Re: Is Overture Overtaking the Web??

From: Kyle Yamnitz <Kyle_at_EdScope.com>
Date: Tue 04 Mar 2003 11:54:22 -0600

> I am sure there may be an exception to
> this out there, and maybe those who have been commenting are those very
> exceptions. But seriously... how many terms out there on the old
> Overture system could you get for under $.10 that still delivered
> significant amounts of traffic? From my experience we have a few... but
> not many.

Hello Josh,

     I guess I'm one of those exceptions. I have exclusively penny bids
with Overture, and they're all well-targeted keywords (I run a website with
free lesson plans for teachers). I get about an average of 25,000 clicks
per month ($250 worth). Increase that to 5 cents and that increases my cost
to $1,250 - no longer economical for me. Increase it to 10 cents (as they
will likely do eventually), and my cost increases to $2,500 per month -
about what I paid in a year...

> measuring the effectiveness of that traffic. Not which keyword phrase
> drove the most visits but which drove the most sales or leads. Not

     In my case, there are no sales or leads - the site is all advertising
supported and doing very well for a small business, but a penny per visitor
isn't really economical considering the low advertising payouts these days.

> Oh and one more response to a separate comment, if a visitor to your
> site isn't worth more than a penny... then either your targeting the
> wrong traffic or your site isn't capturing the value of the visitor the
> way it should be.

     In my case that isn't true. I'm targeting the right traffic for sure.
I'm capturing the advertising value of the visitor, but I'm not selling
anything (so I could be capturing more value of the visitor if I was). I
could break it down better, but as a simple argument for now, the visitor
isn't worth more than 1 cent for a single visit from a keyword. If that
visitor makes 5 repeat visits, then that visitor *is* worth 5 cents (on
average), but I'd like to profit from my advertising, not just break even.
Also, my site is well established (since '96) and my assumption is that even
a large portion of the search traffic visitors have visited my site
before...

Take care,
        --Kyle Yamnitz
          Expanding the Scope of Education:
                http://www.EdScope.com




Received on Tue Mar 04 2003 - 11:54:22 CST