Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click advertising is another form of advertising growing at an extraordinary rate.

A few years ago it was possible to get extremely targetted pay-per-click ads for only a few cents per click. Now you may need to pay many dollars to get a decent position for the most popular words, and learn how to optimise the actual pay-per-click ad. With search engines such as Google, even having the maximum cost-per-click doesn't guarantee you the number one place, unless your ad also has a good click-thru-rate and is optimised for the targetted keyword.

Per Per Click advertising has also increased due to the extreme competition for good organic rankings on search engines, and also the time delay for new sites to get a good ranking. It has become standard practise for new sites to do pay per click advertising for the first 6-18mths until they get a good ranking on search engines.

One fad is for mini-sites. With a little experience, people have been known to decide on a niche, build a money-making site, and then use PPC to get their site at the top of the result list on search engines. They can be making semi-serious money within the space of a week.

The danger with PPC is untargeted keywords. If you pay 50 cents per click for the phrase "buy a car online" and somebody in Alaska selects your site, which only sells Australian Ford Falcons, that was a waste of 50 cents. You would have had better luck with "discount Ford Falcons". You can also generally restrict ads to a particular country, region, search engine or third-party site.

Pay Per Click advertising can be expensive. If you want to experiment with this technique, there are usually a bunch of sites that will give you a free introductory balance to spend on PCC at their site. PayPerClickSearchEngines has a list of new PPCs at the top. New ones often offer a free introductory balance.

Also check out these sites for help:
PayPerClickAnalyst
PayPerClickGuide

An excellent guide to selling products through Google's Pay Per Click Adwords program is GoogleCash, famous for its advanced advertising techniques.

Other well-known marketers who utilise Pay Per Click advertising heavily are Rosalind Gardner with her Super Affiliate Handbook, or Phil Wiley with his Minisite Profits in Australia.