Pay-Per-Click Search Engines: A Really Bad Investment

What was once such a good thing is now a rip-off and a sham!

I'm talking about pay-per-click search engines, and how
they've become a really bad investment!

There are two reasons for the deterioration of pay-per-click
search engines: high bid prices and out of control click
fraud.

A few years back, you could get popular keywords at a
halfway decent bid price. Nowadays, even moderately popular
keywords are ridiculously high.

How high? Well, let me give you an example, using the most
popular pay-per-click search engine: Overture.

Let's take the popular keyword phrase, "home business."

At the time this article was written, Overture's top bid for
the keyword phrase "home business" was an exorbitantly high
$2.28. Just to get on the first page, it would cost you
$0.61, which would place you last at number forty.

Now let's just delve inside the numbers for a moment, shall
we? I'm not going to even bother breaking down the number
one bid price, because quite frankly, it's obvious the top
spot is reserved for and controlled by the high-rollers.

So, let's break down bid number forty. The bid price of
$0.61 means that for every 100 visitors Overture sends to
your website, it's going to cost you $61.00. Now, here's
where the numbers really get interesting.

According to the so-called experts, a decent conversion
ratio is right around one percent. In other words, one out
of every one hundred visitors to your website converts to a
sale. I happen to know for a fact that most websites don't
even come close to converting one percent. However, that's a
subject for another day.

Using the very generous one percent conversion ratio, here's
the problem. Unless you're selling a big-ticket item and
making $100 or more per sale, it's impossible to make any
real money with pay-per-click search engines. You just can't
do it!

For example, if you're selling a $20 e-book and you're
paying $61 to get one hundred visitors to your website, with
a one percent conversion ratio, that means your website is
making a measly $20 for every one hundred visitors. That
leaves you $41 in the hole. Even, if you were selling a $50
product, you'd still be $11 in the negative.

And even if you cut the bid price in half and made it $0.30,
there's still another problem. It's called click fraud and
it's a major problem among all of the pay-per-click search
engines.

In a nutshell, click fraud is what occurs when someone
fraudently clicks on your ad over and over again, without
any intention of responding to your offer. Click fraud hurts
advertisers by driving up the cost of each click because
many online advertising programs adjust the price of each
click based on the popularity of a particular keyword and
the number of competing advertisers.

And depending on how popular your keyword is, it can take
just a few minutes to register hundreds or even thousands of
clicks. Click fraud can quickly deplete your pay-per-click
account and leave you with nothing to show for your
expentiture.

At the present time, the pay-per-click search engines seem
to be powerless to stop click fraud. To their credit, Google
even admitted as such.

In a recent filing to the Securities and Exchange
Commission, Google acknowledged, "We are exposed to the risk
of fraudulent clicks on our ads. We have regularly paid
refunds related to fraudulent clicks and expect to do so in
the future. If we are unable to stop this fraudulent
activity, these refunds may increase. If we find new
evidence of past fraudulent clicks, we may have to issue
refunds retroactively of amounts previously paid to our
Google Network members."

In conclusion, because of unreasonably high bid prices and
rampant, out of control click fraud, I consider pay-per-
click search engines a really bad investment, and recommend
you stay away from them!