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Where does openPPC fit in this list ? We really don't. We've designed our
system to bring you, to the best of our ability, the best of each class. Our primary
goal was to be a network of Niche PPCs. Each category is run independently by
an Operator as a separate search engine and domain, as a Niche PPC. Within these search engines, you'll
enjoy the advantage of industrial strength ROI, and the loyalty of a community that
appreciates your involvement. On the flip side, in addition to your niche-specific
keyword bids, we encourage you to participate in network-wide bidding, in which case
openPPC acts more like a 2nd Tier (stepchild) system, with a broad distribution
network designed to send you the traffic levels you crave. This is optional, so
you're free to use us to market niche-only, internet-wide, or a little bit of both.
Further, we steal a page from the wannabees .... allowing you begin bidding on
the cheap, with a $10.00 signing bonus, and 10% deposit matching on all funds
paid into the system. Being an open system, we're always trying new things, to
set new standards in the PPC industry, so you can expect things like synonym bidding,
Geo-Targeting, and other ground-breaking technologies to be born here.
Having said all of that, we do not expect that openPPC will be your only PPC
marketing effort. In fact, we'd call you foolish if we were the only PPC that
you were marketing with. Every class of PPC has advantages to you, if you
know the game, know how to play it, and are willing to spend the time to make
it work for you. Below are our thoughts on how the PPC world shakes out. Hopefully,
you'll be able to make better decisions having begun your research here.
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Class 1: The Big Guns
- Overture.com
- FindWhat.com
- Google.com "Adwords"
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Pros:
These engines are HUGE. They have extensive reach ... between these 3
engines, you'll get nearly 98% coverage. That means that nearly every
time anyone does a search from any search engine, your bidded listing
will likely show up. Overture's results show up on Altavista.com searches,
Findwhat's show up at AOL, and Google is ... well, Google.
Cons:
Due to their extensive reach, you may find it extremely difficult to
target your intended audience. Since your listing is going to show up
everywhere, you run the risk of your listing being clicked on (and costing
you money) by every 8 year old and 80 year old playing around in their
AOL or MSN account. In some cases, the exposure is exactly what you want.
For many businesses, paying for all of that "Drive By" traffic is
too financially draining. In our opinion, big time reach is not an
advantage to the advertiser. It's great only for the PPC engine, because
they're able to serve up millions and millions of results, and line
their pocketbooks with millions of clicks, regardless of their worth
to the advertiser.
Extremely high bid prices. The average price in this tier is roughly
$.18 to $.20. Generally, you can expect to average around $.50 per
keyword bid to be #1 for most of your terms. That's a mighty big nut
for most of us.
Also, as is the case with most big companies,
individual treatment of you as a customer is often suspect. These
engines are running millions and millions of dollars through their system,
if your PPC budget is down in the $100 to $250 per month range, don't expect
them to run around in circles trying to help you. The big PPCs are
notorious for thinking that they know your business better than you. They
quite frequently deny your ability to bid on keywords that are relevant
to your business, and will even delete your listings and keywords
if they don't generate enough clicks to make it "worth their while" to
keep you in their database. In our opinion, if a keyword gets you
only one click per year, but makes you $500 ... it was a good investment.
Not so on the big engines. They'll drop you in a heartbeat if your
listing is "under performing"
Food for thought:
If exposure is what you're after, this is your best bet. You will not,
despite their claims to the contrary, experience any higher Return on
Investment (ROI) than you would with the old standard Banner Ad. Generally
speaking, if you can convert 1-2% of the visitors you're paying for,
consider yourself lucky. It really comes down to your business model.
Some businesses (adult and gambling come to mind) can survive, and in fact
thrive on low conversion rates at low margins, because they're able to
make a profit on pure volume. If you're like most businesses, tread
lightly with the big boys, work harder on more targeted keyword selection,
and limit your budget to what you can afford. Its not uncommon for
companies to spend upwards of $15,000 per month in clicks to these
engines.
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Class 2: The Step Children
- kanoodle.com
- goclick.com
- search123.com
- searchfeed.com
- ahha.com
- epilot.com
- search123.com
- xuppa.com
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Pros:
Better than average reach, these engines typically generate about
1/3 to 1/2 the search and click traffic that the big guns do. One
thing you'll notice nearly across the board is that these 2nd tier
engines are hard workers. Customer service is more personal, and
the general feeling is that they really do pound the pavement on
your behalf, trying to get you more exposure, and higher quality
traffic. Typically not having to answer to an army of NASDAQ
investors like the big guns, they're able to move and shake quickly,
making changes and improvements without having to worry about the market
taking a dump on their next move. Lower average bid prices
make it easier for you to be able to pin yourself near the top
of the search results without breaking your budget.
Cons:
These engines are sort of stuck in the Purgatory of the internet.
They're not equipped financially to compete with the big guns for
the giant contracts (such as having their results appear on the
higher profile search engines like Yahoo or MSN), and they're too
big to really be able to focus in. You can expect varying degrees
of Quality and ROI from these engines, depending on who they're feeding
their results to this week. You'll often experience spikes in
traffic...sometimes you'll get a lot of traffic, and other times,
you'll get a weak stream of traffic, but of better quality.
Food for thought:
With an apples to apples test, using the same keywords in these
engines as with the big guns, you can expect that the top bid within
these engines will be roughly 80% cheaper. Given that, along
with the lesser amount of traffic ... a company that would spend
$1,000 per month with Overture, would likely spend only $80 or $90
per month with one these engines for the same set of keywords. If
"dollars out the door" is a primary concern for you, this is good
news. But if you really need the exposure, such as for a holiday
push, the big guns are a better bet. Average visitor quality
is a toss-up. The big guns typically deliver you a lower quality
of visitor, mainly because they're showing your results to anyone
that'll look at them. The engines in this category don't have
that problem, but they're feeding your results everywhere else,
so from day to day, the quality of your visitor will vary, depending
on where they saw your listing...
