Many of us here make our money from acting as an agent in one form or another: by providing a common point for service providers and consumers. As the agent, we'd either take a fee for
1) arranging the meeting
or
2) handling the sale
or
3) advertising for the service provider
In all of these cases there would normally be many customers and many service providers (otherwise you would not be using the internet to do business). The intermediary has traditionally benefitted from the economies of scale whereby it has been uneconomic for service providers to advertise for themselves. Recently, however a low cost form of advertising has come along in the form of PPC. At the moment it seems like a godsend. Hundreds of customers rolling through the door for a few cents a click.
Like many webmasters, I have looked at Adwords as a boon, but now I am beginning to wonder. I have noticed recently that my service providers are showing more interest in the internet, and I'm just wondering how long it will be before they realize they can take up a ppc campain with a daily limit that suits them. Once they work it out, there is little reason for intermediaries to exist anymore (except the ppc engine itself).
The one small advantage I can think that the agent has, is that he may be able to wring more profits out of each customer because he will have a large number of offers, and also perhaps that the small service provider will have capacity problems and will not be able to serve every inquiry adequately.
Of course we don't live in a frictionless world and not every service provider will have the patience to build a web page, do his own ppc and handle direct inquiries.
However, the whole scenario doesn't look very optimistic, and the higher your profit margin, the higher your risk that you may get cut out of the food chain.
Any differing views on this?
personally speaking, I think the reverse of what you are thinking is a potential route.
having been a PPC advertiser for quite some time, and achieving great CTRs, I have still decided to outsource my work allowing me to concentrate on other parts of my business instead.
when PPC 1st came about, I did not know anyone who knew what they were doing, so I started learning all about CPC, CTR etc etc etc, it was a very interesting time, but it took up a lot of valuable time from other parts of my business.
these days I have a meeting once every 10>14 days with my PPC manager to discuss strategies, and leave her to do the work, although I have web access to all the accounts.
I think to achieve this, you have to position yourself 1 step above the "full service web agencies" out there, specialising in PPC, and this WILL result in lots of quality customers and also 3rd party agencies wanting to hire you.
"did that make any sense?"
Shak
