Real Web Hosting Reviews

Comparing Advertising Programs: Adsense, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.

You have just finished your website, and you would like other people to know about it. One way to quickly present your website to the world is to advertise it. This is the fastest way to attract your first visitors. You won’t need to advertise much once when your website appears on the first page of search engines for containing the right keywords or when enough websites links to your website. You can also reduce advertising when many people follow your blog.

I have used the following programs to advertise Reviews-Web-Hosting:

• Google Adsense
• Yahoo Search Marketing (get $25 credit)
• Facebook Ads
• Stumble Upon
• Press Release

Pay per Click, Pay per Impression.

You can pay foryour ads by the number of impressions or the number of clicks. In both casea, your cost is defined as CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPM (Cost Per Mili. or cost per thousands of impressions). I highly recommend beginning with a payment for number of clicks because it is hard to evaluate your CPM. Some ads that I run have a CPM of $0.07 while others are $0.22. Don't be surprised if thousands of impressions bring you just one click on average. By using a CPC, you have a budget so you know how many people visit your website.

All of the programs I compare are based on Pay per Click.

Bounce Rate

How do you measure the success of a campaign? If you sell items on your website, it is easy: How many people bought something on your website after clicking on an ad? If you don't sell items on your website, the measure can be how many users browse your website and visit at least one more page. Website statistics tools such as Google Analytics can tell you both. They can show you the bounce rate per referral site which is the percentage of people who landed on your website and left immediately.

With this data, you can calculate your cost of acquisition: how much does it cost you to attract one customer or an interested user to your site. The formula is simple: CPC / (1 - Bounce Rate). If I pay $0.95 for my ad, and the bounce rate is 75% (75% of the clickers leave, 2%5 buy something or browse the site), my cost of acquisition is $0.95 / (1 - 0.75) = $3.80. This is the real cost of my advertising: $3.80 per "successful" click.

Google Adsense & Yahoo Search Marketing

Both programs work the same way. First, you bid on keywords to display an ad. Then, you can choose whether to display your ads on the Google/Yahoo search engine or on other websites that display ads from these two vendors. For example, you can bid $0.95 for the keywords "web hosting reviews" and "web hosting plans." This means:

• I want my ad to appear when a user search includes "web hosting reviews" or "web hosting plans"
• If a user click on my ad, I will pay $0.95

Choosing the right keywords at the right price can be tricky at first. If you bid too low, your ad will never be displayed. If you bid too high, you are overpaying to be number one on the search engines. You need to keep a couple of things in mind:

• Choose very specific keywords; you will keep your bids low and ensure an often display of your site.
• Most users set up a daily budget. You may get lower prices on keywords late at night when everyone's budget has been reached.
• You associate different ads with different keywords.

Both programs will give you information on your ads after a couple of hours or days. The information will contain the following:

1. minimum price to appear in the top 5
2. average position of your ad with your current bid
3. number of displays
4. number of clicks

You need to keep an eye on these parameters continuously to get the best for your dollar. If your position is always 1 or 2, you are overpaying so it is best to lower your bid. Ideally, you want to target position number 3 to be in a good position for a low price. If your ratio click/display is low, your ads are either not attractive enough, or you are targeting the wrong keywords. Also, if you already appear in the top 3 or 5 in the search results, you do not need to advertise. Users will probably click on your website for free.

Yahoo and Google offer practically the same tools and provide the same the same information about your campaign. However, Google is by far the leader, which can be a disadvantage for you. More people use Adsense so there are more bidders for your keywordswhich raise the price and there are more ads to display per search (an even higher price!). You can see it for your self. Make the same search in Google and Yahoo and see how many ads are displayed on the right. For my keywords, Yahoo is half to a third of the price from Google to be displayed in the top 3.

The second advantage of Yahoo is that it is less restrictive in using brands as keywords or in your ad. If you have a website about product reviews, fan groups, discounts, etc., chances are that you would like to mention the corresponding brands in your ads. Google will not let you do that, but Yahoo will.To advertise Reviews-Web-Hosting to people looking for a specific company, I have to use Yahoo Search Marketing.

You might be able to use Google and still keep a low price for your bid. Most people have a daily budget (I encourage you to do the same to avoid any bad surprise). After spending a certain amount of money within 24 hours, the bidder stops displaying his ad to keep his budget under control. Some keywords are entered millions of times per day on Google. After some time, most bidders may have reached their daily limit for these words. Then, you can display your ads for a much smaller price.

Facebook Ads

Unlike Adsense and Search Marketing, this program is not associated with an active search from the user. They are more like billboards, or ads in news paper, they appear in front of you whether you are interested in the subject or not. So the number of impressions per click is a lot higher and the bounce rate is usually a lot higher too.

With Facebook Ads, you do not bid on keywords, but on a target such as age, sex, marital status, etc. In my experience, the bids are about the same price as Yahoo Search Marketing, but the bounce rate is much higher (93% versus 63%). This is because I haven't figured out who is my main audience. You might receive a much better bounce rate if you know your audience well.

Stumble Upon

Stumble Upon defines itself as "Personalized Recommendations to Help You Discover the Best of the Web". Like Digg or Reddit, users share what they find on the web.

Stumble Upon is similar to Facebook Ads in the sense hat you target a demography. You can choose the sex, age, location of the users, and a category. However, the advertising is forced on the user every few pages; users have to click on a website. You need to grab their attention quickly to prevent them from simply getting to the next website on their list. The bounce rate for my site was 93%! But Stumble Upon is very cheap: I paid only $0.05 per user and maxed out my daily budget. If your website has the cool factor that Stumble Upon users expect, this is the most affordable advertising program.

Press Release

I know a lot of people think press releases are a thing of the past and just a waste of money. However, I don't agree. A press release allows you to reach a broader audience. It also helps to be picked up by Google Alerts. A professionally-written press release such as ours cost about $80. A good distribution is around $80 as well. Don't overlook the distribution: your press release is worthless if nobody sees it.

My Personal Experience

Your bounce rate can become much better by optimizing your keywords, demographic target, and ad content as you acquire more data on who is interested on your website. Here are the results I got for this site:

• Google Adsense: 65%
• Yahoo Search Marketing: 63%
• Facebook Ads: 93%
• Stumble Upon: 91%
• Press release: 63 %
• All sources: 83%

I have a very low budget, so I am more concerned about my cost per acquisition (getting the most number of clicks with a low bounce rate) than by the number of clicks I get. I started with Google, but I now prefer Yahoo. With cheaper keywords and the option to include web hosting company names (which is not allowed by Adsense), I get a lower price and a lower bounce rate.

Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.

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