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Class 3: Mid-Range
- findit-quick.com
- theinfodepot.com
- IQseek.com
- TurboFind.com
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Pros:
While not true "Niche PPCs" since they do not focus on one particular
industry or theme, the PPCs in this class afford you many of the
same benefits that the Targeted PPCs do, and have shown the fortitude
to really stretch out and work for you. What we've seen from PPCs
in this class is that since they're not behemoths that compete for
your business on the basis of pure, raw traffic numbers, they make
great strides in high quality visitors. Most of these PPCs are part
of a bigger Portal or Community, which means that the people searching
there are quite loyal, and very knowledgeable. Not a lot of "Drive by"
searching here. Folks that frequent these PPCs do so by choice, and
are therefore a bit more "legitimate" (for lack of a better word) as
qualified leads for you than even the 2nd Tier PPCs discussed above.
As with many of the "wannabees" discussed later in this section,
you can very often receive a nice sign up bonus of matching funds on
your first deposit, and will enjoy much lower than average bid prices
almost across the board.
Cons:
The simple fact is that unless you're dealing with a PPC that's averaging
a few million searches each month (and most in this class are going
to be around the 500,000/month level), you're simply not going to see
a lot of traffic ... probably on the order of 10-20% of the traffic
you'll see from the larger PPCs. While the likelihood is that your ROI
will be higher due to the inherent quality of the visitor, you're not
going to set any records marketing with the PPCs at this level.
Food for thought:
PPCs in this area are run in most cases by quality individuals or
smaller companies, so focus on customer service (you) is pretty high,
which is a good thing. This is a GREAT place for you to get your
feet wet if you're new to PPC marketing. You'll be able to get in
pretty cheap, work with quality companies, and learn the system while
having a monthly bill you can afford to pay. PPCs in the "wannabee"
section below that make it beyond their first birthday, and grow in
popularity and professionalism will eventually make it up to this level.
You can expect that PPCs that have made it this far have done so
for a reason ... they are focused on their advertisers, and deliver
good ROI.
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Class 4: The Niche PPCs
- infospot.com
- bridalclicks.com
- harmonycentral.com
- sex.com
- carstrucksandautomobiles.com
- findwatches.com
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Pros:
Extreme ROI. One common thing you'll hear often when discussing
Pay Per Click search engines is that the visitors you receive
from your PPC campaigns are "Pre Qualified". They qualify themselves
as potential customers to you because the only way that they
can actually get to your website is by searching on keywords and
phrases that you have specified as being absolutely relevant to your
product or service. This is true, in theory ... but the concept
of visitor pre-qualification really gets its legs when you are
talking about Niche PPCs. We call visitors from Niche PPC Campaigns
"Double Qualified". They're qualified customers not simply because
they searched on your keywords, but because they searched on them
from a search engine devoted to your area of expertise. Think
about that. If you are a company that sells wedding flowers, who
is a more likely customer ... a someone that searched for "flowers"
at msn.com, or a bride that went to a wedding resources directory
like bridalclicks.com and searched for flowers?
Cons:
Although your ROI will be extremely high (industry analysts report
an average conversion rate of almost 19% on niche portal/directory
campaigns ... compared to the internet wide average of .5% to 2%), your
raw traffic totals will be quite low. Where overture may send you
1,000 visitors each month, a niche PPC may send you only 20 or 30.
Also, competition is pretty fierce at this level. You can expect bid
prices to be a bit higher in many cases than even at the bigger PPCs.
Your competition has realized the importance of Double-Qualification
and are setting the bar high. Be prepared to pay top dollar for top
spots.
Food for thought:
In addition to ultra high ROI, your marketing campaign at a Niche
PPC will usually extend beyond simply bidding on your keywords. Typically
a Niche PPC Search Engine is a part of a Portal or Community servicing
a particular industry. Your involvement in that community lends credibility,
loyalty, and respect to your search engine placement. Niche marketing
is an opportunity that you simply cannot afford not to take full advantage
of. Getting your hands dirty with the folks at the very core of your
industry/market is crucial to online success.
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Class 5: The Wannabees
- Go2simon.com
- ifoundit.net
- mitefind.com
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Pros:
Great bargains abound. You can generally find excellent deals here. Most
of the "little guys" give excellent sign up bonuses, matching your initial
deposit in some cases by 200%. Some will even allow you to sign up and
begin bidding on your keywords free, with a $10 or $25 initial balance
on the house. Even the most popular keywords will be available to you
for under $.05, so you'll be able to dominate the top spots without breaking
your bank.
Cons:
Questionable traffic quality and owner/operator stability are going to be
your big concerns in this arena. They are fighting an uphill battle
(straight uphill) ... trying to compete with companies that have
millions of dollars to drive traffic, with little to no budget of their
own. In many cases, they must resort to questionable marketing tactics
and traffic trading deals to keep the searches and clicks coming.
Food for thought:
Most of these engines are run by individuals, not companies ... many
are run as hobbies or part-time businesses. More than a few of these
search engines were either just purchased on eBay, or are about to
be sold on eBay. We recommend being very careful when spending your
marketing money here. Do your research. Find out what kind of
company, if a company at all, you're really dealing with, and don't be
fooled by a pretty website. Make sure that you're not about to be
sold off at auction, and definitely track the traffic patterns closely
when you do buy in. Probably 1 or 2 in 10 PPCs at this level deliver
on the promise of PPC ... so tread very lightly.
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