The Key To Pay Per Click
Whatever your home-based internet business is, you must have people visit your website. The best way for this to happen is to have a high search engine ranking. This takes time, skill, and money.
For those of us that have limited budgets and can’t afford sponsored links, full page ads, or speedy URL insertions, there is an alternative — The Pay Per Click (or PPC).
The Pay Per Click is geared towards business owners who have outgrown free classifieds, but are still not turning enough profit to advertise in the aforementioned way.
PPC sites give you the option to bid on select keywords that can draw visitors to your site. Most PPC sites will list the cost or bid for the keywords you are interested in. The price listed is for searches that actually result in a visit to your site. You will only be charged if a prospect visits your site.
So find a list of PPC sites that you are interested in and test the current bids on the keywords that you want to use. See how much the competition is paying and this will give you an idea of how much you should budget. Most PPC sites let you start with an initial investment of $50.
Now that you have investigated a few PPC sites and viewed the prices for select keywords, you should narrow your choices. The first trick is not to overdo your keywords. Many people get caught up with having 50+ keywords that cover every possible search a potential customer can perform. This is a bad approach because you will lose your money very quickly. Focus your keywords down to 10 or fewer for best results.
The second most common mistake is wanting to have the #1 spot on the PPC search. Here again you will run out of money very quickly and have little results to show for it. #1 spot bids are very competitive and pricey. If someone is serious about buying your product or joining your program, they are not going to jump on the first site they see. If they do, then they probably aren’t going to be a good customer anyway. Most likely, the customer will do research on at least 10-15 sites before making a decision. These are the people you should be targeting, especially for affiliate programs. To save money and get ‘better’ prospects, you should keep your keyword bids in the 10-15 ranking spot. The savings are enormous!
The final key to using PPC’s would be to monitor your bids constantly. Think with an eBay auction mentality: you want to keep your midlevel status as well as tracking which keywords are working for you and which are not.
In summary, the keys to PPC are:
1. Research your keywords and what your competition is paying on various PPC sites. This will help you to budget your advertising dollars.
2. Limit your keyword selection to fewer than 10 words. Your advertising will be more focused and your money will last longer.
3. Don’t aim to be #1. You will only end up broke and disappointed.
4. Monitor, monitor, monitor.
Author:
Jonathan Canfield
