Really. In goto.com the race for the keyphrase "web hosting" is almost $7.00 per click. What do you think about it? Do you really think this is worth spending? Even for the big boys?

You would have to be an idiot to pay $7.00/click. What kinda % do you think actually buys an account with them?

Originally posted by Get-Hosted.com
You would have to be an idiot to pay $7.00/click. What kinda % do you think actually buys an account with them?

Agreed. I wander why these people pay that much. I bet they need at least 5 visitors before the first sign-up, which will then be what 20/month?

Not to mention Goto supports incentive based affiliates. Meaning these incentive based affiliates pay to have people click on links so they can make a buck. These are false leads as the person visiting never had any intent to buy.

I bet they need at least 5 visitors before the first sign-up, which will then be what 20/month?

Damn, I would take those leads to sales ratios anyday! I bet it is closer to 1/20.

Originally posted by bert
Agreed. I wander why these people pay that much. I bet they need at least 5 visitors before the first sign-up, which will then be what 20/month?
There's no way they're getting 1 in 5 signups. My experience is that the super-common keywords like "web hosting" give much poorer results than specific keywords (such as "asp access web hosting"), and even with good keywords the sign up ratio might be more like 1 in 50.

As for the aforementioned "incentive based affiliates," I believe this is a real problem. When I experimented with some high-priced bids on Goto.com ($1-2 per click), I would watch people enter our site from Goto.com (based on info on the HumanClick monitor), spend about 5 seconds on the home page, and then they were gone. This just doesn't happen with referrals from other search engines.

Combined with the incentive based affiliates problem, I would be surprised if the top-10 "web hosting" spots on Goto.com are getting 1 out of 100 orders per click.

We've gotta be missing something...

You just don't pay someone $700 for one customer, and I see 1/100 to be a realistic number.

Well, the signup radio varies quite a bit and it is really affected by many variables. You won't believe this, but when we got started, we had very low-priced plans and we were getting a few hits a day, back then our signup radio was 1/10 (really) now, our signup radio is about 1/40 (Not sure) maybe less, but we are targeting a more experienced audience.

I totally agree with you Chris, they click on the link, you see them through Human Click, they stay for about 10 seconds and they leave. Who tell you that some of them are not your own competitors burning your money on purpose? Unfortunately not all of us are honest and play it by the rules I don't think. :(

Originally posted by bert
Really. In goto.com the race for the keyphrase "web hosting" is almost $7.00 per click. What do you think about it? Do you really think this is worth spending? Even for the big boys?

Here is a way to take care of stupid bids like that. Do the search and then for every one of the top 10 results (all over $2/click I believe):

-Right click (or Option click for you Mac folks), select open link in a New Window.

-Once the window fully renders, close it.

Do that for all of the top 10 links daily - that should keep them from bidding so high next time. :-)

Brian

Originally posted by bteeter

Do that for all of the top 10 links daily - that should keep them from bidding so high next time. :-)

Brian

:D

I'll give you a discount. $6 per click on my site. No promises on all unique traffic, but trust me, you'll get A LOT*!!

*from me

Originally posted by Dogma
I'll give you a discount. $6 per click on my site. No promises on all unique traffic, but trust me, you'll get A LOT*!!

*from me

$5 and you've got a deal. :stickout

Another thing to pay attention to if you bid with GoTo. Look closelly at your stats. You will notice clicks from places like "bigred.com". You will be surprised at how many of these rip off affilaites GoTo has.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
Another thing to pay attention to if you bid with GoTo. Look closelly at your stats. You will notice clicks from places like "bigred.com". You will be surprised at how many of these rip off affilaites GoTo has.

You are right, I just checked the results of a search in bidred.com with the results of a search in goto.com and some of them match!

What a rip off! :eek:

Goto has real problems with dodgy affiliates. Wayads. ExitFuel, Nettaxi- to name a few. These will burn up your accounts like nobody's business. Just check your logs and you will see. $7.00 for 'web hosting' is of course ridiculous and at a 1-40 conversion ratio means that every sign-up is costing $280.00.

I use a Goto a lot for clients and would never target terms like web hosting or gift or terms like that- partly because you are just encouraging the pay-to-surf brigade and companies like those mentioned above and partly because these terms are best targeted through Looksmart, Dmoz and Direct Hit listings. These are the ones that are the top results for most Search Engines. You can't really optimize too well for these type of terms - link popularity is the way to go.

