Yahoo is great, but they have a secret and they’re not talking about it. Every month advertisers waste tens of millions of dollars because of it. How much are you losing?

When you signed up to advertise on Yahoo you probably thought your traffic was going to come from www.yahoo.com, right? The answer is that a majority of your “Yahoo” traffic is coming from Yahoo.com, but anywhere from 25-40% of it is coming from Yahoo’s search partners. So if you are spending $1000 with Yahoo per month, you are wasting between $3000 - $5000 annually! The good news is that you can do something about it immediately.

First, a little bit of background. Yahoo search partners are websites that send targeted traffic to your website within Yahoo’s sponsored search program. This is good for Yahoo because, through these search partners, they are able to generate millions of dollars in additional revenue every month. Yahoo pays these partners a percentage of the click revenue generated from their websites. In theory, this additional source of traffic is good for you (the advertiser) because of the additional traffic these partners are able to provide. More traffic, more sales, right? Not necessarily.

Here’s the secret: Most of Yahoo’s “search partners” spawn from the porn industry and are responsible for significantly more click fraud than Yahoo.com. By default, when you sign up with to advertise with Yahoo, you are also signing up to advertise with their search partners. Here’s just a sampling of their search partners:

www.embarq.com
www.faqs101.info
www.savemorenow.org
www.activeaudience.com
www.companymanual.net
www.goodsearch.com
www.instafinder.com
www.onestepsearch.net
www.shopperscompanion.org
www.tanesha.com
www.tbzi.com
www.uclickwefind.com
www.vortal.com

So what’s the solution? Yahoo allows you to block up to 250 of their search partners from displaying your ads. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your Yahoo sponsored search account at https://marketingsolutions.login.yahoo.com.
2. Click on the Administration tab.
3. In the Account Summary to the right of Blocked Domains, click on Submit Domains.
4. Enter up to 250 Yahoo search partner domains that you want to block.
5. Click Submit.

Here’s the catch: Yahoo doesn’t provide a list of their search partners, so you need to check your website stats (specifically your referring url’s) and manually put a list together. This requires a lot of time and energy, so you might consider hiring us to do it for you. This is perhaps the single most important thing you can do to reduce your Yahoo costs.

I also highly recommend that you use Yahoo’s conversion tracking program. This doesn’t eliminate click fraud, but it does give you a very good idea of your cost per lead or sale.

Yahoo! and Google don’t care whether you set up an advertising account by yourself or hire a professional. Thousands of business owners have opted to do it on their own and paid the price (whether they knew it or not). Here are the top 5 reasons to hire a professional:

1. Although it’s pretty easy to actually sign-up with Google and Yahoo!, it’s also very easy to waste thousands of dollars once you get started. Although there is a cost associated with paying an expert to set up and possibly manage your accounts, they will save you a lot of money and headaches.

2. Your online advertising accounts are only part of your overall marketing campaign. A professional can help keep your cost per sale or lead as low as possible by providing expert advice in other important areas such as domain names, web hosting, lead generation pages and follow-up.

3. Yahoo! and Google’s ad programs are essentially video games. A true expert has years of experience and has made all of the mistakes. Take advantage of this and save time and money.

4. An expert is going to ensure that you are fully utilizing all available advertising resources and that you are tracking everything. There are many other quality sources of targeted website traffic.

5. Besides saving you thousands of dollars and countless hours, a professional Internet marketing expert will build world-class Google and Yahoo! advertising campaigns and allow you to focus on what you do best.

If you have an existing Yahoo! or Google advertising campaign or have a product or service that you want to market, contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation.

There are dozens of mistakes you can make trying to promote your products or services online. Here are the top 10 that I have encountered with clients:

1. Doing it yourself to save money
2. Not having a clear vision about your goals
3. Having a website that’s confusing to the customer
4. Hiring the cheapest vendors
5. Being too conservative
6. Focusing only on Google
7. Not tracking your results
8. Not using email marketing
9. Not backing up your website or files
10. Choosing a long or confusing domain name

and one more bonus mistake…

11. Being unwilling to change

Lets take a closer look at each mistake…

1. Doing it yourself to save money

Let’s face it - we all want to save money and we also don’t want to pay too much for anything. The problem with the “do it yourself” approach to Internet marketing is that there’s no room for error. Whether it’s your domain name, website or logo design, Google ad campaign or follow-up system, you need to hit the mark every single time if you expect to be successful. You will make a lot more money faster by hiring an expert with many years of experience.

2. Not having a clear vision about your goals

If you haven’t developed a road map of your goals, how do you expect to get there? All great products or services start out as an idea, but that vision needs to be well thought out and written down. That’s not to say, however, that you need to spend all of your time writing a business plan before taking action. Strike a balance between the two.

3. Having a website that’s confusing to the customer

Customers have thousands of choices today and their attention spans are shorter than ever. You can have a great marketing plan that brings thousands of people to your website, but if you don’t make it easy for them to buy from you, you’re done. Google is a perfect example of this. Their main advertising program is so easy to sign up for, a 2nd grader can do it. (Quick note: The fact that Google’s ad program is easy to sign up for doesn’t mean that you should do it on your own. See mistake #1 above.)

4. Hiring the cheapest vendors (web designer, marketer, web hosting company, etc.)

We all want the best deal possible, but at the end of the day you get what you pay for. If you don’t care about quality, customer service or being able to understand the person on the other end of the phone, then buy the cheapest and be prepared for the worst. However, if you value your time and want great service, then find a vendor that offers value-priced products and services. A sign that you aren’t that serious about your venture is having a website that looks like your cousin designed. Find a professional who does outstanding work at a fair price.

