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I'm writing a book about some of the horror stories that some businesses have gone through with pay per click marketing services.
If you have an interesting story of how you were surprised by some type of fraud, tactic, abrupt change in policy or anything of that matter, please contact me.
If you want to remain anonymous that's fine. Leaving your business name and url in the story does give it more credibility and maybe a little publicity for you. If the problem was resolved, that's great. Be sure to mention it.
This book is not an attack on all pay per click marketing or the concept in general. It is simply a book showing all of the problems that can arise if you are not fully aware of how these sytems operate.
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Credit to responders.
Double-Triple checking that information is correct, both from advertiser and ppc engines.
Credit to Webmasterworld.
Free copies for all of us to read?
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just curious "matey"
Shak
2: double and triple checking: Well I can do that with my own clients, but I probably can't do that with others unless they are willing to provide that information. I do however want as much information as possible so that the facts are evident. Where the facts may not be as clear, we will either keep the information out or remove the reference to the company in question.
3: I have no problem whatsoever with giving credit to webmasterworld.com for the contributions.
4: I can provide free electronic copies of the book in pdf format, as long as it is not distributed to others without permission.
What's the purpose of the book?
Some things that have struck me as horror stories :
decimal points in the wrong place. We must write 5 e-mails a week to advertisers where they are either plain dumb with their bid or got the point in the wrong place and 30p becomes £30. 90% of the time they are not plain dumb, just plain humans.
Software writers that actively encourage you to "kill your competitors", writing features like this into a product as a "cool" way to beat your competitors.
Big agencies bidding blue chips to #1 regardless of any ROI or cost implications, if I was a shareholder in those companies I'd want to know why my money was being wasted.
Consultants/agencies taking on work that clearly they are not qualified to handle and asking in forums for guidance on what to charge the clients.
The best way to educate people on how PPC works is to make them money.
As the author, in my mind the purpose of the book is evident, but I can see your point of view. The book is not complete, so I'm not trying to sell anybody on it, I just want to know if anybody wants to participate.
The book may not be of value to you since you are a professional marketing expert. However, there are tens of thousands of people who are either trying to market their company or the company they are working for, and they are making all of the same mistakes that you and I and many others have made over the past few years. Some of these people will lose their jobs or go out of business because of these mistakes.
This case is made evident by the fact that everyday people are posting messages to forums asking if ah-ha provides good traffic, or e-pilot, or just about everything else out there.
I am not trying to tell people not to use pay per click services, in fact I make it clear several times that there are some great advantages to ppc's. However, there are some simple things that can be done that you and I probably do almost instinctively now whereas many others are now making the very same mistakes that we have.
This book does not knock down the industry as a whole, nor does it target any specific business. Every advertising medium whether it be tv, radio, or internet marketing has its advantages and disadvantages. I am trying to address an issue that seems to only be addressed in forums, and I'm doing it in hopes that with more education, people can make wiser decisions for their business or the company they work for.
With more education, the fallout effect may be that the fraudulent services will go out of business, but that would simply be a side-effect, it' not the objective.
If nobody at WebMasterWorld.com wants to contribute any ideas or horror stories, I'm fine with that. This isn't my personal content service and none of you are here to do work for me. Regardless of whether or not we receive ppc horror stories from webmasterworld users, this forum will be listed in the "valuable resource" section of the book.
