Using Online Auction Sites To Save Money

If you are like most of the world today, you are looking for the best product at the lowest price. Most auction sites are operated with the express idea that the highest bidder winning. A new style of auctions is sweeping the world and catching on fast. Reverse and DubLi auctions help both buyers and sellers save and earn money that is not possible with other types of sales.

Reverse sales are used primarily by large suppliers. They offer their goods to buyers and the buyer usually chooses the most attractive price. This may simply what looks like the best deal to the buyer. Government agencies and constructions supplies use this type of sale most often.

There are several ways to bid with the DubLi style of sale. You can use express style bidding, unique and zero bidding. These three styles allow you to get the items you are watching for the best price on the internet and are usually geared more towards consumer electronics and other types of single items.

With express bidding you buy credits costing a minimal amount for each one. When you click on the button to see the price, you use one of your credits. A small portion of that credit goes to lower the cost of the product. You have the option at that time to purchase this at the present price or wait until others have clicked on it and lowered the cost even more.

Zero bids involve a lot of clicking by others. When a price gets very low, many people will continue to click to see if they are the one who makes it turn to zero. The person that clicks to get it to zero wins the sale.

If you do not want to wait for the zero bidding or a bid that will allow you to purchase the goods, think about using unique bidding. This is when you place a bid, allow the system to delete all duplicate bids and then choose the one that is the most unique and the lowest. There is no better way to save money when using an online auction site than this.

With an auction, you can enjoy the savings. Visit today and see what it is like to really save that hard earned money and still get top of the line items. Http://www.ezydubli.com/auction.html

Pay Per Click Advertising: Ten Terrible Mistakes

Mistakes in pay per click advertising are common and often very costly. Doing it right requires some vigilance and micromanaging. Here are 10 of the top mistakes people make in their PPC campaigns.

Big, Bulky and Broad Ad Groups for Your Keywords

If you put all your keywords into just a few big and broad ad groups, it’s time to restructure your account. You are missing out on important flexibility that pay per click advertising allows. Tighter ad groups allows you more focused, relevant ads.

Ignoring Negative Keywords

Negative keywords reduce unwanted impressions, and more importantly, unwanted click throughs. However, with increasing priority given to “quality scores” and click through rates in the PPC engines, it’s key to trim the fat from your keyword campaigns. If your company sells “widget management software” then be sure that you have keywords like “-serial” or “-free” assigned as negative keywords (unless, of course, you offer it for free in some manner). You can find good negative keywords in your log files or when you build your lists.

Weak Testing

An often neglected, but very important result-booster is the split testing of your ads. Even minor variations can increase your effectiveness. Obviously, you can rework such items like your unique value statement or your different calls to action, but there are many variables of each ad that can be optimized. Your display url, the ad title, each line of copy — all of that may be effectively tested. This can be time consuming, which is why a quality pay per click management company can be a great investment, especially if they offer daily split testing. Effort here pays off.

Not Precisely Tracking Results

Of course, testing your ads and fine tuning your keyword lists only works well if you are tracking results. The search engines will tell you what your click-through rates are … but you need bottom-line results. You need to know your return on investment or what your cost per action is. It’s not enough to know that you spend $5,000 and get back $10,000. You might be able to spend only $3,000 and get that same $10,000.

Not Tracking Results to the Keyword Level

Good analytics or a good pay per click management company will get your data down to the keyword level. Why pay for keywords that are not performing? That money could be better spent on keywords that are doing well or on other marketing expenses. If one keyword has an earning per click of 45 cents and another keyword has an earning per click of $1.45, you need to know. You can lower the bid on one and raise the bid on the other to drive more profits. If you aren’t doing this, you likely have under-performing keywords that are leaking your account daily.

Keywords That Are Too Generic

Negative keywords may not be enough to keep you from trouble on too generic a keyword. While these generic keywords are often more highly searched and can even be among your best…they can also be riddled with bad traffic. Users who perform a search on a generic keyword may often be at a very early stage in the purchase process. Are you able to turn an effective profit on them? Once again, this is yet another reason why you need keyword-level traffic. It’s especially vital on a generic keyword.

Avoiding the Dirty Work of Building Long-Tail Keywords

To follow up on the generic keyword topic, creating your long-tail keyword lists and the relevant accompanying ads may be a major time-consuming process. Do it right and you can also find it to be very profitable. The nature of keywords is that they vary from phrase to phrase. A keyword like “cell phone” can differ in results from a keyword such as “motorola cell phone”, which in turn can vastly differ from a more long-tail keyword like “motorola w375 unlocked cell phone.” One user is likely still doing research, while the user in the last example knows what they want … and may be ready to make that purchase.

Not Monitoring Both Content and Search Campaigns

An easy way to get scorched on poor performing traffic or even click fraud is to not separately track your search network ads from your content network ads. Chances are that if you don’t know what the difference is, then they are likely not separated in your account — and bad keywords are leaking your funds daily. You are better off to build different campaigns for your keywords on the content and search networks.

Not Geo-Targeting a Local Business

Local businesses that attract clients from their region must take advantage of the geo-targeting that each of the major PPC engines offer. Bringing that local clientele to your front door on non-local keywords can increase profits greatly.

Not Monitoring Your Campaigns With Frequency

Okay, so you don’t do daily split testing even though you should. Maybe you don’t continually monitor your earnings per click at the keyword level, even though you should. Still, a lot of PPC advertisers don’t even frequently check into their accounts. Google, Yahoo and MSN are increasingly slapping keywords with the “Inactive for Search” status to get you to improve your quality. They may be slowly picking off your keywords — and your profits — one by one and you aren’t even aware of it.

Healthy, efficient and vibrant PPC campaigns require work. The Terrible 10 of PPC Advertising that we listed above form a strong foundation for you consider when revamping or starting up your PPC advertising. Whether you hire out to a pay per click management company or can actively manage your PPC accounts at this level of detail…precision, effort and attention to detail can greatly impact your results.

Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and search engine marketing consultant for Zero Company Performance Marketing, one of the top 40 pay per click companies worldwide. Visit their website to learn more about how to increase your pay per click ad campaigns and performance.