How to Effectively Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising

How to Effectively Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising


I have been a supporter of PPC search engines for years. They remain one of the most effective tools you can use to bring quick, cheap, targeted traffic to your site.

True to their name, with pay-per-click search engines, you pay a premium every time a visitor clicks on your link-anything from a few cents to a few dollars.

For example, let’s say you want to promote a site that sells information on how to learn affiliate marketing, and you want to rank No. 1 in the search engines for the term “affiliate marketing course”. To get a top-ten position in the free search engines, you’d probably be looking at a few months (at least) of arduous effort.

But in the pay-per-clicks, you can grab the No. 1 spot in just minutes! That is because all you have to do is see how much the person who has the No. 1 position is paying per click, and simply outbid them by paying once penny more.

Then when your potential customer searches for the term” affiliate marketing course”, your link will show up as the first listing on the search results page. Each time a searcher clicks on your link, you will pay however much you have bid the No. 1 Position.

There are three advantages to bidding keywords in the pay-per-clicks:
You get effective advertising, because you only pay when someone actually clicks through to your site.
Your listing will get posted quickly-anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days at the most-meaning you can start profiting from increased traffic and sales almost immediately.
In order to rank in the No. 1 position, all you have to do is outbid your competitors, which is usually only a matter of a few pennies per click.

Done right, pay-per-click advertising can be very profitable. However, if you are not careful, you can lose a lot of money with PPC advertising. Here are some tips to help you ensure your campaigns are profitable.

Avoid keywords that are too general. More general keywords will attract a lot of traffic, diving up the cost of your PPC campaign and converting few visitors to sales because general search terms are not specific enough to attract the right audience.
Ensure that the sales process on your site is converting visitors to buyers before you launch a full-scale PPC campaign. You do not want to be spending money on getting the traffic if your site can’t produce sales.
Make sure you calculate how much you can afford to bid on keywords to guarantee you still turn a profit. To determine how much you can afford to bid, you will need to understand the value or each visitor to your site. You can do this by determining the number of sales you will get, the profit you will earn per sale, and the number of unique visitors your site will receive during a set period of time. It is generally easiest to calculate these numbers on a monthly basis.

Here are three easy steps that will help you determine the value of each individual visitor to your site:

To determine your visitor conversion rate, calculate No. of sales divided by number of visitors = conversions per visitor.
To calculate your net profit per sale, calculate: Gross revenue – total expenses divided by the number of sales = net profit per sale.
To determine the value of each visitor to your site, calculate: Net profit per sale x visitor conversion rate = individual visitor value.
Once you understand the value of your visitors, you will be able to set your maximum bid for keywords. For example, you may determine that each individual visitor to your site is worth 63 cents in pure profit. This means you can afford to bid a maximum of 53 cents per click to guarantee that you will generate a profit.

There is no doubt that the two best PPC services are offered by Google and Yahoo Search.

Jason Rossi is an entrepreneur, author, business owner and successful Internet marketer with over 20 years experience in business. He owns and operates the following successful website http://www.advancedpromotingtips.com, http://www.jrossiconstruction.com