Never Pay Per Click
Welcome to my soapbox. Pay Per Click might be the worst form of advertisement in existence and mainly consists of big companies getting rich off of little companies' money. Not that I have any direct issues with Yahoo or Google, they are offering a service that people are willing to pay for, but most business owners just aren't educated enough to know that it doesn't work.
I want to make the comparison to newspaper advertising. Before the internet many people put ads for their business in the daily paper. You could pay extra to have a bigger box or even a full page ad, and then pay even more to get it in color. But these steps all made sense, pay a little extra, get more notice. However, the internet doesn't work that way. There are lots of ways to advertise for free (I am more than happy to tell you about them, see last blog). Paying more does not mean getting more when it comes to the web.
What sparked me to write about Pay Per Click today was an article about . In the article it talks about fake clicks, Yahoo being aware of the problems and still doing nothing and ignoring repeated inquiries from the company. But here are some other good sites: , , , or .
Of course, there are lots of companies out there to help you stop click fraud. But of course, you have to pay them too. So you pay for advertising and then pay another company to make sure your advertisment is working. Peachy. I might even go so far as to say, Pay Per Click could be considered the biggest on the internet today.
So if you are a small business owner and considering Pay Per Click, please, please, do research and consider the costs. This is not a newspaper ad.
Tags: Free Tip, Internet News, SEO