Back in September of 2007, Yahoo announced the ability to choose Pay Pal as a payment method for adding funds to your search marketing account. Up until now, I hadn’t had a use for the option and continued doing manual refills, automatic deposits or invoicing for clients.

But then a client came along (me) that had a free $100 advertising credit if I opened a new Yahoo Search Marketing account. All I had to do was put down the minimum deposit of $30 to get the $100. Sounds like a great deal for the small business right? Right.

I went ahead and opened my new account, set everything up, selected keywords and ads and when it came time to pay the bill to get the account running the idea of Pay Pal seemed very attractive since I was dealing with such a small amount of money and it seemed like it would be very easy to do. And it was, I simply clicked the radio button for Pay Pal, logged in, verified the amount and the payee and I was off.

The only problem was that once I was off, I couldn’t stop. If you set up an account from scratch with Pay Pal selected as the payment method you must choose a deposit amount to go with your payment method, $30 or more. This is what I selected, but what I found was happening was that this is also an automatic refill option as well. You cannot opt out of yourself later on. So each time that Yahoo deemed my balance as low, it automatically was taking that $30 out of my Pay Pal account. As a seasonal advertiser, I just wanted to spend what I had, see what happened and then add funds if necessary and let the clock run out, so to speak.

Typically, through the credit card method if you’re doing the manual refill option you receive the email that you balance is low, you can login and assess whether or not you want to add funds and how much. In this case, I was unable to change the settings for Pay Pal. I could add a payment method of a credit card, switch that to my preferred method of payment and go from there, but the whole reason I chose Pay Pal was to avoid that issue.

So how do you fix it? (Short of scheduling a campaign end date and hoping that you spend all the funds before it closes.)

You have to ask a Yahoo representative. That’s the only way. Either by calling in and requesting that they check the little box in your account that allows you the freedom to do that or as I did and ask the agency representative what the deal was.
Not so convenient (that part) but overall is a great alternative to credit cards!