I want a search engine on my site, but only banners won't pay the rent. Sites like FindWhat and GoTo allow you to show their paid results above your own search results.

My question: What do you in average earn per thousand displayed PPC results?

-- Some research I did --

- According to Forbes: "In the fourth quarter of 2000, GoTo's advertisers paid 17 cents on average for 228 million clicks".

- Media Metrix says GoTo gets about 7.2 million unique visitors a month. Including their affiliates they get 20 million unique
visitors. (Source: http://www.internetstockreport.com/tracker/article/0,1785,711_328091,00.html)

- Over 90 percent of GoTo's traffic takes place at affiliate partner sites. The clickthroughs occur there. (Source: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/00/09-goto.html)

- Fool.com tells that: "GoTo's own site still generates close to 150 million monthly searches every month".

If they generate 150 million searches per month on their own site (10%), then this has to be 1350 million searches on other sites (90%). So 1650 million searches per month in all.

If 76 million (1/3 of 228 million) of these searches result in a paid clickthrough (of 17 cents), then every 21.7 searches should make you 40-50% of 17 cents.

Is that also about right when showing the paid results above search results on your own site?

Thanks

Interesting info. However, I would like to point out some inconsistency.

1. If MediaMetrix says that Goto is getting 7.2 M unique a month out of 20 M unique total that would be about 30% of total unique. On the other hand, Searchenginewatch says that 90% of clickthroughs are coming from affiliate sites. Assuming both reports are accurate then this would indicate that Goto own uniques are shy clickers whereas affiliate uniques are prolific clickers. Don't you think, in terms of percentage, that the amount of clickthroughs should also be consistent with that of the number of uniques? Meaning if the ratio of uniques is 30%:70%(MediaMetrix) then it could be expected that the clickthrough should be within the range; ie, 25%:75% or 35%:65%, not 10%:90%(Searchenginewatch). Don't you think that there's a significant statistical difference between the report? If both reports are accurate it further indicate that clickthroughs from affiliate sites are inflated(Could this be the reason why there's a lot of complain about quality of clickthroughs from Goto?).

2. Number of searches - 150 M searches a month, in order to analyze this data, it should be further broken down. Bear in mind that there are 2 types of Goto affiliates; a)those that are allowed to display the paid listing and b)those who are allowed to use the 'search box' only. I would surmise that 150 M searches is the total searches which includes the affiliates sites. All goto search box is directly connected to Goto querying program. Statistically, I would err in the safe side rather than calculate things in the high side. In short it's suicide to assume the actual number of clickthroughs based on insufficient data that there are 150 M searches at Goto and 10% Clickthrough then proceed to estimate the number of searches in the affiliate sites.

Hope this would help you to investigate this matter further. Good luck in your research and keep us posted.

Now if you are a kid looking for a extra $50 per quarter to boost your pocket money then fine, Goto et al is probably exactly what you need. Yet most companies or even enterprising individuals won't want such a bum deal.

If you want to offer search on your site and earn some decent money from even so so traffic and stand out from the crowd then I would recommend a custom directory/affiliate based partnership with a PPC that gives you 50% of the action and some control over your listings.

So for example get a top directory program like Hyperseek, buy a database or grab parts of the ODP and customise it for your site. Don't just take the entire ODP because thats lame and every Bob's homepage can pull this data in anyway. Running a customised directory lets you do wonderful things when mixed in with your affiliate based PPC partnership. You can mix in the results with plugins, set featured sites and allow people to add their own site etc. In short it looks wonderful and is very flexible, sure it probably presents your site as something its not but first impressions count big. Umm our site started like this (cough)

Now get on the line to one of the PPCs and say you want to run their sponsored links or you want to pull in their database, tell them what kind of traffic you can give them, be economical if it will get you the deal, I would try for 50% which if they are a relatively new PPC you will probably get. Try and get a 6 month or annual contract signed also, that way if they get big they can't suddenly start throwing their weight around and cutting you down to 10%. Make sure you get paid monthly also.

Now for each of those $2.50 'casino' clicks that your users click on, you walk of with half the readies, golden rule though keep your results relevant.

Not saying its easy but with dedication there is no reason you can't get a few thousand bucks a month out of such a setup. Having your own directory also helps you stand out from all those lame searchfuel, goto affiliate sites. As for your monthly ctr its very difficult to say. Wholly based on your traffic and demographics. But having traffic will not always mean you make money.

Say you have 500-1000 peeps hitting your index page each day. Thats quite a lot for the average site if they are running on their own steam. Now you might put your expensive $2.50 casino links on your main page but if no-one is looking for casino they won't turn into clicks.

If you put your much less costly generic links up instead, say only worth 0.25 but 60% of your visitors go clicky clicky then we are talking $$$. Again look at your search engine referrals, what were the keywords that were used. If 80% of people were looking for 'web hosting' then $2.00 web hosting links would be a good line for you index page.

Any kind of unique search solution costs money and time to setup, if you want to make it work you need to think PPC or PPS and secondly plan how you can make your site unique from all the lame search clones already out there. Branding is important, as is unique content, speed and relevancy. Also just as important is the management that goes into forming and implementing your ideas and partnerships.

Chris

[This message has been edited by chrisuk (edited 05-28-2001).]

If you do the math from reasonable conservative estimates based on 10 - 30 percent of the people clicking on results 1 - 5 you would be wrong.

Bottom line: it isn't as easy as you might think, and the number of people clicking on the top 10 results is a lot LOWER than you would think.

I am interested if anyone knows how many searches GoTo gets per month. Google gets about 60 million a day, so 1650 million is almost the same amount of traffic for GoTo.

chrisuk: Thanks for responding to my email. You give some excellent advice. Hyperseek seems like a good program and I already have a small directory with links from my previous site. I will probably also install the AltaVista search module.

