Web Affiliate Marketing Blog

What’s available to new websites and merchants who want to give PPC a try?

YAHOO! SEARCH MARKETING
Yahoo! are now offering new advertisers, whether it be an affiliate or a merchant, £60 free credit when you open a Yahoo! Search Marketing account. This is to tempt you into the PPC Advertising arena in which Yahoo! Search Marketing puts your company top of the results based on your selected keywords. You will only ever pay when a customer clicks on your advert, and not when your advert is shown, therefore in theory increasing your ROI. Your adverts will also be shown across its partners which include Orange, Lycos and Altavista meaning a possible increase in exposure.

MICROSOFT ADCENTER
Advertisers looking for a better way to control and influence their online advertising efforts get some help from Microsoft AdCenter. Looking to increase how online marketers interact with their adverts, the company expanded their adCenter offerings to the MSN networks such as Health & Fitness, Tech & Gadgets and Travel & Money. Personally I see Microsoft as the leading company when it comes to Innovation, making AdLabs available for all to have a play with. The AdLabs is an online laboratory and so do not expect great things straight away such as their adWriter thats designed to “Automatically generates text ads for an input URL“. It’s offerings for my websites weren’t exactly fantastic!

There are many Microsoft Adcenter codes available when you purchase hosting packages from companies such as 123-Reg. These voucher will entitle you to £50 Adcenter voucher but unfortunately, Microsoft have informed me that they do not offer any Adcenter vouchers or promo codes directly, all of them are via 3rd parties.

GOOGLE ADWORDS
Google Adwords is one of the most well known PPC engines, and therefore is also one of the most expensive. They are currently offering new account holders and introductory £30 Adwords Voucher allowing you to have a little dabble in the PPC game. Depending on what your website or product is that you wish to advertise on Google, this £30 Adwords promo could generate an extra 1 visitor or an extra 600 visitors! Be careful when selecting the keywords to ensure you maximise your free offer.

THERE YOU HAVE IT
So there you have £150 of free website advertising to get you started. In theory, this should allow you to attract and additional 3,000 visitors to your website, presuming you use a minimum bid of £0.05 for all keywords. Unfortuantely, this isn’t always the case depending on your website niche and in many cases, Search Engines desicision to raise the price on certain keywords and phrases. This will however let you have a play around and see what works for you and what you should steer clear from.

Remeber, just because you may experience 10 times as many clicks from your adverts shown on Google than Microsoft, unless those clicks convert to sales, then you maybe paying 10 times as much for obtain a new cusomter. Don’t base success on clicks alone!

WHAT ABOUT OTHER OFFERS?
I suspect there are many more vouchers and promo codes that allow you to trial smaller search engines and if I hear of any, I will add them to the list.