Stumble Upon - the solution to everyone's PPC problems?
Like most site owners I've tried PPC (pay-per click) marketing like Google AdWords several times over in an attempt to start a campaign that was even close to profitable. Every time I've done it for one of my sites I've come up short (I'm usually working on small margins and just can't show profitability with it). I have however, seen several clients be VERY profitable with PPC so I continue to buy eBooks on it and refine my skills hoping that some day I'll have an opportunity to use PPC that makes sense.
Will that be the price guide? Who knows - I'm going to start a campaign in the next few days and I'm optimistic, primarily because there are A LOT of people searching for "free sports card price guide" and no sites come up.
Regardless of whether that works or not, I've recently discovered a new traffic-generating tool - Stumble Upon. I've used Stumble Upon since it's inception because it's a great tool and because I've noticed that when I "stumble" my sites I get a few hundred visitors from it the next day :)
But they recently launched their own version of PPC - a pay-per-visitor program. For those who don't use it, Stumble Upon is a tool bar that you install in your browser. You hit the "stumble" button and you're brought to a site that matches your interests. You give it a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" and the stumbler continues to learn your interests based upon what you like.
Essentially their pay-per-visitor program allows you to pay $.05 for a stumble to your site. The most interesting thing about it is that you also get a little market research - it tells you how many people have approved your site and shows you the comments they left...invaluable information for any new site.
The downside is of course that the people that use SU are site-addicts who hit the little stumble button thousands of times each day, and many times your $.05 results in someone looking at your site for a millisecond.
For the price guide the jury is still out. Only 2.5% of stumblers have signed up for price guide accounts (weak) but I've got a high approval rating which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. We're paying about $1.50 for a free account through SU. I'm not sure if that's worth it or not yet, but I'm going to continue the campaign for the feedback alone...at least for a few weeks.
This is my first real marketing effort for the price guide. It may turn out that $1.50 for a free user is a great deal...or it may not, depending on our other marketing efforts. It would seem to me that we could get that $1.50 back in advertising and up-selling to premium accounts, but we'll see.
Next up is PPC, followed by PR and box-breaks (explained in my biz plan). Once the dust settles from all of that stuff we'll see what works best. Oh, and no surprise thus far - the natural search traffic to the site and the traffic from newsletter subscribers has accounted for the majority of the accounts, and is converting much higher than the SU traffic.
Will that be the price guide? Who knows - I'm going to start a campaign in the next few days and I'm optimistic, primarily because there are A LOT of people searching for "free sports card price guide" and no sites come up.
Regardless of whether that works or not, I've recently discovered a new traffic-generating tool - Stumble Upon. I've used Stumble Upon since it's inception because it's a great tool and because I've noticed that when I "stumble" my sites I get a few hundred visitors from it the next day :)
But they recently launched their own version of PPC - a pay-per-visitor program. For those who don't use it, Stumble Upon is a tool bar that you install in your browser. You hit the "stumble" button and you're brought to a site that matches your interests. You give it a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" and the stumbler continues to learn your interests based upon what you like.
Essentially their pay-per-visitor program allows you to pay $.05 for a stumble to your site. The most interesting thing about it is that you also get a little market research - it tells you how many people have approved your site and shows you the comments they left...invaluable information for any new site.
The downside is of course that the people that use SU are site-addicts who hit the little stumble button thousands of times each day, and many times your $.05 results in someone looking at your site for a millisecond.
For the price guide the jury is still out. Only 2.5% of stumblers have signed up for price guide accounts (weak) but I've got a high approval rating which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. We're paying about $1.50 for a free account through SU. I'm not sure if that's worth it or not yet, but I'm going to continue the campaign for the feedback alone...at least for a few weeks.
This is my first real marketing effort for the price guide. It may turn out that $1.50 for a free user is a great deal...or it may not, depending on our other marketing efforts. It would seem to me that we could get that $1.50 back in advertising and up-selling to premium accounts, but we'll see.
Next up is PPC, followed by PR and box-breaks (explained in my biz plan). Once the dust settles from all of that stuff we'll see what works best. Oh, and no surprise thus far - the natural search traffic to the site and the traffic from newsletter subscribers has accounted for the majority of the accounts, and is converting much higher than the SU traffic.
posted by Adam McFarland at
5/10/2007 01:24:00 PM
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