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Is the directory what gives them the extra push? Is the $300 worth paying just for an extra step up in the SERPs?
(Their descriptions in the directory are horrible. Definately not Zeal worthy at all, and No keywords in the title or description of the listing either.)
DaveN
I guess hits don't come cheap :(
I guess hits don't come cheap
Compared to most competitive PPC terms, this isn't expensive. The volume is a far bigger issue.
Let's say 1% of visitors actually contact you (these are just leads). Then you need 10 leads for each sale.
That makes about 1 sale per year in my book. Would you pay $300 per year to a salesman that made one sale? For the right product maybe ... but I doubt this will cover the majority of cases.
it's the question whether yahoo can generate some ROI
It's pretty easy to work this one out. Taking the figures from this thread ...
ogletree showed 4 visitors (I hope they were visitors, and not just hits!) during a 24 hour period (in reality, it would be better to take an average over a couple of months)
This gives 4 * 365 = 1460 visitors per year
Assume 1% will contact you = 14 leads
Assume you will sell to 10% of leads = 1 sale
This 1 sale has just cost $300 (for the Y! entry). So long as you can afford $300 per sale in advertising costs, no worries ;)
Plug in your own figures for visitors and conversion ratios, then test to see if you can really make the expected amount of money (or not, as the case may be)
There is a little more to this, of course. If a Y! link gives your site a boost in (e.g.) Google's SERPs, this may lead indirectly to more sales.
But I would tend to take the Y! link at face value. I can think of far more effective ways of using the $300 for most of my clients.
Not too long ago a Yahoo directory listing was considered a requirement for many sites. Back then the Yahoo directory listings were effectively fed into search results and referrals (often significant) resulted from a listing.
If Yahoo decides not to recreate that situation then I assume their directory review income will decline. Probably it will continue to decline as I imagine it must have declined somewhat already.
To come back to it a Yahoo listing, I think for many sectors it is still a reference point.
The indirect google PR effect, if your category has reasonable google PR can certainly not be discounted.
If you think that with their slow break from google search results they may start to build some value for their directory entries it may still be worth a listing.
I see a comparison of that $300 to the cost of sales people.
It was estimated some time ago in the UK that each individual visit from a salesperson to a customer costs on average £150.
Viable promotion channels do depend a lot on the value of each customer acquired.
Value per customer is not the same as value per transaction.
Value per customer includes the profits arising from the multiples of transactions that your new customer may make with you in the lifetime of your relations with them.
If you want to compare customer acquisition costs with anything it should be "customer lifetime profitability".
imho
Yahoo claims 289699 B to B listings and 443882 shopping and services listings. That's 733,551 commercial listings, and at $299 each that's potentially $219 million a year (if everyone in there was paying).
Yahoo has sales of only $1.1 billion, so the directory is potentially 20% of their income. I don't think Yahoo would want to give that up.
Yahoo searches are definitely giving VERY different results than Google right now. Maybe the Yahoo directory is now part of the algorithm?
That's the answer. If you get one a day, it's less than a buck per person... if you get 10, it's less than a dime. Anything over that I don't know why anyone would care.
