Pay-for-inclusion is becoming
highly popular lately and is an
excellent way to get guaranteed traffic in a guaranteed time
from major engines. That is, if you know how to use them well.
So on the upside you have guaranteed quick listing and ranking. Google.com, Overture and DirectHit/AskJeeves can give you page
one listing for searches of your keywords in as little as one
hour or less from the time you sign up. On the downside, well,
you have to pay for it, although even just $25 will get you
started. To win and profit from these giants, you have to know
your math, and your keywords. You need to know how to minimize
your expenses, maximize your click throughs, and optimize your
return on your investment.
Many webmasters avoid these pay-for-inclusion engines for fear
that they will waste money and not get any results. If you use
these engines and directories correctly, you can be sure that
you will profit from their use. It is highly recommended that
you do list with the pay-for-inclusion engines - it's one of the
best, most guaranteed way to get traffic fast and profit from it.
To start with, you need to collect and calculate the following
values for your web site:
1. Unique visitors per month. How many unique people visit your
web site (not hits or page-views)? You need a log file analysis
tool or similar tool to be able to get this figure. You can use
Hitbox.com or WebTrendsLive.com free.
2. Total gross profit per month in US$. This is the total sales
of all your products in a month, minus what those products cost
you. For example, if you sell tables for $100 a table, and the
table costs you $60 to make, and you sell 30 tables a month, the
figure you should enter here is (100 - 60) x 30= 1200. Have your
monthly average total gross (not net) profit for your business
for all products and services you sell.
3. Number of unit sales per month. How many items or services do
you sell in a month? This is the total number of items or
services you sell in a month.
4. Average gross profit per unit, which is calculated as monthly
gross profit divide by monthly unit sales.
5. Conversion ratio, calculated as monthly unit sales divided by
monthly unique visitors. It is very important to have a high
conversion ratio. The conversion ratio is a measure of how many
of your unique visitors actually turn into buying visitors. You
should try to increase your conversion ratio using various
marketing techniques on your site and products. A higher
conversion ratio will mean that you get a higher return on your
advertising dollars. It also means you can spend more on
advertising and advertise more times, resulting in a cycle of
increasing profitability.
Now, let us use these values to get sure profits through Google,
Overture and DirectHit/AskJeeves. You can do it manually
using a calculator and some way of keeping records. Remember,
the following calculations tell you when you will be making a
gross (not net) profit on your using the engines.
Google.com
Google.com is one of the largest and most used engines today.
They now offer their AdWords program at
https://adwords.google.com/AdWords/Welcome.html.
Your AdWords
text ads appear on search result pages for the keywords you buy,
and can be targeted by language and country. Pricing for AdWords
is based on the position in which they're shown. Google
positions your ad based on how many users click on it over time.
Current rates are $15, $12 and $10 (per thousand ads shown) for
positions 1, 2, and 3 respectively, and $8 per thousand for
positions 4 through 8. Accounts are opened with a credit card
and no minimum deposit is required.
The trick is to choose very targeted keywords that will trigger
your ad. Which means that only very targeted buyers will ever
see your ad and your conversion ration will be incredibly high.
If your keywords are not well selected, you will end up having
your ad showing often but with very few people clicking on it.
And because Google charges you for ad displays and not click throughs, you will be loosing money. You can set how much you
wish to spend. Google takes the money out of your credit card
after it reaches $50, by which time your ad will have been
displayed roughly about 5,000 times! If your keywords are highly
targeted, many of the people who see your ad will instantly
become buyers and you will actually get your money in before you
even pay Google! Your listing shows up in about an hour of your
creating it.
It is more effective to have about 20 or more keywords/phrases
you are targeting, specific and related to your site, than it is
to have just one, so come up with 20 or more very specific and
targeted keywords/phrases if you really want to win this game
hands down.
Google allows you to create campaigns. A campaign holds its own
keywords and adverts. Each campaign has its own statistics that
are reported to you. The best strategy to use is to create a
separate campaign for each keyword and each advert, rather than
put all your ads and keywords into one campaign. That way, you
will easily be able to tell which keywords and ads are doing
well and which ones are not so that you can eliminate those that
are wasting your money.
You should also ensure that for each ad you create for a
particular keyword or phrase, that keyword or phrase appears in
both the title and description on that ad. Click through rations
can be significantly improved when you have the keyword being
searched for included in the title and description of the ad.
Once you start advertising on Google, Google will give you
reports showing how your ads are doing. From the reports, take
the average amount of money in dollars you are paying for every
1,000 impressions/displays of your advert (this is called CPM or
cost per 1000), which varies depending on the positions your ad
gets, and refer to the conversion ratio and gross unit profit
figures you calculated earlier for your web site. Now, in that
Google report, you will also be told what click throughs you are
getting for your ads, in other words, what percentage of the
times your ad is show does someone click on it.
