I was wanting to know if anyone had any experiences with overture and if they could give me an idea of what to expect...

Are they better than adwords? Or is it another waste of money..

I used Overture over the years for some of my sites .. didn't have much luck with them BUT there are advertisers who do well with Overture too ... it's depends alot on your offer and the audience targeted, keywords, etc.

My advice ... do an initial test and track the response.

overture can pay off if you target the low cost keywords ,i beleive the initial deposit is $50 so it`s worth a shot
I find it better to be ranked number 2 or 3 in less popular keywords than ranked 8 in the popular one.

Adwords is good but it is getting expensive .expect to pay $0.80 per click

Yep, just to chip in - we find Adwords far far more effective than overture...

In fact personally I feel Adwords is the best of the PPC schemes *if* you have the cash.

Overture seems to be at an average rate between 4-7 dollars for hosting related words.. can you set a limit to how much you spend per month like adwords?

Do you have better experience paying 10 per click and only spending 50 a month or paying 5 per click and spending 100 a month on average?

overture is probably one of the better ones in their class if not the best. the problem being.. you have to pay quite a bit of money. but it is well worth it if you target it right.

Does your website keywords have any effect on overture results or is it only based on what you pay?

it`s based on what you pay for example the keyword "hosting" would probably cost you $5 per click but "php hosting" would cost you $0,50 click so you can make overture work for you at a low cost .
you website keywords does not effect your listing it`s the highest bids first

One trick is to buy *many* low volume targeted keywords ... which is cheaper ... and they will add up ;)

Originally posted by easily
it`s based on what you pay for example the keyword "hosting" would probably cost you $5 per click but "php hosting" would cost you $0,50 click so you can make overture work for you at a low cost .
you website keywords does not effect your listing it`s the highest bids first

or use other PPC engines with lower prices that syndicate search results from bigger engines. for example, findwhat and kanoodle.

Try to buy less popular keywords and you can keep your average click cost down. We're at around 0.30 per click.

proceed with caution at the smaller PPCs 'cos some of them have so little traffic volume it could take months or even years to finish your initial balance!! :rolleyes:

Of course most of them offer free balances of $10-$25 etc. with new accounts created ... but they usually take very very long to send even 1 click ... :rolleyes:

Alright thanks for the help everyone...

Originally posted by RH4U
Alright thanks for the help everyone...

give us a feedback after you try them

Sure thing, i wont be giving it a go until after the first of the year but i will post some info back here as soon as i have enough data to give some feedback.. i will try a few different methods and let you guys know how things turn up..

Heres a list of PPC engines (In no perticular order):
http://www.overture.com/
http://www.google.ocm/
http://www.kanoodle.com/
http://www.ah-ha.com/
http://www.sprinks.com/
http://www.7search.com/
http://www.goclick.com/
http://www.findwhat.com/

I have user them all (except overture) for various web sites and they all have provided good results.

Out of the above PPCs, I've used Overture mostly. Tried Sprinks once, tempted to try Findwhat. Overture and Findwhat are listed on NYSE ... and both are profitable companies.

Not sure about the traffic volumes and quality from the rest though.

Originally posted by vhedesigns
Heres a list of PPC engines (In no perticular order):
http://www.overture.com/
http://www.google.ocm/
http://www.kanoodle.com/
http://www.ah-ha.com/
http://www.sprinks.com/
http://www.7search.com/
http://www.goclick.com/
http://www.findwhat.com/

I have user them all (except overture) for various web sites and they all have provided good results.

I have used Google (spent there a lot of $$$ and got good results) , Sprinks (poor results) and FindWhat ( they have bigger traffic than Sprinks)

my picks are google and overture (if you know how to play it without blowing a budget)

Heres a little promo I received from FindWhat at Ad:Tech in the city:
https://secure.findwhat.com/promo/adt.asp

Originally posted by vhedesigns
Heres a little promo I received from FindWhat at Ad:Tech in the city:
https://secure.findwhat.com/promo/adt.asp

This is a bit too good to be true. $25 for 3500 clickthrus?

It's not too good to be true what they do its give you a $10 credit.

So if each click-thru was a $0.01 then you would get 3500 clicks.

So do the math and see how many clicks you will get for $35!

If you pay 0.01 per click for the "hosting" keyword, its too GOOD to be true...

They give you a $10 credit.

$35 @ $0.01/click = 3500 clicks...

