Re: Click Tax

From: John Gaskill <jg_at_info-central-usa.com>
Date: Tue 23 Apr 2002 13:22:18 -0600

Allan Pollett wrote:

>This year Looksmart unveiled its new pay per click model.
> My listing has now become a "small business listing" where
> they gave me $300 credit towards clicks received. Each
> click costs $0.15, so my listing is only worth 2000 visitors.
> This for a well ranked site is about a few days worth of traffic.
> It seems more and more like a form of tax, where like it
>or not we must pay to be seen. This is not what the
>Internet was intended to be. Gone are the days of the
>free web. I would really like to hear how others feel
>about this concept of click tax.

I tip my hat to those who have been around long enough
to remember the beginnings of the world wide web.

I was not. My first foray into Internet discussion groups
was exercised in the now defunct DOMAIN-POLICY
List sponsored by Internic and run for them by Network
Solutions.

"The good old days" were a common topic for discussion
on D-P and for good reason, the allocation and issuance
of domain names was a big deal in those days when there
was only one provider of .org, .com and .net domain names,
i.e., Network Solutions. As a monopolist, NetSol enjoyed
excessive profits and that was reflected in its stock price.

My how times change.

When the Internet was a mostly vacant space, getting listed
by a search engine was easy -- they needed listings and
sites wanted to be listed. As more and more commercial
interests moved into the Internet space, the competition for
prime listing space in search engine results became extreme,
fueled, in part, by the false notion the everything on the
Internet was "FREE."

Looksmart apparently decided they could attract more customers
and make more money by adopting the pay-per-click model than
they were making under the fixed fee pricing system. Perhaps
they saw what was happening at sites like Allan's and decided
they were leaving too much money on the table.

Anyhow, the point of this post is to remind those who pine for
the Past that it is gone.

If obtaining traffic by pay-per-click is viewed as some kind of
confiscatory tax, perhaps the average revenue from a click is
not worth the cost (a.k.a. ROI). If you are paying fifteen cents
per click, for the cost of ten clicks, you could probably send
one good direct mail piece and generate a click and perhaps
a sale. The secret is in targeting the recipients.

It strikes me that for sites with limited appeal and wholly
dependent on matching personal taste with unique products,
e.g., fine art works, that pay-per-click may generate traffic
volume, but not traffic quality that results in lots of sales.

Maybe your marketing needs to venture in some new directions
or maybe you need to investigate other Internet options for
advertising artworks or art sites?

Just my thoughts.

John Gaskill
jg_at_Info-Central-USA.com
http://Info-Central-USA.com





Received on Tue Apr 23 2002 - 14:22:18 CDT