We got a phone call from them too recently and the £49 on admin fees puts me off right away. If i'm adding my own listings, then why do they need admin fees?
If anyone has used webfinder, i'd be interested to ear from you.
Here is what I think I know:
1. It is run by the Thomson directory company.
2. It is a PPC with a 5p minimum bid
3. £49 + VAT set up fee minimum + £50 deposit.
4. A single listing appears within the top 3 on Freeserve.
Their site also has the Altavista logo, but I can't see where the listings appear; certainly not in the main results.
I note that Freeserve have also chosen to include the Thomson "Business finder" service as well (the "who, what, where" search).
Plus points
1) You do get a top 1 or 2 listing on Freeserve provided you are in the #1 bidding position
2) The ROI seems reasonable so far
3) The majority of your competition will not have switched onto it yet - its too small fry and they probably cant be bothered.
4) Do you have much to lose giving them a try apart from £100 approx set up costs? Given the amounts that some of us get through week in week out - this is a drop in the ocean.
Bad points
1) Its got Bidsmart written all over it - BUT Bidsmart didnt have the Freeserve anchor - limited though it is.
2) The feedback from the webfinder team is dire
3) The #1 position on Freeserve - which if you word your ad well enough can stand out and do the biz - is mobile. In other words it moves from #1 -#2 -#3 position which is annoying and conflicts with the sales blurb
All in all - Id say its worth a stab. Pay the money if youve got it - let it ride for a while and if the ROI is there, even if its a slow burner then what the hell.
Currently we've had 1270 clicks for £520 from 87 keywords. As you can see our terms are not in the 5p range but the equivalent on Overture is probably 2 to 3 times more expensive.
As Claimsweb so rightly says, it's worth a go especially whilst it's still virtually unknown.
Two points to remember :
1) They do the same as Overture and lower your bid to 1p more than the bid below you so you can try the old "scare the opposition to death by bidding £3" trick, provided that you've got the time to keep checking the listings to make sure that some nasty person hasn't bid £2.99 below you
2) It's only position 1 that gets into Freeserve, position 2 and lower do not get a single click. Last time that I spoke to the rep he mentioned that they were hoping to provide 2 listings to Freeserve in the not too distant future, but it hasn't happened yet.
Many of us bid for phrases on PPC engines without worrying about being top because we know that the other positions get traffic too... without that, Webfinder is limping somewhat. It makes it unattractive to those who can't afford to pay the top bid price.
In the climate at the moment, this is going to be hard, especially given the changing relationships between providers, and the fierce competition from Overture/Espotting/Google/Mirago (does anyone still use Mirago?)
I think it's worth a try, but one thing that concerns me is the whole logo thing. They want you to sumbit a logo along with your listings, and this means if you want to promote more than one site _and_ have different logos for each, then you have to have multiple accounts, and pay the £49 admin fee for each.
The way i see it is it could go either way. They should have a look round WW to see what people like us want from a PPC and maybe they'll stick around longer.
I'm going to use it for cheap PPC on competitive terms until it get washed out, even a small amount of competitive traffic is worth it for a couple of months!
Smiley
Just wondered, as I was considering using the webfinder.com self-service option, if since this thread was started anyone has seen any major (or even minor) returns in traffic?
TIA
Any more deals WRT expanding their results network have yet to materialise.
Still just #1 result for freeserve.
They are _very_ slow at adding listings, and you get very little traffic - i've had 3 click throughs in 6 weeks.
But on the plus side, they can only get better! ;)
I'm sure that there are still plenty of bargains to be found there. If you're a UK advertiser take a look, you might find your main keyword at 5p a click when it's ten or twenty times that on Overture / Google.
I may look into them whilst they are still cheap.....
Surely any traffic is good traffic!
1. Bulk upload facility?
2. Agency terms any good?
3. Account management any good?
4. Payment on account?
5. Ridiculous set-up fee (£49) can be waived?
1. Bulk upload facility?No mention of it on their website.
2. Agency terms any good?Can't help there either I'm afraid
3. Account management any good?Yes, quite similar to Overture. Listings can be categorised. Bids are 1p over the one below you. Reports seem ok.
4. Payment on account?I've got my account set up so that they take £100 off a credit card when balance is low. They send an email and you receive a VAT receipt in the post. When I had top position for a popular keyword I was getting batches of these letters through the door in the morning but now the value's gone for me and I'm not getting many clicks
5. Ridiculous set-up fee (£49) can be waived?I'm sure that it can. What they don't make clear is that they actually set up the ads for that £49. So originally I sent them a spreadsheet with 100 or so search terms and the relevant URL's. They did the wording (a bit "directory like" but not bad) and set the ads up.
If you've got more questions I suggest that you give them a ring. Drop me a pm and I'll give you my contact (wasn't sure if I was allowed to post it).
Ross
I've got my account set up so that they take £100 off a credit card when balance is low
Hmm, maybe we need to expand our keyword range a bit.
Set up my account this morning, set up some listings and keywords then wanted to talk to them about something.
Have been phoning all morning only to hear an answerphone message saying that no-one is that at present to deal with enquiries.
Hope this isn't how it's going to stay....
Wow, you're actually getting traffic from them Ross?
So far i've spent less than £2 (plus£49 set up fee).
I've paid for 5,000 clicks in 2 months, but mostly on a term that had 198,541 searches on Overture UK last month :)
Like I said, there was some value there at first ;), for me it's now gone :(
We had some good results on their for certain keywords where there was a high volume of searches, but on others there was always the sheep bidders and no value to be had.
