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I got stuck in a bidding war on PPV. It was starting to get outrageous to the point where I couldn’t squeeze money out of that target (it was a very high trafficked target that converted very well), and had I continued raising the bid, I could have lost hundreds – a thousand dollars on it. While some will tell you to outbid your competition until they drop out, I watched as I went from guessing 1 – 2 people were bidding with me, to over 10 people.

Getting in a bid war with 10 people is not something you want to get yourself in to. Out of those 10, you kind of have to assume they are all big fish trying to squeeze out smaller guys, like me. There are ways to avoid bidding wars, however. I felt I needed to move on because after several days the cost has only doubled. Here is what I am doing instead.

I started out by finding alternative traffic sources and finding more targets. I moved to other PPV platforms, and the same targets being warred upon in this case were only about 5-10% of the price I was bidding previously. If I move the same pop on the same URL over every other traffic source, I can probably connect with nearly the same amount of consumers. I also did a broad keyword and url target search which effectively doubled my overall target count.

I could also find another way to make more money. Ask for a paybump, the highest you can get. That may allow you to survive a bid war a bit longer. Throw up your email capture forms, and sell down the road via that. If the user doesn’t clickthrough to your offer page from the lander, exit pop them to a different, more simple offer or to a different squeeze page.

Alternatively, you can stick out the bidding war if you have the budget. You’ll squeeze some out, like me, but you might get stuck with 10 other big fish all wanting that target to themselves (like what I am seeing now). It’s your choice, however, I believe there are better ways to spend your time and money than constantly having to outbid your competition.