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Yahoo Search Marketing is a very common way to drive traffic to affiliate landing pages but there is one thing I just CANNOT STAND about Yahoo Search Marketing...
The way that they bill your credit card.
One of the most important things for people starting in affiliate marketing is budgeting. Knowing how much you can afford to spend and keeping to it is important.
With the default billing style in Yahoo search marketing, it's practically impossible to stay on budget if you hit a good campaign! For those who do not know, Yahoo Search Marketing tries to "precharge" and keep your account balance at around 3 days worth of search marketing so if you have any down time (like a weekend), your account will continue to run for most of it.
IE: You spend $100 per day on average so they're going to want to charge your card up so your balance is $300 or more. Silly right?
That's where my tip comes into play...
You can actually call up Yahoo Search Marketing (1-866-924-6676) and request to be moved to prepaid billing without automatic refill. When you call be sure to have your account number (found in Administration panel) and your email handy.
With prepaid billing you simply pay $100 and your account will run till the balance is $0. If you want to run more ads, you add more funds.
The great thing about this is that now if I know my budget is $1,000 for the month I add $1,000 and I dont spend a dime over that.
Pretty cool huh?
This also works for Yahoo Search Marketing accounts in the UK.
Hi, I just opened a new Yahoo Search Marketing account and this tip was the default way of charging for my account, so maybe they fixed it.
~ Jason ~
http://www.jasonbedunah.com
Hey, first time commenter long time reader here.
I remember having this problem with Yahoo as well that’s the sole reason I dropped them. My credit card charges just going up and up, and when I looked I was like Whoa!
I came into the problem as well.
They charged my credit card like $500 within 2 days!
I have a friend who does well with yahoo and told me to turn off prepaid.
I know I hate how they bill – after 2 weeks of using YSM I decided not to use them anymore. The pre Paid process is strange sometime they pre charge your card some weird amounts – but no YSM for me anymore
Nice post, Jonathan.
Just getting into PPC, and had no idea about this. Thanks for the tip!
What the?! Awesome tip man. I’ve always been hesitant to run yahoo campaigns because I hate hate hate hate hate that prebilling crap. Very cool. thanks!
I totally agree with you. I actually found out by accident (by speaking the their customer service rep.) that you can call them to change your account to prepaid.
Google has the best system over Yahoo and MSN. Google just bills 1 time at the end of the month. Yahoo and MSN really need to benchmark Google!
The first time Yahoo did that to me, I was a bit irritated. I’ll definitely give them a ring in the morning to turn off auto refill.
Thanks for the tip, Jonathan. Great info as always. >
That is really helpful. Thanks Jonathan
Ya, I hate there lets charge them 7 times a day billing style.. grr
Yes, this is horrible. I had a $2,000 per day budget set and they nailed my card for $6,000+ before. I am still on the “automatic refill” plan, but pay closer attention to my campaigns. YSM can get out of hand quick if you don’t watch closely. Most people claim YSM is pretty good for set it and forget it, but it never worked for me. They also have a big problem with deleting keywords for invalid reasons. They recently deleted a keyword with the word black in it stating it was racial, when it was simply a name of a band. Also deleted Napalm Death Ringtone campaign for having the word napalm in it. There were a lot of cases of keywords being deleted for bad reasons. I still love using YSM for those cheap clicks though ;-\
Jony –
Awesome and timely advice!
I just had a wicked cost overrun yesterday.
I called YSM support and they took care of it right away. I also switched my billing too.
Thank you!
Pete
Hi Jonathan,
What a great post!
Kudos on your Blog!!!
#2 on page one of Google search has wet my appetite on looking at your SEO info. As Gen. Macarthur said, “I shall return!”
(That probably dated me!)
So much Helpful Information and you are giving it away free!
How I agree that marketing budget is a main item in … any business.
No Marketing Budget made it so hard to get my ‘Brick & Mortar’ Business going! “I MEAN SLOW!” Therefore, Diversifying and endeavoring to generate additional streams of revenue has brought me to the Internet and I appreciate the goodness of people like you, who are here to help.
And to find out about Yahoo before I even considered it, is ‘frosting on the cake’.
Not having any budget (To Begin With!) started my search on finding something with, which to do it.
One thing that caught my eye was a question I stumbled on searching for marketing budgets, “What is better than free?”
Nevertheless, “getting paid for doing it” was right down my alley!
Thanks again for the Great info, D. P. Gatten. http://tinyurl.com/2d88ck for more.
Thank YOU Jonathan. You’re the man!!!