My web host (thee of the recent 5 hr outtage) offers a $50 Overture (Yahoo’s Search Marketing system a la Google Adwords) credit to every hosting account. After ignoring it for a year and some change, I took them up on the offer and clicked their promotion link to see if the folks at Sunnyvale could serve me up some more hits.

Here’s a step by step recap:

I saw the $50 credit noted on the Yahoo page that opened up from the link so I’m good to go. First I chose to set it up on my own, Self Serve. The other option is Assisted Setup, which partially reads as follows: “Our specialists will build a campaign that’s customized to your budget and goals. They will select relevant keywords, write effective ads and determine bid amounts within your budget. You’ll receive a proposed campaign in 2 to 5 business days, and a specialist will contact you to discuss it.” This costs $149. Or as they prefer to show it: $199 $149 (The $50 markdown does not take the credit into account. The credit would be applied to the setup fee, making the final price $99)

As always be careful of fineprint:
“There is a minimum bid requirement of $0.10 per click through.” Hmm, not as Google Adwords friendly but that’s still a ceiling of 500 free clicks.

On to Step 1. Target Customers by Geographic Location
I chose Specific Regions and Target by DMA(r) or City and Surrounding Area. I had no idea what DMA was so after several Google searches which mostly turned up Direct Memory Access I found out that it was Nielson’s defintion of a television market: a Designated Market Area. I then saw that DMA was clearly defined at the bottom of the SAME signup page I was on. Moral of the story: Read the whole page so you don’t feel like a fool minutes later.

I then chose Massachusetts for State/Province/Territory and “Boston (Massachusetts,New Hampshire,Vermont)” for City. The wording can be misleading because you are not selecting a city but a much wider area.

I went back and forth betwen using this or the Zip Code option. I decided to use the former option since the website does get hits from a lot of areas in MA but out of Boston. If I eventually see a lot of “1:00″ Yahoo clicks from outside I will switch to Zip Code option for a smaller coverage area. “1:00″ clicks are when someone visits your site and leaves right away. It’s like a drive-by, the visitor gets out of there as fast as they can.

Step 2. Choose Keywords Related to Your Business
I didn’t find much success in the Find Keyword feature so I entered the most searched for keywords we have in Google Adwords.

Step 3. Tell Us How Much You’d Like To Spend
I’d like to spend zero but as that’s not possible, I chose the the minimum 10 cents per click and $1 a day spending limit. Again, fine print: “**Please note that you may be charged up to 10% above your account daily spending limit. However, charges that exceed your account daily spending limit by more than 10% may be eligible for a refund.”

Step 4. Create Your Ad
Pretty similar to Google except for a few differences.
A. Your Title can be 40 characters instead of 25 (stingy Google!)
B. You have 70 characters for Description. Yes that’s the same as Google except the G-men force you to break your description into two lines of 35.
C. They don’t allow you to have a seperate Display URL and Destination URL.

Step 5. Review and Activate Your Ad
First was setting up your username, password, email, etc. Then clicking the Activate Now button.

After thoroughly reading and re-reading their Terms of Service (do you really believe that?) I put in my business’ contact information and proceeded onto the billing section where I ran into a slight problem. The $50 credit did not show up!

I tried calling their number to no avail. I didn’t want to sign up and then have to call them later to work out the $50 credit so I decided to put the kibosh on it and try later. To be continued…

Technorati Tags: yahoo search, yahoo, search marketing, overture, google, google adwords, lunarpages, web hosting, pay per click, ppc

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