Day 10 (Wednesday) - Start laying groundwork for “Targeted Traffic” to your site

Lesson Objective:

To lay a solid foundation for driving targeted traffic to your website… so you can start
making sales!

Skills Needed:
· Basic Surfing
· Basic Email
· Basic Word Processing



Today’s Lesson:


Let me ask you a question…

Would you like your website to achieve a “Top 10” placement on a major search engine?


Would you like it up there in just a few days, drawing tons of targeted traffic to your
website like a stampede of cattle on the open Texas range?


No problem!

Pay-per-click search engines offer anyone with a website the opportunity to obtain and
keep a top spot in the search engines – no programming required!

Unlike traditional search engines, which base their selections on the page’s content and
“code”, pay-per-click search engines sell their top spots to the highest bidder.


When visitors search for a particular keyword phrase, the website owners who bid the
most come up first and get the lion’s share of website traffic.


Getting to the top of traditional search engines can take months and does not guarantee a
good ranking, no matter how much effort gets expended.

Using the pay-per-click model shortcuts this extremely time and labor-intensive process.

Overture, the web’s top pay-per-click search engine, boasts millions of searches daily.


Overture has been around for years, but recently started coming on strong with the
decline in soft advertising dollars on the web.

In the past, traditional search engines made their money from selling banner ads and
sponsorships to advertisers.


Unfortunately for traditional search engines, advertisers have learned that banner ads,
general audience popup windows, and other advertising online don’t produce good
returns on investment.


As a result, this formerly lucrative method of making money has virtually disappeared…
and Overture stepped in to fill the void.

Overture’s search listings now appear in the search results of some of the web’s
traditional search engine giants, including:

· Yahoo!
· MSN
· AltaVista
· InfoSpace
· CNN.com
· All the Web
· Excite
· DogPile and more!


Anyone who bids their site into the top 3 for a particular keyword phrase (Overture’s
“Premium Listings”) not only appears in Overture, but also appears prominently on the
first page of searches on those other search engines.


Overture in turn pays these search engines a commission for any of their links that get
clicked by surfers. These arrangements have evolved into a significant revenue source for
other search engines and have massively extended Overture’s reach across the Internet.


Overture’s success has launched a virtual online gold rush to cash in on the pay-per-click
search engine model.

Dozens of pay-per-click search engines have sprung up across the web trying to grab a
piece of the pie.


FindWhat, the next largest pay-per-click search engine, dwarfs in comparison to
Overture’s size and reach. However, a recent price increase by Overture caused many of
its lower volume advertisers to seek alternative pay-per-click traffic and FindWhat gladly
welcomed them into the fold.

Anyone with a website who wants to get a jumpstart on traffic and start driving targeted
visitors across their site would do well to take a serious look at pay-per-click search
engines.


As the web gets more crowded, paying for search engine traffic represents an excellent
way to rise above the clutter – fast!


Today you’re going to sign up with Overture to set the stage for getting
traffic to your site!

Part 1 – Log on to OVERTURE

Click the “Sign Up With Overture” link at the top of the site and you will be presented
with a choice similar to this:

Unless you are strapped for time and flush with money, you should choose the “Self
Serve” option.


After clicking the “Self Serve” option you will be taken to a page to begin the actual
signup process with Overture.


You will need to have your credit card ready.


Notes about Overture:

1. Overture requires that you pay $50 to sign up. This $50 will apply to click
through’s so all your money will go towards buying traffic -- there are no setup
fees.


2. Overture has a minimum monthly spend of $20. IF you don’t generate at least $20
in click through’s each month they will subtract $20 from your account.


3. If you don’t want to spend at least $20 to promote your business each month…
you’re not serious about making any money online.

Today all we want to do is sign up with Overture and do more keyword research.


Tomorrow we’ll submit a bunch more listings to Overture and other pay-per-click search
engines.

So pick out your “top 3” keyword phrases and get ready to write a basic title and
description for each.


The first thing you must do is give them an initial list of keywords you want to bid on.
Make sure that once you go through the selection process you only make the minimum
bid to get started.


Our objective here is just to get the site approved and get started with Overture.


Here’s how I would do it to get started for my antique car show site:

First, I’d select my most obvious keywords to get started

NOTE: For now just bid the minimum $.10. You can instantly change your bids later to
whatever you want once your account gets set up.

Then I would create a single listing that I used for all my keywords at this point just to
get the account up and running quickly.
Fill in the Title - which is literally the title for your “ad” in the search engine.


Fill in the description – which is really your classified “ad” for your search listing.

Fill in the url (web address) and the bid you are willing to pay for a visitor.


NOTE: For now just bid the minimum $.10. You can instantly change your bids later to
whatever you want once your account gets set up.


