Several weeks ago, I heard about a site called Trada.com. Simply put, Trada connects PPC experts looking to earn an extra buck to companies that are looking for assistance with their SEM campaigns. From Trada.com:

“Trada is revolutionizing the way Agencies, Advertisers and PPC Experts build and manage PPC marketing campaigns. We’ve developed the first PPC marketplace that allows agencies and in-house advertisers to leverage the skills of hundreds of the best PPC experts in the world, who in turn earn money risk free by generating low cost clicks and conversions for advertisers.”

I have several clients that I work with over at SawtoothMedia, primarily with SEM, SEO, and CSE campaigns, but I thought I’d give this a try. I wanted to see that this company was all about – earn an extra buck, gain a little more experience, etc.

From their “How It Works” page:

1. Advertisers create a new Paid Search campaign in Trada

Advertisers create a new campaign with some basic information about the company and the product/service that is being sold, and establish the parameters for the campaign like daily budget, maximum cost per click, the ad networks to advertise on, target cost per conversion, etc.

2. PPC Experts in the Trada Marketplace join the campaign

PPC Experts are alerted to the new campaign and decide if they’d like to work on it. If they join the campaign, they begin generating ad groups, keywords and ads.

3. Ad begin running on the Google, Yahoo and Bing ad networks

Trada gathers the ad groups, keywords and ads created by PPC Experts for the campaign and sends them to the Google/Yahoo/Bing accounts we’ve created for the campaign, where it begins running. After the campaign launches the Advertiser has the ability to review all of these keywords and ads to make sure they accurately represent the business and objectives.

4. Clicks and conversions are generated; PPC Experts earn money

If PPC Experts generate clicks or conversions for less than the stated click or conversion price, they keep the difference between what the Advertiser was willing to pay for the click/conversion and what it actually cost to generate it.

It’s that simple!

After checking it out over the last 24 hours, I realized it isn’t that simple.

Pros:

Signing up for the service as a ‘PPC Expert’ was pretty easy. It consisted of getting in touch with the folks at Trada (I think it’s a three person company? Maybe five?) and showing them that you have an SEM background. I mailed them my LinkedIn profile and was invited to take a 15 question quiz (way too easy in my opinion). Once that was done, I had to sign and fax a “rules of Trada” document to them along with a W9. It was received and accepted pretty quick.

Trada runs a forum (on Ning… bleh) where you can connect with other ‘PPC Experts’, discuss campaign strategies, submit bugs and feature requests which are answered by a person over at Trada, and network with other search engine marketers. In total, there are about 210 marketers on the forum. It’s not a bad place to chat… most folks seem friendly and willing to give a hand.

Finally, there are about 40 companies signed up with Trada who are looking for your hands-on help with their Google and Yahoo PPC campaigns. You have the option to join any of the companies on Trada’s platform, and begin building out a campaign immediately.

Cons:

Where do I begin? I guess I’ll start by saying it’s not very obvious how someone like me makes money. This is how I think it works: Company X has a conversion event, whether it be selling an item, or creating a lead. Company X has a goal for the conversion event stated on their campaign page; for this example’s sake, let’s say it’s a $50 CPA. As an advertiser, you have to create a campaign for Company X and if you create 10 leads at a $25CPA, you’ll receive the cost difference between Company X’s goal, so in this case, you’d make $25 x 10 leads, so $250. I think this is how it works, but I’ve yet to see where on Trada’s site this is specifically explained. An example like this would be useful. I guess the good part about this is that if you create no leads and spend $200, you aren’t charged. There is no risk (except your poor performance may get you suspended from the account).

Next, a good number of the companies looking for SEM help have poorly built sites. There is no way you can build a campaign for these sites without quality score suffering. When I manage some of the clients that I have partnered with, I’ll discuss with them strategies around making a website more SEO friendly. That line is cut off with Trada, and you’re at the mercy of their site’s quality.

A handful of the companies that do work with Trada have very small advertising budgets. Of the 40 companies listed with Trada, 23 of them have an advertising budget of $50/day or less. Maybe I am an SEM snob as I have worked with clients with either unlimited budgets or budgets way higher than $50/day, but it’s a waiting game with a small SEM budget. Because you split the budget with 10-15 other ‘PPC experts’, it’s difficult to get statistically significant data to work off of.

A lot of the advertisers have CPC and average position goals; I don’t agree with this. If you’re selling insurance, you’re going to have a high CPC in the $3 – $10 range. If you’re selling clothing and apparel, your CPC is going to be lower. CPCs will be as high as an advertiser can keep driving traffic efficiently. Like CPCs, I keep an eye on the average position of my ads that I run with my other clients, but I use it just as a bench mark. I’d never recommend using average position as a goal.

Here is my biggest nag with Trada: the way you optimize these accounts. Two things stand out:

1) it’s time consuming to update an account - The interface Trada expects you to use to add and edit ad groups, ads, keywords, and bids is very poor. It’s frustrating using this tool. It’s like a tool you’d expect to see from 2006. There is no way an advertiser will get a well optimized campaign with this interface.

2) as a PPC expert, you aren’t given access to all SEM optimization tools – I am talking about big ticket items that all search engine marketers use. I am talking about the ability to upload negative keywords, the ability to download search query reports, the ability to geo-target, the ability to create campaigns. The only way to build a campaign in Trada is with ad groups, ads, keywords, and bids. As a marketer, this is equivalent to building an SEM campaign with both hands tied behind my back, hanging from a tree upside down.

Not to take a cheap shot, but in reading through some of their help and getting started PDFs, there was a good amount of spelling mistakes. In taking the entry quiz, it was a bad sign that the quiz was as easy as it was. In fact, some of the questions they asked didn’t even have the right answers. Also, their site has been down quite a bit over the last few days… a big turnoff.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, there seem to be too many flaws in this program from an search engine marketer’s perspective. The cons far outweigh the pros. I love seeing new ventures in the SEM space and I hope Trada finds a way to be successful, but they’ve got a long way to go. The SEM landscape changes so fast, and I don’t see them keeping up unless they get more man-power to build a better interface to battle some of the cons that I listed.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this site for improvements, but as a highly skilled marketer, my time is better spent elsewhere.

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