My advice is to ignore Goto as much as possible.

Mark

Originally posted by bert
Do you really think this is worth spending? Even for the big boys? Is a TV ad during the Super Bowl worth the price? Paying this kind of money to be the first site listed isn't an attempt to make a profitable direct return on the advertising investment, it's for branding. ***** -- the number one listing at the moment -- clearly has a goal that when people think "web hosting" they think "*****."

The value of branding-based marketing is hard to quantify, but look who's there at the top: after CI, it's Earthlink, Network Solutions, Verio, and Microsoft. How much is becoming a "household name" worth?

It is sad that these corporations make it nearly impossible for small business owners to succeed. It is all about monopolizing the market. :(

When I worked in advertising, we always used to tell wavering potential clients or unhappy customers that the benefit of advertising wasn't always in the number of new customers or products sold. We used to tell them it was name recognition and branding and that the long term benefits were so great as to outweigh the fact they had spent a fortune for no return.

It is still nonsense. Any form of advertising needs to have a real quantifiable return to be successful. The SuperBowl analogy fails as the advertisers know that such and such a demographic will be watching, that so many millions will be tuning in, and so on. With Goto and its myriad partners, you cannot quantify or analyse the effect of your advertising and it is just too much money to pay $7 per click.

For smaller businesses there are better ways of achieving the same result and making a profit. Let Verio and ***** spend stupid money on Goto. While Verio have the money to do it, ***** probably have a huge burn rate and will burn themselves out.

For the keywords "web hosting", ***** is ranked #4 with $6.35. :rolleyes::eek:

Originally posted by Kiwi
For the keywords "web hosting", ***** is ranked #4 with $6.35. :rolleyes::eek:

3000MB of space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited POP3 e-mail accounts

Impressive deal :eek: ;)

I would pay it if it guranteed I would get a customer out of each click..... But that aint gunna happen is it?

Regards,
Chris

I'd say do your math
and you'll notice it aint worth it

I don't think is even worth it for branding. Even Verio and others who charge at the very minimum $25.00/month for hosting couldn't justify those expenses. It is just a stupid race in which Goto.com is the only winner.

Maybe they don't even pay that much per click ...it could be that its just a 'friendship ranking' (;)) between GoTo.com and Verio, *****, etc.

Hello
I play the PPC's quite a lot and actually do quite well out of it, but not by bidding on the common ones like "Web Hosting".

Here are a few tips:

1. Check your listings regularly. If you are number 1 at 20c its posible that the companies at no2 and 3 have dropped out by now and you can get the same listing for 5c.

2. If you work 7 days (I guess a lot of us do) you can up your rankings on a Friday night and many of the big comapnies won't update their listings till Monday (surprising but true)

3. You can have fun pushing the top bids higher and higher with companies like Hostsave and they will never bring the price back down, so they end up with $2.50 per click for #1 while you pay 5c for #2.

4. You don't need to be #1 to get clicks. In fact there are fewer fraudulent clicks with lower places so the quality is better.

Having said that I had a nasty accident with Goto yesteday and set all a lot of my keywords to #1 by mistake. Burned $200, but brought in $500.
I couldn't work out why we were suddenly so busy.
I think under some circumstances and with the right keywords it can be a good thing.

Its also a way of getting listed in Askjeeves and other meta search engines, which is not a bad thing.
On average we spend about $20 per day on ppc search engines and Google adwords, and they really do bring in a lot of business.

I have tested all theppc's and most are worthless. Goto, Findwhat and Espotting (UK) are the only three that convert to buyers.

Gordon

Having said that I had a nasty accident with Goto yesteday and set all a lot of my keywords to #1 by mistake. Burned $200, but brought in $500.

Wouldn't the smart businessperson say that if you are bring in more then you spend, that is a good thing. Why would you quit if this really was the case?

If this was, certainally list those key words and I will bid for them at number 1 to take the return you said you got.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord


Wouldn't the smart businessperson say that if you are bring in more then you spend, that is a good thing. Why would you quit if this really was the case?

If this was, certainally list those key words and I will bid for them at number 1 to take the return you said you got.

Agreed! :)

Please list the keywords. I have also spent some money on Goto.com until I said enough! The signup rate has to be almost 1 to 1 to be able to make a profit.

