Archive for February, 2010
Pay Per Click (ppc) – Why is PPC Best Form of Traffic Generator?
The Internet domain is such a big wide web and users are scattered all around. Trying to bring them to your site is no mean feat.
This is why marketers alway have a huge task at hand trying to bring traffic to their site. The success of our internet campaign will rely solely on generating enough traffic for conversion (whether it be sales or lead generation).
1. Well-Targeted Traffic
Furthermore, we only want well-targeted traffic. By reaching out for well-targeted visitors who are already interested in our products or services, we can ensure a higher percentage of success in our campaign.
No other traffic source can generate traffic as fast and targeted as PPC (Pay-Per-Click). PPC are paid advertisement from search engine. You only pay when the user clicks on the ad.
PPC is a well-proven traffic technique to bring in increased traffic and improve online conversion rates.
There are three main reasons for PPC high success rate:
2. Everyone uses Search Engine
Everyone uses Search Engine to look for what they need. Its the most convenient tool they can use right at their browser when they need something. As they enter their search terms (keywords), we can roughly understand who are they and what they need. This explains why PPC traffic is so targeted.
Remember targeted traffic converts much better than non-targeted traffic.
3. Instant Traffic
Your ad will appear almost instantly once you start adding your ad in your PPC account. No long waiting time and groups of hungry niche visitors are always searching for information everyday.
When you are selling a hot affiliate product, you want to reach out to your targeted visitors fast.
4. Display at prominent area of the search engine
Being a paying customer, your ad will always appear more prominent than other non-paying links. Thus your ads can match with the visitor’s needs earlier than other ads.
The non-paying customers will have to go through the tedious and often complicated SEO process to climb his way up the list.
Mike
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/pay-per-click-ppc-why-is-ppc-best-form-of-traffic-generator-676393.html
Online Advertising Mistakes You Don't Wan't To Make
Here’s a list of 10 advertising mistakes I have made while developing my online business.You can avoid these pitfalls by reading this article. I started my first online business back in 2004. I knew absolutely nothing about e commerce.
I saw a pop up ad that guaranteed I would make $500 dollars within 30 days after making a $25.00 investment, to sell Satellite TV subscriptions. Since I had no clue about selling on the Internet, failure was pretty much inevitable. At least I got my money back.
10. My first mistake was investing any amount of money in an Internet business, without doing at least some research on how to market an online business.
I thought if I threw up a website, people would “appear” and they would all sign up for Satellite TV! I was expecting to make money right away, with no targeted advertising.
When you have a small online business it’s impossible to make money if you don’t advertise to potential customers, who already have an interest in what you’re selling.
9. When I finally did begin to understand the importance of online advertising, the mistake I made was to buy “hits” of traffic. I didn’t know the difference between “hits” and actual “unique” website visitors. “Hits” are how many times your web page and the graphics on your web page are loaded.
“Unique” visitors are supposed to be actual human visitors to your website or blog. I later found out that a lot, if not most of these websites that sell what they describe as website visitors or “traffic”, are really simply using automated scripts that load your web page over and over again. The script simulates live visitors to a website. You’ll end up with great statistics, but zero sales and or sign ups.
I also used one of those “automatic hits machines” that I received with something I downloaded. This software again simulated live website visitors by pinging my website from hundreds if not thousands of assorted domains. No actual human visitors. At the time I didn’t know this type of software existed.
I thought these “hits” coming from real domains were real people! I think that because I used this software my website, which had zero page rank, but had been indexed by Google, eventually got banned by Google. Because shortly after using that automatic “hits” software my website began to show the infamous “Grey” page rank box.
Don’t use automatic scripts that claim to bring “traffic” (as in website visitors) to your online business. Sure, the numbers will be encouraging. But it’s an illusion. In reality you may get your website banned by the major search engine, and besides, you can’t sell to an automated software script anyway.
8. Next I tried the free Traffic Exchanges. On free traffic exchanges, you sign up to view other people’s websites. For every one or a few website that you view, the traffic exchange will display your website once. The problem is, from the sales perspective, if there are for the most parts real human eyes viewing your web page, (and not a script) these eyes probably belong to other’s who are trying to get their online business advertised at no cost.
Which means that they are probably not going to buy whatever it is you’re selling, unless it’s going to get them what they have already shown an interest in. That would be getting more free traffic to their Internet business. I have used several of the free traffic exchanges, and my websites have never benefited from the effort whatsoever. I also wrongly assumed that the free exchanges would provide a back link to my website. They don’t.
