Paid search is too cheap!  Or: why AdWords prices will keep
rising  I was at the Dutch Search Marketing Congres yesterday,
quite a nice day and I had some fun talking to other people in
the business. One thing annoyed me though: some folks kept
whining that AdWords was getting more expensive every year… What
annoys me most is this: someone will come up to me, we’ll talk a
bit, and he’ll tell me that offline he pays â‚¬ 80,- for a lead,
and using AdWords their cost per lead is â‚¬ 12,-. He was
profitable with both, but of course he preferred the AdWords
leads.  After telling me that, and me congratulating him on his
nice way of using AdWords, he starts complaining that AdWords
prices keep rising… Now, if you can be profitable with a cost
per lead of â‚¬ 80,-, chances are, someone else can too. So
someone will start bidding more for the same keywords, getting a
cost per lead of â‚¬ 14,-, and still make money. You will start
bidding higher, etc. etc. etc. get it? You know what that’s
called? Economics…  If you c