What was once such a good thing is now a rip-off and a sham!I'm talking about pay-per-click search engines, and how they've become a really bad investment!
There are two reasons for
deterioration of pay-per-click search engines: high bid prices and out of control click fraud.
A few years back, you could get popular keywords at a halfway decent bid price. Nowadays, even moderately popular keywords are ridiculously high.
How high? Well, let me give you an example, using most popular pay-per-click search engine: Overture.
Let's take popular keyword phrase, "home business."
At time this article was written, Overture's top bid for keyword phrase "home business" was an exorbitantly high $2.28. Just to get on first page, it would cost you $0.61, which would place you last at number forty.
Now let's just delve inside numbers for a moment, shall we? I'm not going to even bother breaking down number one bid price, because quite frankly, it's obvious top spot is reserved for and controlled by high-rollers.
So, let's break down bid number forty. The bid price of $0.61 means that for every 100 visitors Overture sends to your website, it's going to cost you $61.00. Now, here's where numbers really get interesting.
According to so-called experts, a decent conversion ratio is right around one percent. In other words, one out of every one hundred visitors to your website converts to a sale. I happen to know for a fact that most websites don't even come close to converting one percent. However, that's a subject for another day.
Using very generous one percent conversion ratio, here's problem. Unless you're selling a big-ticket item and making $100 or more per sale, it's impossible to make any real money with pay-per-click search engines. You just can't do it!
For example, if you're selling a $20 e-book and you're paying $61 to get one hundred visitors to your website, with a one percent conversion ratio, that means your website is making a measly $20 for every one hundred visitors. That leaves you $41 in hole. Even, if you were selling a $50 product, you'd still be $11 in negative.
