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Although new to webmasterworld.com, I do however have considerable experience with PPC companies worldwide.
From experience the majority of the companies that offer PPC are somewhat scrupilous in dealings and therefore leave a large number of websurfers with a stale bitter taste-in-mouth.
Due to this bitter feeling of entrapment, unseen masses will boycott your site, and before you know it you will be faced with hundreds of individuals who will literally bring you to your knees via cheating any system you enforce.
This such fate befitted some of the largest Paid-2-Surf, Paid-2-Click and Paid-2-Search companies on the internet. The largest loss I'm aware of was reported at being $31,000,000US.
Whilst such companies overrun a possibly limitless market, there will always be more users who try to steer-clear from such markets. This being said, I encourage anyone out there thinking of entering into the PPC field, to do so in a respectable way, and remember your affiliates and browsers expect more than a smiley face, and if they feel 'jipped' will surely do more than sit down.
Phuzzy
Have you ever talked this over with Nathan Power from Brisbane?
>and therefore leave a large number of websurfers with a stale bitter taste-in-mouth.
Ppc is another way to be found.
Most of site paying Ppc are good sites!
Do you refuse to read a magazine because of advertisement?
I feel a bitter taste-in-mouth when I found a site that is not relevant with my search: it is a rare event with Ppc. If you use Ppc you will try to reach satisfied searchers, you do not like to lose your money.
Usually it is a clear situation: the site owner pays your click; you can skip that listing..
Listings from Ppc have a good description too.
No I havent, please enlighten me as to whom Nathan is...
Thanks,
Phuzzy
did you mean, Unscrupulous?
> and therefore leave a large number of websurfers with a stale bitter taste-in-mouth.
why?
I don't mean to challenge you, but you didn't actually say why.
By saying Bitter Taste, I was referring to those companies that fail to hold their end of their own agreements, eg, not paying customers, affiliates and others involved the monies/rewards that they have legitimately earned.
Please note that my post while sounding somewhat like a flame of-sorts, wasnt intended to be such. Merely a warning for those who wish to pursue the ppc industry.
Phuzzy
I still don't get it - which companies do this? the search engines that offer PPC?
Having said that, as we all know, there are PLENTY of negative comments to be made about PPC... not least the impact on relevancy and the potentially grave effect on the net itself by allowing the big budgets to dominate (like other media)..... don't get me started on this topic!!!
Companies that have been questionable in their operations vary from search engine based pay-per-programs to those companies that provide pay-for-surf.
It's not terribly a hard-to-understand predicament, let alone one that needs to be analysed unless of course you have a pre-invested interest...
Phuzzy
The big budgets can dominate without using ppc! They can have several sites, inter-connected, and they can rent excellent SEOs!
Low budgets can be smarter on Ppc, using three-four keyword phrases and any combination; big budgets tend to bid on one-two generic keyword phrases.
Yet the small guy can become an excellent SEO himself/herself and can therefore compete effectively. Regarding inter-connected sites, Google (which uses link pop heavily) isn't the only engine around.. others do not employ this factor as heavily.
>> Low budgets can be smarter on Ppc, using three-four keyword phrases and any combination
So the big guys get the pie, and the others have to make do with the crumbs. Oh... what a great model for the small guy!
Phuzzy, Nathan Power runs [payperclicksearchengines.com...] . He is located in Brisbane Australia. Might be worth an email...
Onya
Woz
Hate to tell you, but some of us quite like equitable models and fairness... and are more than happy to challenge 'big guys' to ensure that small guys have a chance.
Fortunately I am neither evil, nor a genius. But here's how I'd do it, if I were. I would write a tool which is designed to screw over your Goto competitors. It would do searches in Goto, click on their links, perhaps mill about on the target site for a moment, then do it again. Yes, I know they track IP addresses so not to double-bill, but that's easily defeated.
Next, I would write a spambot which would go into Goto and do lots of big money searches and find the companies that are paying the most for their listings, and then scan the site for email addresses.
