A affordable website hosting question:
With Search Marketing (PPC), I basically break even. For every .00 sale I make, I pay about .00 in PPC charges + paypal and hosting costs. My business is basically breaking even on a product with a HUGE markup. How does anyone make it in this industry? Does SEO work, or are there better ways to get customers to your website? Thank you-
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The answer is "maybe"
1. How do you know you’re doing the best you can on PPC? Are you constantly split-testing ads, landing pages, offers, followup sequences etc? How long have you been doing it? Whose courses/materials have you taken? Are you doing Taguchi testing?
2. The big players have learned that if they break even on the first sale, that’s gravy. Their business model is based on acquiring a customer, building loyalty and continuing to sell things for years and years ("the back end") … so, if you’re acquiring customers at a profit, all you need now is a good back end and you’re making big bucks.
3. Yes, SEO can work, as can all kinds of other media (articles, pr, magazine space ads, newspapers, TV, radio, billboards, affiliates, direct mail, etc etc etc), and you should test them all. It’s a mistake to ask "which media is cheapest per sale" instead the big players figure out how much they can afford to spend to acquire a customer, and use every media that meets/beats that number. Again, they’re thinking about it differently than you are.
Good luck
Scott
This is the problem with pay-per-click. It can cost you more than you make. It is possible to get paying traffic to a website through "natural search". It takes work, but if you can put together a well-structured site with lots of relevant, original content (not spammy output from so-called content generation software — no, no, no), you will get traffic that you do not have to pay for.
Once again, the Site BuildIt process promoted by SiteSell.com is something I would recommend you look into. Checkout http://www.sitesell.com when you have a chance.
Also, read about what is called "the long tail" to get educated in natural (not payed for) traffic generation. It’s an eye-opener.
SEO is definitely the cheaper way to go. I would do both. To improve your Search Engine Optimization, make sure that you website has good copy relevant to the search terms that your propspects are using to find your type of products. Make sure you website is listed on as many other websites (credible) as possible as this will increase your Google Page Rank.
Even though it sounds like you may be an online business, you may want to try introductions and personal relationship that encourge word-of-mouth. This will always be your greatest source of new business.
Hi, PPC is difficult for people new to it. Like you most new people either break even or loose money. I highly suggest driving traffic to your website using free methods. That way you could keep 100% profits.
There are lots of ways to get traffic to your website for free. I highly suggest an eBook (electronic book) called "5 easy ways to boost your website traffic for FREE). You can download it here: http://www.wideopenebooks.com/product/5fastwaystogettraffic/index.html I have watched all the videos in it and it is awesome!
Lots of people are in the same boat as you, great question.
Matt
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http://directmatches.com/clpdirectster
Hi,
This is a very good book for building traffic: Search Engine Optimization – An Hour A Day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin. Their advice is mostly free.
Hiring an expert to do SEM is expensive.
With this book you do not need any costly SEO services.
You can apply to DMOS for a listing in their directory (http://dmoz.org/help/geninfo.html). It takes a long time to get accepted because a real person looks at your application, not a software robot like the search engine spider programs.
If you are lucky enough to get listed, Google will index your Web site. You can also submit your Google sitemap to Google to get them to index your Web site. You have to go to Google and get the URL for the sitemap and then create a separate Web page for that sitemap.
I assume you want to get a low page rank in Google. If that is true you need to do search engine marketing (SEM).
If you had the right Site Build It software, Site Build it software would do all submitting for you automatically.
Here is a tool you can use to check on how your Web site stacks up against other Web sites – (http://searchit.sitesell.com/waltera1.html). Check for Popularity to get Alexa Rank.
There are only 4 or 5 search engines worth submitting to, the rest are a waste of time and money.
The best way to get traffic is via lots of pages with quality content for the SEs to spider.
Craigslist is just one arrow in your quiver of search engine marketing arrows. It’s free.
Hey! Did you know that the major search engines are going local? They are spending millions on local search. This is just another reason to have your own Web site, such as whatever.com. You should definitely have a dot com as part of your URL. This is what surfers expect.
SEO or search engine marketing (SEM) is critical for the success of your web site. Without it, you will get no targeted traffic.
