Peak Small Business Newsletter
April 19, 2003
Year 2003, Issue 16
In this issue:
Opening Remarks
Quote of the Week
Featured Resource - LeechFTP 1.3
Featured Article - NUMBERS YOU CAN
LIVE BY
Resources We Recommend
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Opening Remarks
I hope all of you have had a profitable and safe week.
Welcome to our new subscribers!
As I mentioned last week, I have put up a new page on our
website that explains the NewsMon option for receiving our newsletter.
The URL is:
http://www.peakconsultinginc.com/newsmon.htm
The page is a little graphics intense, so give it a moment to
load.
For those of you who did not receive last weeks issue,
NewsMon is a small downloadable program that allows you to subscribe to
ezines without giving out your email address. It puts you more in
control of your subscriptions and saves bandwidth. I won't go into a
great deal of detail here since you can read about it at the URL above on the website.
Of course, you can still subscribe to the email version of
the newsletter if you prefer to receive it that way. If you choose to
use NewsMon rather than continue your subscription via email, please send me
an email letting me know your preference and I'll remove you from the email
list. Send your email to
mailto:cary@peakconsultinginc.com
I also mentioned to you that I have been thinking of changing
our newsletters somewhat. Here are the decisions I've made:
-
I'm going to begin publishing the newsletter once
every two weeks. The Small Business and Home Business versions will
go out on alternating weekends. For example, this week I'll publish
the Small Business version only. Next week, I'll publish
the Home Business version only.
-
I'm going to cease including a guest article in the
newsletter. Instead, I'm going to be adding guest articles to our
Small Business Articles and Home Business Articles web pages each week.
I'll include a link in the newsletter to those articles so you'll know
which new articles have been posted.
-
I have decided that we will no longer accept paid
advertising. We have always limited the number of ads we allow, but
now there will no longer be top and middle sponsor ads and no classified
ad. We will continue to feature a free resource each week and have
added a new section called "Resources We Recommend" which will contain
resource links to various categories of business tools but no advertising
copy. The resources listed will probably rotate each week although I
may make this a static list over time. I may also have it link to a
categorized resource listing on our website.
-
This opening section will be used for any
administration, updates, news notifications or editorials I believe are
called for in a given week. Some weeks it may be no more than a
"Welcome" and link to the online version. Other weeks, like this
week, I will use it to update you on administrative matters or news I
think you should be apprised of. Some weeks it might take the place
of a featured article if the subject is meaty enough.
-
You may notice I've updated the format of the HTML
version of the newsletter to a leaner, cleaner look. I like simple!
And that's it for now! I may make more changes in the
coming weeks. If you have any suggestions or prefer I leave in
something I've removed, let me know. Please.
As usual, if you prefer to view this newsletter online, the
URL is:
http://www.peakconsultinginc.com/newsletters/sbnl_apr1903.htm
(Or, download and use NewsMon)!
Cary Christian
mailto:cary@peakconsultinginc.com
Quote of the Week
The person who is willing to say yes to experience is the
person who discovers new frontiers.
- John Marks Templeton
Featured Resource
LeechFTP 1.3
This is a very simple and terrific little FTP client!
We've downloaded and tried quite a few, including most of the more popular
offerings, and we like this little jewel better than most. It's super
easy to use, very intuitive, and the price is certainly right: fr^e!
http://stud.fh-heilbronn.de/~jdebis/leechftp/downloads.html
Featured Article
NUMBERS YOU CAN LIVE
BY
by: Cary Christian
I participated in a marketing survey last week. The survey
was run in a forum format which made it possible to see everyone else's
responses to the questions.
The respondents were all small business people, much like most of you, and
most seemed to be running successful businesses. There were many good ideas
set forth and many interesting answers to questions that dealt with how
individual companies deal with online marketing mediums.
There was one question about the maximum amount people would bid for cost
per click advertising, such as Pay-Per-Click search engines. Some of the
answers floored me!
Quite a few of the respondents answered that they would never bid more than
10 cents or 25 cents on keywords or keyword phrases. It made me wonder how
many other people set these types of limits on themselves. More
specifically, it made me wonder how many of YOU set these types of limits.
