As I have said in my introduction I am considering how best to go about creating side income streams... and looking at market stalls as well. But one thing that has caught my eye is Dropshipping.

Now I am a web content writer by trade, so I am perfectly happy in being able to target keywords, use articles to drive traffic and the like. Creation holds little fear for me. I am sure I will have to learn a lot about ecommerce stuff but I got the hang of blogging and forum creation quickly enough.

But one thing I have not tried is PPC. I have kept away from it as most sites I have are more lead generators than sales sites so the profit margin seems to be to slim at what is the low end of the payment market. But on dropshipping it might well be more productive as you can (with the right products) look at far higher margins than you do in lead generation.

So I was wondering if anyone here uses PPC (ideally Googles, but any program would be interesting) and if so (or if you have in the past) how you are finding/found it?

p.s. for those that don't know PPC stands for pay per click. They're teh adverts you see at the top and on the side when you do a Google search. It costs you x amount (decided by Google based on a number of factors) per click that users make - which then redirects to your page

Lol, just noticed PPC ads also appear under the original post - so that should give you a good clue as to what they are!

I use PPC a lot and in my opinion it's the greatest invention on the net in this decade.

It won't work for you if your net profit per order is very small as clicks will cost you money. Even if you manage to convert 5% (very good) @ 0.20 per click (very cheap) it's 4 GBP per sale.

Sure, it depends on the item, niche etc., as there are niches out there where good, high converting keywords can be bought for just 0.10

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I used it a generation ago when I could buy words for 5 cents. Worked very well for me, the only promotion I did. But Yahoo and Google got into it and I was blowing $100 per day and getting nothing, so that was the end of that.

Using a "long tail" key phrase that zeros in specifically on your product is the way to go. Much less competition, so lower cost per click.

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Originally Posted by Andy777

I use PPC a lot and in my opinion it's the greatest invention on the net in this decade.

It won't work for you if your net profit per order is very small as clicks will cost you money. Even if you manage to convert 5% (very good) @ 0.20 per click (very cheap) it's 4 GBP per sale.

Sure, it depends on the item, niche etc., as there are niches out there where good, high converting keywords can be bought for just 0.10

Thats exactly my thinking - my current business models on non-dropshipping sites are not worth enough to make it financially viable. The question now will be what margins I am looking at on each product.

TBH I suppose the only real way is to leap in and test it - conversion rates will be all important and no one can tell me those before I start

Originally Posted by Pete

I used it a generation ago when I could buy words for 5 cents. Worked very well for me, the only promotion I did. But Yahoo and Google got into it and I was blowing $100 per day and getting nothing, so that was the end of that.

Using a "long tail" key phrase that zeros in specifically on your product is the way to go. Much less competition, so lower cost per click.

That's very much what I am doing in non-dropshipping sites. Targetting keywords/phrases I've researched and then article writing, blogging and backlinking until I rank well for them. Would definitely be in the mix now that I am considering dropshipping, I would be daft to throw away my knowledge in this area, I just want to examine other methods of driving traffic... the more traffic the better!

Have you given any PPC experiments in recent times or just decided it doesn't work for your business model now?