The only thing I have found the free traffic exchanges good for is the opportunity to see what some of my competitors are selling, and how they have written their web page’s. I also think that the free traffic exchanges may be a good place to advertise if you have a website or blog that have “freebies” as in free download e books and or software. Again the folks who actually click on ads at these free traffic exchanges have already shown an interest in free resources. But for making money, for me they were useless.
7. After the free T.E.’s I tried using the software that submits your website to 500 search engines automatically. Another waste of time, although I did get the software for no cost. The only real problems with this process is that of the 500 search engines, most people probably only use 2 or 3 of them for web searches. Next even back then the 3 major S.E.’s preferred manual submissions. Automatic submissions are considered “Spam.” Always submit to S.E.’s and Directories manually.
6. I also paid to be listed on a search engine network. My site would be listed on all of the websites in their network. I was allowed to choose one keyword phrase. If it was available, I was charged a flat fee, to be paid quarterly. In three month time, I received maybe 20 clicks. Dismal. No results. And 97 percent of those clicks didn’t register on my web server files. The other peculiar thing about this search engine “network” was that the majority of clicks registered on their statistics that I received, came during the period of time when it was almost time for me to renew the account. Call me suspicious.
5. Next on my list of learning experiences, I dived into the Pay Per Click industry. I decided to start off on a less expensive so called “Search Engine.” I won’t name the company, but their name, if they are still in business, starts with the number7. This small S.E. if I remember correctly charges either 25 or fifty dollars to be paid upfront. That money goes into your p.p.c. account. You bid on keywords, and then your ad is displayed on their so called anonymous “network” of distributor websites. Each unnamed distributor website has a minimum bid amount for ad placement.
After a few days I began to notice website ads that were totally unrelated to Web Hosting ahead of my ad. Gambling websites were placed higher than my website for the keyword “web hosting.” And I was paying for my ad placement based on my keyword. I became suspicious. I called the company. They told me they must have missed it. But it was happening on almost every keyword!
After being with the account for a couple of weeks and getting zero clicks, I began to research just who these anonymous distribution network of websites actually belonged to. When I performed a back link check on my website, I began to see links leading to my website, on websites’ that were completely unrelated to my online business.
One of the sites that I found my link on, was a one page website titled Greek Poetry. Most of the other websites that were linked to my site, were hardly more than starter pages. One site was a one page website about horse grooming! I was at the time selling and using keywords for “Web Hosting.”
All of those ridiculous distribution network back links led directly back to that so called Search Engine. Apparently this company bought a lot of domains, threw up some starter pages, and then decided to sell them off as a network of active and highly visited websites. To that Search Engines credit though, they did give me a prompt refund. If you decide to advertise on a network of websites, be sure to research and determine if these are real websites, that get lots of real human visitors.
4. After that didn’t work out I bought into a service that would distribute an ad for my website on a so called “network” of Ezines. That only cost me $15 dollars. $15 more dollars flushed down the toilet. When I did a back link check on this so called “network” of Ezines, I noticed that at least 90 percent of these Ezine websites had the exact same template and look of the website that sold me the distribution service.
Call me suspicious. But how can 20 or thirty supposedly different Ezines and websites all have the same template right down to the colors, and not be owned by the same company? I didn’t even try to get a refund from that website. I just considered it a lesson learned. Oh yeah, naturally I got zero traffic for my money, and my ad was misspelled, along with being on a page that had about one million other ads that made outrageous claims of overnight profits.
If you buy advertising to be distributed to a group of Ezines, make sure you know exactly what Ezines your ads will be published in, how many subscribers they have, and also what type of ads are being displayed on the same page as your own. Your online business will look dishonest if your ads are displayed with other ads that make these unrealistic claims of overnight success.
3. My next advertising adventure was to submit to as many directories as possible. It was too tedious to submit to them one at a time, so again I bought into a service that claimed they would submit my website to 50 directories. After paying, I found out that least 95 percent of the directories had very low or no page rank at all, not to mention being totally unheard of. Plus even today when I do a back link check, only maybe 5 to 8 of the 50 directory listings that I paid for, list my website.
More money wasted! Whenever I see the phrase “our network of advertisers” I become a little suspicious. Especially when they don’t specifically name the individual websites in their so called “network.” Again I didn’t request a refund. I just considered it a lesson learned.
