Is Pay-Per-Click Advertising Still Profitable?

By: Robert Hartness

Not long ago it was very easy to profit from pay-per-click
advertising. In fact, I used to spend 99% of my advertising
budget on pay-per-click search engine advertising since it
was so easy just to post up an ad, add funds to one of the
popular pay-per-click providers and sit back and watch the
orders food in.

It was that easy.

Using simple tracking software the source for each sale
could be determined. It was then a simple calculation to
determine how much I could bid on popular keywords,
by dividing the gross amount in sales by the number of
visitors to my website.

It was scientific marketing that produced a real return
on my investment

However, over time my results began to change...
unfortunately for the worse! As more and more advertisers
took advantage of the fast and easy access to niche markets
by ppc advertising, the competition for those popular
keywords to gain pole position became more fierce. Everyone
wanted to be at the top to gain the most traffic. The
result was a bidding war!

The battle to reach the top became detrimental to the
advertiser. As the bids increased, these popular terms
which previously used to attract large chunks of profit
became too expensive. Instead of providing a return on
my investment, the campaign began to cost more than the
amount that was returned in sales. I tried lowering my bids
but the amount of traffic that was delivered rendered my
campaign ineffective.

Up until a few weeks ago, this was my position concerning
pay-per-click advertising and if you have been advertising
online using ppc methods then this story will probably
seem very familiar...

So when I released my new product I decided to 'err on the
side of caution' and test my advertising campaign with a
few different pay per click traffic providers before
committing my budget to just one popular source.

Instead, I decided to perform a comparison test between a
few providers to test the market. My starting budget was
$200 committed to 3 different traffic sources promoting my
latest ebook product 'Cash From Your Camera'
http://www.cashfromyourcamera.com

Firstly, I chose probably the most popular method of
pay-per-click advertising - Google Adwords

The second was another fairly popular source of
pay-per-click traffic - Kanoodle at http://www.kanoodle.com

Finally, I tested a new and different kind of traffic
source - Have Traffic at http://www.havetraffic.com.
Actually, this isn't a pay-per-click search engine but it
is a kind of PPC advertising. The traffic is achieved
through a network of related sites instead of a direct
result from a search engine query.

The results....

Google's traffic was the most expensive at 45 cents per
click for the list of targeted keywords that I chose.
They delivered a total of 449 visitors to my web site for
my $200 investment. I got one sale and 20 sign-ups to my
newsletter. So the sign-up conversion rate was 4.4% and my
return on investment was 43%

Kanoodle provided a lot more traffic for my money. I
actually received 1523 visitors at around 8 cents a
visitor. Unfortunately, the results were very disappointing.
The campaign did not achieve a single sale and I got only 2
confirmed sign-ups to my newsletter....very disappointing!

Have Traffic was the real surprise package.

They provide traffic at a flat rate of 20 cents a visitor
so I received 1000 visitors for my investment of $200.
The traffic returned a total of 3 sales and 46 subscribers
to my newsletter. The return on my investment was a 135%
plus I received 46 leads with which to follow-up

Just one of the campaigns broke even and that one only
earned 135% ROI. I'm sure that if I optimize everything
a little better then Google and Have traffic would provide
a profitable return on my investment. It really seems that
Kanoodle is a bust no matter what I do. Its a pity.
In the distant past I could count on decent traffic from
them

I guess that if I had used different keywords then it
may have been possible to achieve different results for
the campaigns

But overall, this test shows that it is still possible to
find cost effective pay-per-click advertising. You just have
to look harder (sometimes at unexpected sources) and
optimize your ad copy quite a bit more than was necessary
in the past for even solid known good sources of traffic
like Google.

One of a series of articles by Robert Hartness, successful
freelancer and author of Cash From Your Camera
which offers a step-by-step guide to those on the threshold
of freelance photography and is illustrated with 40+
published photographs. Acclaimed as a great reference
source for serious freelancers. Please visit
http://www.cashfromyourcamera.com for more information