overture ppc

[astoller]

Excuse my lack of knowledge here!

Can someone simply explain minimum bids.
Surely you should bid the maximum above which they cannot charge you?
What happens to the person who bids slightly below you?
Do they get listed at No.2?
If so, why not just bid 1 cent and hope you appear in the top 10.

[Mardi_Gras]

The minimum bid is .05. Although you will see some bids lower, they are "grandfathered" under old terms of service. If the bidder makes any changes to the listings - it goes to a .05 minimum.

Surely you should bid the maximum above which they cannot charge you?

You have to look at return on investment. You can't (or at least you shouldn't) bid more per click than you make per click. There are lots of threads here on calculating ROI.

What happens to the person who bids slightly below you?
Do they get listed at No.2?

Yes - or number 3, or number 25 - there are lots of people competing for keywords.

[Mike_Mackin]

>Yes - or number 3, or number 25

Or #40 on the first page that overture returns.
The problem is less than 10% of the traffic comes from the Overture site. 90% comes from the Portal Partner sites and most of those only show the first 3 to 10 sites.

[Mardi_Gras]

Didn't mean to imply that the results stopped at 25 :)