I aggree that unique content, speed and relevancy etc. are important. However, you say it is possible to get a few thousand bucks a month (I assume that is what you are earning). Can you tell how many hits/searches your site gets each month? This would give me an idea what at least one site is earning. Is this really a better deal than the $1 CPM banner ads?

takacsj: "the number of people clicking on the top 10 results is a lot LOWER than you would think" What would be your estimate if it isn't 10 - 30 percent?

We are running a targeted directory and our top 3 gets around 30%-40% out of our total unique visitors.

Were not Goto affiliates though, but aligned with other popular ppc.

As per revenue, there's a lot of planning involved in order to have a successful directory. Anybody could create a directory or searchengine, it's how you managed it and your business strategy, that's what would seperate you from the rest and with it a much better revenue.

"so that I know what I can offer my affiliates."

Ask yourself, why would anyone be your affiliate when they could simply go to the source?
Are you going to be a real PPC engine with people paying you for traffic? Or are you an affiliate site competing for traffic just like everyone else?

[This message has been edited by paulmaas (edited 05-28-2001).]

I like your search engine, if I'm a nurse or in health care industry, I would definitely bookmark your site.

paulmaas,

There's really no hard rules on what you are planning. As I have indicated before, it all depends on your business acumen.

I say it's a safe bet that there are a lot of Hyperseek and Link SQL owners out there that started with similar plan as yours. But if you visit the sister site of this forum ( http://gethighforums.com/bin/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&forum=Advertising+Sales&number=10&DaysPrune=30&LastLogin= ), there are a lot of web owners that are complaining of their earnings.

In order to succeed in the Internet medium you have to stand out. Take for example searchengineforums.com and searchenginewatch.com at first thought they seem to compete at each other on a second thought they actually compliment each other, fueling each other with traffic. Both have the same product (search engines reviews). It is how they present this product to the users, that is how they stand out.

I'm not saying that it's useless to start another PPC but you better have a unique strategy and not depend heavily on statistical figures.

If you start your PPC acting on the basis of insufficient statistical figure and having the same business system with other PPC, you are facing a hard climb.

Figure this out. ODP is a very popular directory (at least with the web masters ) and a lot of would be directory are strictly copying ODP data. Why are we not hearing about these directories? Now apply this scenario to PPC.

Take your time and study the market. If you did so already then good luck and keep us posted.

Yes the source will be made up of the same content and overcoming that is one of the obstacles on the road to success. That is why I said so much about mixing your content to make your site stand out from all the sheep.

Dmoz implementers are faced with a similar challenge. Affiliate PPCs can and do work well with a proper business plan and a sound set of design goals. In fact I prefer the term PPC partners to affiliate, 'affiliate' stinks of searchfuel or something tacky like that.

It can be done, it is being done, we are doing it. And if it all goes pear shaped we still have our own infrastructure in the form of our unique directory.

Example : Over the weekend the data connection between Espotting and ourselves had techie problems, during that time we switched back to our local directory with sponsored links and things kept running. You do need strong content of your own so you can make your site unique and so you have something to fall back on in my opinion.

Chris

The problem is that when starting a PPC you will not have any paid results. So we want to promote our site via affiliates and offer them a percentage of our profit. But at start there is no profit. So just like e.g. Infospace displays commission based results from GoTo, FindWhat, Sprinks etc. we will start with some of those results. Infospace has an affilite program as well (3 cents per search). Whenever an advertiser makes a bid on our site, it will replace the listings from GoTo etc. So bids made on our site will have priority.
I think BigWhat has more or less the same business strategy.

If this would be a discussion about the CPM rate of banners, one person would say that he had earned $1 CPM at FlyCast. Another person would respond that his CPM rate was $1.5 at another network.
I hoped to start the same kind of discussion at this forum. If you get one million searches/hits a month and you earn $3,000 then your profit would be $3 per thousand page views. Someone else would say that with FindWhat they earned $3.5 per thousand etc.

I know there are a lot of content related issues to think about. But for now I really need to know what to offer my affilites at start, when no one has placed a bid on my site and all the PPC profit comes from FindWhat etc. Only webmasters that display commission based results can aswer this question for me.

paulmaas@my-deja.com

[This message has been edited by paulmaas (edited 05-30-2001).]

The problem is that when starting a PPC you will not have any paid results. So we want to promote our site via affiliates and offer them a percentage of our profit. But at start there is no profit. So just like e.g. Infospace displays commission based results from GoTo, FindWhat, Sprinks etc. we will start with some of those results. Infospace has an affilite program as well (3 cents per search). Whenever an advertiser makes a bid on our site, it will replace the listings from GoTo etc. So bids made on our site will have priority.
I think BigWhat has more or less the same business strategy.

If this would be a discussion about the CPM rate of banners, one person would say that he had earned $1 CPM at FlyCast. Another person would respond that his CPM rate was $1.5 at another network.
I hoped to start the same kind of discussion at this forum. If you get one million searches/hits a month and you earn $3,000 then your profit would be $3 per thousand page views. Someone else would say that with FindWhat they earned $3.5 per thousand etc.

I know there are a lot of content related issues to think about. But for now I really need to know what to offer my affilites at start, when no one has placed a bid on my site and all the PPC profit comes from FindWhat etc. Only webmasters that display commission based results can aswer this question for me.

Less than 10%. Much less.

I was speaking with a representative from a top engine, one you all know, and they did not even hesitate when I told them the figure. That indicates to me that the statisitc is common, otherwise the conversation would have ended immediately.