Mmmmm
That would work if you had the cash flow or the finance to back a big campaign but I don't think I do.
Certainly I work on breaking even each month after the salaries are paid.

It may just have been luck because 3 people took out annual plans, and I have those accounts on the server for a year now with no income from them.
If you were relying on monthly plans you would not have been in profit, and quite a few of the sales were domain name registrations.

Anyway here is a list of keywords I regularly bid on but I am usually way down the list!


asp hosting
2 become a web host
3 becoming a web host
4 cheap domain
5 cheap domain name
6 cheap domain names
7 cheaper domain
8 cheapest domain
9 co.uk domain
10 com domain
11 com domain registration
12 discount domain names
13 domain name registrar
14 domain web host
15 doman name
16 fast web hosting
17 front page web host
18 frontpage web host
19 frontpage web hosting
20 inexpensive web hosting
21 linux web host
22 linux web hosting
23 low cost domain
24 microsoft front page hosting
25 microsoft front page web hosting
26 microsoft frontpage web hosting
27 microsoft frontpage web site hosting
28 net domain
29 php web host
30 php web hosting
31 register web site domain name
32 register your domain name
33 reseller hosting -
34 uk web host
35 unix web host
36 unix web hosting
37 web host
38 web host uk
39 web hosting
40 web hosting nt


have fun

Gordon

So we can all pull up GOTO.COm and keep clicking on the ***** link, that way we indirectly get the refund they owe us, I hope GOTO doesnt use an IP address filter that prevents multiply clicks...haha just imagine...100 people click the link each hour, theyll be bankrupt by dinner time...LOL

Originally posted by Fred
So we can all pull up GOTO.COm and keep clicking on the ***** link, that way we indirectly get the refund they owe us, I hope GOTO doesnt use an IP address filter that prevents multiply clicks...haha just imagine...100 people click the link each hour, theyll be bankrupt by dinner time...LOL

Hehehe :D


Gordon:

Thanks for your info! :)

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
Wouldn't the smart businessperson say that if you are bring in more then you spend, that is a good thing. Why would you quit if this really was the case? Not to speak of GordonH's case specifically, but no, the smart businessperson might not say that. Because the smart businessperson would recognize that he probably lost money that day.

If GordonH would have made, say, $100 profit off the $500 in new accounts if he had acquired them 'for free," he'd be losing $100 by spending $200 to acquire them at GoTo.

Or, to look at it another way, his marketing cost (assuming for the sake of simplicity that he does no other marketing) for the $500 in gross sales was 40%. The smart businessperson probably wouldn't find that too attractive.

It came down. It is now only $$6.45 per click :D

JayC, we all think different. That is why some make it and some don't. He did not increase any other expense! No new employees, no new hardware, nothing. He basically just traded $200 for $500. What person wouldn't call that a good deal? Your theories make no business sense to me. Why would those "for free" customers still not come over?

his marketing cost (assuming for the sake of simplicity that he does no other marketing) for the $500 in gross sales was 40%.

1) This is flawed. Do the math, you will see. 2) You forget that this is not a set $500. He has just gained the most important resource for a hosting business - customers. Customers need more services and like to refer other customers.

He got a damn good deal. Who knows, maybe that was luck. Or maybe he could have done better the next day. We will not know since it was a one day deal. I know one thing. If my core is stable and running fine, and I find a place that trades $200 for $500. I sure the hell would take it.

I understand the cash flow thing GordonH is talking about though. I also know everyone thinks they can run someone else's company better, which I am not saying. I just think *if* you have lets say $2000 to invest and someone then gave you $5000 back in 10 days, you would want to take it.

I agree with UmBillyCord and with Gordon. Perhaps the results with more "restricted" keywords would be different. The point here is that keywords like "web hosting" are a total waste of money. Yes it is true, "branding" is sometimes the goal of these businesses, but how may clicks at $6.00+ does it take to achieve the brand recognition that they seek?

Sorry for posting twice

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
What person wouldn't call that a good deal? Your theories make no business sense to me. For some reason when I read that I think of the Dilbert strip where his boss says "I fail to see your so-called point!"

My point was that it's not as simple as trading $200 for $500. With more customers you get more expenses to service those customers. Of course you don't need more hard drives or employees to add a couple of customers, but if you were to do the same process over and over you would. $500 in sales doesn't equal $500 in profit.

