[jamesb]

Hello people,

I have been using Google Adwords for some time but it is getting really expensive. Does anyone know of any good and preferably less expensive PPC alternatives?

[e-boadmin]

James,
Have you tried Yahoo's ads? - Also, what is your niche?

[MarieMusicademy]

I don't find that Yahoo works that well for us. Maybe its just our niche, but the ads barely break even. And these are ads that work well in Google. (Our niche - we sell worship instruction DVDs)

Some recommendations on adwords.
- Make sure you are using Cross Match
- Number 1 position is not always essential. You can bid lower and still get good results
- Narrow down your keywords to more long tailed phrases. Don't use the generic stuff
- Avoid the content network (or if you do test it separately and use much lower bid prices)
- Test, test and test again
- Get your landing pages working harder - some great advice here from www.marketingexperiments.com - loads of companies have clicks going to their home page. If you have a landing page that reflects your ad, not only will Google charge you less, but your browsers are more likely to stay and buy
- Other ways to pay less than others for the same clicks - have your key search word repeated in the ad, the url (you can use the forward slash on the ad url eg www.companyname/keyword without that actually being your page url) and the landing page
- Read and research. There are plenty of great books out there written to advise you on adwords. Buy at least one and follow its advice.

And remember ad words should be additional to an overall SEO organic listing strategy. SEO should be built in from the start of a website and is worth investing in for continued success. Adwords are ideal for long tail searches or for working with products and keywords that have not yet had a chance to propagate organically.

Hope you all find that helpful

[knight]

There are a lot of alternative advertising ones to adwords. However not all of them can be as effective as adwords. You can use adbrite, bidertiser, Yahoo ads and other advertising companies for cheap PPC campaigns.

[Ricardo]

This thread reminds me of audio ads that I'd been hearing about maybe a year ago. They were five second ads that played as a site loaded.

I take it that that company didn't get off the ground, because I haven't heard anything about them for about a year.

Does anyone else here remember those?

[st_hart]

Yes, I think Yahoo ads and Bidvertizer are good options other than Adwords. I read a report somewhere that a marketer used Bidvertizer and he got profitable ROI. I think it is worth trying.

[e-boadmin]

Ricardo,
Those audio ads would drive me nuts - if I hear an audio ad on a site, I leave it and will never come back.

[aru123]

I never been tryed but many of my friends tell me that they made good returns from google add words...

[homebrewer]

Adbrite can be an alternative but i would suggest yahoo ads as adbrite was reported to have miniscule income.

[wolschulze]

Originally Posted by jamesb

Hello people,

I have been using Google Adwords for some time but it is getting really expensive. Does anyone know of any good and preferably less expensive PPC alternatives?

I have tried Yahoo Adwords program but I think that this program is not so good as Google. But all the same both these programs demand sufficient traffic.