If you’re a blogger or a small-site webmaster, get ready to boycott Google’s new Pay-Per-Action program. Why? Because you’ll never get as much money as you do right now with AdSense & Co.
Google calls Pay-Per-Action the “complement to AdWords,” but in reality, Pay-Per-Action is an AdWords/AdSense replacement. Look at it from Google’s point of view: Google claims it loses over a billion dollar’s in revenue from click-fraud with AdSense. If Google thinks it’s losing that much money due to click-fraud, and Google sincerely believes that with Pay-Per-Action that loss will no longer exist, they’d be stupid not to switch over.. Unless of course, bloggers refuse to use their new PPA service.
From the bloggers’ point of view: look at the odds. You get several million viewers a day|week|month. Some of them click the ads. You have a CTR rate of around (probably under) 0.5%. Now how many of those 0.5% of your visitors that actually click an ad go through the whole way? How many of them buy the product being advertised? How many sign-up for the subscription on sale? How many go through with the “action?”
If you answered zero, you’d be correct. Even if one or two people did buy a product directly as a result of a link on your site, how many of these people will buy it on the spot? When they do want to make the purchase, are they going to go back to your site and make the click from there, or are they going to use a bookmark/URL to make the purchase? After all, if it’s not a direct referral you won’t get a single penny.
If they find a product they want to buy via a link on your site, and in the remote chance that they buy it on the spot, how much will you get? The product’s price isn’t changing, the revenue is simply being split 3-ways between You, Google, and the company selling the product. Obviously the Company has to make it’s money, and Google’s not in it for the Karma…
The bottom line is, you’re chances of making money just went from near zero (relatively speaking) to zero itself. The amount of money you make per “connection” may increase, but the net amount will almost undoubtedly drop to zero.
Stand up for your rights as a blogger/site-owner to reap the fruits of your toil. Don’t let Google feel that Pay-Per-Action is their freedom ticket, and don’t – whatever you do – fall for it. After all, it’s your pocketbook at stake!
Wow, thanks for pointing this out!
I was eagerly waiting for my chance to enter the PPA program, but you do raise some good points… I think I’ll pass!