Pay Per Click: A Waste of Time and Money
by Brad Taylor

Pay per click advertising is somewhat of a relic for the small business owner. With so much click fraud at the smaller more affordable sites, and over priced bids at the bigger, more reputable sites, it is impossible to get any bang for your buck.

I was using a company called Miva.com (formerly findwhat.com). They claim to get you traffic for as little as 5 cents per click. First off, I must state this is one of the most confusing and challenging management areas to any site I have ever encountered. Then, when I call them for assistance, they have someone that barley speaks English.  But, to make matters worse, they have been accused of click fraud by many sources, and that is just downright dirty.  And, if you do not put a daily budget on your account, they will exhaust hundreds of dollars in a day and you will have not one sale to show for it.  All in all Miva is a scam, STAY AWAY!!!

Enhance.com - Formerly Ah-Ha.com
This is another pay per click for the "average Joe".  Bids as little as 3 cents last time I checked, easy to manage program, and decent customer service, that speaks English.
But, there is one major bad thing here; They have been accused of click fraud by many reputable services.  You can run through $100 per day and not get one sale. Stay away.

Google AdSense
This is a laugh. Minimum bid to just get seen is around 50 cents. If you actually get listed, your fifty bucks will be gone in no time.  Also, I have searched all over Google for my paid ad and cannot find it anywhere. They have serious issues. And, for an enterprise as big as this one not to have a contact phone number is just plain insane. Two thumbs down for the Google debacle.

So, as you can see, pay per click is just not what it should be. Either you are getting scammed, or paying way too much for some bored surfer to visit your site.

Quick note on hosting: Stay away from IPowerweb.com. They have been hacked many times, servers crash,  customer service is bad, and sites go down for periods of time with no explanation. I called them one time to change my billing info and I think the guy was eating on the phone. It sounded like I was interrupting him from watching Tv or something.