£200 to spend - where?

Should this go on Looksmart, Overture, E-spotting....

[Think]

OK, we run a .co.uk website aimed only at the UK market. We have good rankings in Yahoo, Google, Altavista, Lycos and some in MSN (where there are no Directory Results).

We have around £200 to spend, we currently pay for our home page inclusion (one page) in Ink, Ask, Altavista, Fast -using PTs submission service.

Question, as our search terms are quite competitive, in MSN.co.uk we list about 60 as there are around 50 or so directly listings (guess these come from Looksmart), in order to get within these 50 do we have to pay £149 for a Looksmart directory listing and are MSN likely to drop Looksmarts directory at the end of the year.

Or should we invest our £200 in a PPC venture and if so which one Overture, Espotting, Adwords etc (noting we only want traffic from the UK.

All assistance would be apprecaite.

[DaveN]

give webfinder (thompson directory)a go or even better still try all three e-spotting and Overture, spread your cash and monitor your ROI they all have quite different surfers depending on your Product.

would not spend a penny with L$

DaveN

[percentages]

>are MSN likely to drop Looksmarts directory at the end of the year.

WOW....that was uncanny.....just a few hours after your post they did. Any tips on what we should be selling short tomorrow?

As for where to put your money....I would go with DaveN's advice for anything UK related.

[DaveN]

from what I heard MSN UK will drop looksmart before the end of this month,

DaveN

[tigger]

Dave

Do you get much traffic from webfinder? I've got a good few top listings but never get a single hit

[tosspot17]

We get very little from Webfinder, even at the number 1 spot, but I know a few people round here do get a good amount of traffic.

My vote would be for Mirago, for certain terms, they're very low cost and still bring in a teady stream of traffic.

[DaveN]

Tigger - starting to see a little more traffic but better much better ROI. the traffic is not as good as OV and E-spot, but I'm happy, my main problem is that we only really run short run stuff due to the product we are selling and our pricing ;)

DaveN

[Think]

Hey percentages, I dare not tell you everything you know!.

So the advice is spread it thinly. Hmm, its not a big budget so spreading it across several is perhaps not the best way forward.

In promoting consumer goods its important to ensure that you get listed as economically as possible, as Google is currently without question our biggest feed of traffic at the moment we must concentrate in other areas.

I have read some disturbing reports re Overture and their reporting structure and click through analysis not to even comment on their customer support, but to be unbiased I assume that there are as many happy users out there.

Considering that out bids (if we were to use Overture) would only place our listings at best at no. 4 or 5 (as we cannot afford to bid higher) then where will E-spotting's listings turn up (assuming that our bid would be as economical but positioned higher)?

In the perfect world Fresserve, in being UK would be somewhere to start. I note that the main initially listings come from OV, but where do the very top ones come from?.

[DaveN]

In the perfect world Fresserve, in being UK would be somewhere to start. I note that the main initially listings come from OV, but where do the very top ones come from?.

webfinder ;)

DaveN

[Receptional]

Here's another way of spending £200 that may go further...

Get a low cost affiliate tracking system. mals-e.com is £60 per year for the entire ecommerce system but will require work... I am sure others can suggest alternatives. Try kowabunga.

Then use this to build links with other websites. A good affiliate will build an entire site around your offering.

This worked for me when I started out in Cyberspace. I found ONE affiliate who has returned my investment 100 times over.

D.

[tosspot17]

where do the very top ones come from?.

1. Freeserve network site
2. Webfinder
3. Freeserve network site

I think... ;)

[Smiley]

>£200 to spend - where?

Links.

Can you get an increase in budget?

[Think]

Re Webfinder

I see they offer various priced packages, some PPC, some listing.Any comments on their various packages and what you get more/or less for each one.

RE the PPC option, is there a sinple way to find out the current bids based on keywords rather than having to enter all you details up front.

With overture you can at least enter 'hit keyboard lots of times' entries just to get to the cost per bid section.

[Smiley]

>simple way to find out the current bids

Go to overture uk, do a search then click "View Advertisers' Max Bids"

With only £200 to spend IMO webfinder may not be the best option.

[zooloo]

<£200 = Subscribe to WebmasterWorld!

It will more than return mere cash.

zooloo :)

[snookie]

If you're thinking about LookSmart you should look here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[Shak]

keep well away from Webfinder, they really could not arrange a drinks party in a brewery.

I would be saying go for Overture and Adwords, although adwords would give you results a lot lot quicker.

failing that send the £200 to me, and I promise to tell every single 1 of my friends about your site.

shame I only have 2 friends though

Shak

[Michael Anthony]

If it helps, here's my top 5 as measured by cost per lead. (This is for a UK only financial services site.)

1) Webfinder
2) Overture
3) Google
4) Espotting
5) Mirago

This said, even at the top spot I could not survive on the Webfinder traffic alone, there's just not enough of it.

AND if you're in a hurry for traffic, Google Adwords is the only one that will get you going immediately even with zillions of keywords - all the others have an editorial review process which takes between 3 (Overture, Espotting) and 14 (Webfinder) days.

[Adam_C]

putting 200 quid into PPC won't last very long.

Reckon you'd be better off spending it on a Y! UK listing.

This should help boost your rankings in all the major SE's in the longer term.

[TinkyWinky]

£200 says do a PubCon to get good contacts and some ideas to improve / revitalise your listings and use the left overs for either beer, wine or a bloody good juice maker

TW