That doesn't mean it might not in the long run turn out to be profitable at some margin, but as GordonH explained as the person it happened to, it's clearly not as simple as getting $500 back every time you spend $200. I don't want my hosting business friends here to think that if they mortgage the house and spend $200,000 at goto.com they'll get back half a million in cash!

$7 per click is not real at least it is not normal!
How can some one pay $7 for a simple click! They an buy targeted CPM banners for less than $5 and will get them at least 10 to 50 clicks. or buy banners based on CPC for $0.25 per click. why would any one pay over
$1 for a targeted click!????? :eek:

Originally posted by bert
Yes it is true, "branding" is sometimes the goal of these businesses, but how may clicks at $6.00+ does it take to achieve the brand recognition that they seek? Really, that's missing the point of branding. Because if branding is your goal, the answer is "zero." Your direct concern isn't that anyone clicks through to your site, it's that when they think of web hosting they think of you. It's that when they are shopping for a host, they see or hear your name and it's familiar to them. It's more an investment in future sales than immediate. You wouldn't even try to measure a return on it.

A branding campaign, though, is a luxury to 99% of hosting businesses, and most businesses in other industries as well.

For any of us here, paying these kinds of rates at goto would be foolish. But clearly the people at Verio, Microsoft, and the rest -- including the marketing masters at ***** -- have decided it's worth it to them in the long term. We can sit here and deride them for being fools throwing their money away, but in the meantime they are laughing all the way to the bank.

Originally posted by JayC
Really, that's missing the point of branding. Because if branding is your goal, the answer is "zero." Your direct concern isn't that anyone clicks through to your site, it's that when they think of web hosting they think of you. It's that when they are shopping for a host, they see or hear your name and it's familiar to them. It's more an investment in future sales than immediate. You wouldn't even try to measure a return on it.

Exactly! However, clicks work for branding, although it could take years for a host to gain brand recognition that way.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
He did not increase any other expense! No new employees, no new hardware, nothing. He basically just traded $200 for $500.

I think this is not true. What is an "expense" for you? Most small hosts forget that time for support and so on is also an "expense". Or why do you think resellers get their accounts cheaper if not for the fact that they are doing the support?

I also know everyone thinks they can run someone else's company better

Come on, if someone says something in public he can be sure that not all persons will have the same opinion.

$7.00 per click is not worth it, just take a look at the ROI it would bring. Trust me it would be 30:1. Most people generally look around before buying, whats going to make them buy from you ? thats the point that should be addressed more often. I am going to be placing my host in the google adwords program and in goto and serveral other search engines.

Regards,
Valaublehost

That doesn't mean it might not in the long run turn out to be profitable at some margin, but as GordonH explained as the person it happened to, it's clearly not as simple as getting $500 back every time you spend $200.

Yes, I now have those customers to service for the next year with no income from them.
If you had unlimited funds you could make a lot of money this way, but if you are not prepared to get into debt then its not worth the risk.

Gordon

Well, that is right. If you have funds to support your business and yourself for at least 2 or 3 years, you can eventually start making some good money this way. It is all just a matter of establishing a good client base.

- This thread has a few things going on. I replying to Walter and JayC -

What is an "expense" for you? Most small hosts forget that time for support and so on is also an "expense". Or why do you think resellers get their accounts cheaper if not for the fact that they are doing the support?

Walter, I am not sure how you run your business, but I would think someone halfway intelligent would have incorporated that into their pricing model. It amazes me that some people can not see that GordonH came out on top. He made a mistake, got billed $200, and received $500 in revenue back. It is that simple. Now of course you can extrapolate all you want and make this difficult, but to me the bottom line is that his GoTo ads paid off (maybe by luck :D ). As he said, if he had more money he would have tried it again.

This has gone from something *simple* to something complex for no reason.

Come on, if someone says something in public he can be sure that not all persons will have the same opinion.

Thanks for the enlightenment. I feel smarter already.

Here's how my budgetting works:

x=Total income from monthly paying clients
a=total server costs per month
b=advertising costs per month
c=support staff costs per month

x-(a+b+c)=0

Profit (the bit that pays me) comes from annual plans, profit from domain sales and other activities.

This means all the costs are covered by the customers who pay monthly. I never let (a+b+c) get more than x, its usually a few hundred less.

Its possible to make $50 per day selling domains and then you can have one annual sign up per day bringing in $100, so making a reasonable profit is really quite easy.
Anything excess goes back into the pot for business development like buying servers instead of leasing, setting up my own servers in London and other projects which will benefit the business in the future.
Anything I spend on the business is not taxable so I take a basic salary and plough the rest back in.

