KING ROSALES

Trada Review – Crowdsourcing Paid Search Optimization?

September 13, 2011

King Rosales

Would you crowdsource your PPC campaign? I didn’t know this service existed, did you? Well, a company called, Trada Inc, provides PPC optimization services and they’ve even been featured in Forbes, Inc Magazine, Business Week, New York Times and Business Week. They offer “”free” Paid Search Optimization through their system that connects you to a community of skilled PPC managers.

Here’s their video illustrating how their “free service” works

I was given this site and had to do a POV yesterday. Unfortunately, I was shocked this service existed, but not actually surprised. At work I’ll get at least 2 – 3 calls from paid search management firms from all over; well, specifically from the US & India… thank you Canada.

Unfortunately, after I watched the video and learned how their crowdsourcing system works but then identified how they’re monetizing their service, I was left thinking how many people actually got suckered into using this system?

How Trada Paid Search Advertising Works

Trada is a crowd sourced service that makes money on the difference that you bid for vs the actual amount you actually pay for.

For example, if you are bidding $3/click to compete against the likes of your top 2 competitors for any given product, on average you wouldn’t actually pay that much. At most we’ll only pay $1.00 – $2.00/click depending on many factors that Google’s Ad Auction system takes into account. The bottom line here is, you’re not going to pay the full $3.00 for that click.

How Trada makes money is that they get the difference. So that $1.50 or $1.00 that you just saved and didn’t pay for? That goes to them.

Trada sounds good because its “free”, but they are going to eat up every single penny saved through optimization.

Here’s a blog post review I found written by PPC Without Pity.

Recommendation

Stay away. If you can find a reliable PPC consultant to do the work for you, do that. Or if you’re Paid Search campaigns justify bringing in someone full time, do that.

4 responses to “Trada Review – Crowdsourcing Paid Search Optimization?”

Reg

October 16, 2011

Theres actually a tier system on Trada that prevents the payment of a large difference between bids and actual cost. The advertiser actually pays trada/optimizers, the difference in the bid and the tier. If tiers are .5/1/1.5 with max bid being $2, you generally only pay a few cents. That of course changes in proportion to the keywords prices.

Six of one, half dozen of another… You can pay these differences, or you can pay percentages or steep rates on consulting. Going with a well known professional can be more reliable, but you can also rely on paying more.

Reply
1. King Rosales
  
  October 17, 2011
  
  Hi Reg,
  
  Thanks for the comment. You seem to have experience using it as an PPC Optimizer. Can you give me an example with actual numbers?
  
  Reply
Dave

December 1, 2011

What also is important is that you get way you pay for. If a company thinks that “Crowdsourced experts” (ha, I was accepted as an Optimizer and I am by no means an expert, I just filled out an aplication) will leverage the same devotion and results that a full time or highly paid consultant will, that’s the biggest gamble.

Despite there marketing, I’ve only heard negative reviews of the quality of what Trada delivers. Sure, you may get one good Optimizer on a campaign but if the other 10 are sloppy or don’t think gettin paid $1 an hour is worth it, your campaign suffers as they can’t colaborate, you cant kick badd ones out or control anything. You just watch your campaign slowly die while they recklessly spend your budget without fear.

Reply
1. King Rosales
  
  December 1, 2011
  
  Thanks for the comment Dave. I agree, there’s a chance of getting less talented optimizers on a crowd sourced system. I think its like using Elance.com to find freelance PPC optimizers from around the world and using a system whereby you grant people to tinker with your adwords program.
  
  Reply