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Pay Per Click Marketing - An Introduction
This article outlines all of the basics of using pay per click in your marketing campaign.
Pay per click (PPC) is one of the four basic types of search engines. PPC remains one of the most effective methods for acquiring targeted traffic to your website. A recent article from Forbes Magazine stated that in 2008 alone, 8 billion dollars will be spent on pay per click advertising.
Below is a basic overview of how PPC search engines work.
PPC search engines create listings which are based on keyword phrases that people are using in their internet searches. Webmasters who are seeking to market their websites will bid against other webmasters for each keyword phrase. Each of these phrases will have a number one spot, then a second and third spot, and so on. The winning bidder for the number one spot will show up at the top of the search for that keyword phrase. The same thing happens for the winning bidder of the second and third spots, and, well you get the idea. Ultimately then, when somebody types one of the keyword phrases which were bid on into a search engine, the pay per click listings will show up first. The pay per click ads will be easy to spot, as they will be labelled as sponsored links. These sponsored pay per clicks will either be in a shaded area at the top of the search result or in a sidebar on the right (and sometimes both).
One other place that pay per click ads will show up is within the Google Adsense system. You will commonly see these on web sites in a separate box with the notation: “ads by Google”. Ultimately then, when someone clicks on an ad, the original webmaster who bid on this ad is charged the bid amount. Depending on the popularity of the keyword phrase, this charge can vary between two cents to a dollar or more.
OK, let’s see how we can use PPC to make money with an affiliate marketing website.
First of all, you can use PPC to send immediate targeted traffic to you site. In this case, you will be one of the webmasters described above who will bid on keyword phrases. Once you have an account with a particular PPC search engine, and you complete your keyword bidding, your ads will go live very quickly (usually the same day). When someone does a keyword phrase search in their favorite search engine, and this keyword phrase matches one of the phrases you bid on, your website will show up on page one (usually at the top) for that search. If the user clicks on your ad, they will be taken straight to your website and you will be charged the bid amount. In this way, you can get almost instant traffic to your website. Keep in mind, however, that you need to have a budget for this method.
The second method that you can utilize to make money using pay per click is by incorporating Google Adsense into you site. Before I continue, I want to clarify a couple of terms for you. Google Adwords is the Google pay per click search engine. Google Adsense is the advertising platform that you see on many websites (and the ads here are pay per click). You can join Google Adsense for free, and with a little bit of work, you can have their ads running in a sidebar on your website. This is an extra income stream for you. If a visitor doesn’t purchase one of your affiliate products, they may click on one of the google ads. If they click on a google ad, you will get paid for this click through. Google will automatically place ads which are only relevant to your website. Google Adsense is completely maintenance free once you have it set up on your site. Typically, the people who click Google Ads on your site are not interested in your products so they will leave and never come back. You may as well make a small amount of money from them on the click, before they depart. Typically, Google will pay you between 30 to 80% of the advertisers’ bid amount.
In closing, you will definitely want to incorporate pay per click into your overall marketing strategy at some point. Even though it will cost money to run a pay per click advertising campaign, the pay off should be much greater if you go about it correctly. Additionally, if you want to incorporate Google Adsense into your website, it is entirely free so you have nothing to lose. Good luck with your internet affiliate marketing program.