2. Moving up my list of advertising mistakes, this time I decided to open a Pay Per Click campaign with Google Adwords. After spending money with so many questionable websites, and getting no results, I figured that a company as large and well financed as Google, would surely not do anything to raise suspicions. I like everyone else at the time was told by Google that for as little as a five dollar sign up fee, and 50 dollars per month I could begin advertising on the most utilized search engine in the world. It sounded like a no brainer. Wrong.
What I didn’t know was that spending fifty dollar per month on a Google Adwords advertising account is practically useless. Especially if you bid on the keywords that your potential customers are most likely to use. I completed sales using Adwords, but in the end when I added the click fraud that I was being charged for, (I once received 131 clicks in less than four hours, after making an unpopular statement on the Google Adwords forum.) along with the constantly increasing bid amounts for ad placement, and not knowing what my competitors were bidding against me, it became cost prohibitive to continue advertising with Google Adwords.
If you are considering signing up for a Google Adwords account, the best advice I can give you is to read the Adwords Help Forums before you spend any money. Start off in the Basics section. Read the New Post first. Then go back a few months into the older Post. Look for patterns in user problems and frustrations. Expect to be treated the same way and to have similar problems when you have your own account.
1. Which finally brings us to what has probably been my biggest online advertising mistake. Not taking the time to master keyword research. The whole idea of it bores me to tears!
Plus when I did try to understand keyword research, I was getting conflicting information, which again makes me suspicious. What I learned was this…
Every online keyword tool available, from Wordtracker (and I have paid to use their service) to Google’s keyword tool, to Overture’s keyword tool and Microsoft’s Adcenter’s keyword software, they all give different results for keyword popularity, and search volume. It’s as though each company has their own “turf” when it comes to certain keywords.
For example Overture will say that a keyword is very popular and gets a high volume of search traffic. You may try that same exact keyword phrase on Google’s keyword software, and their keyword tool will indicate there is not enough search volume to even determine search keyword popularity or volume! Now are we to assume that the people who made this a very popular search term with Overture’s keyword research tool never tried to perform that same keyword search on Google. The number one ranked search engine in the world?
It doesn’t seem very likely does it? So why all the contradictions with search volume and popularity. I believe it’s another pay per click profit mechanism. That’s the main reason I don’t spend an excessive amount of time worrying about keywords. Although I should try to learn more. It couldn’t hurt. But you may have heard that within the past few days, Google has deducted page rank from several websites, for no apparent legitimate reason.
Just because one website improves, or websites in a particular genre become more competitive is no legitimate reason to penalize a website, that was okay and making progress 3 months ago. Webmasters, and small online business owners have worked dilligently trying to master keyword research and web page optimization only to get penalized.
All of the work and money spent on website and search engine optimization down the toilet again. If these guys really wanted to have the BEST search engine in the world, they would hire humans to evaluate websites.
At least until technology catches up with the demands being made of computer software, when predicting human behavior, and text recognition, juxtaposed with intent.
So for now I just do the best I can with keywords and search engines. But I’m not going to lose any sleep studying keywords, or pay any so called SEO experts, when my website can be penalized at any time.
I really believe this entire penalty fiasco and the P.P.C. Quality Score gimmick is simply a dishonest method of rotating which websites occupy the first page top ten rankings.
No matter how good we are at SEO skills, we can’t all be listed on the first page of the search results! And the penalizing of websites is another great way to rotate websites in and out of the first page rankings, and also to persuade some website owners who don’t want to lose their traffic, to invest in Pay Per Click advertising. A win, win situation for the Search Engine industry.
I hope this article saves you time and money! Always remember “Any pursuit is great… when GREATLY pursued!”
Copyright © 2009 Nicholas Busbee All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Nicholas Busbee
How to Make Money With Cpa
One of the best ways to make money on the internet just now is using CPA, or Cost Per Action.
Until now, CPA has been a relatively unknown method of how to make money in the realms of Internet Marketing, but that is changing fast – and with good reason. Traditionally, Internet marketing has involved you selling someone else’s products and taking a commission for the sale. They make the stuff, you promote and sell it; it’s a good synergistic relationship and has worked well for many years, and indeed continues to work well for many people.
CPA is different however, because you, the marketer can earn a commission by simply acquiring a lead for a particular product or business – you don’t actually have to sell anything, and most often, the customer only has to supply an e-mail address of zip code (known as a zip submit) for you to get paid.
