"Our consultant says that CPC will peek this year and start to drop off in 2004"
Now that it's 2004, I'm wondering what everyone's "overall" feeling is about adwords in specific and cpc in general.
I've currently just begun my second attempt at adwords marketing. After reading ALOT, dozens of hours, I'm sure I've not read more than 5%), and taking notes, I've started using KDA, and WordTracker, as well as googles estimator, to find "niche" keywords for various cj sellers and products.
Thus far, I've gotten pretty decent ctr for some of them (some would say 2-5% suck, seems decent for a beginner). Only been at it for a few days, and have about 30 clicks after maybe $2 spent. No sales yet, but if the network earnings are 2 or more, and epc is decent, then logic suggest some sales are likely.
Now, granted, 30 clicks in 48 or so hours isn't many. But, I've no idea about the 3 line copy and what works and what doesn't (haven't read the "writing" forums yet), so seems 30 clicks for less than $2 is pretty good.
Anyway, how do you all feel in general about cpc these days, still profitable? still possible to find decent kw phrases with low enough cpc to get decent roi?
Thanks
Tim
However, I think it has been maturing as an advertising avenue. There are many more people bidding up keywords and Google's foray into exapanded broadmatching killed a number of niche keyword groups some had.
An example would be a keyword I have used for some time. Last year around this time there were three bidders with average CPC around $.065. Currently there are 30+ bidders with the average CPC having quadrupled. So I get less clicks and those fewer clicks cost me more. I am still making money, just not nearly as much - which is generally the sign of a maturing market.
seasalt
No offense there my moderator friend, but an article from March of 2003, imho, does not qualify as "current opinion", as my subject suggests I would like to hear.
Thank you
Tim
I don't mean NOT worth it. But less. This might be because (as others have said) it is maturing a bit, but the significant increase in effort to manage our account (hurting ROI 'cause time is $) and the higher bids has dented our impression.
We still do the bulk of our advertising on G, but we are now spending more on overture and starting to look again at offline advertising.
Ironically, G tries to reduce the management time with things like Expanded Broadmatching or Smart pricing, etc. But for us this INCREASES the difficulties because, frankly, WE know our business BETTER than any ole algorythm! (thank you very much) We spend significant amouts of time figuring out ways to 'wrest' control of our ads BACK from the algo.
G's attitude seems to be 'algo' knows best. We put a little more stock in our own intelligence. (after all it is OUR money!)
G (if you are listening) LET US OPT-OUT OF EXPANDED BROADMATCH, WEBSEARCH, AND ADSENSE!
Thanks for taking the time to say it in a thoughtful and compelling way.
AWA
If you haven't seen it already, there is a related thread (+ an article) going on over here that should give you additional current opinion - [webmasterworld.com...]
seasalt
