Dave Davis on PPC Engines

Posted on: June 13th, 2007 by Jeremy Schoemaker

What Is Your Favorite Search Engine?

Dave DavisAsk.com. Without a doubt. Ask sponsored listings are an absolute goldmine and many of the non technical markets have little to no competition. Ask.com also has very few technical users which are perfect for converting the non technical offer. Some of my sites I have seen conversion rates of 80% on Ask as opposed to a mere 10%-15% on AdWords. Not everyone is a Google geek.

Dave Davis
Managing Director
RedFly Marketing LTD

Post written by Jeremy Schoemaker

Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.

More about Jeremy at http://www.shoemoney.com!

Have You Read:

24 Comments. What Say You?

  1. Dave Davis
    June 20, 2007 at 1:16 am

    Why not?

    Reply
  2. Dave Davis
    June 20, 2007 at 1:15 am

    The UK is included too. It’s kind of hard to figure out how to display in both though. :)

    Reply
  3. Pogung177
    June 16, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    eh…. never try on ask.com

    Reply
  4. JC
    June 15, 2007 at 1:21 pm

    Are ask ads only available in USA or is UK included too?

    Reply
  5. Alex Ion
    June 15, 2007 at 6:15 am

    I think testing is a must every time you run ads be it Ask or not. Even Adwords won’t convert very well if not properly tested.

    Reply
  6. Matthew
    June 14, 2007 at 11:19 pm

    I have been running ask related ads for about a month now. My site is fairly low traffic and it seems tech type stuff doesnt convert too well. However, I have heard of good results in other niches.

    Reply
  7. Dave Davis
    June 14, 2007 at 9:22 pm

    I guess that will depend on your market.

    Reply
  8. Dave Davis
    June 14, 2007 at 9:21 pm

    My experience was not with affiliate marketing but for managing PPC campaigns for companies themselves.

    Reply
  9. Dave Davis
    June 14, 2007 at 9:20 pm

    A little under 2% I believe.

    Reply
  10. How To Buy Websites
    June 14, 2007 at 1:40 pm

    What percentage of the search market does Ask get?

    Reply
  11. website copywriter
    June 14, 2007 at 11:51 am

    This was unfamiliar to me, too, until I read about it on here — interesting stuff.

    Reply
  12. AffiliatePimpin
    June 14, 2007 at 8:25 am

    What I find kind of annoying with Ask is their minimum bids. Example, I’ll select a keyphrase with 3 competitors, and it’ll say minimum bid $1.58…..anyone seeing same?

    Reply
  13. CPA Affiliates
    June 14, 2007 at 8:04 am

    I believe they also pull from YSM/overture ads also.

    Reply
  14. Bill
    June 14, 2007 at 7:30 am

    I’ve tested Ask and it does well for certain topics and doesn’t convert for others; so testing is definitely a must when running ads on Ask.

    Reply
  15. Link Snitch
    June 14, 2007 at 6:11 am

    I think this is news to a lot of us.

    Reply
  16. Link Snitch
    June 14, 2007 at 6:11 am

    What niche is that?

    Reply
  17. Dave Davis
    June 14, 2007 at 4:27 am

    The volume IS low, that’s a given. That was not my reasoning though. I like it for some markets because it CONVERTS better with that smaller volume.

    And regarding the short tail searches, I never had to pay more than 7 cents a click for the markets I operate in.

    I agree, a LOT of longtail keywords never see the light of day with ask when you might get one a month with Google.

    Reply
  18. ritchie
    June 14, 2007 at 2:19 am

    Ask.com indeed does offer a pretty nice niche market.

    Reply
  19. Dave Davis
    June 13, 2007 at 11:00 pm

    Ask is weird (In a good way). It still uses AdWords but sponsoredlistings.ask.com is their own. You all say you didn’t know ask had it’s own… That was my point :)

    Reply
  20. Paul Bradish
    June 13, 2007 at 8:56 pm

    Me neither. I’ve used Miva in the past and did not like the results. I may have to add Ask into the rotation.

    Reply
  21. eTown Landlord
    June 13, 2007 at 7:25 pm

    neither did I. Did you have any luck with dating leads with ask? I have been experimenting with google and none of my clicks turned into leads for the site i’m pushing a free profile for.

    Reply
  22. markus941
    June 13, 2007 at 5:33 pm

    I’ve never heard anybody else say anything good about Ask’s PPC. Ever since your “assume I’m getting something on the side for anything I say” post, I always take advice from here with huge grains of salt now.

    Back to ASK: 1. the volume is low 2. short tail searches are expensive (I looked). I don’t see how you can get enough long tail in there to drive any kind of volume.

    Reply
  23. jim
    June 13, 2007 at 3:45 pm

    Very interesting… I also didn’t know they ran their own ads either…

    Reply
  24. Joeychgo
    June 13, 2007 at 3:35 pm

    I didnt realize Ask.com ran their own ads – Thanks for this heads up!

    Reply

Before You Leave a Comment, Be Sure to Read the Disclaimer!

Leave a Reply