Pay-Per-Click Marketing: How to Waste Your Advertising Budget - Ppc-Advertising

Pay-Per-Click Marketing: How to Waste Your Advertising Budget

A well-oiled pay-per-click search engine campaign can land hundreds of highly targeted visitors on practically any website within a matter of days. That isn't new information. Most experienced online business owners already know it.

But pay-per-click advertising is also one of the quickest ways to lose money, if it isn't done right. At the surface level, the process appears to be as simple as writing an advertisement, bidding for keywords, and waiting for traffic and sales to come rolling in. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially in the midst of today's heated competition for top keywords.

So, for a few minutes, let us play the role of devil's advocate, as we explore some of the common downfalls encountered by hopeful but inexperienced pay-per-click advertisers.

1. - Making Advertising Decisions Based on Emotion

The excitement of tapping into a new market, and the much anticipated thrill of watching click counters working overtime, can and often does lead to a hasty decision making process. Add to this a pressing need for a cash infusion, plus a bit of the gambler spirit, and a framework for failure will emerge.

2. - Overly Generalized Keyword Selection

Keywords that are too broad in scope can inevitably lead to an excess of non-profitable clicks, driving an otherwise profitable campaign into the red.

For example, a website selling athletic shoes should omit the simple term "shoes" from the keyword list. That term alone may generate a massive number of click-throughs. However, a good portion of the resulting traffic will likely be looking for sandals,dress shoes, or some type of shoe other than athletic designs.

3. - Poorly Worded Advertisements

Pay-per-click ads are notorious for restrictions on allowed word count. While the headline and ad body should contain as many prime keywords as possible, every single word in the ad should be weighed and measured for effect. A vague or loosely related advertisement may pull throngs of curious visitors, but the ultimate value of each of those visitors must also be considered. The point of a great ad is to attract only those who have a purchase already in mind.

4. - Failure to Calculate Bid Value

An untested ad leaves much of this process to theory, but even a theoretical profit model is better than none at all. Otherwise, the urge to bid simply for top positioning may ultimately spell an overall loss of profit.

Three critical points to consider are:

- product pricing
- an acceptable profit margin per sale
- a realistic clicks to sales ratio (CSR)

Let's say a modest CSR of 1% may be expected, meaning one out of each one-hundred visitors will order immediately. The product is priced at $69 and a 50% profit margin per sale is acceptable. Given these factors, up to 50% of the product price ($34.50) can be spent to achieve the sale and deliver the product.

For the sake of this example, consider that delivery costs are nil. Therefore, $34.50 divided by 100 clicks = $0.345 as an absolute maximum bid per click. There are only three ways to increase the bid above $0.345 while maintaining the integrity of the campaign:

- raise the product price above $69
- increase the CSR above 1%
- accept a lower profit margin per sale

5. - Failure to Track Results and Manage the Campaign

Once the advertising campaign is set in motion, results should be tracked and analyzed on a daily basis. Many pay-per-click search engines now provide in-depth analysis and reporting tools that greatly simplify this process. In addition, specialized pay-per-click tracking software is widely available, and in the absence of a workable alternative, will prove to be a wise investment.

However, based on this writer's own experience, no two selling days are alike, even on the Internet. We suggest that no fundamental changes be made to the campaign until at least five-hundred click-throughs have been gathered, or until the campaign has been live for several days.

Those suggestions are, of course, only rules of thumb. Any campaign found to be creating a cash hemorrhage should be discontinued immediately and thoroughly reevaluated.

6. - Failure to Enable Follow-up Marketing

An inexperienced pay-per-click advertiser might expect to begin turning a profit immediately after the ad goes live online. However sweet a dream that may be, it is often not the case.

Without follow-up capability, the profit potential of any pay-per-click campaign is severely reduced. A majority of prospects will not buy on their first visit, and may not return to buy later. As a result, the entire campaign may register a net loss on the initial run.

However, even a money-losing initial campaign can be turned into a winner over time, if the campaign is focused not only toward making immediate sales, but also toward producing a mailing list of interested prospects for later follow-up.

The mechanics of the follow-up tactic are beyond the scope of this writing. We invite the reader to visit the link below and investigate a series of articles on follow-up email marketing and the effective use of autoresponder systems.

Dan B. Cauthron is a 30 year direct marketing veteran and has been successful on the Net since 2000.

Subscribe to his 100% original content *Revenew Quick Tips* NEWSLetter and receive Dan's Hand Picked eMarketing Success Library free of charge - http://DanBCauthron.com/autoresponders.html; http://DanBCauthron.com

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Not Sure If Your Online Advertisement is Working? - Ppc-Advertising

Not Sure If Your Online Advertisement is Working?

Without tracking, your online advertising is just a shot in the dark. Many new and seasoned marketing individuals spend significant dollars on banner advertisements, ezline ads, and other online media but do not know which ads have brought them the greatest success.

The following is a list of online advertising methods that you may or may not be using. It is important to track all of your online advertisement. This is the only way to determine which method works best for you and where you should spend your hard earned dollars.