Well, this sounds great, no selling, no money changes hands but you still get paid! If you have ever wondered how to make money, especially using the internet, then you should see by now that CPA is one of the best ways possible.
But, if the customer doesn’t actually buy anything why do businesses pay you. Well, its because new customers are the lifeblood of most businesses, and , depending on the business, they can be very lucrative. Because of this, there are many businesses that are willing to simply pay for the lead in the hope that the new customer will actually buy something from them in the future.
Of course, times it can be much easier to collect leads and get paid for the particular action than it is to actually sell an entire product – after all your customer doesn’t have to part with any money – at least just now – making it a much simpler sale for you.
If you want to know how to make money with CPA, however, there are a few things you must know.
First of all, you have to get accepted by a CPA network. These are the guys who give you the offers to promote, and ultimately pay you. Since CPA is such a simple way to make money, if its done correctly, these guys are fussy about who they accept. However, like all things internet, as CPA becomes a more popular way of how to make money, then more networks are springing up all of the time.
Secondly, you should choose your offers carefully. Some are more profitable, more popular and more trustworthy than others.
Lastly, its a numbers game. The real success of how to make money with CPA is by driving lots of targeted traffic to your web site.
If you do all three things listed above, however, it is quite easy to make money with CPA, and in a big way. Four or even five figure earnings are quite possible every month.
Dave Simpson
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/how-to-make-money-with-cpa-712749.html
Affiliate Programs 2 Tier Explained
How will refering new affiliates to an affiliate program make me money in the future? Thats where a 2 tier affiliate program works like magic!
Affiliates are getting cleverer by the day. So these days, affiliates know the difference between the different types of traffic they can get paid for. There are a lot of definitions though – CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL, CPD and many more.
CPM is impressions, when the publisher (the website owner) gets paid every time a banner is shown.
CPC is clicks, where the publisher (or email marketer and other marketers) gets paid every time a banner or text link is clicked upon.
The other ways of getting paid are grouped together under the term performance marketing – and this is where the term affiliate is most commonly used as well.
An affiliate is a marketer who sends visitors to another site using a variety of methods (such as placing banners or text links on their own site, buying sponsored listings on search engines, email marketing and many other different methods) and gets paid when an action happens. This action can be a lead (CPL stands for Cost per Lead), a Sale (CPS stands for Cost per Sale), a download (CPD stands for Cost per download) and many other variations.
Some in the Internet industry refer to performance based marketing as CPA (cost per acquisition), although the term is also sometimes used for specific types of campaigns such as leads or sales.
Now that we’ve got over the hard part, the rest is easy to understand.
The affiliate gets paid for sending visitors to a specific landing page where an action happens – either a lead, a sale, a download or some other sort of action that the advertiser requires. As an example, some advertisers are looking to build up their databases, so they pay for each opt in email address they receive, others want leads from specific locations, so they pay for zip codes, and then try convince the visitors after they fill in their zip code, to fill in a more detailed lead form.
The common denominator is that the affiliate gets paid when an action happens.
A 2 Tier affiliate program is simply finding new marketers to sign up under you to do EXACTLY what you are doing – sending visitors to different offers and getting paid when the visitors perform some sort of action. So why would you want other marketers to sign up under you to promote the same offers? Simple – you get paid a percentage of the amount the affiliate you refer gets paid? Sounds complicated?
Don’t worry, it’s not hard to understand. As an example, say John promotes 5 different offers on a single affiliate network. He gets paid for every lead, sale, email and zip code he generates from these different offers. John now tells Mark about the Network and gets Mark to sign up using a banner or text link that has John’s referral code built into it. Mark now signs up to the Affiliate Network under John and starts promoting various offers and advertisers from the Affiliate Network. These offers DON’T have to be the same offers that John is promoting. Mark can promote ANY of the offers on the Affiliate Network.
And this is the best part…
For any amounts that Mark gets paid, John receives a percentage of the amount over and above what Mark gets paid. So if Mark gets paid $1000 in Month 1, and the 2 Tier Affiliate program is paying 5%, then John would receive $50 just for referring Mark.
But it gets even better…
Some 2 Tier Affiliate Networks pay LIFETIME commissions. So John wouldn’t get a referral commission just for a month or a year – he receives it FOR ALL TIME.
If Mark becomes a super affiliate and starts generating HUGE commissions every month, John can just sit back and collect the checks as he referred him.
