Pay Per Click

This is the paid-form of Search Engine Marketing.  It is advertising on search engines and their networks where advertisers pay only when a user clicks on an ad to visit the advertisers web page.  This form of advertising is a very reliable way to make money because you are able to constantly drive traffic to your website.  You must, however, make sure that you keep your advertising costs/expenses below your intended revenue.  The benefit of this type of marketing is that once you have set up a profitable campaign, it remains profitable and traffic can be predicted and the conversion remains stable.  



You need to make yourself aware of several aspects such as research, creating a campaign, creating a website or landing page and how to analyse, test and track your campaigns.  You will need to create a Google Adwords account as Google has 74% of the market share.  Yahoo has 16% of the market share and Microsoft Adcentre has 6%.  Ensure that you understand how to research keywords and utilise them; this is so important.


What is PPC
 
Pay-per-click marketing is the most effective way to drive traffic to your campaigns and website.  It is very reliable as it allows you to target specific keywords and placements within the search results; therefore you can determine your success.  It allows you to target your audiences and control the volume and quality of traffic to your site.

Pay-Per-Click marketing requires very little maintenance, unlike article marketing.  Once set up, the pay-per-click campaign runs itself and allows you to focus on the growth of your campaign.  It will provide you with a greater overall income and it leaves little to chance.  There are many pay-per-click networks on which you can advertise your campaigns, the main ones being;


Google Adwords

Bing
Yahoo! Search Marketing 
    

It is worthwhile for you to set up accounts with each of the above and to spread your advertising efforts across them.  Google Adwords and Bing do not require a set up fee, although Yahoo! Search Marketing applies a $30 investment.  It is important to provide a market overview for all three at this point.  Google Adwords takes 74% of the market share, Yahoo! Search Marketing has a 16% share and Microsoft Adcentre 6%.  Yahoo and Bing have a total 22% of market share.  If you are looking to expand your campaigns then these are the Pay Per Click vehicles to use.


Essentials of PPC

• Find your niche market and customer base.  It doesn’t matter what niche market you choose, because the essential of niche marketing is that you target the correct product at the right customer.  This product must be relevant to the market and the customer.
• Find relevant keywords for the product you are promoting.  This keyword must also be relevant to your website page to which your article will link.  Find groups of keywords, called adgroups; these will all be relevant to the ad and the easier it is to create a page that is relevant to all the keywords.  Your adgroup should contain between 5-15 keywords as this could increase your click-through rate (CTR).  The higher this rate, the better your ads are performing and the less your ads will cost you, the better their positioning will be.  The adgroup keywords will be the common keywords in your campaign and Google places these ads in bold.
• Prepare your ad copy; it should be captivating, intriguing and include ‘call to action’ links, such as “click here to learn more” or “click to buy today”.  Your ad copy must include your keywords, and your keywords must include the words that your audience performed their search with.   Your ad must be relevant to your audience, product and keywords.  Your goal here is to get as many people as possible to click through to your landing page,.  Scams are emotive with the online population; you are likely to improve your click-through if you include the word ‘scam’ in you ad, for instance, “Is Product X a Scam”.
• Google traffic estimator can be used to calculate the amounts of traffic you can expect to your  landing page.  It is important that you keep an eye on your campaign and evaluate this traffic
• Monitor your success and traffic clicking through due to your landing page.  Also monitor your conversions so that you are aware of what ads are working, whether the keywords are driving click throughs to your landing pages.
• Refine your pay per click campaigns as you should be achieving a positive return on investment.   You can add more keywords or change your ad copy, create a different landing page ad  and remove keywords that are costing you lots of money.  

You can also gain much from specialist training on the Adwords platform; something like Beating Adwords from Wealthy Affiliate University.  Beating Adwords was created to increase the online earnings of people using Google Adwords as an advertising platform.   It was intended initially as a program that would suit beginners only, but has been constantly updated to become one of the best internet marketing reference guides available online. It is also the most up-to-date book on Google Adwords online.  You can stay one step ahead of the competition when you invest in Beating Adwords.

Wishing you good luck with your pay-per-click campaigns.