What is Pay Per Click

Basically there are search engines which offer a marketing option called "pay per click" to advertisers.

Most of the major search engines offer this type of service.

The advertiser places a small advertisement on the search results page based on a specific keyword or phrase. Although you don't pay to place the advertisement as such the search engine company makes their money by charging you for every time someone clicks on your advertisement. Hence the name "pay per click." Note that this is different from organic (free) search engine optimization obtained through other methods of advertising. How pay per click operates is that when a person asks a question of the search engine eg "How does such and such work" or "how can I do..." then if the words used tally with your keyword/phrase then your advertisement appears. Should your advertisement appeal to the enquirer and they click onto it then you are charged by the search engine company. If your advertisement doesn't ring any bells and is not clicked on then you will not have to pay any money. Bear in mind though that if your advert is clicked on and it is not of interest to the reader y! ou will still be charged. So it is very important to ensure that your keywords are very specific to your targeted audience. Whilst this method of advertising seems fairly simple it is in fact one of the most feared by newbies and with good reason. If you don't know what you are doing then you can very quickly lose all of your advertising budget. On the other hand done correctly the rewards can be HUGE. It is very important that you have your website set up properly after due diligence before even considering pay per click. My advice would be that you shouldn't use company replicated sites (unless brand new!) because everyone else is! You need to have set up your own branding pages, submitted articles etc first. Make sure that your foundations are secure before entering this field! Assuming you are now in a position to go ahead with pay per click then how do you pay?

You bid! Oh no I have to get in an auction? Basically yep!

In essence the greater the bid the higher your advertisement is placed on the search engine.

That is a rather simplified explanation so please study further so that you fully understand how to construct a suitable campaign.

Normally the bid price is in cents rather than dollars but can still work out very expensive unless you have suitable controls in place.

As with most things you have to educate yourself first.

You have probably gathered by now that pay per click requires a serious learning curve and plenty of patience if you wish to be successful advertising in this medium.

As with all things testing is paramount.

So, yes, pay per click is a mayor way of selling your product/service on the internet and should be included in your advertising campaigns.

Just be sure you know what you are doing before dipping your toe in the water as you are playing with the big boys here.

To YOUR success

John Beaumont Internet Marketer