There are 3 important things to know when finding affiliates to sign up under you on 2 Tier Affiliate Programs:
Is the affiliate program or affiliate network credible, has proper tracking so your referrals are correctly tracked, has good campaigns and offers for the affiliates to promote so they actually do make money, and do they pay timeously? Assuming that the affiliate program or network is good, what percentage do they pay you on amounts that your referrals get paid? All programs vary so compare different programs to see what the industry standard is.
How long do you continue receiving referral commissions for? Some pay for a month, some for the lifetime, and of course there are many variations in between.
So do your homework and find a 2 Tier program that can make you money long in the future for the work you’re doing today.
http://www.freesitesignup.com/a/coupon.php?id=6926
ed
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/affiliate-programs-2-tier-explained-720423.html
What is Free Email Advertising and Its Merits
Free email advertising is a substantially useful and an efficient internet marketing strategy; when put to use professionally and appropriately it is capable of taking your business to a new level. Email advertising is one of the modern internet marketing strategies used to make people to know about your product and promote your business. Generally wellness industry products are marketed using free email advertising by most people. Many companies after using free email advertising for their business have experienced that their income is increased significantly and this technique of advertising is best to build good customer relation. Although there are many techniques of advertising your business in to day’s internet world, free email advertising promises to be a great strategy to sustain your business.
Free email advertising using email ads may not be that simple unless you study and apply some fundamental strategy to make your business substantially profitable. The subject matter of your free email ad should be straight forward and simple to interpret so that your email is not ignored by the viewer without reading it. When making your free email ads, in order to save time and to keep your customers updated, use auto responders so that order confirmation is generated automatically. Send more free email ads to targeted customers because targeted email advertising is the most efficient strategy to make more people to know about your business.
In order to make your business substantially profitable the message in your email ad should possess the exact needs and wishes of your targeted customers. The message should include a description about your product and why is it superior to other similar products. It can be a best idea to create your own email list to promote your business, so begin an ezine and make the newsletter with your product and business related information. While using many other advertising techniques business owners found it difficult to reach their targeted customers, where as free email advertising allows you to reach your potential customers directly. Opt in email advertising is considered as the safe and suitable strategy because this system of email advertising is done with the consent of the email receiver. Opt in list can be either constructed by you or you may purchase it from others. Avoid sending email ads that are not wanted by customers; such type of email ads are known as spam. Spam will break your customers instead of getting you good customers.
Free email advertising strategy is a substantially profitable internet advertising strategy for the future internet marketing because many business companies have experienced that email advertising offers as much benefits as they get in any other form of advertising. Experts expect that free email advertising will become the efficient marketing tool for internet marketing in future. Free email marketing has the potential to revolutionize the field of internet marketing. You can direct your emails to your targeted audience. They may feel special if you make them feel that they are among the chosen few customers to whom you have sent the free email ads. It could drive them towards purchasing your product.
squiinter
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/what-is-free-email-advertising-and-its-merits-736570.html
AdMedia – CPA Advertising – Cost Per Action – Cost Per Acquisition
http://admedia.com/marketing_solutions/cpa/ – With AdMedia Cost Per Acquisition, (also known as Cost Per Action) the advertiser only pays when a consumer performs a specific action. That action is determined by the advertiser, and can come in the form of a purchase, a form submission, and so on. Advertisers, who benefit from direct response marketing, believe that CPA is the most efficient way to purchase online advertising. In this case advertisers only pay for ads that produce a desired action, one that was determined by the advertiser early on.
Duration : 0:0:53
Online Predators – The Media Show
You’ve probably seen ads saying one in five children is sexually solicited online. Well, the ad campaign is lying about its statistics. We get serious and talk about the problems with keeping kids offline because of our fear of predators.
Click the yellow “subscribe” button above to hear about new episodes! Or join our Facebook group for weekly updates: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/The-Media-Show/34003419539
Duration : 0:2:44
How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989)
Richard E Grant plays the perfect Thatcherite! From ‘How to Get Ahead in advertising‘ (1989). Directed by Bruce Robinson.
Duration : 0:7:44
How to Make Money Online – a Guide for Beginners – Part 3 – Using Pay Per Click (ppc)
Using pay per click advertising is a vital tool for anyone looking to make money online. In this article, I discuss the key areas required for effective PPC advertising. Google AdWords is the most popular PPC scheme and there are a number of factors that determine the success or failure of any AdWords campaign.
