Does PayPer Click really work?

Well so far, we have only paid small amounts to adwords but cant really see it working so far. I know its small amounts, it was around £200 for a week, got a lot of unique hits.

Do you really have to spend thousands for it work, if it works at all?

Can anyone tell me of success stories with PayPer Click?

My entire business is run off of pay per click campaigns. I spend about 60K a month on pay per clicks and get about 80 to 90 in return. Obviously im trying to increase the spreads in between the 2 via optimization and constant creation of new campaigns. BUT it didnt start this way, started small ensured conversions then upped the positioning and bidding accordingly. Basically for pay per click to work you need a legitimate tracking system, I use analytics, BUT I also have a VERY thorough internal tracking system which is the only system that I use when I make changes, I trust myself more than the company im paying. Basically put it to scale, if your just starting, start small work on that a bit lets say a month, make sure you are converting at a respectable CPA for your business and that it is a profitable venture. Not everything works via CPC, I create new campaigns daily and some stuff just plain doesn't work, nothing i can do about that, except turn it off and come up with another. and when you say you got a lot of unique hits, does that mean that you got no conversions and just hits or do you not have tracking?

If pay per click did not work, Google wouldn't be raking in these billions.

PPC works but not for everybody. Bids vary wildly between markets and you never know whether an ad campaign will work for you until you try.

Note that merely opening an Adwords account does not mean it's easy to do right. Many new clients come to us after they tried Adwords on their own without any meaningful response.

Your campaign and your website must work together to win the sale.

Yes, PPC works.

Yes Swoosch I am agree with you. You are right just opening the A/c doesn't mean that you'll become successful in PPC, but you have to face all ups and downs of the market. and only with the experience of time you b'll be an expert.

I'm only new to the search business but have been managing a good number of PPC clients - but PPC definitely works - as the others have said, depending on your market etc etc.

Recently we've come up with a good algorithm to determine "good performing keywords" and "poor performing keywords" based on a few factors such as volume of visits, goal page visits / conversions, short visits, long visits etc. This gives us a better idea of which keywords we need to concentrate on to increase (or decrease) bid prices. Clearly - whats the point in using keywords which are only going to cost you money, and the users which use these keywords are not interacting with your site? If you notice certain keywords are repeat poor performers then maybe they need to be negative keywords too?

I hope i'm not stating the obvious here. Good luck.

PPC can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business if you do it properly. The first step is knowing how the system works. A number of failures in PPC are due to insufficient knowledge and agressive bidding without taking into consideration the right keywords for their niche and how stiff competition is for top keywords that they bid on.

PPC is a trial and error campaign for newbies. Always test the water before jumping in. Be cautious on how much you bid at first, weigh first what keywords convert in your niche after a test run so you will know what works and what doesn't. There are two ways of bidding - the agressive (high) and conservative (low). This will greatly depend on how much budget you are willing to put in.

You should also try out other PPC providers for more reach on your campaign and to test what PPC platforms works best for you.

Always remeber that getting targeted traffic from PPC is just the initial step, conversion will still depend on how well you match your visitors' needs with what you are oferring them.

Yes it does work. It works differently depending on the niche really. Many people think Adwords is an expensive way of marketing only because they lack the knowledge or do not learn how to properly use it. If you know how to use it or start of small and learn, then you will find out that you may be spending 3 or more times per click than what is needed for the exact same keyword that is used to get that traffic and rankings. It's all about the ads quality score.

Cshermgo, is a pretty interesting post method. I would only like to ask you one question.
Which PPC did you have the best price/quality ratio?

Consider a PPC campaign to be like playing poker.

If you have no idea what you are doing, you are basically giving your money away and probably shouldn't even be in the game. However, if you know a great deal about it and are very good at it, then you will do very well.

There are certainly plenty of success stories using it. I recommend it to any new site or one that doesn't have a great organic presence at the time. I've managed campaigns that have spent $3000/day and have done extremely well until the organic side was improved and now they spend $200/day with even better results. So yes, there are plenty of success stories with PPC when done properly.

yahoo by far. Google would be beyond belief but their new or somewhat new Quality / CTR methods have disabled about 50 percent of my campaigns now with 5 dollar minimum cpc's, sad part is that they're not very many advertisers for my ad groups and I could easily be placed in there becasue the advertising sports are not even close to being filled, is google to good for my money? more than likely they would rather just show completely relevant results than show just anything, although mine is quite relevant. Has anyone tried to open more than 1 account on an engine with the same ad groups masked to a different domain?

We had problems with PPC last year. Our bids needed to be so high to be noticed, that our ROI just wasn't there. Don't know if this was something we did, but we had a bad experience with PPC.

Remember it's not just about the click, then there is the landing page, etc.

They key to a successful PPC campaign is experimentation - on keywords and provider as well. You should also try out other smaller search engines and have their market find your site as well. Besides, competition for keywords in big search engines are really stiff and you would really need a big budget to vie for the top keywords in your niche as compared to other SE's that offer PPC platforms

Do you have a list of these smaller engines Cat?

PPC and adwords are money making machines for Yahoo and Google and if they didn't work they would not be.

But here are some facts:

1. PPC and adwords are bringing you traffic to your site. It is up to you to determin how targeted that traffic should be. So it is important to follow up on keywords that are targeted enough for your business.
2. How those keywords convert to sale. If a keyword is brining alot of traffic but not necessary converting to sale, then that keyword should be invested in as heavily. But a keyword with less traffic but more convergence, is worth investing in more. There are many convergence tools out there starting with Google's analytics convergence.

3. your site it self is a huge factor: its design, description of your products and services, prices, your biz model, etc


goodluck