Site links


Articles


Ezine advertisement


Banner ads


Signatures Tag


Forum postings


Email marketing promotions


FFA postings


Free Classified listings


Paid Classified listings


Surveys


Auto responder


Pay-per-click listing


Reciprocal link


How do you track your advertising? There are basically two ways of tracking your advertising; sign up for a service or purchase ad tracking software to install on your server.:

A service such as ezTrackZ http://www.eztrackz.com will manage all aspects of your tracking on their servers. This is a web-based tool that will allow you to quickly create your tracking links and report your results in real-time. Other examples of service based ad tracking are Hypertracker www.hypertracker.com and goToast www.gotoast.com Cost varies from $17 per month to $67 per year depending on which service you choose.

You can also purchase software such as AdTrackZ http://www.adtrackz.com to manage your own tracking. Software like AdTrackZ must be installed and managed on your server and is available for a one-time cost.

Which ever method you choose, start now and stop wasting valuable time and dollars on unsuccessful advertising.

About The Author

Karen Fegarty is a professional marketer working with both MailWorkZ and ezTrackZ. Check out the ezTrackZ ad tracker product at http://www.eztrackz.com. and MailWorkZ's flagship email marketing tool., Broadc@st at http://www.mailworkz.com

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Ten Tips for Affiliate Marketers Using Google AdWords - Ppc-Advertising

Ten Tips for Affiliate Marketers Using Google AdWords

One of the hottest ways to sell affiliate products is using Google AdWords. Follow these tips and strategies to maximize your earning potential.

1. Seek out affiliate products that generate fifteen dollars or more in commission. Anything in the twenty-dollar range works well. Paying for clicks can add up quickly and when you do make a sell, it should be profitable.

2. The vendor must present a high quality website with first-rate graphics. If the site appears to be unprofessional, any potential buyer will loose confidence and leave before the sell is made.

3. Make it a requirement that the vendor website only displays one product or service on the referral page. Nothing kills a sell faster than having to many sells messages.

4. The vendor needs to include outstanding sales copy. It's easy to realize the importance of this principle; words are what turn shoppers into buyers on the Internet.

5. When evaluating a potential affiliate program ask yourself if this product or service is something you would feel comfortable buying. Put yourself in the place of the buyer. If you wouldn't buy it, why would they?

6. It's preferable if the vendor site does not obviously advertise for the recruitment of more affiliates. An affiliate link is fine as long as it is low key.

7. The best affiliate programs will attempt to secure the email address of your referrals. Some prospects need to see a sales message at least seven times before they will buy. Make sure you still get credit for sales made during the follow up.

8. The vendor should provide testimonials. Testimonials create confidence and trust leading your prospects to make a purchase.

9. You will recognize a profitable affiliate program because at least one in fifty clicks creates a sell. Constantly monitor your expense versus profit for each set of keywords.

10. Track your keywords and delete any that do not get clicked on after two hundred impressions. The higher your click through rate, the higher position you receive in relation to your competitors.

About The Author

Patrick Carlow

Most Relevant Links Directory Reciprocal Link Exchange: http://www.most-relevant-links.com/

Free Internet marketing resources, traffic generators and reciprocal link exchange directory.

Permission is given for this article to be reprinted by anyone as long as the entire text up to and including the author information, the link and this statement are kept intact in its entirety.

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What is Pay-Per-Click? - Ppc-Advertising

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is when an advertiser pays for each qualified click that sends a search engine user (i.e., visitor) to the advertiser's web page. PPC requires the advertiser to bid on key words or key word phrases chosen by the advertiser. There are many PPC advertising services available to choose from. Google AdWords and Overture are probably the two most popular in use today.

The PPC search engine allows you to buy a top position in the search engine results for the particular keyword or phrase you choose. The PPC search engines can deliver targeted and qualified visitors to your web page at an economical advertising cost if you manage the program carefully with a clear objective. PPC provides the advertiser with assurance that their ad is being delivered to the targeted audience.

PPC advertising uses a bidding process where the highest bidder or highest activity value, depending on the search engine, for a particular keyword or phrase will receive the top placement on the search engine results page. The PPC search engine will place your ad text in a special location on the results page when a user searches on your PPC keyword or phrase search term.

As an example, Google AdWords appear on the right side of the search results page while the organic (i.e., natural) search results appear on the left side of the page. In the case of Yahoo! Search, the sponsored ads appear on both the left and right side of the search results page. The top 2-3 sponsored ads appear in the top positions on the left side above the natural search results and the next 3 sponsored ads appear at the bottom of the left side and on the right side of the search results page along with other sponsored ads.

PPC advertising is a good way to obtain web page visitors when you don't have a top ranking web page to get you the necessary natural search engine placement. Statistics show that over 80% of search engine users prefer the natural search results as opposed to sponsored ads. Nevertheless, the search engines deliver a huge amount of visitor traffic to the sponsored advertisers especially in the competitive keyword markets.