THE PROBLEM
The people who responded to this question by quoting a limit on what they
would bid are looking at the issue from the standpoint of "100 clicks will
cost me $10" or "100 clicks will cost me $25." By itself, this information
is meaningless. People who approach the issue in this manner might or might
not be saving money, but they are very likely missing opportunities.
THE PROPER APPROACH
A marketer needs to answer three other questions before considering whether
100 clicks is worth $10, $25 or even $100. The three questions are:
1. How many TARGETED visitors do I need to attract to the sales page
for this product to make one sale?
2. What is my gross profit margin on this product before advertising costs?
3. What profit after advertising costs will I be satisfied with?
With the answers to those three questions there is no guesswork to what the
bid will be. It will become readily apparent and there will be no need to
set artificial limits.
AN EXAMPLE
Let's say you sell product A for $100. It costs you $50 to buy it from your
supplier or to manufacture it yourself. That leaves you a gross profit
before advertising of $50. You want to make at least $25 on this product
after advertising.
You sell product B for $75. It is an information product that costs you
nothing to produce. You want to make at least $40 on this product after
advertising.
You have tracked the visitors to your sales pages for these products and
have found that you need 100 targeted visitors to make one sale of product A
and only 50 targeted visitors to make one sale of product B.
What will your bids be for each product?
PRODUCT A
You know it will take 100 visitors to make a sale. Take your gross profit of
$50 and subtract the minimum profit you will accept after advertising of $25
and you know you have $25 per sale to spend on advertising. $25 divided by
100 visitors gives you a maximum bid of 25 cents for product A.
PRODUCT B
You know it will take 50 visitors to make a sale. Take your gross profit of
$75 and subtract the minimum profit you will accept after advertising of $40
and you know you have $35 per sale to spend on advertising. $35 divided by
50 visitors gives you a maximum bid of 70 cents for product B.
Perform this analysis on all the products you sell using pay-per-click
marketing resources and you will never over or under bid for any product.
MATCHING THE BIDS TO KEYWORDS
Once you have your bids nailed down, you need to consider where this bid
puts you in the rankings. If you have 70 cents to spend on each visitor for
product B but your competition for a particular keyword is spending more
like $1.50, how far down in the listings will your 70 cent bid place you?
Resist the temptation to artificially raise your bid to compete and,
likewise, resist the temptation to bid 70 cents for a particular keyword or
keyword phrase if it will only get you ranked 60th on the third page of
search results. Find different keywords! It's the combination of the right
bid and creative selection of keywords and phrases that yields success.
BID AVERAGING
You can also average your bids across keywords to come up to an average bid
that equals your maximum bid price. Using our maximum bid of 70 cents for
product B, an example of bid averaging would be bidding $1 on a highly
competitive keyword that produces 1,000 hits per month and only 40 cents
each on two keywords that each produce 500 hits per month. In a perfect
world you would get 1,000 hits at $1, 1,000 hits at 40 cents, and your
average bid would still be 70 cents.
Of course, it's not a perfect world. You're just as likely to get 1,000 hits
at $1 and 100 hits at 40 cents which would give you an average bid of 95
cents. If you're going to attempt to use bid averaging, follow these
guidelines:
1. Give yourself a cushion. Calculate your average bid up front to be
less than your maximum. If you're working with a maximum bid of 70 cents,
average it down to 50 cents, 60 cents max.
2. Make sure you average using similar keywords. Don't bid high on a
really targeted keyword and low on keywords that are not likely to be nearly
as targeted.
3. Always calculate your average bids based on a single product. Do
not mix and match products that have different gross profit margins.
After you've gained some specific experience using bid averaging on a
particular product, you can gradually work your average bid back up to your
normal maximum.
WHY GO TO THIS TROUBLE?
It's all about opportunity. Pay-per-click advertising allows you to finitely
target your sales message and attract visitors who are much more likely to
buy. If you understand your products and what it takes to sell them, you
will gain the maximum benefit from this type of advertising at the least
cost. Anything less, and you are wasting money.
© Copyright 2003
Resources We Recommend
Web Hosting -
http://www.peakconsultinginc.com/web_hosting.htm
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