Fill in 3 or 4 of these bids for your top keyword phrases and then move on to the
next step in the sign up process.

Fill in all of your contact information on the next page.


Finally, open your account with a major credit card.


Your Overture account will be activated within a few days when you receive a
notification email from Overture.

Pay-per-click Bidding Tips

1. Don’t go crazy bidding to start. Get a feel for what others are bidding and how
competitive a certain keyword is.

2. Use the “Overture Keyword Tool” to check the traffic counts on your keywords
and look for keywords that will bring you the visitors you want at the lowest
price. Certain keywords get overlooked and you can profit from them.

3. Look for bidding “gaps”. You will see gaps where two or three people bid within
pennies of each other and then it drops off… bid at the “top of the drop”.


a. Example:


1. Mary bids $1.25
2. Tom bids $1.23
3. Jerry bids $1.19
4. Joan bids $.78

You should probably bid $.79 – unless you know you want to come up in
the top 3 and then you would bid $1.20.

4. How much you bid will ultimately depend on your “visitor value”.

Your visitor value is calculated by dividing the total number of visitors by the
amount of money they generate you.


a. Example: ~For every 100 visitors you make $100
~That means each visitor is worth $1.00
~In this case you can spend up to $1.00 to bring a visitor to
your site and still make money.


5. Be VERY CAREFUL with using the “Auto Bid” option instead of the fixed bid
option. This can cause you to pay WAY MORE than is necessary to get clicks.


Let me show you an example that should make you very wary of just making a bid
and not going back to check it.

Here’s a picture of a bid from my account on a “live” keyword I’m bidding on for my
mortgage program.

I’m currently bidding $.10 (10 cents) per click. The guy ahead of me has a max bid of
$1.87 – but he’s probably only spending $.11 right now. Why?


Because the “auto bid” feature only makes you pay 1 cent more than the person’s
max bid below you. But all I have to do is raise my max bid to $1.86 and watch what
happens.

I’m still only paying $.10 (10 cents is the minimum bid – the next lowest person is
paying .07, but I have to pay the minimum) for the clicks, but I have now forced the
person above me to start paying $1.87 per click.


Why would somebody do that to him? A couple of reasons:
1. Because they’re mean (not really ?)
2. The real reason would be to force him to run out of his advertising budget so he
would go offline and the #2 listing could grab the #1 spot for a dime.
The moral of the story – check your bids regularly and make sure you are not paying
more than you absolutely have to for each click you buy. Also, use the auto-bid
feature carefully and don’t set yourself up to pay way more than you should.

Part 2 – Continue Researching Keywords


Remember the keyword tool you used on Day 1?
Overture Keyword Tool

Well go back to that tool and find at least 50 more keywords (this is in addition
to the keyword research you did on Day 1) that would bring you targeted visitors.

Also, see how much each phrase would cost you to get into the “top 3” by using
the “Keyword Bid Tool”. This tool tells you how much others are currently
bidding for a particular keyword phrase.
http://www.Overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/



Make a special note of any and all keyword phrases that would allow you into the
top 3 for a reasonable cost while you are testing your website copy – say less than
$.25 per click.
You have made many more distinctions now about what people are looking for than you
had on Day 1. You know what keywords are important and you can see how much it will
cost to get into the top positions.

That’s why we want you to research more keyword phrases at this point.




Part 3 – Additional pay-per-click search engines

Overture isn’t the only game in town when it comes to pay-per-click search engines.


Other pay-per-click engines can generate significant hits for you very cost-effectively.


You should sign up for at least one more pay-per-click search engine (if not
several) so you can get traffic coming from multiple sources as quickly as
possible.


Here is a list of other worthwhile pay-per-click search engines you should strongly
consider using:

· Overture #1

· FindWhat #2

· 7 Search

· Sprinks

· GoClick

· Kanoodle




If you really want to learn how to use pay-per-click search engines and squeeze every last
bit from each penny you spend… check out this new resource

Click here now ===> Instant Web Site Traffic!


It is written by Jon Keel, one of the world’s experts on maximizing everything you do
with pay-per-click search engines.

Summary of Today’s Assignments:


1. Sign up for an account with Overture.

2. Bid on 3 or 4 of your top keywords just to get your account opened.


3. Research at least 50 more keywords you can bid on to get targeted traffic.


4. Look for keywords with high traffic counts and low cost for top 3 spots.

5. Sign up for at least one additional pay-per-click search engine (FindWhat.com).



Today’s Resources:

For a very comprehensive list of Pay-per-click search engines go to Pay Per Click
Search Engines.

For a complete course on Pay-per-click strategies go to Instant Web Site Traffic!