Are 5 cent keywords even possible anymore?

[drewdrew]

Hello,

I am a new poster to this forum but have read posts on WF for the past couple of years...this post is in regards to marketing an ebook I wrote.

I have used the keyword selector tool numerous times to dig through and find long-tail keywords that have little or no competition and then I googled each keyword and confirmed that there is indeed little to no competition in the search results.

The estimated CPC for these keywords is listed at .05. Then when I activated the adwords campaign, the minimum bid adwords would accept is $1.00 all the way up to $4.75. I balked at this but entered the amount that I was prompted to enter - I thought maybe I could still see actual clicks in the .05 - .25 range.

Not the case - I am being charged .89 to $2.50 for each and every click on these keywords. There is no way I can afford to do this - my whole strategy is to capture low CPC, long-tail keywords with little competition - which are out there mind you (according to the keyword selector tool at least).

Can somebody explain this discrepancy to me please? My bottom line is I want to capture .05-.25 keywords - is this even possible any more? If so, please tell me how!

Thank you for taking time to read my post.

[paulgl]

If you can't afford adwords, don't use it. You must be prepared to
bid high. If you are a new user, you will need to bid, in most cases,
much higher than the going rate, and probably never be shown in
even the top 4.

You do this in tandem with improving your QS and CTR. Then you
too will get a much lower rate, maybe not 5 cents...

From what I have gathered, and others can correct me, the really
low price clicks go to people who google wants to help them get
their ROI up, on sites that have sucked with their adsense.
Smart pricing, so to speak.

I suppose there are some very useless keywords that can be gotten
for 5 cents. Obviously, you're not in that category.

Newbies forget it is not CPC, but ROI. It is long term testing. It is
getting a QS of 10 (at least 9) and lowering your cost.

If you can't afford adwords, get out before you lose your shirt.

If you are just doing search, your cost will probably never be that low.

Paul

[Fornicating]

Guess you must be in an extremely competitive niche, I pay 0.15 for my adwords at the moment, but using a coupon on the first test runs, and I am in a competitive market, one of the keywords I was running was not accepted for this price, they wanted 0.20 but I have not upped my price, kept it at 0.15 because the other keywords were just as important to me.

So I suppose it all depends on what market you are in, and if your competition wants to get those keyword Ads in more than you do.

[reg45]

They are on Bing. In fact you can get 1 cent clicks on Bing and that's search, not content!

[wolfmmiii]

I get lots of clicks for as low as $0.05 when promoting via AdWords.

[calfred]

I heard you can get extremely cheap clicks using the content network instead of search one.

I've also heard that costs of PPC have gone way up for most niches.

[wolfmmiii]

If you do things right, you can still get clicks for under $0.10 on the search network.

[drewdrew]

Well, I dont mind bidding high to get my keyword accepted, but I would expect to have a low CPC if my ad and keyword are in alignment and there is little to no competition for the keyword... and I am not seeing that.

Bottom line the google keyword tool seems of little use here. I am not aiming for the high competition, heavy traffic keywords but the long tail variety that have hundreds to a few thousand global searches a month.

I contacted google forum about this and they told me to target exact phrasing to see if that altered the price...

I have also used Bing search and a content search company called Qualibid - which i discovered through this forum. My campaigns are paused right now though...

Bing also owns yahoo now so apparently your ads are appearing in both places. What I have discovered is there are indeed cheap clicks to be had over there right away - .5 and .6 etc - BUT - not nearly as much search activity. So I have only been able to capture high traffic, broad keywords. My CTR is terrible but I have got many hundreds of unique visits to my site - but I don't think they are terribly on target.

Qualibid is much the same - got a lot of traffic on the cheap but it seems really broad. I counted 589 clicks between qualibid/bing before I got my first sale. But the sale came from Bing...

[wolfmmiii]

Originally Posted by drewdrew

Well, I dont mind bidding high to get my keyword accepted, but I would expect to have a low CPC if my ad and keyword are in alignment and there is little to no competition for the keyword... and I am not seeing that.

What is your QS? Unless it is 7 or above, you can forget about sub-$0.10 CPC.

[drewdrew]

Ok thanks. I can't see how to thank someone in WF