Finally, comes a wave of spam, where all these companies get an anonymous letter sent from "Your secret hacker buddy" which would give the sourcecode to the program written in step #1.
Now, all of these companies have the tool to screw each other over, and I bet you that a lot of them will use it. Soon, everybody's traffic from Goto shoots through the roof, yet oddly, the sales aren't coming in. Goto is flooded with compaints from their customers. It would be a total nightmare for Goto.
Just one of these programs could create thousands of dollars of billing per day. 1000 people running them would distort Goto's statistics to the point they don't know what's going on.
I don't really like Goto but I have no malice for them. If they can make their business model work, great. But considering that any two-bit hacker can whip up code to do thousands of dollars worth of damages, I would have to say their business model is on VERY thin ice.
Bolot
PS - Just so nobody misunderstands me, I am 100% opposed to interfering with a business' practices as long as they are legal. And I'm 110% opposed to spam. This was just a mental excercise.
...the methods border on artificial intelligence. They are as savvy about query density, IP density, URL density, advertiser density as any human being observing the click stream. So, too many clicks along the above listed dimensions (and other dimensions that we won't disclose) serve as trigger points to monitoring software which then prevents abusive clicks from being billed.In summary, we put a lot of time, thought and effort into advertiser security. The security comes in layers, from the outside (routers) to the inside (observing click stream behavior patterns). We have checkpoints all along the way.
Nick Dalton
GoTo.com
clientservices
We also discussed this a while back in this thread [webmasterworld.com], along with the protection of adding ?src=goto to the click-through url for tracking clicks on the user's side of things. I've been doing this for my clients, and haven't had any big problems at all.
GoTo's business model absolutely depends on the integrity of their charging - and they know it. I think it would probably take insider information plus the brain power of several evil geniuses to do any significant damage.
One thing's for sure, if you're making money on buying Goto clicks, keep it up.
Bolot
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone" Keynes
(Shudder) I just had a flashback to my college macroeconomics class and that infernal Keynesian econometric model.
Lawman
A theory that's certain to raise eyebrows comes from Jupiter's Media Metrix. As InternetNews puts it:
"A theory recently published by Jupiter Media Metrix argues that user satisfaction with search engines is inversely proportional to the amount of time they spend on them (i.e. the less time the happier). The research report noted that users spent an average of 56 minutes a month on GoTo.com and 269 minutes on Google."
What's that they say about statistics... :)?
If the validity of the two points preceding the theory rest on the latter's veracity, I'd say that while GoTo may be doing very well out of those funding its climb up the stock charts, Phuzzy's question still begs an answer...
I sincerely hope this business plan falls on it's face. I will give it one more year.
My 2 cents.
We know that it is possible to have great content and still not rank well in the search engines. Therefore, what should determine the top placements; luck, lottery, good looks, harassing phone calls, hiring the best SEO, buying a copy of Top Dog or WPG, taking turns, waiting until it's time for your ship to come in . . .?
Lawman
Anything but money. Money controls every other advertising channel.... it will be a sad day when it controls the net as well. GoTo is as crude as it is possible to be in terms of money talking.
Napoleon
I understand the positions and I would love not to have to pay for placement. However, assuming cash (PFP) is not a factor, what factor(s) should determine placement?
Lawman
I've already said it... anything: ingenuity, knowledge, effort, in fact all the factors that combine to aid placement on the likes of Google, AllTheWeb, AV as was, etc etc. I'd even prefer just plain luck to the big budgets trampling over the net and making it into some nightmare yellow pages - just another selling medium where size and size alone determines level of exposure.
Of course you have those few (including me) who don't have all that figured out.
>>ingenuity, knowledge, effort
Effort, I'm there; knowledge, I'm still on the steep up-side learning curve; ingenuity, I'm limited to what God gave me.
Lawman
P.S. I think I understand your position. ;)