5. Being too conservative

A lot of people are proud of the fact that they “only pay 25 cents” per click in their Google or Yahoo! campaigns. On the surface, that might sound great, but I would be much more impressed to hear how much you make per sale and what your volume is. By consulting with an Internet marketing expert, you might find that being more aggressive in your bidding along with making a few other changes significantly increases your net profits.

6. Focusing only on Google

Yes, Google is the 900 pound gorilla and accounts for roughly 60% of all online searches, however, there are many other great advertising sources that can provide a lower cost per sale or lead (Yahoo!, Adbrite, Craigslist, etc.).

7. Not tracking your results

How do you know how profitable you are if you aren’t tracking your results? Additionally, how do you know which program is giving you the best return on investment? Not tracking your cost per sale or lead is usually connected with spending too much as well.

8. Not maximizing email marketing

Permission marketing (aka email marketing) is one of the most overlooked opportunities for promoting your product or service. Even if you are currently doing permission marketing, it’s likely that your processes can be improved and provide much better results.

9. Not backing up your website or files

What happens when the website you spent $10,000 on suddenly disappears? Or what if the hard drive on your computer crashes? Get copies of everything and back up your computers daily.

10. Choosing a long or confusing domain name

What’s easier to remember: newsweathersports.com or CNN.com? Also, get the dot com version of your domain whenever possible unless you are a non-profit.

and one more bonus mistake…

11. Being unwilling to change

The most successful people always remain open to new ideas and ways of doing things. Sometimes even the slightest change can make a world of difference.

Feel free to contact us for a free, no-obligation Internet marketing consultation

How much are you spending with Google per month? $500? $1000? $5000? For the most part, Google really does try to look out for their advertisers, but there’s one thing that they do that usually isn’t in your best interest.

When you sign up to advertise on Google, you think that that’s exactly what you’re doing, however, by default, your ads will also appear in two other places other than in Google’s search results. These are Google’s Search Network and Content Network. The Search Network consists of websites such as Earthlink.net and AOL.com. The Content Network represents those sites participating in Google’s Adsense program, such as Plentyoffish.com

Here’s the problem: While there is a lot of click fraud in Google’s search results, there’s a lot more in their Content Network. So what’s the best way to deal with this? A quick solution is to simply opt out of the Search and Content Networks. You do this simply by unchecking two boxes.

1. Log into your Adwords account and go to the Campaign Summary tab.
2. Select the campaign (i.e. Campaign #1) you want to edit and then click on “Edit Settings”.
3. Unselect Search network and Content network.
4. Click on “Save Changes”.

Your ads for this campaign will now only appear in Google.com’s search results and you should see a significant reduction in your costs immediately. By the way, Yahoo! does not allow you to opt out of their Content Network, but you can block your ads from appearing on up to 250 partner sites. I highly recommend that you do this or have us do it for you as well.

You might be asking yourself, does it ever make sense to participate in Google’s Search or Content Network? The answer is yes, but it needs to done very carefully and monitored closely. Feel free to contact us for a free consultation.

One of the most powerful yet overlooked tools that Google and Yahoo! offer is conversion tracking. This tool can very accurately tell you how much you are paying per lead or sale.

Most advertisers spend too much time worrying about what they are paying per click rather than per sale or lead. Of course you want to keep your cost per click as low as possible, however, conversion tracking helps you determine how aggressive you can be (per click) and still be profitable. For example, if you don’t know how much a lead or sale costs you, you might be bidding conservatively to keep your costs down. But what if you doubled your average cost per click and tripled your profits? Wouldn’t you want to do that as much as possible?

Your average cost per click is only one factor in determining your cost per lead or sale. Another component that’s just as important, if not more, is the landing page (or web page) you are sending your visitor to with the Google or Yahoo! ad. Most advertisers send the user to their home page thinking that’s what makes the most sense. Most of the time this is a mistake and keeps your cost per conversion much higher than it needs to be.

Feel free to contact us for a free consultation on implementing Google or Yahoo! conversion tracking or reducing your cost per lead or sale.

Google has introduced brand-image ads for mobile phones, in a bid to extend beyond the computer-based Web market into the emerging market for advertising on phones.

In a statement on the company’s Web site, the company said it had designed mobile images to look like standard graphical display ads for desktop computer Web pages, but made them smaller to fit on mobile phone screens.

The company said all mobile image ads are targeted according to the keywords users type into phones to search for information. The ads are priced on a cost-per-click basis, and must link to Web pages optimized to work on mobile phones.

Only one image ad is displayed on each mobile page, a move to that appears designed to limit clutter on small screens.

“For advertisers, mobile image ads serve as a branding tool and have shown to have good click-through rates,” Alexandra Kenin, a product marketing manager, for Google Mobile Ads said in a blog post on the company’s site.

Mobile image ads are available in 13 national markets: Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, the UK, and the United States, Google said.

As the blogging phenomenon continues, it’s always interesting to take a snap shot of the most popular blogs. This list is according to Technorati:

1. The Huffington Post

2. TechCrunch

3. Engadget

4. Gizmodo

5. Boing Boing

6. Lifehacker

7. Ars Technica

8. Mashable

9. icanhascheezburger.com

10. Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Sites like The Drudge Report which have not morphed into a blog are slowing losing popularity. One glaring omission from the list seems to be PerezHilton.com

Complete list

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