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you charge 500 dollars to do a pay per click campaign proposal and are asking questions like that on a forum!

http://www.bogartcomputing.com/internet-advertising-2

http://www.bogartcomputing.com/Google%2 … Itemid=313

wtf - 2,000+ dollars per month and it's a page without a title tag.

am i allowed to say the words full of shit spring to mind?

I was at that small dog site you got, and I felt that the 'add to cart' menu was not in my line of site.

Running FF 2.0, and the thing was way off to the right of the screen. Since i'm a seasoned pro surfer, initially I never looked there because I thought it just some ad's.

Maybe work on your layout a bit to increase conversions.

According to what you said about what you're currently doing, it sounds like you're doing just about everything you can, aside from ranking (i didn't test anything)

Do you have a long-term ranking campaign set in place to get the natural traffic? That kind of traffic is FREE, and converts better than anything else, because the surfer 'feels' like 'they' found something valuable rather than clicking on an obvious advertisement.

never mind.

Last edited by CarolineBogart (2007-09-28 10:31:55)

CarolineBogart wrote:

careful my friend. I outsource it.  Chunks of that money go to specialists.

sorry but i'm not your friend and actually i'm not sorry either.

CarolineBogart wrote:

I hope that satisfies your properly and understandably cynical reaction.

no not at all, it's not cynical either, it's a business mentality, i know a little about seo and see someone who doesn't even have a title tag on their page trying to sell seo for services for 24,000 dollars a year. on that premise i stand by what i said.

CarolineBogart wrote:

never mind.

and that's the kind of fighting spirit i like to see. are you giving up already? never mind, wow what a winning attitude. people have offered viable suggestions, taken time to answer and posed questions which will help you build your e-business and you reply 'never mind' .

loser, of egregious proportions.

Have you researched advertising in magazines?

MrStitch wrote:

Do you have a long-term ranking campaign set in place to get the natural traffic?

thanks for the website critiques.

In this particular situation the clients aren't spending money. I'm using their sites for marketing experiments that can only benefit them and teach me. Massive campaigns to create trust and authority are out of the question.

I have wasted money on the major search and shopping engines so I wanted to see if anyone's had luck outside of these for driving ecommerce traffic.

Sorry man, didn't mean NOT to answer your question, I was just trying to help is all.

Anyhow, you mentioned that the sales were 'not so much'. So since I couldn't help with the original question, I thought that maybe I would offer an alternative angle.

Original angle - Need places to advertise to get more traffic.

New angle - All the traffic in the world won't mean anything if the site doesn't convert into sales.

If you can successfully convert your existing traffic, then you can simply keep pumping those profit dollars back into the original campaigns. Be sure you can track those cost dollars between adwords and shopping.com so you know where most of your sales are coming from. If one is doing terrible, then tank it and move to another option.

Other than that, have you tried finding some dog forums or community sites that you can buy ads from? IMO, banner ads are the WORST possible form of trying to attain traffic, but maybe you'll have better luck.

Mobtex - Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed today? Wow!

Last edited by MrStitch (2007-09-28 11:29:39)

MrStitch wrote:

New angle - All the traffic in the world won't mean anything if the site doesn't convert into sales.

I hope I didn't appear too defensive. Given the welcome I received I didn't read your post in the finest of lights. My apologies.

You're right and thanks for the observations. However...

Both sites are owned by artistic people who'd rather choose design over logic (sales).

I thought maybe I was missing a magic bullet in my forays into buying ads. You're certainly correct, I'm not arguing with you at all, it's just that I wanted to focus on the possibility that there's some particularly good way to find and buy traffic that doesn't, well, doesn't suck.

One site I worked on recently partnered with a very high quality company, that link is reponsible for a huge jump in sales. Got me thinking about the holy quest for the perfect ad buy.

CarolineBogart wrote:

.....Got me thinking about the holy quest for the perfect ad buy.

Stand in line with the rest of us......

Honestly, I couldn't tell you how many times i've heard "All I did was this to make thousands of dollars.... And you can to, with my......"

Those 'magic' bullets are so far and few in between, that you could be spending the rest of your life looking for it. The fact is, it all boils down to luck. Or, someone else might call it "Testing and Re-Testing".

Personally, for that dog site, I think the design is great. Simple, and effective. But making some very simple changes could increase the conversions, and NOT mess with the overall design.... seriously.... not one pixel will be out of place.

Example - Those boxes on the front page that have text-like-images. Why not use some CSS and give G something readable. Take advantage of any NATURAL traffic that you can.... after all.... 'ITS FREE'.

Then, reconfigure the product pages where the 'add to basket' information is right there in front of the user, just below the product (or where ever you feel it will convert to sales better.... test test test). All other information like 'items in basket' 'total dollars', etc, can be kept in that box to the right.

Once your re-design is touched up, THEN look for those traffic opportunities. If you start to see your conversions increase, along with natural traffic, then I'd go back to the company your working for (cheap people IMO), and tell them whats going on -

"I felt that we've made major improvements on your site from multiple perspectives, and managed to increase sales by X percent per month. I believe the best thing now is to look into other traffic campaigns. So lets work out a budget for this project, and move forward."

mobtex wrote:

CarolineBogart wrote:

How do I put you on "ignore"?

sorry, i've no idea, i value my opinion far to much to ignore myself!

MrStitch wrote:

Mobtex - Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed today? Wow!

no, same side as usual, it just really pisses me off when i see people selling stuff they have no understanding of. if you don't understand something you are not qualified to sell it and you're much less likely to be able to look after customer demands.

<edit> Moderator edited Derogatory comment</edit>

Bye folks, your little friend is not worth the value I'm sure I would have received interacting with the rest of you.