adbidding - bidding for text links from $0.01
Adbidding is the notion of bidding for a text link; logic dictates that your links are only worth what people will pay for them and this is the embodiment of that concept. Users will enter basic credentials and bid for a well placed link on your site (on Seopher.com it's at the very top-right, underneath the search).
How it works
It's really very simple. Bidding starts at $0.01. If you want that slot click on the "click here..." bit of the advert and it'll take you to the bidding page. From there you enter your email address, what you want the text-link to say (and where it should link to) and enter a bid value.
If your bid is higher than the current one then you are assigned an "authorisation number" (explained later) and invited to pay for the advert using Paypal - as a trusted third party. Once your payment is completed you are directed back to this site and invited to enter your "authorisation number" and email address to confirm your listing. Enter both correctly and your bid is #1 on the site. Nice and quick, cheap and painless.
Why this is good
Well, Text-Link-Ads value my links at $35 a piece (for a standard link on the right hand side in the "sponsored listings" list). This way you get to determine the value of that leading advertising slot. This is good because it means you can get an excellent text-link spot for $0.01.
So if I bid $0.02 when there's one up at $0.01, I win?
Absolutely. All you need do is bid $0.01 above the current link and you've got yourself a great ad spot.
It's still in a really early phase but I've rolled it out onto the site to get some feedback. So please, feel free to put a link up there and give it a go. Please leave me feedback either in comments or email variety. I'm thinking that if it's a good idea, it might end up as a Wordpress plugin... You never know.
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Showing most recent 5 of 5 comments
The reason this whole thing interests me is because I built an online auction system during my final year of university; spending many an hour reading research papers on bidding behaviour, different techniques and the psychological aspect of doing so.
eBay is the world leader that’s true enough, but to say it’s perfect is to go a step too far. Remember, progress never happens by doing exactly what has been done before.
First it is the traffic. I believe your system would do very good as the links would keep on changing so the user would not be ad blind to that area. The user might be actually see changing fields and may actually respond well to the change.
Secondly Text Link improve the Page Rank. This is where I feel your system may not work. It will be pretty easy for search engines to find the changing links, and therefore no [or very little] PR will passed on to the link .. depending on the policy of the search engine.
Though there is some debate still going on this PR issue, only few people doubt that PR can be improved with purchased Text Links. If you can somehow control this aspect of your bidding / linking process may be by elongating the closing bid time from one hour to two months .. your system might do well. Because when text links do not change for such a long time it will be harder to detect the changes by Search engine , hence sponsored links will be disguised.
BTW visit my site for Wordpress security advice
Some things about bidding :
If you have done any bidding on ebay, you would never tell your bidder what is the current highest bid. You just say that you were outbid. Although you would want to set the sale price to just higher ceiling of the current bidder who was out bid. Try ebay first.
would be a mammoth cron job but that way if i’ve bit $10 for my hour, and someone bids $11, it switches at 4pm... and if they pull out straight away, it goes back to me. blah blah blah