If you own a Web site, the Web site building software should have included SEO. Otherwise, using the software is a waste of time; the Web site building software is useless. SEO includes Internet marketing and while articles posting, etc. is important, the most important thing is to select the right keywords that people use to find your Web site. You need to do keyword analysis to find the best keywords for your Web site.
Then, you need to sprinkle those keywords onto your Web pages so that the search engines will find them as their spiders crawl your Web site as well as putting them in your Title, Keywords, headings and description.
Why? Think about how the major search engines work. They key on what word or phrases the users enter. How do you find keywords that users want? Use Google itself at this URL:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Just enter your keyword and it will tell you what the demand is for that keyword and how much it would cost to advertise it on Google via Google AdWords.
Supply and demand is important for keywords. You want to find the keywords with a huge demand, but very little supply.
Let me digress here and explain Supply and Demand. Assume that bad weather wipes out the coffee growing part of the world. The supply of coffee world-wide drops. But the demand is the same or increasing. Because there is a disconnect between the demand and the supply, the price of coffee goes up. It becomes a scarce commodity. Scarcity drives up prices. Look at oil and gasoline. There is plenty of oil, but the oil cartel, the companies that control how much oil is pumped out of the ground, decides how much to pump. They make sure they don’t pump too much. This would increase the supply and drive down the price of oil and gasoline. Same thing happens to coffee. The growers will plant more coffee to offset their bad year and soon the price of coffee plummets.
Same with keywords, some are scarce. Those are the ones you want, high demand, little supply.
Another good keyword analyzer is Wordtracker.com. This will cost you money, but it’s the best on the Web.
There are Web site builders that do most of this SEO for you. Most free web site builders do not include SEO. That’s why most of them are a waste of time. Creating a Web site is easy, but it is only 10% of the job. The other 90% is SEO and it is critically important.
Do you know about Alexa rank? Alexa is an Amazon company that ranks Web sites. It takes the most active Web site which total about 65 million and compares your web site to all of them. Here is how to get to the Alexa Point Test:.http://traffic-test.sitesell.com/waltera1.html
If you have a rank under 500,000 you are doing good, it you are under 100,000 you are fantastic. Google is under 10. (http://traffic-test.sitesell.com/waltera1.html) Most free Web sites get a rank of "no data"; that means they are invisible to the search engines; they get no visitors, no targeted traffic. No traffic = no money.
The Web sites that score high on Alexa have lots of content. Content is king on the Internet. What is content? Its information, information that visitors find interesting and relevant to your keywords. The more pages you have on your Web site, the better. If you have only 5 or 6 pages, the search engines will ignore you. Once you get to about 30 pages, the search engines will begin to take notice. At that time you should begin to link to other Web sites. The search engines love links, but you must avoid link farms.
Trying to game the search engines is a thankless task. They have computer science PHds developing their search engine spiders. Do you think you can compete with them? Not likely.
Sneaky techniques are called "black hat" optimization. Won’t work. The SEs are changing constantly. You cannot find out what they do or how they do it. When someone finds a crack, they seal it up.
Linking is important. SEs love links. Site build it software includes automatic link exchanging.
Work hard to create more useful sites, more Web pages Get great software for building web sites. One that does SEO for you.
The best way to get more traffic is to have lots of pages, 100s of them, thousands are better, with relevant content (information). SEs love quality content.
If you have the right Site Build it software, the software submits to search engines automatically, as I said above.
How did you build your Web site? I hope it wasn’t one of those free web builder sites.
You see, there are lots of Web sites that will build a Web site for you. That’s where they end. Building a Web site as you probably know is only solving 5% of the puzzle. The other 95% is search engine optimization and internet marketing. Most Web Site Build It software will only do the first 5%, then they nickel and dime you to death with add-ons that purport to do SEO and internet marketing. Unfortunately most of them are scams.
So what is one to do if there is no help from your Web site building software. Do you know about NVU? This is a free web site builder that emuilates Microsofts Front Page and did I mention that it’s FREE. Go here to download: http://www.nvu.com/index.php. However, like most free Web sites it does not do SEM.
