Forum Moderators: mack
Though it seems to be affecting everyone I'm finding I have to bid higher and higher just to stay above water on Adwords. I've never had a single sale from them as I just can't afford much traffic on main words but as soon as I go a bit broader they make the broad words just as expensive because they're not "relevant" enough.
It seems whatever I do I end up at around 60 cents upwards, which isn't too good when selling a $30 product. My understanding is that a 2% conversion rate is meant to be pretty good for the net but at that level it would cover Google but not my transaction costs.
I'm just wondering if this could have anything to do with the fact I'm selling software? For I keep hearing that Google is in favor of open-source, give it away for nothing software.
Am I being penalised for being a "greedy" person for daring to actually sell a program?
P
I really don't think that Google would do that, and whilst they position themselves as being friend to the open source movement they are not based on it or I believe biased towards it.
I have looked at a number of business opportunities where the advertising is essentially PPC, and have yet to find a good one. In my opinion, what sets the ceiling price on bids is actually the point at which it becomes no longer profitable to sell a product via PPC when you subtract the acqusition cost from the margin on the product.
I think in many markets, adwords have achieved this point. I also think that anything which reduces Google's dominance of the search market is good. Not because I don't like Google (I do) but because if traffic is going to other engines, then that will reduce the pressure on adwords bids.
This may be unusual, but because of this, I really hope that Yahoo and MSN get it together a bit more. The situation is particularly bad in the UK where on some figures I saw recently, Google is 11.5 times bigger by search volume than yahoo (their next nearest competitor) in the UK.
Kinnda amusing that their software algo is the most secretive thing on the net yet they claim to favor OS. What got me thinking was a recent interview with a self-professed OS "evangalist" - which doesn't entirely fill one with confidence advertising with em.
Unfortunately other means of advertising seem to demand a large chunk upfront. Found one website that would be ideal - but they demand a minimum advertising budget of $10,000.
And what the heck is it with websites that just say "contact us" regarding advertising?
Should I just presume they want stupid figures as well?
P
Is it your own software? If you're not an affiliate,Have you tried download libraries
Stumbled across a couple and both had prominently placed ads for password crackers and things of that nature, which I don't really want my program alongside.
I get nervous when it comes to software sites..
I also need to read up on just what a 'pad' file is, because apparantly some sites need one. Download.com didn't but others do, for some reason. Still waiting to hear from them, takes a few weeks for them to get round to doing whatever they do with submissions. I know I asked some questions on a revision form which they haven't answered yet but that may be cos they won't answer until they're reviewed or whatever.
But yes it's my own prog. Bloated though, 40mb, which is killing my downloads. Methinks I'm gonna have to hire someone to re-write the whole thing in something faster and leaner than .net 2.0!
I may just quit advertising until I can afford to get that done. But can I afford to quit advertising? Well the way things are, yeah, as I'm getting no sales anyway.
:o/
P.
[edited by: mack at 7:09 pm (utc) on Aug. 19, 2006]
