<b>Testing Your Google PPC Campaigns on the Cheap</b>
So wouldnt it be nice if you could test your Google Campaigns at about a 30 to 50% discount and then know for sure if your Google Campaign is gonna work before you spend the big bucks on Google? If you got have a brain your nodding your head in agreement and have concluded that yes, that would be great. If you have the brain of a flea you also realize that most PPC courses are not worth the digital paper they are written on, and so your more than a little skeptical.
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The above intro sales pitch was actually writen for your benefit. I'd suggest you look at it several times and learn from it. I ain't got nothing to sell, so I'm not gonna spend the hour and a half to two hours to put together a proper piece of sales copy though.
Now I'm gonna spare ya'll the sales pitch crap and just get down to how ya do it. Read the above though, as it's a great way to lead a buyers interest into what you are gonna offer.
What I got is not brain surgery or anything, it's simply Yahoo. Here is what I have found with Yahoo. More important than what I have found, it's also what some of my friends who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on PPC have also found. Simply this. While Yahoo does not scale nearly as well as Google does (ie your gonna have a hard time spending even $1000 per day for an active term on Yahoo, Google can do for you before lunch) it's actually a lot cheaper, between 20% and 50%, I've seen some keywords up to 80% cheaper on Yahoo then they are on Google, but in most cases you save about 20 to 50% on the keyword. The next cool thing about Yahoo PPC is that they are actually, at least in the tests I've done and those that my friends have done, a tiny bit more responsive then Google traffic. But every little thing you can do to boost your business by a few percentage points can really add up if you let the effects of compounding work for you.
The two big drawbacks of Yahoo is, as I mentioned above, that it does not scale nearly as well as Google. Frankly though if your not spending several thousand dollars a month on PPC that is probably not a concern for you yet. The biggest drawback is that the initial setup on Yahoo Search Marketing is rather of a pain in the ass, at least that's been my experience.
One cool thing with Yahoo is that they have coupons all over the web. You can find a lot of coupons for $50 to $100 worth of traffic witih Yahoo, and in a lot of cases they even let you use them if your already a subscriber (something the Google gods wouldnt be caught dead doing). If you find, for example, a $75 Yahoo certificate they might say, as a current subscriber, that after you spend something between $75 annd $150 then they will give you the coupon. I know guys that have their assistent look for Yahoo coupons every morning because if getting a free $75 to $150 in traffic can send your costs plummeting without having to resort to cutting costs in places youd rather not cut them.
The thing with the Yahoo campaign that is great is that if your campaign is not very effective in Yahoo's network the chances are it's gonna be a flop on Google too (remember I said that Yahoo's traffic is a little more responsive) and a flop on Google is more expensive.
I'm also planning to test MSN, but I have not done so yet so I don't have any results to give you on that, but I have heard that MSN traffic and results are pretty comparable to Yahoo but cheaper still. I've heard (but dont know yet 1st hand) that they are slightly less responsive, so it turns out that both MSN and Yahoo will cost you about the same amount. But just be aware that with this I am giving you second hand information.
Finally before anyone's panties get all up in a bunch I don't have anything to sell you to teach PPC tactics. The truth is that most of the stuff out there is a scam because the algorithms change so fast. Most of what is on the market is "black hat" stuff that works for a few months and then gets you booted from the network once they catch you. (Yes, the stuff produces KILLER results up until they point you are banned..but what the hell is the point of getting some nice short term gains if you screw yourself out of long term profits....I know, I know, I know, someone shoulda taught the boys on Walll Street that lesson..but I digress here).
I also don't have an affiliate product to promote. In fact there are really only two courses out there that I feel are worth what you pay for them. Once is about $80, the other is my buddies that costs $2000. The $2000 course is obviously completly inapropriate for anyone but the big dogs like riskfreetrading, but he already knows EVERYTHING cos he read it in a free ebook or ezine, so he might not get anything from it either.
The best advice I can really give you with the PPC stuff is just to tool around with it. Follow the advice of the posts I have given you guys going back a few pages, and be sure to know the rules that Google and Yahoo and the gang use. If you know the rules, and you figure out what they want, you will do very well. With Google the key thing to remember is the only thing they give a shit about is the USERS experience. They really don't give a damn about the advertisers (as my friend who spends millions of dollars a year on PPC found out....for the record I have a correction to make on the $7million figure too. He spent that much 2 years ago when his biggest niche was very very hot and very very expensive. Now he's down to about $4.5 or so. He's also told me that he is of the opinion that TWITTER is the next big thing. He's a guy who has sold over $100million in infoproducts of every sort you can imagine on the web since 2001, so I tend to default to him, even if I think something is a little silly...like TWITTTAAAAH.
Brandon
PS. Here is an example of the scale that Google allows you to move up to vs what Yahoo can let you do. I've got a friend who sells weight loss products. He has no problem spending a few grand a day on Google's search and content networks. However with Yahoo he struggles to get above $600/$700 bucks. Now that's still a lot of traffic and nothing to sneaze at, but Google could probably spend $7000-$10,000 per day for him if he wanted to.
PPS. When you set your campaigns up be sure to set up seperate campaigns for the search network and the content network. Google's default is to have you running in both at the same time, and the stupid tax for keeping that default setting usually will run you 10 to 20%.
