Copyright 2005 Richard GradyThere are a couple of things I want to share with you this
week, both based on my own experiences recently?.
Keep a very close eye on your PPC advertising
Over a year ago, I wrote a newsletter about how I had
managed to save myself $750 a month by cancelling one of
the pay per click advertising campaigns that I had been
running for months and months. I spent some time tracking
the conversions from the advertising and found that the
number of sales resulting directly from that particular
campaign were minimal and as such, it was pointless
continuing with it. At the time I made a point of
recommending to everyone that they keep a close eye on
their own expenditure and track results carefully.
Obviously I listen to my own advice and it occurred to me
recently that one of my other pay-per-click campaigns may
not be as lucrative as it once was. I therefore devoted
some time to tracking conversions from this campaign and
found that it had gone from being my main source of sales a
few years ago, to now contributing hardly any sales at all.
At the beginning of the month, I cancelled this campaign
too and it has made absolutely no difference to my business
turnover. The amazing thing is that this campaign was
costing me nearly $2000 a month which is now money in my
pocket :-)
So why is PPC becoming less effective?
It is, of course, impossible to say that PPC is actually
becoming less effective and the fact is that it works for
thousands and thousands of people. However, it has
certainly become less effective for me and I think that the
main reason is simply competition. When I first started
the above campaign, there were no other advertisers
offering a similar service to my own. Today there are
something like ten different alternatives. This has two
main effects - firstly it means that customers have a much
wider choice and regardless of how good my service may be
in comparison to the competition, some people are
inevitably going to buy from one of my competitors.
Secondly it means that the cost that each advertiser is
paying for their exposure has increased considerably and
this means that they have to either make more sales or
increase their prices in order to make the increased
advertising cost worthwhile.
The above situation is one which is likely to affect pretty
much all online businesses that use PPC advertising at some
point. This is why you need to get your business to the
point whereby you can comfortably turn off your
pay-per-click advertising campaigns (if you ever need to)
and still generate sales. This means spending time now
building traffic from other sources. Believe me, the time
I have spent over the past few years writing articles,
getting good search engine rankings, building links and
gaining strong affiliates and joint venture partners has
certainly been worthwhile and has made the difference
between me having a profitable business today and having
nothing.
Mac vs PC
Something else that I wrote about last year was my dilemma
as to whether to replace one of my Windows computers with
an Apple Mac. I was forever hearing about how reliable
they were and how pleasant they were to use and I couldn't
help being tempted?.
So last week, after months of deliberation, I took the
plunge and replaced my old laptop with an Apple iBook. I
have to say, it is one of the best computer purchases I
have ever made!
I don't have the space to go into detail here about the
various features and benefits of the Mac but if you are
like I was and keep thinking about buying a Mac but don't
actually do it, take my advice, go and get one (even if it
is a secondhand one from eBay) - I am sure you won't be
disappointed.
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Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn online
since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which is published
every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim your free gifts),
visit: http://www.thetraderonline.com/newsletter.html
