Online Advertising Mistakes You Don’t Wan’t To Make
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Online Advertising Mistakes You Don’t Wan’t To Make
Here’s a list of 10 advertising mistakes I have made while developing my online business.You can avoid these pitfalls by reading this article. I started my first online business back in 2004. I knew absolutely nothing about e commerce.
I saw a pop up ad that guaranteed I would make 0 dollars within 30 days after making a .00 investment, to sell Satellite TV subscriptions. Since I had no clue about selling on the Internet, failure was pretty much inevitable. At least I got my money back.
10. My first mistake was investing any amount of money in an Internet business, without doing at least some research on how to market an online business.
I thought if I threw up a website, people would “appear” and they would all sign up for Satellite TV! I was expecting to make money right away, with no targeted advertising.
When you have a
small online business it’s impossible to make money if you don’t advertise to potential customers, who already have an interest in what you’re selling.
9. When I finally did begin to understand the importance of online advertising, the mistake I made was to buy “hits” of traffic. I didn’t know the difference between “hits” and actual “unique” website visitors. “Hits” are how many times your web page and the graphics on your web page are loaded.
“Unique” visitors are supposed to be actual human visitors to your website or blog. I later found out that a lot, if not most of these websites that sell what they describe as website visitors or “traffic”, are really simply using automated scripts that load your web page over and over again. The script simulates live visitors to a website. You’ll end up with great statistics, but zero sales and or sign ups.
I also
used one of those “automatic hits machines” that I received with something I downloaded. This software again simulated live website visitors by pinging my website from hundreds if not thousands of assorted domains. No actual human visitors. At the time I didn’t know this type of software existed.
I thought these “hits” coming from real domains were real people! I think that because I used this software my website, which had zero page rank, but had been indexed by Google, eventually got banned by Google. Because shortly after using that automatic “hits” software my website began to show the infamous “Grey” page rank box.
Don’t use automatic scripts that claim to bring “traffic” (as in website visitors) to your online business. Sure, the numbers will be encouraging. But it’s an illusion. In reality you may get your website banned by the major search engine, and
besides, you can’t sell to an automated software script anyway.
8. Next I tried the free Traffic Exchanges. On free traffic exchanges, you sign up to view other people’s websites. For every one or a few website that you view, the traffic exchange will display your website once. The problem is, from the sales perspective, if there are for the most parts real human eyes viewing your web page, (and not a script) these eyes probably belong to other’s who are trying to get their online business advertised at no cost.
Which means that they are probably not going to buy whatever it is you’re selling, unless it’s going to get them what they have already shown an interest in. That would be getting more free traffic to their Internet business. I have used several of the free traffic exchanges, and my websites have never benefited from the effort whatsoever. I also wrongly
assumed that the free exchanges would provide a back link to my website. They don’t.
The only thing I have found the free traffic exchanges good for is the opportunity to see what some of my competitors are selling, and how they have written their web page’s. I also think that the free traffic exchanges may be a good place to advertise if you have a website or blog that have “freebies” as in free download e books and or software. Again the folks who actually click on ads at these free traffic exchanges have already shown an interest in free resources. But for making money, for me they were useless.
7. After the free T.E.’s I tried using the software that submits your website to 500 search engines automatically. Another waste of time, although I did get the software for no cost. The only real problems with this process is that of the 500 search engines, most
people probably only use 2 or 3 of them for web searches. Next even back then the 3 major S.E.’s preferred manual submissions. Automatic submissions are considered “Spam.” Always submit to S.E.’s and Directories manually.
6. I also paid to be listed on a search engine network. My site would be listed on all of the websites in their network. I was allowed to choose one keyword phrase. If it was available, I was charged a flat fee, to be paid quarterly. In three month time, I received maybe 20 clicks. Dismal. No results. And 97 percent of those clicks didn’t register on my web server files. The other peculiar thing about this search engine “network” was that the majority of clicks registered on their statistics that I received, came during the period of time when it was almost time for me to renew the account. Call me suspicious.
5. Next on my list of learning
experiences, I dived into the Pay Per Click industry. I decided to start off on a less expensive so called “Search Engine.” I won’t name the company, but their name, if they are still in business, starts with the number7. This small S.E. if I remember correctly charges either 25 or fifty dollars to be paid upfront. That money goes into your p.p.c. account. You bid on keywords, and then your ad is displayed on their so called anonymous “network” of distributor websites. Each unnamed distributor website has a minimum bid amount for ad placement.
After a few days I began to notice website ads that were totally unrelated to Web Hosting ahead of my ad. Gambling websites were placed higher than my website for the keyword “web hosting.” And I was paying for my ad placement based on my keyword. I became suspicious. I called the company. They told me they must have missed it.
But it was happening on almost every keyword!
After being with the account for a couple of weeks and getting zero clicks, I began to research just who these anonymous distribution network of websites actually belonged to. When I performed a back link check on my website, I began to see links leading to my website, on websites’ that were completely unrelated to my online business.
One of the sites that I found my link on, was a one page website titled Greek Poetry. Most of the other websites that were linked to my site, were hardly more than starter pages. One site was a one page website about horse grooming! I was at the time selling and using keywords for “Web Hosting.”
All of those ridiculous distribution network back links led directly back to that so called Search Engine. Apparently this company bought a lot of domains, threw up some starter pages,
and then decided to sell them off as a network of active and highly visited websites. To that Search Engines credit though, they did give me a prompt refund. If you decide to advertise on a network of websites, be sure to research and determine if these are real websites, that get lots of real human visitors.
