Pay Per Click 101

Let's start by defining what Pay Per Click advertising is. It is a system that allows you to post ads on different web sites in exchange for a determined amount of money. You pay the service for each instance in which someone clicks on your ads.

It should be obvious, just from the above sentences, that if you only pay when someone clicks on your ads that you have control over your advertising campaign. How?

* Targeted ads - As long as you are honest and post your ads with relevant keywords only people looking for your product or service will follow through.

* Expense - You get to stop the campaign whenever you want. A reason you may want to stop your ad is when you determine that it must be rewritten.

* Segmentation - It is easy to bring your ads to those that are looking for you. The use of keywords becomes handy when your product or service will perform better in a segmented market.

How does it work?
The most important thing to consider when starting a PPC campaign is to understand your product.

The reason for this is that PPC functions based on keywords. If you sell soap online keywords you may use are: soap, natural soap, fragrance free soap, etc. Every time someone goes to Google and types one of your keywords chances are that your ad will pop up in the first page or so. Of course, there are other criteria that your ad must meet to be displayed in the first pages, but if your bid for those keywords beats the competition traffic to your site will be out of this world.

Bidding?
Yes, bidding. You see you are not the only business picking soap as your keyword. Across the country there's a mom wanting to start her online soap business and she also opened a Adwords account in Google. Her bid for soap was .25 while yours was .20. Guess what? She won the bidding process and her ad will be displayed on top of yours. You can increase your bid or you can have your ads displayed in other websites. It works the same as described above but instead of relying on search engines your ad will be posted in sites that are relevant to your ad. In the case of the soap making business their ads could appear in sites devoted to home and gardening, work from home sites, or any site you targeted thinking of the demographics you think would purchase the products you offer.

This is a basic rundown on Pay Per click advertising. If used correctly it should increase the traffic to your web site and increase sales as a result. I am offering a FREE e-book: "How To Become A Pay per Click Mastering Master" to those who send me an email with Marketing Master in the subject line. It's full of details about Pay Per Click and it's meant to help you understand Pay per Click and help you start a successful PPC campaign.