Advertising heavily on goto would lead to a very unstable business and I wouldn't feel comfortable with that.

Gordon

I agree with you Gordon. I am just really curiuos what would of happened if those ads you placed would have kept going for a few more days. I also think it is funny that you made a mistake and came out on top. I wish my mistakes ended up like that. ;)

It makes up for all the horses that didn't come in.....

Hi All,

I think these web hosting companies, that pay $7 per click, must have a good reason to do that, other than getting direct visitors or branding.

I think may be they are doing this to benefit from being listed in the first 3 positions. That makes them benefit from goto's premium listing. You can check this page http://www.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/pl.jhtml.

I think they pay all this amount of money not only to get listed is goto.com, but also to reach 75% of internet users as goto claims.

I do not know how this premium listing realy works, but may be it is a little more worth the $7 than only getting direct visitors and branding.

I do beleive that $7 per click is a HUGE amount which must has some good reason to do so.

This is IMHO.

Ahmed

I just noticed that being listed one of the first 3 gets you double the clicks you get if you are listed in >3 position. That means a company paying $7 to be listed number 1, it will reduce the cost to half. So it gets 2 clicks instead of 1 click. That makes it $3.5 per click not $7 per click.

Seems a little reasonable. Now $3.5 per click a little reasonable for branding.

I still think that $3.5 is a HUGE amount.

Sorry for posting twice, just trying to solve the puzzle.


Ahmed

I wonder how much traffic they are getting per day frm this 7 per click campaign..

anyway, this kind of competition seems to be extremely healthy... especially for web hosting portals, like our own :)

Good luck

We've bid into the top 5 on goto in the past, and we got around 500 clicks a day charged to our account. So you talking around $3500 per day at $7 per click.

Heres an extract from their financial statement last year:
-------------------------------
http://www.goto.com/d/ssn/usindex.jhtml

WE DEPEND ON A LIMITED NUMBER OF SOURCES TO DIRECT CONSUMERS TO OUR SERVICE TO CONDUCT SEARCHES.
The consumers who conduct searches on our service come from a limited number of sources. Our sources for consumers conducting searches are members of our affiliate network, including providers of Internet browsers such as Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, aggregators of search offerings of various providers, Internet Service Providers, such as AOL and Earthlink, our Web site, and banner advertising. In August 2000, we entered into a multi-year agreement under which AOL will display GoTo's listings on the search results page of AOL, AOL.com and Netscape's Netcenter. We also entered into a one-year agreement with Microsoft Corporation for continued traffic from their Internet Explorer 4 and Internet Explorer 5 browser, which commenced on January 21, 2000. This source is expected to deliver a diminishing level of traffic to us in 2000 compared to 1999, and we expect that we will eventually receive no traffic from this source. In addition, our agreement with Netscape will expire on June 30, 2001. Although sources of consumer traffic to our service fluctuate, in any given month we typically depend upon one or a few of these sources for a significant majority of traffic and searches conducted on our service. For the quarter ended September 30, 2000, approximately 90% of all of GoTo's traffic came from our affiliates. Of GoTo's total traffic, approximately 10% of the total traffic came from the browsers, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape, approximately 80% of the total traffic came from other affiliates and the remaining 10% of the total traffic came directly to the GoTo Web site. We generally obtain traffic from the browsers and other affiliates through short-term agreements. There can be no assurance that we will be successful in renewing any of these agreements or entering into new distribution agreements on commercially acceptable terms.


-------------------------------------------

All I know is that I click on that ***** link everyday just to make myself feel good! LOL $7 less for them and peace of mind for me! $7 per day multiple by 365= a lot less money for them!

My guess is about 1 out of 15, certain people would have a HUGE incentive to have people come in and leave with no intention of actually buying.

$7 a Click isn't worth it to the company that is just starting out,

But its just fine for the company with a $50,000 -> $100,000 Advertising budget.

$7 per targeted click sure beats television/radio advertisement prices.

Originally posted by JKLIVIN
My guess is about 1 out of 15, certain people would have a HUGE incentive to have people come in and leave with no intention of actually buying.

Who wants to pay for low quality traffic?

its sad that goto is ripping off people in this way, nobody in their mind would pay that much for such little leads.