This is how you know when to advertise and when not to advertise
with Google: if the reported click through percentage is equal
to or higher than:
(Your Site's Conversion Ratio x Reported Google CPM) / Your
Site's Gross Unit Profit
... then you are making a gross profit on sales generated by
that advertising!
Overture
Overture is another powerful pay-per-listing search engine. The
trick is to pay for the top 1 position, or at least the top 1 to
3 positions. Depending on your product, how much gross profit
you make out of it, and what your conversion ratio is, you may
be able to profit very well with the top spot. Why is the top
spot so important? The partners that Overture has have a very wide audience. Overture's top search results reach 75 of all
Internet users through their affiliate partner network, which
includes America Online, Microsoft Internet Explorer, EarthLink,
Lycos, and AltaVista! But these partner sites only show
Overture's top one to three results for any search. Goto uses
the bidding model to charge for listing your site. You pay for
click throughs, not the number of times your ad is shown. How
much you pay for a click-through on your listing depends on what
the target keyword is and how much other webmasters have bid to
pay for a click. The more you bid, the higher your listing is
ranked. You can list your site using multiple titles and
descriptions, all targeted for different keywords. So just look
for the top spot if your gross margin can allow it. The good
thing about Overture is that they only charge you for a click
through, so you only pay when someone clicks on your link. Top
spots can cost you anywhere from 0.01 cents to over $4 depending
on the keyword. Your listing shows up in about 3 days.
It is more effective to have about 20 or more keywords/phrases
you are targeting, specific and related to your site, than it is
to have just one, so come up with 20 or more very specific and
targeted keywords/phrases if you really want to win this game
hands down. Because Overture charges you for clicks and not
displays/impressions, you can list for as many keywords as
possible. Their Power Advertiser Change form allows
you to easily compose and submit up to 25,000 adverts - we
advise you submit for as many keywords as possible that related
to your site because you only pay for clicks on those ads. That
form also helps you compose ads in the right format, especially
including the appropriate keywords in the title and description
of the ads.
You should ensure that for each ad you create for a particular
keyword or phrase, that keyword or phrase appears in both the
title and description on that ad. Click through rations can be
significantly improved when you have the keyword being searched
for included in the title and description of the ad.
Based on your conversion ratio and unit gross margin, you will
make a gross profit on all sales generated by your advertising
here as long as you bid less than this amount for each click:
Gross Unit Profit * Conversion Ratio
DirectHit/AskJeeves
DirectHit/AskJeeves (http://sponsor.directhit.com)
also has a
paid text ads system similar to Google's. Your link appears
alongside their search results for every search topic you
sponsor. Your link also appears alongside search results on Web
sites that participate in the Jeeves Text Sponsorship Network,
including MSN, Searchalot, Bomis.com, SuperCyberSearch, and
Direct Hit. Your ads appear in a few days and you just need a
minimum deposit of $25 to start. You pay for the number of times
your ad is shown. They use a bidding system to arrive at this
payment amount. How much you pay depends on what the target
keyword is and how much other webmasters have bid to pay for
their ads to be shown. Bids start at $5 for every 1,000 times
the ad is displayed. For most keywords, that is all you will pay.
The trick is to choose very targeted keywords that will trigger
your ad. Which means that only very targeted buyers will ever
see your ad and your conversion ration will be incredibly high.
If your keywords are not well selected, you will end up having
your ad showing often but with very few people clicking on it.
And because they charge you for ad displays and not click throughs, you will be losing money.
It is more effective to have about 20 or more keywords/phrases
you are targeting, specific and related to your site, than it is
to have just one, so come up with 20 or more very specific and
targeted keywords/phrases if you really want to win this game
hands down.
DirectHit allows you to create sponsorships. A sponsorship holds
its own keywords and adverts. Each sponsorship has its own
statistics that are reported to you. The best strategy to use is
to create a separate sponsorship for each keyword and each
advert, rather than put all your ads and keywords into one
sponsorship. That way, you will easily be able to tell which
keywords and ads are doing well and which ones are not so that
you can eliminate those that are wasting your money.
You should also ensure that for each ad you create for a
particular keyword or phrase, that keyword or phrase appears in
both the title and description on that ad. Click through rations
can be significantly improved when you have the keyword being
searched for included in the title and description of the ad.
Once you start advertising on DirectHit/AskJeeves, DirectHit/AskJeeves will give you reports showing how your ads
are doing including the CPM, which varies depending on the bids.
Now, in that AskJeeves report, you will also be told what click
throughs you are getting for your ads.
This is how you know when to advertise and when not to advertise
with AskJeeves: if the reported click through percentage is
equal to or higher than:
(Your Site's Conversion Ratio x Reported AskJeeves CPM) / Your
Site's Gross Unit Profit
... then you are making a gross profit on sales generated by
that advertising.
Well, there you go. A simple way to make sure that you will make
gross profits from having your site on page one of related
searches on engines that reach over 75 of the world's Internet
users. It is highly recommended that you do list with the
pay-for-inclusion engines - it's one of the best, most
guaranteed way to get traffic fast and profit from it.