WebDiggin.com: An Adventure to Make Money Online

We finally got one of our affiliate marketing campaigns to be an asset and generate some revenue. We generated $137.84 of profit in January. The same campaign doesn’t run on Google AdWords. Why? Because up until now, Yahoo Search Marketing set their minimum Pay Per Click bid at $0.10. This meant that your ad would run on certain keywords with a minimum bid of 10 cents on Yahoo Search Marketing, but would not meet the minimum bid requirements on Google. As a result, we’ve had more success on Yahoo than on Google. That’s all about to change.

Yahoo has announced that minimum bids are no longer fixed at $0.10 per click. Following Google’s model, Yahoo’s minimum bids on keywords will fluctuate based on preceived demand.

If you go to any auction, whether it’s Sotheby’s, eBay or your rural county’s hog auction, there’s usually a reserve price (or minimum bid) set according to what is believed to be the minimum value of the product. It’s their way of making sure that no one walks away with a cheap Van Gogh just because people aren’t lifting those paddles fast enough.

Following the auction model, we are changing the way we set the minimum bids required to participate in a Sponsored Search keyword market. In the next several weeks, we will start calculating a variable minimum bid for some of the keywords you’re bidding on. That means that sometimes the minimum bid may be lower than 10¢. Sometimes it may be higher. Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at 10¢. SOURCE: http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2008/02/26/minimum-bids/

What does this mean? I can run my current affiliate marketing campaign on Yahoo with a minimum bid of $0.10. Google tells me to raise my minimum bid to $12.00 to run the ad campaign. Assuming that the results of Yahoo’s change in minimum bid policy mirrors Google, I expect to see a lot more “please raise the minimum bid to $12 to activate.”

Presumably Yahoo’s recently announced losses forced the company to tighten the belts, reflect on their practices, and innovate. And, likewise, small fish like us will adapt and innovate as well to find the “new cheese.”

Bottom Line: 1. Prepare for some learning experiences as PPC search marketing affiliate campaigns that used to work on Yahoo’s search marketing may not work with their new dynamic minimum bid model. 2. Investigate second and third tier search engines (like Kanoodle) to see what they offer. (After all, Yahoo may try to emulate Google in terms of minimum bids, but they don’t offer the scope that Google does. Why not switch back to Google?)

(3 votes, Rating: 4.33 out of 5)

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