Before beginning a campaign you must have clearly defined goals for example are you trying to send customers to a review page of an affiliate product your advertisment will not be aimed at selling the product but designed to encourage click throughs to the review page.
The aim of PPC is to drive targeted traffic to a specific page where a pre-sell via a review or a direct sell is made, a % of which you receive as commission. The amount of people who see your advert is dependant on the popularity of the keywords you choose. More popular keywords attract more competitors and push the advertisng price up, however may provide greater opportunity for making money online.
To make money online the most important aspects of a Google AdWords campaign include:
” Keyword selection. In general terms the more targeted the keyword, the better. You’ll get less click throughs but they will be from people who are genuinely interested in your product or service.
” Advertisement. The headline is the most important aspect. Make sure that it relates to the keywords you have chosen to bid on – this will help keep the advertising cost lower.
” Display URL. The more relevant this appears to be to the keywords you’re bidding on, the greater chances of a click. For example if you are selling dvd copy software the name of the software should be used.
” Landing page URL. This needs to be specific to your keywords and advertisement. If you’re bidding on Madonna then you shouldn’t be sending people to a page about trainspotting. If it’s not relevant Google will penalise you by charging a lot more per click.
” Budget. How much are you willing to pay per click? Estimate how many visitors it will take for a single conversion (sale) start of around 1% and work out from your commission how much you can afford to pay and still make money.
For example: If your commission is $30 per sale at conversion rate of 1% that means that every 100 clicks = 1 sale.
Therefore $30/100 or $30 x (1/100) = $0.30 pay per click is break even so a figure less than this for advertising is required to make a profit.
” Daily Budget. The amount of money you are willing to spend in a 24 hour period. Keep in mind that if you’re making money, it’s okay to spend money.
These are just some of the basics associated with creating a successful AdWords campaign. The truth of the matter is that being able to consistently make money online with Google AdWords takes knowledge and experience. The more you work with pay per click advertising, the better results you’ll have.
James Curtis BSc writes on how to make money online with a wealth of experience in management and business. If you are having difficulty making money online you can learn more by visiting my blog:
how to make money online
http://howtomakemoneyonline-jcurtis80.blogspot.com/
Online money making scams
http://onlinemoneymakingscams-jcurtis80.blogspot.com/
James Curtis
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/how-to-make-money-online-a-guide-for-beginners-part-3-using-pay-per-click-ppc-738416.html
Online Advertising Mistakes You Don't Wan't To Make
Here’s a list of 10 advertising mistakes I have made while developing my online business.You can avoid these pitfalls by reading this article. I started my first online business back in 2004. I knew absolutely nothing about e commerce.
I saw a pop up ad that guaranteed I would make $500 dollars within 30 days after making a $25.00 investment, to sell Satellite TV subscriptions. Since I had no clue about selling on the Internet, failure was pretty much inevitable. At least I got my money back.
10. My first mistake was investing any amount of money in an Internet business, without doing at least some research on how to market an online business.
I thought if I threw up a website, people would “appear” and they would all sign up for Satellite TV! I was expecting to make money right away, with no targeted advertising.
When you have a small online business it’s impossible to make money if you don’t advertise to potential customers, who already have an interest in what you’re selling.
9. When I finally did begin to understand the importance of online advertising, the mistake I made was to buy “hits” of traffic. I didn’t know the difference between “hits” and actual “unique” website visitors. “Hits” are how many times your web page and the graphics on your web page are loaded.
“Unique” visitors are supposed to be actual human visitors to your website or blog. I later found out that a lot, if not most of these websites that sell what they describe as website visitors or “traffic”, are really simply using automated scripts that load your web page over and over again. The script simulates live visitors to a website. You’ll end up with great statistics, but zero sales and or sign ups.
I also used one of those “automatic hits machines” that I received with something I downloaded. This software again simulated live website visitors by pinging my website from hundreds if not thousands of assorted domains. No actual human visitors. At the time I didn’t know this type of software existed.
I thought these “hits” coming from real domains were real people! I think that because I used this software my website, which had zero page rank, but had been indexed by Google, eventually got banned by Google. Because shortly after using that automatic “hits” software my website began to show the infamous “Grey” page rank box.
Don’t use automatic scripts that claim to bring “traffic” (as in website visitors) to your online business. Sure, the numbers will be encouraging. But it’s an illusion. In reality you may get your website banned by the major search engine, and besides, you can’t sell to an automated software script anyway.
