Pay Per Click advertising

Pay per click or PPC advertising comes in two main forms. You have PPC affiliate marketing, and PPC search engine placement. As most of affiliate marketing has moved toward PPS (pay per sale), the main emphasis for PPC is now on the search engines. You can bid for high placement on the major (and minor) search engines, although your listing will usually appear as a separate advert outside the main search body text. You must be careful with this form of advertising as it is easy to spend your whole budget without receiving much in return. Targeting the wrong terms can mean a lot of costly traffic that isn't interested in what your selling. To get proper results from a PPC campaign you have to be strict with your keywords, careful with your wording, and monitor your statistics.

Step 1. Refining your keywords

You should have created a long keyword list in the section finding keywords. Now you want to refine this list. When you first created the list you were instructed to remove all the keywords made from searchers that would not be interested in your sites content. Now you need to go through the list and check again. You need to keep as many targeted keywords as possible, but be ruthless with ones that don't properly match. If you are thinking 'We'll there is a small chance someone typing that keyword is looking for my site', get that keyword off the list. Otherwise when you move on to the next step that keyword is going to do nothing but cost you money. Un targeted keywords, or keywords that are to general will eat you marketing budget in a matter of hours.

Step 2. Looking at the PPC search engines

There are several pay per click search engines. The largest being Google AdWords and Overture. They can potentially send you the most traffic, but they are by far the most expensive. We have compiled a list of the top PPC search engines, including minimum deposit and Alexa ranking.

PPC Search Engines
Name	Min Deposit	Alexa
Google	credit	3
Overture	$50	67
Lycos	$50	78
Looksmart	credit	672
FindWhat	$25	944
Kanoodle	$50	1 068
7Search	$25	1 403
Searchfeed	$25	1 907
Epilot	$100	2 051
GoClick	none	2 171
Mamma	$25	2 338
Search123	$25	3 184
Xuppa	$50	4 366
BrainFox	$10	6 960
Enhance	$50	9 244

Although the Alexa ranking will give you a rough idea of how popular these sites are it is not definitive. Each of these pay per click search engines distribute their results to many different search engines and sites. So the real traffic your listings will get depends on how good their distributor network is.

Step 3. First try at PPC

We recommend that before you dive in with the big expensive PPC search providers, you get a taste for how it all works. This will also allow you to prepare your listing text and iron out any problems before you start spending more money. Signup to 7Search, Searchfeed and Search123. They all are low cost with low deposits and low minimum bids. Each has it's own interface and method for you to bid on new keywords. With any luck they will allow you to submit some form of bulk submission spreadsheet as doing it manually can be painstaking to say the least. Create a new spreadsheet based on this PPC bidding template, and copy across your keywords leaving behind the Alexa rank. Now work down the spreadsheet entering a title, description, URL, tracking URL and bid for each keyword. It's probably best to start with the lowest possible bid, then you can see the results and increase the bid as necessary. There is nothing worse than paying 30cents a click when the next bidder below you is on 5 cents. The spreadsheet includes 2 columns which let you know how long your title and description tags are. Different pay per click engines have different length limits so you may need to adjust your title or description for each engine. Do not include CAPITOLS, or !!! as these will not be approved. Make sure you have the keyword included in the title and description for maximum click through's. The more unique the title and description are to the keyword the better the listing will perform. Once your spreadsheet is ready follow the PPC engines instructions to submit your listings.

Step 4. Looking at the results

2 weeks to a month later login to your PPC advertiser accounts and have a look at the statistics. You can see how much traffic has been sent and exactly which keywords have been getting the clicks. You can also see what rank your bid is for each keyword and how much the top bids are. Be wary of options to set all your keywords to the top positions as these systems can often escalate bid prices. Increase your bids to a comfortable level and wait to see the results. If you rush then you may find your PPC budget running out without much to show for it. Take your time to get used to how it all works for the best results. You can afford to put higher bids on very specific keywords, but be careful when you have a broad term such as 'marketing'. To keep the PPC campaign profitable you'll have to check the stats and bids at least every month.

Step 5. Going for the big fish

Now that you are comfortable with pay per click and it's workings it's time to branch out into the other PPC engines. You should have an idea know of what you can afford as a profitable bid on each keyword. Stick to what you can afford to keep an eye on how the market changes. An awful lot of money is wasted on PPC advertising. You'll most likely see people shooting to the top and then disappearing completely. Make sure you don't get caught in the same traffic. Keep your campaigns profitable and within your budgets. Pay per click adverting can be a good source of traffic and revenue, but it's not enough to be your sole traffic source, and if you try to make it then you'll end up in trouble. Get it working for you, then focus on the other parts of your internet marketing strategy.