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** SiteBuilderNews - 3/14/2002 Issue
** Helping You Build A Better Website
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In This Issue of SiteBuilderNews:

=> 1. Editor's Note
=> 2. Article: PPC Bid Management Software Showdown
=> 3. Site Builder Tip
=> 4. Sites for Site Builders
=> 5. Site Builder News

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1. Editor's Note
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Hello SiteBuilders,

How much money are you losing with each click of your listing at
Overture, FindWhat or any other pay-per-click search engine?
Prevent overpaying with a good bid management system! But which
should you choose? Kalena Jordan answers that this week with a
comparison of the major competitors.

--
Dan Grossman
edi-@sitebuildernews.com

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2. Feature Article:
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PPC Bid Management Software Showdown
By Kalena Jordan


If you've been keeping up with the search engine industry lately,
you'll know that Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a fast growing trend.
Nearly all of the major search engines and directories have now
integrated one type of PPC or another into their search results.
At the moment Overture.com (formerly GoTo) is the clear leader in
the PPC field, with an estimated 90% of the total PPC search
market. But others such as FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting are
slowly catching on.

Overture currently has partnerships in place with Yahoo, AOL, AV,
Lycos, Netscape, InfoSpace, MSN and Excite. People bid to
purchase keywords from Overture and the top 2 or 3 bids (called
Premium Listings) appear on their partner sites when searches are
conducted for those keywords. Most of the time, Overture results
appear above regular search results as "sponsored matches", so
you can see how effective this type of campaign can be when used
to draw targeted traffic to a web site. Whenever a viewer clicks
on a sponsored listing, they are taken to the advertiser's site
and the advertiser is charged for the click at the rate
determined by their bid on Overture.

The main drawbacks to advertising on PPC engines to date have
been:

a) The quick exhaustion of funds due to large traffic volume

b) The time consuming nature of bid rank analysis for multiple
keywords

c) The impact of bid gaps on cost-effectiveness (when your bid is
more than it needs to be to maintain your target rank).

When you are managing PPC campaigns for hundreds of keyword sets
for multiple client sites, these problems are compounded.
Fortunately, software has sprung up to help people manage their
PPC campaigns and automate the bidding process.

We have reviewed eight of these Bid Management Software programs
in our effort to find the one right for our client campaigns and
thought we'd share the results with you:

(Please note a more detailed version of this article, including a
Software Features Chart can be viewed at our site here:
http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/PPC_Bid_Management_Soft
ware_Showdown.htm)

1. Tangare's Pay Per Click Maximiser www.tangare.com

The Pay Per Click Maximiser is a great product. A downloadable
desktop program, no monthly fees, plenty of keywords and a good
price for the Standard edition (USD $199 for 500 keywords). It
supports FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting in conjunction with
Overture US & UK and allows the user to determine the bid update
frequency. Other notable features include the ability to export
reports to Excel, HTML and email.

My only real problem with this program is the Interface, which
tends to be confusing, (all that gray on gray) and not very
intuitive. There is a help menu, but on first launch, it is not
clear where to start or how to launch a new project. The "manage
search terms" tab is also a little user unfriendly, but once you
study the help menu to determine how to set your rank targets and
bid limits, you're off and running. Their free trial download
simulates the bid optimization process, but is otherwise fully
functional. Score 8/10


2. Click Patrol www.clickpatrol.com

Click Patrol claim to be the largest provider of automated
Pay-Per-Click bid management services, but I can't see any
redeeming features that differentiate the service from other
providers. For starters, it is Internet based, so if you are
security conscious, you may not like the idea of handing over
your Overture account login details to a third party provider.
Then there are the monthly fees, which are the most expensive of
all programs reviewed, ranging from $100 to $500, with an extra
fee per keyword if you want your bids checked more often than
every 24 hours. See the Features Chart for details. They do
support seven of the major PPC engines and I hear their "Auto
Position" feature works well to close price gaps, but there is no
free trial of their system that I could find, only case studies
and a screen capture. Score 5/10


3. Gapster www.did-it.com/gapster

With the release of their freeware bid optimization tool Gapster,
Did-it had an opportunity to win hearts and capitalize on a
thankful market. It sure sounded promising: free automatic bid
monitoring & updating for 200 keywords on Overture US & UK,
FindWhat and Kanoodle.

Unfortunately, they chose to abuse the privacy of their customers
and win enemies for their trouble. As reported by Danny Sullivan
in his latest Search Engine Update newsletter, beta users of
Gapster allegedly had their Overture account login details
published on the Internet last month, care of one of Did-it's own
servers. The security breach was quickly corrected, but the
damage to Did-It's reputation was already done. Mindful of this
first impression clouding my judgment, I tried to download the
beta version to verify the product itself and give them the
benefit of the doubt. But at time of writing the download was
unavailable due to the software undergoing an update. Let's hope
their updating their security protocols. Score 0/10


4. Save Per Click www.saveperclick.com

Another Internet based program, Save Per Click supports more PPC
engines than any of the other products we reviewed, Nine in
total, including some I've never heard of. They offer a free 7day
trial, but you need to have an account already in place at one of
the supported PPC engines. This is a fairly straightforward
program, but my major gripe is price and the inability to
pre-determine bid update frequency, although you CAN choose time
of day. The monthly fee ranges from $19.95 to $89.95 for the
Standard edition (updates once a day) and $59.95 to $199.95 for
the Pro edition (updates once an hour). Price range is determined
by number of keywords. See the Features Chart for details. Score
6/10