Just good marketing like you can find a keyword will cost 0.01! ;)

Most PPCs, especially the smaller ones, give free opening balances of between $10-$25. Of course, you won't find this with the big boys. :cool:

Thats not exactly alot though!!

Im still debating between which method i should use:

Pay ALOT per keyword to get #1 spot with less views.
OR
Pay less per keyword to get more coverage, but less views and at lower spots.

Originally posted by RH4U
Overture seems to be at an average rate between 4-7 dollars for hosting related words.. can you set a limit to how much you spend per month like adwords?

Do you have better experience paying 10 per click and only spending 50 a month or paying 5 per click and spending 100 a month on average?
It all comes back to whether you service a niche market in the hosting scene. If you're going after generic and broad keywords, forget it. There are better ways to get rid of $$$$. ;)

edit - fixed typo :o :D

For your keywords target the categories you are marketing. IE if you are a linux host target PHP keywords.

Windows=ASP.

Etc....

So terms such as hosting, virtual hosting should not be capitalized on as much as maybe php hosting, msql hosting, etc.?

Is this what youve all found better experiences with?
So perhaps H-Sphere hosting, php hosting, linux hosting, yadda yadda??

Has anyone found advertising on forums such as WHT to be helpful, with the amount charged per banner it seems it would take forever to get anything out of it.. . and as far as advertising in the ad forum.. most people here are webhost providers of some sort so isnt kinda just pointless to advertise on forums??

I just signed up with a $50 dollar deposit.

Originally posted by RH4U
Thats not exactly alot though!!

Im still debating between which method i should use:

Pay ALOT per keyword to get #1 spot with less views.
OR
Pay less per keyword to get more coverage, but less views and at lower spots.

if your budget is big, go for method 1.
otherwise I recommend method 2.

Method 1 will see more clicks in shorter time BUT your ad dollars will diminish faster too.
Method 2 will see much lesser clicks over the same time period but your account balance lasts longer.

Of course, between the 2, I recommend method 2 IF you can find plenty of targeted low volume hosting keywords.

One trick, track every keyword with a cookie for 3 weeks so that you can get rid of the useless ones quickly.

I think it is more than that.

You have to consider the effectiveness. If you are ranked too low, obviously it's unlikely you will ever get any hits if at all. In fact, if you are ranked outside of 10, the chances of clicks decrease dramatically.

Personally I will look for other apt keywords but which is less popular. More effective imho

I've been using overture since they were goto. Infact I've been using overture since before they were pay per click. I remember their first letter they sent me asking to be one of their sponsored listings and I laughed saying.. Nobody will pay to be listed in a search engine.


No everything was much better then. They brag about ROI but compared to then this is terrible. I am slowly decreasing my overture advertising and looking for better ways to advertise. There are too many hosts advertising and driving up bids on keywords past $8 for some words on some days. A little host like me can't make any money paying $8 for a hit.

Yup if you're ranked below 10, you aren't going to get many clicks ... that's why you need to make it up with *plenty* (hundreds) of targeted low volume keywords to make method 2 work ... of course, this is *really* time consuming to setup initially. Also you'll need an automated solution to optimize bids and track clicks+conversions.

But if you can pull it off, you may get good results.

Of course, the other method is just to pay for the top 5 spots :D which is simpler but just $$$. :stickout:

Overture has been automated and I have doubled my keyword count since they automated. I have well voer 500 keywords at this point. I'm not going to give away my whole strategy but I have ZERO high volume keywords... as I'd be ranked at 900 or something disturbingly low... only spammers go that deep into the archives.

Well then i guess it would be up to how manypeople actually go with number 1 vs. 2,34,-900 lol..

I mean if i pay 12 per click for #1 it would be worth it if 90% of the people signed up, but results wouldnt be that good even at #1 would it? Is there any statistics on this type of stuff anywhere??

RH4U, you can test it out with a small budget by tracking each keyword's conversion (and perhaps even by CPC) with a cookie or use a simple affiliate program script to set it up.

We have also found that Adwords from Google is far more effective then Overture ... Also, we do our own tracking for clicks that come in from our advertisers and there is always click they say come in that actually don't. And it was always the more expensive keywords.

With Overture, as long as your OWN tracker don't show LESS click count than Overture's count, things should be ok.

Cos counting the people which click twice or more at your listing, there will always be a slightly higher number at your side.

So if you notice your tracker has lower count than Overture's, then something may not be right .. eg. their system didn't properly redirect the clicks to your site or your site was down for prolonged periods. ;)