Bidding on Keywords
PPC (pay per click) advertising is a staple of many e commerce businesses. I don’t know of any site that sells a product online that doesn’t use PPC, at least every now and then.
It can be remarkably cheap or bankruptingly expensive, unless you heavily target your keyword phrases. The broader keywords are obnoxiously high, costing as much as $15+ per click. Unless you are making more than a few hundred dollars per sale and you have a high conversion rate (ie more than 50%), I don’t know how these are economically viable for the typical e commerce site.
While Amazon and eBay have almost limitless funds to buy all the broad keywords, you have more brainpower than they do, since their intelligence is stunted by the fact that their buyers don’t *have to* determine the most cost effective keyword phrases.
When looking for keyword phrases to buy for PPC, you’ll need to do some testing first. Look at the suggested phrases in the PPC provider’s set up and write your own as well. Choose very low click rates, $.01-$.10, depending on your keyword provider, and compare the PPC conversion results.
One keyword can be wildly profitable on one PPC engine, yet bomb on another. You also need to know at which bids and positions your keywords perform best on each engine. If you’ve tried PPC and lost money, consider: Did you test more than one search engine? Did you use conversion tracking for your keyword performance?