5. Auto Pilot www.managebid.com

Probably the pick of the Internet based programs, Manage Bid's
Auto Pilot software was the only one reviewed that provided
unlimited keywords. The hitch is that each keyword will cost you
0.25 USD a month to monitor, with a minimum spend of $25 per
domain, per month. Bid updates are done every 24 hours and the
program provides support for eight PPC engines (some obscure).
There is also an Economy Mode for the penny pinchers, at 0.10 USD
per keyword, with a minimum spend of $10 per domain, per month.
But economizers must update their bids manually - see the
Features Chart for details. Score 7/10

6. PPC Professional www.ppcmanagement.com

Now this one has real potential. You have the choice of
purchasing a lifetime version or a monthly subscription and you
also have the flexibility of determining how often your bids are
checked and updated. Keywords supported range from 50 to 5,000+
with costs staggered from $89 or $12 per month for 50 keywords to
$999 or $100 per month for 5000+ keywords (see the Features Chart
for detailed pricing). With a "Smart Bid" feature to ensure your
bids are cost-effective and the ability to import keywords
straight from Overture, this new product has many features the
bigger names don't. You can print reports or email them directly
to customers and the developers claim to keep your login and
account info secure. It also supports unlimited Overture accounts
for those of you with multiple clients. Currently the software
only supports Overture.com, but a new release planned shortly
will support other engines and include new features. The 10 day,
10 keyword trial version has a few bugs to be ironed out and the
interface isn't as intuitive as others, but definitely one to
watch. Score 7/10

7. Position Guardian www.positionguardian.com

Not the most feature-packed product, Position Guardian (Premium)
is an Internet based bid monitoring and gap analysis tool that
automates the process of checking your bids on Overture and sends
you daily notification of bid gaps. Unlike the other products
reviewed, Position Guardian does not include automated bid
updating, you have to manually change the bids yourself by
logging in to your Overture account. Sure it's cheaper than some,
with prices ranging from $7.95 to $57.95 per month depending on
keyword numbers, but it still seems like a lot to pay for less
than half the work (see the Features Chart for detailed pricing).
In their defense, they do provide a free online version that
allows you to manually check for bid gaps one keyword at a time -
handy if you're worried about that all important keyword. Score
4/10


8. BidRight www.bidright.net

We have a winner! BidRight was very hard to fault. A downloadable
desktop program, no monthly fees, generous keyword limits and a
very competitive price for their new release Pro edition (USD
$199 for 500 keywords). See the Features Chart for more pricing
options. Version 2 supports FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting in
conjunction with Overture US & UK and allows the user to
determine the bid update frequency from every 60 seconds to every
24 hours. Their interface follows the WYSISYG principle and it
was the easiest of all the software to install and start using.

Particularly impressive is the "Gap Surfing" tool that finds the
most cost-effective position from a range of ranks that you
predetermine. So if you wanted to remain in the top 5 positions,
you choose position 1 as your target rank and enable gap surfing
with a range of 4. BidRight will find the largest price gap in
the top 5 and slot your bid in there automatically whenever it is
scheduled to update, preventing you from overbidding and saving
you lots of money in the process. Other new features include the
ability to export reports in CSV format, a drop back rank feature
when maximum bid has been reached. Combine all this with the
ability to customize the update frequency for your most important
keywords and you have a very powerful tool that becomes a must
for managing any PPC campaign. You can download a fully
functioning 15 day demo, with the only disadvantage a five
keyword limit. Score 9/10

Well BidRight was the ultimate winner of our Showdown and I was
so impressed with the product that I immediately signed up to
become an affiliate! If you would like to buy BidRight, you may
like to use our affiliate link:
http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?bidright+NARxJp+index.html.
Be sure to mention Coupon Code WR 007 to obtain a 5% discount (we
do get a commission if you use our link, so if that bothers you,
feel free to use the general link above). Remember you can view
the Features Chart for all the software reviewed from the longer
version of this article located at our site:
http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/PPC_Bid_Management_Soft
ware_Showdown.htm.

If you are in the market for any kind of Bid Management Software,
you may want to keep an eye on current talk about the
implications of such software on server load at Overture.
Apparently Overture are considering restricting access to their
servers from persons using bid management software because the
server load is becoming too great. They may block access from
certain IP addresses that abuse the system or they may restrict
access by software. To reduce the impact on search engine
servers, you should use your bid management software responsibly,
restricting bid checking to every few hours or daily rather than
every few minutes.

More: http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/t1479/s.html
http://searchengineforums.com/Forum16/HTML/000836.html
http://www.pay-per-click-bid-managers.com/

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Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank. Kalena was one of the
first search engine optimization experts in Australia & New
Zealand and is well known and respected in her field. For more of
her articles on search engine ranking and online marketing,
please visit http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com

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Reach thousands of subscribers! For ad details and prices, email:
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3. Site Builder Tip
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This Week's Tip: Add Testimonials

The best way to add credibility to the affiliate program that you
are promoting is to add your own testimonial for the product.

You really need to purchase / use the product or service yourself
and then tell the world how wonderful the product or service is
and the benefits of the purchase.

In addition to your own testimonial, add the testimonials of
others. Many people are willing to offer the use of their
testimonials in exchange for a link to their web site or
newsletter.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Deborah Anderson, of AndersonCreations.com, teaches web design
and internet marketing in addition to publishing Webmaster Tips
Weekly. Subscribe free by sending a blank email to
mailto:subsc-@webmaster-tips-weekly.com
http://webmaster-tips-weekly.com/webtips

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4. Sites for Site Builders
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paste the HTML into your site!

Check it out at... http://cometzone.cometsystems.com/

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5. Site Builder News
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How to make money from your website
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ACORD Selects ebix.com to Build Next Generation Website
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Cape Clear releases new Web services tools
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What the Internet Needs: Cheap, Reliable Web Hosting
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