Overture - A Can't Lose Pay-Per-Click Strategy
By Willie Crawford
Contributing Writer
Article Date: 02.21.03
The absolute quickest surefire way that I know of to get instant website
traffic is using pay-per-click search engines. You bid on the search terms of
your choice and as soon as your account is set up they start sending traffic your
way. I use a variety of pay-per-clicks but Overture is my favorite. Today I'd
like to show you how and why I use them.
With regular search engines, you can't really "tell" them what
terms you want to be listed under. With pay-per-clicks, you get
to specify exactly what terms you'd like to be listed under. At
Overture and some of the others, the staff does review your
listing to confirm it is appropriate. If your listing is
appropriate, you get listed under the term you want to attract
targeted traffic with, and you get to specify how you would like
your listing to read.
There *are* less expensive ways of getting traffic to your site.
However, it is not as tightly controlled. Overture's minimum bid
is 5 cents per click. With many terms, that's all you need to
bid to appear in the top listings (even at number 1).
Controlling exactly how your listing appears ensures you spend
your money attracting only the traffic you want. It also ensure
that you discourage the type of traffic that you don't want.
I'll give you an example for illustration. I have a site that
sells a "soul food cookbook." I want the traffic I attract to
this site to be interested in obtaining a soul food cookbook....
especially if I am paying for this traffic. So I use that phrase
or a related phrase in my Overture listing. I also use it in my
title and the description. I tell them exactly what they will
find on my website in my listing. Traffic attracted through
these listings are seeking "soul food cookbooks" so they buy my
product!
In deciding how much to bid on a pay-per-click term you must know
your conversion rate. You need to know how many sales each
dollar generates. For example, I spend an average of $1 on
Overture traffic for each sale that I make from this traffic. I
sell a $20 cookbook and my profit margin is sufficient to make
this campaign smart business. The traffic from Overture also
generates 4 signups to my website recipe exchange mailing list
for each dollar I spend. It could be much higher but I land the
traffic on a webpage focused on making the sale rather than
getting new subscribers. A very high percentage of these
subscribers will eventually purchase either my cookbook or a
related product.
A spill over effect of this pay-per-click campaign is that my Overture listing
gets me a top listing on many other search engines. Overture's paid listing feed
the search results at Yahoo!, MSN,
InfoSpace, Lycos,
Alta Vista and Netscape.
This spillover drives incredible traffic to my sites. For example, my traffic
from MSN nearly doubled with one of my Overture campaigns. Microsoft
is the default homepage for a lot of internet users (since it is the default browser
pre-installed on a lot of computers), and having a top listing with them is well
worth the expense.
When setting up an account at Overture,
the most important thing you can do is to make sure you are targeting the right
keyword phrases and that you really finess your listing. You want customers to
arrive at your site ready to buy your product or join your list. You don't want
curiosity seekers when you are paying for traffic. You don't want to get "cute"
with your listings since attracting the wrong visitors really does no one any
good. It might even generate a lot of complaints.
Overture has a tool you can use to investigate what keywords were
searched on the most - recently. I use this tool but I also
subscribe to a service that emails me the top 500 most searched
terms every week. They send me weekly reports and I build mini
sites around these terms. I sometimes funnel traffic from these
mini sites to other topical sites. Some mini sites I also design
as direct sales sites. Both strategies will work well for you if
properly employed.
A properly designed pay-per-click campaign is a can't loose
proposition. You know that for every $100 spent exactly how much
you can expect to earn. The only variable in the formula for me
is how fast Overture can send me this traffic. You do want to bid
the minimum bid possible to get the listing you want. You don't
need to be number 1 since it is the words in your listing that
really generates the click. I do consider being one of the top 3
bidders very important.
I also keep my mini sites' costs down by hosting my keyword rich domain names
on quality, low-costs hosts. I use a web host that allows you to host additional
domains for only $5 per domain. You do have to have at least one domain hosted
on their regular $25 per month plan (500 meg of space and full-featured). Then
you can host as many additional domains as you want for only an extra $5 each.
This makes building a series of mini sites related to the theme of your product
or main site so affordable you really should use this business strategy. Check
out this host at: http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/tk.cgi?fivedollarhost
To get the full details on starting an Overture account, just visit:
http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/tk.cgi?overture
I've just given you a very brief overview of one of my pay-per-click strategies.
Using this strategy, I routinely turn every thousand dollars invested into over
$10,000. With the right product or service, you can too. If you'd like to learn
more about the strategies and techniques I use to generate hundreds of thousands
of dollars a year, grab the recordings from the Internet Marketing Power Workshop.
All of the instructors not only show you how we run our very successful businesses,
we will also helped attendees troubleshoot unique problems in their own businesses.
Grab your copies now at bargain pricing! http://williecrawford.com/workshop-videos.htmla
About the Author:
Willie Crawford is an expert on internet marketing, joint ventures, buying and
selling reprint rights, and building business through networking. His directory
of seminars, workshops, conferences, and tele-events is at: http://InternetMarketingSeminarSchedule.com
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