8. Next I tried the free Traffic Exchanges. On free traffic exchanges, you sign up to view other people’s websites. For every one or a few website that you view, the traffic exchange will display your website once. The problem is, from the sales perspective, if there are for the most parts real human eyes viewing your web page, (and not a script) these eyes probably belong to other’s who are trying to get their online business advertised at no cost.
Which means that they are probably not going to buy whatever it is you’re selling, unless it’s going to get them what they have already shown an interest in. That would be getting more free traffic to their Internet business. I have used several of the free traffic exchanges, and my websites have never benefited from the effort whatsoever. I also wrongly assumed that the free exchanges would provide a back link to my website. They don’t.
The only thing I have found the free traffic exchanges good for is the opportunity to see what some of my competitors are selling, and how they have written their web page’s. I also think that the free traffic exchanges may be a good place to advertise if you have a website or blog that have “freebies” as in free download e books and or software. Again the folks who actually click on ads at these free traffic exchanges have already shown an interest in free resources. But for making money, for me they were useless.
7. After the free T.E.’s I tried using the software that submits your website to 500 search engines automatically. Another waste of time, although I did get the software for no cost. The only real problems with this process is that of the 500 search engines, most people probably only use 2 or 3 of them for web searches. Next even back then the 3 major S.E.’s preferred manual submissions. Automatic submissions are considered “Spam.” Always submit to S.E.’s and Directories manually.
6. I also paid to be listed on a search engine network. My site would be listed on all of the websites in their network. I was allowed to choose one keyword phrase. If it was available, I was charged a flat fee, to be paid quarterly. In three month time, I received maybe 20 clicks. Dismal. No results. And 97 percent of those clicks didn’t register on my web server files. The other peculiar thing about this search engine “network” was that the majority of clicks registered on their statistics that I received, came during the period of time when it was almost time for me to renew the account. Call me suspicious.
5. Next on my list of learning experiences, I dived into the Pay Per Click industry. I decided to start off on a less expensive so called “Search Engine.” I won’t name the company, but their name, if they are still in business, starts with the number7. This small S.E. if I remember correctly charges either 25 or fifty dollars to be paid upfront. That money goes into your p.p.c. account. You bid on keywords, and then your ad is displayed on their so called anonymous “network” of distributor websites. Each unnamed distributor website has a minimum bid amount for ad placement.
After a few days I began to notice website ads that were totally unrelated to Web Hosting ahead of my ad. Gambling websites were placed higher than my website for the keyword “web hosting.” And I was paying for my ad placement based on my keyword. I became suspicious. I called the company. They told me they must have missed it. But it was happening on almost every keyword!
After being with the account for a couple of weeks and getting zero clicks, I began to research just who these anonymous distribution network of websites actually belonged to. When I performed a back link check on my website, I began to see links leading to my website, on websites’ that were completely unrelated to my online business.
One of the sites that I found my link on, was a one page website titled Greek Poetry. Most of the other websites that were linked to my site, were hardly more than starter pages. One site was a one page website about horse grooming! I was at the time selling and using keywords for “Web Hosting.”
All of those ridiculous distribution network back links led directly back to that so called Search Engine. Apparently this company bought a lot of domains, threw up some starter pages, and then decided to sell them off as a network of active and highly visited websites. To that Search Engines credit though, they did give me a prompt refund. If you decide to advertise on a network of websites, be sure to research and determine if these are real websites, that get lots of real human visitors.
4. After that didn’t work out I bought into a service that would distribute an ad for my website on a so called “network” of Ezines. That only cost me $15 dollars. $15 more dollars flushed down the toilet. When I did a back link check on this so called “network” of Ezines, I noticed that at least 90 percent of these Ezine websites had the exact same template and look of the website that sold me the distribution service.
Call me suspicious. But how can 20 or thirty supposedly different Ezines and websites all have the same template right down to the colors, and not be owned by the same company? I didn’t even try to get a refund from that website. I just considered it a lesson learned. Oh yeah, naturally I got zero traffic for my money, and my ad was misspelled, along with being on a page that had about one million other ads that made outrageous claims of overnight profits.
If you buy advertising to be distributed to a group of Ezines, make sure you know exactly what Ezines your ads will be published in, how many subscribers they have, and also what type of ads are being displayed on the same page as your own. Your online business will look dishonest if your ads are displayed with other ads that make these unrealistic claims of overnight success.
