Forum Moderators: open
Now we are officially Yahoo free. MSN and Google for us and even with Google our spending is down 60% from last year as we don't get into their little game of upping the money for keywords. If they turn it off..it stays off. Overall our PPC money saved gives us a better financial picture than the same time last year when it was spend spend spend.
Congratulations Yahoo. You officially just became a third tier PPC company.
You wouldn't listen to us when we said we didn't want your so called 'partners' and now you are losing money by the fistful. You better take whatever deal is on the table and sell because you obviously don't have a freaking clue how to run a profitable PPC service.
I won't put another nickle into this company until I read here on webmasterworld that things have changed.
Buh bye!
The pride cometh before the fall it seems in Yahoo's case.
Sept 2006 - Posts that he's thinking of suing Yahoo
[webmasterworld.com...]
October 2006 - Advises members to run away from YSM, that's it lousy ROI
[webmasterworld.com...]
October 18, 2006
Claims was spending thousands per day and now is only spending $70. Posts that the ROI is poor.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Good luck.
I just try to engage others and by doing so I found out I'm not alone. They suck and probably always will suck. Fact is we turned them off, and sales not only suffered but the money saved also counted towards overall profit therefore we did much better than in years past. Same with Google, we pay about a 1/4 what we did two years ago and better results. PPC is going to die a slow painful death as one by one people realize they are paying a heavy price per customer. Especially when there are other ways to market.
I am however a bit offended that a moderator would actually do the research in an effort to make me look like a sh**t disturber with no real value to my posts. It isn't the first time I've seen people on this site (moderators included) jump to the defense of Yahoo and Google. I guess you never know who's in bed with whom.
I will take it as a sign that I'm no longer welcome.
That's ok. I'm a big boy and will take my leave.
Good luck to you as well.
however a bit offended
Then you are reading something into MB's post that I certainly don't recognize.
This thread seems to be a natural evolution out of past concerns. What's wrong with clarifying that for others who haven't been around long enough to know the whole context?
My best campaigns are in Yahoo, and I am making a killing on it.. My google roi would jump 10 points if they simply allowed my to exclude domains in adwords...
if they simply allowed my to exclude domains in adwords
AdWords will indeed let you exclude domains. Look in "Tools" for "Site and Category Exclusion".
I've spoken to my account rep in the past and we are able to remove sites (some, not all) if I provide them a list. I'm not sure if they require you to have a dedicated team to do this or if you need to be spending millions or what, but I was told it is possible.
As for finding and removing Yahoo's so called partners (which I think are just spam) that is a job that would never end. As soon as you identify one and remove it 10 more take it's place. It's the easiest system to rip off out there because they insist that you use their partners who they do a poor job of choosing and policing..and you can't opt out.
As for putting the work into it I doubt our corporation put any less into it than anyone else. But you may be right. You might be a Yahoo ppc guru compared to the rest of us. We personally tried everything humanely possible to turn it around in Yahoo. In the end, we decided to do a test and go Yahoo free. That was months ago. We won't be back anytime soon because as I said, no drop whatsoever in sales. Not one dime. Google we were able to tweak so we were getting the same sales and better ROI for 1/4 of the money we were spending which speaks for the time and effort we put into the analytics. We tried dropping Google too but that didn't go so well..lol.
Lately we have been doing very well with alternative advertising.
Not here to get into a pi$$ing contest with anyone. Just reporting on what happened when we dropped Yahoo completely and wondered if anyone else had the same results.
I am just willing to help anyone who wants to make yahoo work for them... I am in retail space, my largest client being a comparison engine..
As you said though, if you have spent your allotted budget on testing a channel, and you just could not make it work, it is time to move on. that is what I did with Ask.com :)
I understand your position much better once you told me your business model and your best customer. Makes me ashamed to jump to conclusions like I did. ( Everytime I do, it doesn't work out well for me...think I would learn but Nooooooo...lol)
Like you, I'm just sharing my experience.
All is good.
PS: I did get a call from HR of Yahoo last week (!) for a product management position, but the position is in CA and I have no plans to leave Chicago..
I even dropped my Yahoo Home Page cause they messed with it and it doesn't even fit my browser window anymore ( I'm a dinosaur with 800x600 but hey my eyes are old). iGoogle is my page now.
Still (and even more so) Yahoo free and lovin it!
