Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I have a site (not officially launched) that is getting 80% of its traffic from blogging.  I have been very active with it over the past month and I only get around 100-250 visits a day – most of it through blogging.

 

I am thinking of using Adwords and was wondering:

 

If its worth it for an ecommerce site?

 

If so, I am thinking of using some of my product brand names as keywords.  Is that a good idea or should I stick to more broad, general terms (as long as it relates to my site and products)? 

 

adwords is probably not gonna be worth it, but it can`t hurt to try if you get the free $25 or $50 that they give you just for signing up.

Prices can get kind of steep on there ($1 per click) and that`s just not worth it a lot of times if you do the math and figure out a conversion rate.  Even at 10% (which is really high) you`re paying upwards of $10 just for one sale.

You`re better off just focusing your blogging campaign more, working on some PR, and if you must do CPC, try other services like MSN or Ask.com. CPC`s are usually a lot lower and users aren`t as web-savvy in general, so they are more likely to click on with an intention to buy.  Sponsored results on google sometimes get clicked by accident, or almsot out of spite, lol.

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

I prefer to use PPC as a first and on-going tool. You`ll want to use PPC to test your landing page conversions. Once you know a keyword converts for that page, work to get that page (or similar page) ranked in the search engines for that converting term. Then in the long term, you will no longer NEED to pay for that traffic, unless you choose to if it makes ROI sense.

The other reason to do continual PPC is because you`ve made the conscious choice not to SEO for that term. And it continues to bring in positive ROI through PPC.

Best,
Eve


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We work with established small to medium size businesses that are in the position to invest in improving the results of their online presence.

Let me ask you three questions.
1) What is your cost per online visitor?
2) What is your revenue per visitor?
3) What is the lifetime value of your customer?

I will cut to the chase on the SEO/SEM efforts to focus on increasing your bottom line.

Pay per clicks can be extremely profitable... I`ve used them for my personal sites and I manage them for others. One of the campaigns I currently manage spends on average $1,500 per day alone on Google Adwords -- this doesn`t include the cost for Yahoo`s and MSN`s pay per click program. In the past, we`ve managed campaigns that went well over $5,000.00 per day.

I bring that up because pay per clicks is a tricky little beast, and it`s one that can make you a lot of money, and it`s one that can cost you a fortune too.

As Roland suggested, you gotta make sure everything on your site is working towards closing the sell. In other words, your site must be able to convert those visitors into paying customers and a lot of that has to do with the quality of the keyword phrases (or keywords) you`re selecting, and the ability of your site to convert them into paying customers.

You can get 1 million qualified visitors to the site, but if the site doesn`t do it`s job, you`re just throwing away money, and this happens quite often.

My preference is to use ppc as the first option. It allows me to get instant targeted traffic right away, and I have the ability create multiple landing pages to test the effectiveness of the particular pages `closing ratio`. I`m able to test a variety of variables in an effort to see what converts best, and based on the results.

Right now, you should have some type of gauge of how well your site is converting with the number of visitors you`re getting now... 100 - 250 equates out too 3,000 to 7,500 visitors per month. If your conversion rates are poor, then you`ll likely have the same poor results when you run your google campaigns.

Get that site to convert should be your primary goal (well... I think list building should be your primary goal), but get that site to convert and select the right keywords (phrases) and make sure you have the visitors going directly to the page/product advertised in the adword..

Hope this helps!
Cartess


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Website Startup Coach: Step-by-Step Coaching to Help You Build a Profitable Business Online!

Thanks for the advice everyone! I know there are no cut and dry answers to this.  I didn’t realize it can be so expensive! Once I get my products up, and increase my blogging efforts, Ill see what my traffic does before trying the Adwords.

Barose,
It`s not traffic to the site that matters, anyone can drive traffic to a site and call themselves SEO experts. Anyone can add a script to a site that allows you to track your web site`s statistics. It`s not "Qualified Traffic" What is Qualified Traffic anyways?

I think that 100% of the people that land on my web site are qualified enough to do business with me "They have a credit Card" so therefore they qualify. As a matter a fact all of you on this post qualify to do business with me... It`s my sales pitch that`s going to close the deal. So, here is what you need to do, you need to sit down and analyze your products, and write very good descriptions for them, and tell everyone why they should by from you.

Adwords, if used correctly, can be very lucrative in getting your newly built Shopping Cart Indexed and sending traffic over to your site. But it`s up to you to convince the customer why they should to business with you.

I pay $1.95 a month on Adwords and the most I`ve spent is $6.98 a month and believe me I get traffic.. But that`s not the only source of getting traffic to the site that I use. I submit my web site to all the search engines...



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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

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When I first posted the question, I didn’t have much of a clue about Adwords. After doing research, its not a chance I cant afford to take right now. I will concentrate on organic search and other ways to drawl traffic to my site.