Get better software for Site Building. One that has some keyword analysis. Getting search engines to spider your Web site depends on your keyword selection.
Listen! The SEs find Web site by searching for keywords. If a Web site has the right keywords or phrases, the SEs will find it and send you to the front of the class.
But how do you know which keywords are the best. Ahhh! That’s the question and I will give you a web site that does keyword analysis and it’s free.
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is an excellent preliminary brainstorming tool. Let’s say that you have ten ideas for a theme or Site Concept. This tool gives you a superb "high level snapshot" of how profitable each of your Site Concept possibilities might be. Here’s the URL: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal – remember, it’s free
Here’s a book you might find helpful: Increase Your Web Traffic In A Weekend by Jerry Lee Ford, Jr and William R Stanek.
Then, there is Brad Tabke’s "26 steps to 15K a day". It boils down to solid content thoughtfully put together can make more impact than a decade’s worth of tweaks that may or may not work such as fiddling with META tags. Find his 26 steps here: (http://www.frihost.com/forums/vt-2797.html).
Brad also created and runs one of the best forums for Web site building information at: (http://www.webmasterworld.com/).
This is the exact same plan used by Site Build It. See Ken’s blog: (http://blogit.sitesell.com/waltera1.html). I’m not saying Brad stole it from Ken Evoy, but Ken developed what is known as the C + T + P + M formula.
This is how the formula works:
Create in-demand content (information) – C
Attract Targeted Traffic (visitors) – T
Presell Those Visitors – P
Monitize Presold Traffic – M
Content
Web users search for information, for solutions. They are not looking for you – they don’t even know you (yet!). They seek what you know. Give it to them. Convert your knowledge into in-demand Content. (http://ctpm.sitesell.com/waltera1.html) To succeed online, start where they start – at "the search."
Traffic
Your topical content ranks high at the Search Engines (ex., Google, Yahoo!, MSN), attracting free, targeted (i.e., interested), open-to-you visitors. Basically, these future customers "meet you" at your site. These visitors are known as "Traffic.".
PREsell
Complete strangers develop trust and confidence in you. Why? You "PREsell" by OVERdelivering what they seek… relevant, original, information.
Deliver it in your own voice, in your own way. Go beyond merely instilling confidence… your visitors will like you.
Monetize
Convert warm, willing-to-buy ("PREsold") visitors into income. Called "Monetizing," this is the easy part. But "M" cannot happen if you fail to first execute C T P. This is where 99% of small businesses fail.
Kindest Personal Regards,
Walt Brown
Site Build It Certified Webmaster
http://buildit.sitesell.com/waltera1.html
walter@capecod-beaches.com
wab@theworld.com
http://www.capecod-beaches.com/
http://www.wareham-boatyard-marina.com/
P.S. Start a blog to promote your Web site. Word press is a good one. It you have the right Web Site Build software, it includes a blog feature so that every time you create a new page, it gets posted on the Web as a blog. Turn your blog into articles and submit them to article sites with your URL.
P.P.S. You flat out do not have enough content on your Web site. If you did the SEs would find you. You need more information, more Web pages with quality content, to attract traffic via the SEs.. Onesy, twosy page Web sites have no no content. Create more pages. Use the content to submit articles to article Web sites. Make sure the articles refer back to your Web page. This will attract more visitors and the SEs.
P.P.P.S. Good articles on search engine marketing here – no hype – (http://www.jehochman.com/articles/).
P.P.P.P.S. Here are some other books that you need to read:
Increase Your Web Traffic in a Weekend, by Jr., Jerry Lee Ford (Paperback – Nov 1, 2005)
"How to Use the Internet to Advertise, Promote and Market Your Business or Website with Little or No Money" by Bruce C. Brown, 2006 (Although I have a brother named Bruce his middle initial is "L" for Loring, so we are not related to Bruce C., even tho I call my younger brother, Brucy.
Web Design: The L Line, The Express Line to Learning (The L Line: The Express Line To Learning) (Paperback)
by Sue Jenkins, 2007
Google Analytics by Mary E. Tyler and Jerri Ledford, 2006
Web Site Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for Building and Administering Your Web Site (Cookbooks (O’Reilly)) by Doug Addison, 2006