Pay per click for small site?

Need advice about whether I should use PPC

[heartbeatkid]

Hello,

I'm very new to all of this. I have a little web site that is part of a major MLM company. The company suggests that we use PPC, but I'm not sure (after all, it's in the company's best interest to get me to invest in advertising my web site).

They suggest many web sites, but mostly Overture. After browsing these posts, it seems they might be right about Overture. I would like to get on Google, and that seems to be the other one you all seem to like.

Here's my question: how do I know if it's worth my while to use PPC? Being so new to this, I'm worried about making an investment and getting nothing back. There are probably thousands of other people with web sites with this same company. I tried a web search and came up with only a handful of sites (maybe six). But I wonder how much I have to bid to get my site up there at the top, and whether it's worthwhile.

My instinct is that once I'm happy with the content of my site, I give either Overture or Google a try. If I understand correctly, I could start out with an investment of only $50 if I use Overture. I don't know about Google.

Does that sound reasonable? Does it seem worthwhile to try PPC for this kind of web site?

I appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks!

Janet

[eWhisper]

It depends how you track conversions. Both OV and G offer free conversion tools, but if the conversion occur on another site, the best you can track is what visitors are going to that other site.

If you are starting with a very small budget, I would recomend G over OV. G has a minimum bid of $0.05 compared to OV's $0.10 which means double the visitors for the same money.

If you have a sligthly larger budget, then you can try both and see which one works better for you.

Sites lower in the ads do get clicks, just not as many, however, a lot of people prefer the lower positions as they get less 'tire kickers' and more serious shoppers in those positions.

[tfanelli]

I would recommend that you start with low positions in either G or Ov. Chances are that if you only have a few competitors than you could out perform them if you really focus on becoming a PPC expert. I would do alot of research on tracking your performance on a per terms basis. This way you can put your funds into keywords that result in sales. Good Luck.

[Udayan]

My recommendation would be GAW. Reasons: You start bidding at 5cents.More importantly ad text relevance is of utmost importance.This means that through a clever combination of relevant ad copy and constant bid monitoring you can maintain a fairly high position at an acceptable cost.
Overture listings are totally based on "higher the bid-higher the position" principle. Its difficult for marketers with "limited budgets" to get any substantial output,especially if there are sharks in the category.
In either cases, TAKE CARE(-:

[heartbeatkid]

Hi, thanks so much for the input! Based on your replies, I went with Google AdWords. Just started and yesterday I got four clicks! And I guess my insticts are okay because I did start at only 5 cents, that way I can track performance and see if it's working. And I'm focusing on having good copy in the ad and on the site. I still have a lot to learn. How do you learn to be a PPC expert? I think it would be fascinating. I'm going to browse through this site now to try and find out the likely percentage of clicks that result in a sale, that's my biggest question now.

Thanks so much for all your very helpful replies!

Janet