Forum Moderators: skibum
In trying to assess what "good value" means, I'm wrestling with some numbers which I'd value your comments on.
Factiods:
1. Based on my experience with Google's AdWord, I estimate click thru rates on ads which pop up on related search pages to be around 3% max.
2. Based on our trading history our conversion ratio - visitors to sales - is around 1%.
3. Our average sale is £20.
4. Our average profit is about 50%
Taking these together, I can back-fit a break-even cost per 1000 impressions:
1000 impressions at 3% click-thru rate implies 30 click throughs to my site
30 site visits implies 0.3 sales
0.3 sales of £22 each means £6.60 takings
50% profit means £3.30 gross profit
- so for breakeven, I'll spend all of this on those 1000 impressions,
so the breakeven CPM is £3.30, which is 0.3 pence per click.
Is this what others estimate - or are my numbers wildly unusual?
What are YOU paying CPM/CPC?
I hear that 50 cents is routinely paid. How come?
Any helpful comments would be greatly appreciated.
Chris
They are YOUR numbers.
Each industry, product / service and website will vary.
We have an ad running at since July with a 15.4% CTR.
Does that mean anything to anyone else? NO
It our service, pricing, website and OUR ad.
Just because another webmaster pays $0.50 dosn't mean that you can. Pay what you can afford and let others do their thing which may not be profitable. Set up your account and wait for adwords to move to market driven bidding.
I didn't suggest my numbers were gospel, I was inviting other numbers, so I could understand how typical or otherwise they are.
Thanks again,
Chris
NOT hostile - SORRY about that!
I'll give you another example:
8.3% CTR = WOW
What are the stats?
1 click out of 12 impressions - cost = 5 cents
It was a waste of my time ;)
Chris
Well, now that is interesting. I have kept Google Ad Words, Sprinks, OV and FindWhat and discarded Looksmart, Kanoodle, & 7 Search and Brain Fox and Ah-Ha. Google gives me a lot of traffic, and a great conversion rate; but have to admit, I pay high for it. Same with OV except I think the conversion rate is less. Google -- for me -- has a really high conversion to sales rate.
My estimates are NOT -- I have to admit, based on scientific hard results, but on gut. That is unfortunately the way I operate, cause don't have enough tech experience and knowledge and enough energy to track it all, but just go on gut.
Do 7 Search & Kanoodle give you that much in traffic and conversion for a good cost per click? I liked them when I first started, but it gets hard to manage more than 3 or 4 PPCs. So dropped them, as they did not just seem to provide that much compared to OV and Find What. And then along came Google Ad Words.
At some point these PPCs start to knock each other off re where they appear and what you get. For Example: on the meta search engines like Dogpile.com and Mamma.com and etc I would see every buy I made on those from 7Search and Kanoodle, along with my OV & FW buys & OV always at the top.
At some point, you also start to wonder: are the clicks you are getting real? On ANOTHER POST on this site was posted: "30% of all clicks on PPCs are probably fraud." Person who posted is in the busines of investigating PPC search results for clients (I believe). So that is disturbing. Anyway ......
The PPCs have always had a problem with that issue. Just wondering if 7Search and Kanoodle are now giving you really strong results & conversion to buy ratio.?
That could be good news. I would quit OV in a heartbeat if I had even a hint I could get what it delivers for a cheaper rate from some other PPC.
WHEN IT COMES TO GOOGLE THOUGH: I don't think unless I had really, really hard evidence I could do better, I would quit Google Ad Words. They are hard to beat. Google is just too prominent on the Web, though at times expensive if you don't watch your bids carefully.
Thanks for your original input and any response to this.
