Is Pay-Per-Click Advertising Still Profitable?

At one time, not so long ago, it was very easy to make a
healthy profit from pay-per-click advertising.
In fact, in the 'not so distant' past, I never, ever
considered any other kind of advertising since all I
needed to do was knock-up a simple ad, top-up my
pay-per-click account with a popular ppc search engine
and watch my profits grow.

It was that simple.

Using simple tracking software the source for each sale
could be determined. It was then a simple calculation to
determine how much I could bid on popular keywords,
by dividing the gross amount in sales by the number of
visitors to my website.

This basic scientific marketing produced a real healthy
return on my investment.

However, over time my results began to change...
unfortunately for the worse! As more and more advertisers
took advantage of the fast and easy access to niche markets
by ppc advertising, the competition for those popular
keywords to gain pole position became more fierce. Everyone
wanted to be at the top to gain the most traffic. The
result was a bidding war!

The battle to reach the top became detrimental to the
advertiser. As the bids increased, these popular terms
which previously used to attract large chunks of profit
became too expensive. Instead of providing a return on
my investment, the campaign began to cost more than the
amount that was returned in sales. I tried lowering my bids
but the amount of traffic that was delivered rendered my
campaign ineffective.

Up until a few weeks ago, this was my position concerning
pay-per-click advertising and if you have been advertising
online using ppc methods then this story will probably
seem very familiar...

So when I released my new product I decided to 'err on the
side of caution' and test my advertising campaign with a
few different pay per click traffic providers before
committing my budget to just one popular source.

Instead, I decided to perform a comparison test between a
few providers to test the market. My starting budget was
$200 committed to 3 different traffic sources promoting my
latest ebook product 'Cash From Your Camera'
http://www.cashfromyourcamera.com

Firstly, I chose probably the most popular method of
pay-per-click advertising - Google Adwords

The second was another fairly popular source of
pay-per-click traffic - Kanoodle at http://www.kanoodle.com

Finally, I tested a new kind of traffic source -
Have Traffic at http://www.havetraffic.com . This isn't a
pay-per-click search engine but it is a type of PPC
advertising. They say that their traffic achieved through
a network of related sites instead of a direct result from
a search engine.

Here are the results....

First, for the Google traffic, my average cost per click
was 45 cents for the range of different keywords I was
bidding on. I received a total of 449 visitors and 1 order.
I also received 20 sign-ups to my newsletter providing a
sign-up conversion rate of around 4.4% and ROI of 43%

Kanoodles's traffic was disappointing although much
cheaper. I actually received 1523 visitors for my $200
investment. This works out at less than 8 cents a visitor
for the same keywords. But the campaign resulted in zero
sales an only 2 sign-ups to my newsletter...not good!

Have Traffic was the real surprise package.

They provide traffic at a flat rate of 20 cents a visitor
so I received 1000 visitors for my investment of $200.
The traffic returned a total of 3 sales and 46 subscribers
to my newsletter. The return on my investment was a 135%
plus I received 46 leads with which to follow-up

Just one of the campaigns broke even and that one only
earned 135% ROI. I'm sure that if I optimize everything
a little better then Google and Have traffic would provide
a profitable return on my investment. It really seems that
Kanoodle is a bust no matter what I do. Its a pity.
In the distant past I could count on decent traffic from
them

I guess that if I had used different keywords then it
may have been  possible to achieve different results for
the campaigns

But overall, this test shows that it is still possible to
find cost effective pay-per-click advertising. You just have
to look harder (sometimes at unexpected sources) and
optimize your adcopy quite a bit more than was necessary
in the past for even solid known good sources of traffic
like Google.

One of a series of articles by Robert Hartness, successful freelance photographer and author of Cash From Your Camera which offers a step-by-step guide to those on the threshold of freelance photography and is illustrated with 40+ published photographs. Acclaimed as a great reference source for serious freelancers. Please visit http://www.cashfromyourcamera.com for more information