3. My next advertising adventure was to submit to as many directories as possible. It was too tedious to submit to them one at a time, so again I bought into a service that claimed they would submit my website to 50 directories. After paying, I found out that least 95 percent of the directories had very low or no page rank at all, not to mention being totally unheard of. Plus even today when I do a back link check, only maybe 5 to 8 of the 50 directory listings that I paid for, list my website.
More money wasted! Whenever I see the phrase “our network of advertisers” I become a little suspicious. Especially when they don’t specifically name the individual websites in their so called “network.” Again I didn’t request a refund. I just considered it a lesson learned.
2. Moving up my list of advertising mistakes, this time I decided to open a Pay Per Click campaign with Google Adwords. After spending money with so many questionable websites, and getting no results, I figured that a company as large and well financed as Google, would surely not do anything to raise suspicions. I like everyone else at the time was told by Google that for as little as a five dollar sign up fee, and 50 dollars per month I could begin advertising on the most utilized search engine in the world. It sounded like a no brainer. Wrong.
What I didn’t know was that spending fifty dollar per month on a Google Adwords advertising account is practically useless. Especially if you bid on the keywords that your potential customers are most likely to use. I completed sales using Adwords, but in the end when I added the click fraud that I was being charged for, (I once received 131 clicks in less than four hours, after making an unpopular statement on the Google Adwords forum.) along with the constantly increasing bid amounts for ad placement, and not knowing what my competitors were bidding against me, it became cost prohibitive to continue advertising with Google Adwords.
If you are considering signing up for a Google Adwords account, the best advice I can give you is to read the Adwords Help Forums before you spend any money. Start off in the Basics section. Read the New Post first. Then go back a few months into the older Post. Look for patterns in user problems and frustrations. Expect to be treated the same way and to have similar problems when you have your own account.
1. Which finally brings us to what has probably been my biggest online advertising mistake. Not taking the time to master keyword research. The whole idea of it bores me to tears!
Plus when I did try to understand keyword research, I was getting conflicting information, which again makes me suspicious. What I learned was this…
Every online keyword tool available, from Wordtracker (and I have paid to use their service) to Google’s keyword tool, to Overture’s keyword tool and Microsoft’s Adcenter’s keyword software, they all give different results for keyword popularity, and search volume. It’s as though each company has their own “turf” when it comes to certain keywords.
For example Overture will say that a keyword is very popular and gets a high volume of search traffic. You may try that same exact keyword phrase on Google’s keyword software, and their keyword tool will indicate there is not enough search volume to even determine search keyword popularity or volume! Now are we to assume that the people who made this a very popular search term with Overture’s keyword research tool never tried to perform that same keyword search on Google. The number one ranked search engine in the world?
It doesn’t seem very likely does it? So why all the contradictions with search volume and popularity. I believe it’s another pay per click profit mechanism. That’s the main reason I don’t spend an excessive amount of time worrying about keywords. Although I should try to learn more. It couldn’t hurt. But you may have heard that within the past few days, Google has deducted page rank from several websites, for no apparent legitimate reason.
Just because one website improves, or websites in a particular genre become more competitive is no legitimate reason to penalize a website, that was okay and making progress 3 months ago. Webmasters, and small online business owners have worked dilligently trying to master keyword research and web page optimization only to get penalized.
All of the work and money spent on website and search engine optimization down the toilet again. If these guys really wanted to have the BEST search engine in the world, they would hire humans to evaluate websites.
At least until technology catches up with the demands being made of computer software, when predicting human behavior, and text recognition, juxtaposed with intent.
So for now I just do the best I can with keywords and search engines. But I’m not going to lose any sleep studying keywords, or pay any so called SEO experts, when my website can be penalized at any time.
I really believe this entire penalty fiasco and the P.P.C. Quality Score gimmick is simply a dishonest method of rotating which websites occupy the first page top ten rankings.
No matter how good we are at SEO skills, we can’t all be listed on the first page of the search results! And the penalizing of websites is another great way to rotate websites in and out of the first page rankings, and also to persuade some website owners who don’t want to lose their traffic, to invest in Pay Per Click advertising. A win, win situation for the Search Engine industry.
I hope this article saves you time and money! Always remember “Any pursuit is great… when GREATLY pursued!”
Copyright © 2009 Nicholas Busbee All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Nicholas Busbee