Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello SUN community,   I apologize if this is a repeat of other postings.  I recently launced my website and am now trying to drive traffic to it.  Can anyone give me advice regarding how google adwords or yahoo sponsored search works?  1st question - if my monthly budget is $500,  should I spend the whole $500 at one site (google) or split it up between say, google, yahoo, msn etc.  2nd - regarding the bids of keywords,  if the #1 bid is $2,  do I have to bid $2.01 or will I be wasting my money?   and  should I bid on several keywords for my industy? Can I use the $500 per month as a max, or is it so much per keyword?  Any other advice regarding Adwords is appreciated, or regarding Adsense also.  Any stories, good/bad with your experience with this?

Thank you very much,,

Rich.

500 a month is too much when you have other company`s that can help you with this.... Forget adwords... To costly.... Forget using all these search engine submital company`s... If you want more information on how to do this for pennies on the dollar contact me.. I may be able to help you...

Thank you Nuevolution and Chuck for you advice and tips, I appreciate it. 

I`d split the budget between both Google Adwords and Overture. Both are great systems and are extremely profitable if you know how to use them.

Concerning bids, you don`t want to be the #1 guy or #2 for that matter, especially if the bids are high. Through years of testing, I found being in the number 3, 4 or 5 spot has given me a higher return on investment.

If you`re in the #1 position, a lot of people will click on it, and will naturally go to other sites to compare services/prices.

Again, both programs work extremely well. Be sure to be descriptive in your ads so you can try and prevent needless click-thrus. As with everything, its about testing....you`ll need to test your ads, test the keywords and test the pages prospects are landing on.

$500 is a great starting budget and is not a waste. In fact, before launching offline products, I generally test using adwords and overture to see if there is a market for it before `automatically` dumping tons of money into an offline marketing budget.

Cartess Ross

While adcenter may be cheaper, it wouldn`t be wise to abandon the others to save yourself a few bucks. All three could be extremely profitable to you as long as you test, test, test.

It`s no different than offline advertising. You wouldn`t use only once source for marketing/advertising your business. If a particular type of media didn`t work for you, that`s one thing, but to make a profit from one media, and drop it for another to save a buck, that would be unwise.

You won`t know how effective all 3 are until you try them.