ROI on PI vs. Adwords

This started to make sense all of a sudden

[nevetS]

So I noticed tonight, that positiontech gives me a report on my click throughs.

I looked, and for the $100 on 2 urls I spent, it reported 200 clicks, with an average ranking of 5.1

that's in about two weeks, so right now, I paid about 50 cents a click. My adwords ads cost me more than that. Over a year, it will have been a much better investment than adwords.

I see more traffic from MSN than that (much more), so I'm a little confused. Adding my total adwords traffic to the 200 clicks reported by positiontech is still several hundred less than my log files show. I can only theorize that they don't track all clicks, since I'm pretty confident in my log files.

I decided to foot the money and cross submit my pages to fast and ask jeeves -- simply because when you look at the cost comparing to adwords, it's much less, and I'm spending a ton on adwords right now.

Also, my terms are not too competitive, and looking at current results, my rankings should be pretty good.

Just thought I'd share my revalation. What are your thoughts?

[percentages]

It depends upon your category. For me in my primary category it is impossible to make a profit using AdWords. The AdWords bidders are buying the hope of repeat sales, which may or may not happen, and given the timeframe between sales it seems to me like total folly.

In my category Overture has much better ROI, given the time to the next sale is most likely several years and shouldn't really play a large role.

In other cats it can be very different.

Free SERPs are by a huge percentage the best performers, but you have to manage any volatility :)

[ukbrad1980]

I've had issues with PT in that recently, my amount of coverage has dropped significantly. I decided to try submitting to netsol and ask, which I beleive should do the same service as Pt, and the results have been far superior number 2 in MSN for my main keyword for example.

It might be worth having a stab at submitting some key pages to netsol.

[nevetS]

Interesting. Is there much evidence of preference between PFI providers? I'm a little new here. I'm getting top 5-6 rankings in my targeted keywords, but very little competition.