Because PPC as (part of) a strategy for making money online can always more easily maintain the illusion of that which every newbie wants:
INSTANT RESULTS!
The evil SEO however with it’s annoying nature of ongoing work required in order for results to be achieved will always be less popular.
But guess what?
Everyone I know who does well with PPC has been through many a shit storm in order to achieve the results they do. Google Slaps, ad hijacking, adwords account loss, and years of spending money testing campaigns and failing were required before they became killer PPC marketers.
Juuuuuust a little reminder for you today… a little step back to reality.
While we’re on it – how many times can the idea of direct linking to an affiliate program from an Adwords ad be rehashed and resold?
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Aha….I suspect you’re referring to the infamous PPC Bully 2 that is being pimped by nearly every major marketer out there.
For those of you thinking about PPC, let me tell you what it’s really like.
It’s cut-throat.
I mean “really” cut-throat.
You’ll find yourself logging into your PPC account every 15 minutes to make sure you haven’t lost money. Like mentioned above, ads will get stolen as well. I remember reading a post by a famous marketer that speaks at seminars. He said he could always tell the PPC marketers from the regular ones because during breaks, they would run off to check their Adwords account.
Not the type of lifestyle for me.
In regards to PPC Bully, I tried it out for 2 weeks free. The concept is that you can “spy on keywords” over time to see which ads and keywords are money-makers. I quickly realized that there are potentially 100′s of other people mining the exact same keywords as yourself. These 100′s of people will copy and launch the same “successful” ad also. After the 2 weeks are up, that one ad now has 100-something competitors all competing for the same slice of the pie. Does that sound smart in any way? Would you want to stand in a street corner selling $1.00 water bottles with 100 other people selling the same water bottle for $0.93, $1.01, $0.99 beside you? lol…
The only person banking off PPC Bully is the owner. I’m sure the software is intelligent enough to identify winning markets and hide the results from the members….while displaying them to the owner. Think about that….you never know.
Good stuff, Andrew.
Good point above- “not the lifestyle for me” –
I agree – I got internet marketing with a goal of freedom, not hooked to another job.
My wallet is still burning from my last PPC campaign – and i know enough to do along the right track- am helping a business owner who owns a debt collection company.
His keywords were “business” and “bad” and the CTR Sucked!
I guess at least he is taking action………
Paul
PPC is the last advertising strategy on my list.
Why? Because if you going to speed $200 – $500 a day on click you want to make sure your ad copy your landing page / sales page is fully optimised and you know that if you send 1000 people to it you’ll make more that enough to cover the campaign and profit.
I use smaller scale traffic strategies to get my sales process correct before spending the time and energy for PPC.
PPC is faster, More profitable and yes, cut throat. Its a mans game for people who are serious about driving lots of traffic and making lots of money.
About 18 months ago I started AM and SEO sites, made some ok money. Enough to quit my job but the real change came when I moved to PPC. That is what takes you from earning 3 figures per day to 5 figures per day.
You are leaving so much out of the equation… Both methods are valid ways to make cash, you just need to decide which ones the right one for you.
In regards to the PPC Bully comment, you are 100% correct. Any tool that comes out like this will by its very nature become unusable. The downside is that with PPC you are playing with real money and the average noobie will think this is the easy path to a profitable campaign, which it is not. The only way to rule in PPC is by being innovative and doing a butt load of testing and manual work.
Getting tired of all the PPC ads in my inbox. Long live SEO
PPC is very scary. I have experimented with it several times. I have lost 100s with it. I feel like I am gambling with my money every time I run a campaign. All said and done, almost every cent that I have made online has been through SEO.
It beats me why some people knock PPC. After all, we are surrounded by paid offline advertising – tv, radio, newspaper, magazine, direct mail etc etc. Most companies expect to pay for advertising.
“Unpaid” SEO is a bit like word-of-mouth advertising – some businesses can survive on it, but most can’t.
But here’s the killer: SEO is small fry compared to the world of online paid advertising. PPC, CPV, test ads, media buys, coreg, email and so on. The guys and girls who make the really big money online use paid advertising. Sure they use some SEO, but paid advertising, including PPC, is where the big money is.
As for PPC Bully, it’s just another tool. It’s similar to Google Cash Detective, and it has its uses. If you are not having success with PPC then PPCBully is unlikely to help. If you know what you are doing with PPC then PPCBully and similar tools can save you a lot of time and money.
The bottom line is, PPC is the most effective method of direct advertising yet devised by the human race – if you can develop the skills to use it effectively.
Of course PPC can be tough. And there’s a whole industry devoted to flogging ebooks on Google Adwords to an unsuspecting public. There are easier ways to start with PPC.
But for the record, I make well into four figures daily with PPC. And by the way, I never use direct linking
It is simply impossible to do what I do with SEO. SEO simply doesn’t have the speed, accuracy and amount of traffic required.
The bottom line is, if you are not using paid advertising, including PPC, you are missing out on most of the potential of your business, probably as much as 95%. Think about it. The bulk of internet traffic has got nothing to do with SEO (or regular ppc for that matter). Most of the websites people visit are, guess what, bookmarked sites! They don’t go through search engines, they go direct. The main way to reach most internet traffic is with contextual ppc and media buys (i.e. banners) placed on the sites people visit.