Research Online, Buy Where?

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 at 4:43 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

As an affiliate marketer, I thought it would be interesting to find out where people go when they are ready to buy online. I figured this information would give me a better idea of where to invest my advertising dollars.

Here are a few statistics I ran across:

According to a July 2006 comScore Media Metrix study, people searched (from home, work, and universities) most often using the following search engines:

Google: 43.7%

Yahoo: 28.8%

MSN: 12.8

Ask 5.4%

Others 3.4%

So, after they get done searching, where do they end up buying?

I found last years information, which should still give us a good clue.

Online classified ad sites had more than 26 million visitors in September 2005 - an 80% increase over September 2004 - I’m sure it’s much higher now!

Craigslist.com sites were the most popular, with 9 million unique visitors in the same month in 2005. That’s a 156% increase over the prior September. Now, you know that Craigslist has become even larger.

I’ve tried posting a few ads, the only drawback is that you have to be persistent and post almost daily to keep at the top (and read the rules before you start, you don’t want to get kicked out of this free advertising resource!).

eBay - I always thought most people started at eBay. However, online auctions attract “only” 24% of all Internet users. I guess Craigslist is blowing them away with their free to advertising. eBay’s percentage actually hasn’t increased over the years, but the total number of users has - representing a lot more potential buyers.

If you have been doing most of your advertising using Pay Per Click, it might be time to try out a few other resources. These are all relatively low-cost compared to PPC.