Earth Skater Internet Marketing
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Are Yahoo! Sponsored Listings Worth The Investment?
In this article a real-life case study is discussed of a marketing
experiment with a Yahoo! Sponsor Listing to reveal whether it was worth the
investment.
A Yahoo! Sponsor Listing is a commercial web site that has paid for an
enhanced listing within the "Sponsor Listings" box in certain categories of
the Yahoo Web directory.
You must already be listed in the Yahoo! directory, before you can
purchase a Sponsor Listing. Unless you're already listed, you will have to
pay $299 ($600 for adult web sites) to have your site reviewed and indexed.
A Sponsor Listing costs $25-$300 per month for each category, for each
individual web site.
I submitted one of my sites to the "Search
Engine Optimization" category. Yahoo! charged me $100 per month for that
particular category.
The following listing was displayed within the "Sponsor Listings" box at
the top of the page:
Search Engine Optimization Strategies - features optimization ebooks
and software.
Results
My listing was added on March 27, 2002. In the following 15 days, I've
received a grand total of, wait for it...
38 click throughs!
Shock! Horror! So, what figure was you expecting? 2000?
By the end of the campaign, I ended up with about 76 click throughs for
the month. At a cost of $100 per month for the listing, I end up paying
$1.31 per visitor.
That was simply too rich for my blood. I'm used to paying 16 cents per
visitor at the Overture pay per click
search engine.
So, I decided to cancel my Sponsor Listing, after only one month. But,
I'm sure some of the other listings are profiting from their Sponsor
Listing.
My listing was promoting low-cost books, which offers a small profit
margin.
Other listings in the same category were for optimization services which
charge hundreds, even thousands of dollars, per client. The higher profit
margin would certainly justify the cost, assuming they convert the visitors
into customers.
Conclusion
There are a number of possible reasons why my Sponsor Listing received so
few clicks.
Maybe the listing title and description wasn't tempting enough to attract
click throughs. Unfortunately, there's little I can do about that, as Yahoo!
will not change a listing, unless there is an error in it.
The large number of competing listings may also have contributed to the
lack of click throughs.
Placement of sites within the "Sponsor Listings" box is random and
rotates every time the page is reloaded. Since there were 21 Sponsor
Listings in total in the category, my listing only showed up once every four
to five times the page was loaded.
So, all in all, it wasn't a worthwhile investment for me.
But it could prove worthwhile for you, if you're selling a product or
service that has a much higher profit margin.
Visit Yahoo! for more information on
Yahoo! Sponsor Listings.
Call 877-627-2492 to discuss your marketing plan
today.
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