PPC Management: The Next Big Thing
Online marketers working on a limited budget have greatly depended on free submissions and a little dash of paid search management. Obviously, they would rather market their websites through free submissions than pay for a service that would give almost equal results. However, since almost everyone is trying to make money out of something, the free submissions will inevitably disappear and businesses offering these for free will soon require a fee for their services.
You wouldn’t expect that a free program shared by possibly millions of other businesses have the same quality and comprehensive service as that of the paid programs. A wise advertiser would prefer quality service with excellent results than a cheap program that offers only mediocre results. For those who are not yet willing to give up on the freebies, don’t you worry. A few search engines like AltaVista, Inktomi, AllTheWeb, and several others still provide both free and paid submissions rather than leaving advertisers no choice with the paid service.
On the brighter side, search engines like Yahoo and Looksmart continue to allow ways for non-profit sites to be reviewed for free. If you’re a non-profit company working with Yahoo, you are required to submit via a special link to avail this service. In the case of Looksmart, you go to a partner non-profit listing engine called Zeal.
Open Directory has also chosen not to charge anything for its reviews since it was founded on the premise that a directory should be unbiased, uncomprehensive and not ruled by the almighty dollar. But, this wasn’t wholly simple for dmoz.org (Open Directory). It takes a large amount of money to build such a large directory. The solution? They made a network of volunteer editors to write the reviews for free making the site totally free and available to all. The idea was that each editor is in charge of one or more topics of his interest and expertise and would write the review out of love. Surprisingly, thousands of editors from around the world have volunteered to do this project. However, this free project has encouraged many volunteers to join with their own agenda in mind, writing with bias toward their own websites or against those of their competitors. This obviously shows that free service is not always free from its drawbacks.
With all that being said about the free and paid submissions, you now get the picture. You may not be ready to embrace paid PPC management just yet, but remember that sooner or later, you’ll have to accept that some things come with a price, especially in terms of quality and productivity.