4. After that didn’t work out I bought into a service that would distribute an ad for my website on a so called “network” of Ezines. That only cost me dollars. more dollars flushed down the toilet. When I did a back link check on this so called “network” of Ezines, I noticed that at least 90 percent of these Ezine websites had the exact same template and look of the website that sold me the distribution service.
Call me suspicious. But how can 20 or thirty supposedly different Ezines and websites all have the same template right down to the colors,
and not be owned by the same company? I didn’t even try to get a refund from that website. I just considered it a lesson learned. Oh yeah, naturally I got zero traffic for my money, and my ad was misspelled, along with being on a page that had about one million other ads that made outrageous claims of overnight profits.
If you buy advertising to be distributed to a group of Ezines, make sure you know exactly what Ezines your ads will be published in, how many subscribers they have, and also what type of ads are being displayed on the same page as your own. Your online business will look dishonest if your ads are displayed with other ads that make these unrealistic claims of overnight success.
3. My next advertising adventure was to submit to as many directories as possible. It was too tedious to submit to them one at a time, so again I bought into a service that
claimed they would submit my website to 50 directories. After paying, I found out that least 95 percent of the directories had very low or no page rank at all, not to mention being totally unheard of. Plus even today when I do a back link check, only maybe 5 to 8 of the 50 directory listings that I paid for, list my website.
More money wasted! Whenever I see the phrase “our network of advertisers” I become a little suspicious. Especially when they don’t specifically name the individual websites in their so called “network.” Again I didn’t request a refund. I just considered it a lesson learned.
2. Moving up my list of advertising mistakes, this time I decided to open a Pay Per Click campaign with Google Adwords. After spending money with so many questionable websites, and getting no results, I figured that a company as large and well financed as Google, would
surely not do anything to raise suspicions. I like everyone else at the time was told by Google that for as little as a five dollar sign up fee, and 50 dollars per month I could begin advertising on the most utilized search engine in the world. It sounded like a no brainer. Wrong.
What I didn’t know was that spending fifty dollar per month on a Google Adwords advertising account is practically useless. Especially if you bid on the keywords that your potential customers are most likely to use. I completed sales using Adwords, but in the end when I added the click fraud that I was being charged for, (I once received 131 clicks in less than four hours, after making an unpopular statement on the Google Adwords forum.) along with the constantly increasing bid amounts for ad placement, and not knowing what my competitors were bidding against me, it became cost prohibitive to
continue advertising with Google Adwords.
If you are considering signing up for a Google Adwords account, the best advice I can give you is to read the Adwords Help Forums before you spend any money. Start off in the Basics section. Read the New Post first. Then go back a few months into the older Post. Look for patterns in user problems and frustrations. Expect to be treated the same way and to have similar problems when you have your own account.
1. Which finally brings us to what has probably been my biggest online advertising mistake. Not taking the time to master keyword research. The whole idea of it bores me to tears!
Plus when I did try to understand keyword research, I was getting conflicting information, which again makes me suspicious. What I learned was this…
Every online keyword tool available, from Wordtracker (and I have paid to
use their service) to Google’s keyword tool, to Overture’s keyword tool and Microsoft’s Adcenter’s keyword software, they all give different results for keyword popularity, and search volume. It’s as though each company has their own “turf” when it comes to certain keywords.
For example Overture will say that a keyword is very popular and gets a high volume of search traffic. You may try that same exact keyword phrase on Google’s keyword software, and their keyword tool will indicate there is not enough search volume to even determine search keyword popularity or volume! Now are we to assume that the people who made this a very popular search term with Overture’s keyword research tool never tried to perform that same keyword search on Google. The number one ranked search engine in the world?
It doesn’t seem very likely does it? So why all the contradictions with
search volume and popularity. I believe it’s another pay per click profit mechanism. That’s the main reason I don’t spend an excessive amount of time worrying about keywords. Although I should try to learn more. It couldn’t hurt. But you may have heard that within the past few days, Google has deducted page rank from several websites, for no apparent legitimate reason.
Just because one website improves, or websites in a particular genre become more competitive is no legitimate reason to penalize a website, that was okay and making progress 3 months ago. Webmasters, and small online business owners have worked dilligently trying to master keyword research and web page optimization only to get penalized.
All of the work and money spent on website and search engine optimization down the toilet again. If these guys really wanted to have the BEST search engine in the
world, they would hire humans to evaluate websites.
At least until technology catches up with the demands being made of computer software, when predicting human behavior, and text recognition, juxtaposed with intent.
So for now I just do the best I can with keywords and search engines. But I’m not going to lose any sleep studying keywords, or pay any so called SEO experts, when my website can be penalized at any time.
I really believe this entire penalty fiasco and the P.P.C. Quality Score gimmick is simply a dishonest method of rotating which websites occupy the first page top ten rankings.
No matter how good we are at SEO skills, we can’t all be listed on the first page of the search results! And the penalizing of websites is another great way to rotate websites in and out of the first page rankings, and also to persuade some website owners who
don’t want to lose their traffic, to invest in Pay Per Click advertising. A win, win situation for the Search Engine industry.
I hope this article saves you time and money! Always remember “Any pursuit is great… when GREATLY pursued!”
Copyright © 2009 Nicholas Busbee All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Nicholas Busbee started his first online business in 2004, and has written several articles on the Internet teaching others how to start their very own online business. “Nicholas Busbee’s Total Resale Package Master Resell Software, E Books and Video’s You Keep 100% Of The Profits!
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