How I Used PPC Advertising And How I Failed Miserably

As I mentioned in this post, it’s been almost a year since I posted in this blog. But although I was inactive with my blog, I was quite active in the world of Internet Marketing and gained some experience under my belt. Today, I’m gonna share with you my efforts and results in Pay Per Click (PPC advertising).

How I used PPC

I used PPC to advertise my e-commerce website. Right from the start, I decided to go into PPC with a big style – I signed up with Google Adwords, 7Search and also Bing and Yahoo! (these two are now both under one “PPC roof”).

I got some free credit, and also added some of my own money. The idea was to advertise a lot, on many platforms, and wait for the money to roll.

Well, I advertised a lot, and on many platforms, but the money didn’t start rolling. In fact, quite a few pennies rolled away from my wallet in my effort to scale up.

Marketing Plan or Gambling?

It felt like a gambling. You know, you lose $100, so you bet $200 to get it all back. And just like most gamblers, I quickly found out, that this system would leave me broke, if I don’t change something.

And the thing that I changed was, that I stopped. I calmed down, stepped back and decided to call it a quit. Obviously, in order to run a profitable PPC campaign, you need to know what you are doing. Simply throwing money at it is not going to bring you positive results.

But despite of losing a bit of cash, I had a great opportunity to analyze each PPC platform.

Time To Anayze

1. Google PPC

Clearly, Google is the king when it comes to getting clicks. But the cost per click was by far the highest from all 4 networks. Although I tried to find and use some less common keywords related to my gift basket business, it still cost a lot to compete in this field.

2. 7Search PPC

On the opposite side of Google was 7Search. Although I used the same keywords and in many ways also the same ads, the cost per click was marginal when compared to Google. I literally paid only a few cents per click. This allowed me to receive tons of clicks, for the same budget I had set up for Adwords, yet no click brought in a converting customer. It
was as if all the clicks came from a people who did not even try to search for gift baskets.

3. Bing PPC

Like I said, Bing and Yahoo merged into one platform, so my results with those networks may be irrelevant. But just so you know, I found Bing almost as expensive as Google, but it was much harder to get the clicks. While I ran through the clicks (for allocated budget) on Google in a matter of hours, Bing took much longer. In fact, I did not even get to spend the whole $100 of free credit I received when I signed up with Bing. Strange, especially I ran the same ads on Bing and Google.

4. Yahoo! PPC

And the winner of my experience was Yahoo!. Well, I should not say winner, since I lost money with Yahoo! too, but it prove to be a reasonably priced PPC platform, a click-through was pretty much identical with that of Google.

Is It Just Me, Or PPC Does Not Work?

I’m sure it’s just me. If I ever get to do PPC again – which I know I will, but not until I feel confident in my ability to handle it properly – I am quite sure I will go with Yahoo! platform. Although they merged with Bing, which I found the worse from all four networks I tested, I bet the Yahoo! will curb down whatever negative Bing may have brought to this merger.

My PPC Future Is With Yahoo and 7Search

So what’s the future of Adwords and 7Search in my PPC plans? Well, I have no doubts that Adwords is a very viable PPC network, after all, it is Google we’re talking about. But the cost may be too prohibitive for me to jump into Adwords anytime soon.

On the other hand, 7Search is definitely network I have on my list of future tries. The cost was so very low, that despite of no conversions, there simply must be a use for this network. I am playing with a thought to use this traffic to build an email list or get fans to my Facebook pages for my affiliate websites.

Hey, Where’s Facebook PPC In All This?

Now, I also tried to get Facebook fans through advertising directly on Facebook. I enticed the user to click and become a fan in exchange for a chance to win a free gift basket (I actually did give away a free basket once a month to one random subscriber. I managed to get 17 fans via those ads, but the cost was way too high – over $2.50 per fan, so after a few days, I stopped the Facebook campaign.

Obviously, free traffic is always the goal for me to gain subscribers and fans, but 7Search does offer a very cheap alternative to driving the traffic to my sites, especially new ones or the ones that are in more competitive niches. Plus, the chances are, that most clicks for keywords in my niches would end up costing literally 1-2 cents per click. So although I would not use 7Search for any e-commerce site again, I do think it will play a role in my future IM activities as a list builder.

We’ll see.

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