The typical PPC advertising campaign is based on the bid per click. For example, you bid $0.10 for a particular keyword or phrase that is accepted by the search engine. Whenever a search engine user clicks on your sponsored ad then you are charged $0.10 by the search engine. This amount is deducted from your account funds. Your placement in the search engine results page depends on the search engine. For Google, the placement is determined by your bid price and the ad's click-through activity. For Yahoo, the placement is determined by your bid relative to other bids.

PPC can be an excellent method for getting visitor traffic to your web site but it can also cost you a lot of money. You need to be extremely careful and monitor your cost of using PPC versus the revenue generated. As the old saying goes, do the math. Calculate your return on investment (ROI) on a continuous basis to determine if you are making a profit on your PPC campaign.

As an example, assume your bid for a particular keyword is $0.10 and the product you sell has a profit margin of $15 after product costs (excluding PPC costs). If your conversion rate (the number of visitors that buy your product) is 1.0%, only 1 of your visitors will buy your product out of 100 visitors. Your net profit for every 100 visitors from your PPC campaign will be $5 ($15 profit margin less $10 for PPC).

It is a good idea to experiment with the different PPC search engines to find the one that works best for you. In addition, you need to spend the necessary time and effort to select the keyword or keyword phrase that has a profitable conversion rate for your specific web page. A higher conversion rate implies more profits to you.

Try to avoid the senseless bidding war with your competitors. Seriously evaluate whether having the number one placement position is worth the PPC price you pay. What about position numbers two, three and so on. Will you get enough clicks in one of those positions to make your PPC campaign a success? Do not automatically assume that you have to be in position number one to make a lot of money using PPC. It all comes down to experimenting and testing.

There is no such thing as the perfect PPC campaign. Evaluate the performance of your PPC campaigns on a continuous basis. Are you leaving money on the table by not adjusting your PPC bid to a lower level? Should you increase the bid price to get more traffic? Is your conversion rate changing? What are your competitors doing? Should you be considering different keywords in your campaign? PPC advertising is a great way to get traffic but at a definite price. PPC requires a thorough knowledge of the PPC search engines that you use and constant monitoring and evaluation of your campaigns.

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Copyright (C) 2004 F. Terrence Markle - All Rights Reserved

Get my F.R.E.E multi-part series on generating targeted and quality traffic to your web site. http://www.QuikSystems.com/WST/TrafficSeries.htm Get my F.R.E.E newsletter on building your own targeted mailing list: http://www.QuikSystems.com/EzineSub.htm

About The Author

Copyright (C) 2004 - F. Terrence Markle has worked for over 20 years with public and private companies. He has an MBA in marketing and finance. He has been involved with Internet-related businesses for over 3 years. His primary focus is the marketing of affiliate programs.

tmarkle@quiksystems.com

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Have you ever imagined what it would be like to get hundreds, even thousands of targeted visitors to your web site each and everyday?If you could increase web site traffic by a factor of 3, how much more money would you be making? I can tell you that your profits would grow exponentially!So how do you drive those targeted, ready to buy, visitors to your site? I am going to outline the keys to winning the Pay per Click game. If you will implement these strategies, I can guarantee you that you will have more traffic to your site than you ever imagined!So, let's get started increasing web site traffic, shall we?PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINESThis is one of the most obvious and misused traffic generating strategies on the web.

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Keywords, How to Find Them, and Use Them Effectively - Ppc-Advertising

Keywords, How to Find Them, and Use Them Effectively

To be a successful affiliate marketer takes a ton of work. You probably know this by now. Really! I hear some of you say. You thought it was a piece of cake, mostly because you don't have to worry about having your own product.

Ok, so no product costs, no shipping costs, no payment processor costs, and so on. So what is so hard about being a successful affiliate.

Glad you asked! Your first step should be to make a marketing plan, or as I call it, a 'decision plan'. How many of us really make a complete marketing plan. (Not me!) I know we sh ould, but mine never completed. This is where you decide what niche, or specialtiy you want to 'major' in.

Why don't I just be in 'affiliate marketing'? you ask. Wow, talk about shooting yourself in the foot before you get off the ground. It's TOO competitive, don't you know! Also too general, maybe too vague, all over the map so to speak.

So how come it's good enough for Best Affiliate Products but too much for you? Firstly, I must mention that I do have other niche markets, and some in both the planning and preparation stages. I do heed my own advise. Secondly, someone has to protect you and lead you down the best path to success. I don't want you to experience all the pain I went through.

This is why it's important to associate Affiliate Marketing with Niche Markets. By focusing on one topic, you magnify your chance of success many times over. Doesn't matter if the niche is small or large, but you must align your thinking in this direction.

The niche can be huge, such as Auctions or EBay, and you will find a good market there. The EBay sales may be huge, but the competion for affiliate products is not excessive at all.

Take another huge Niche (specialty) such as Health. Now this competition is ferocious. Personally, I would not touch it, even though a lot of people do well with it. Why fight an uphill battle just to get started, when you can surely find ot her prospective niches.

The solution is to find smaller niches of "in demand" products. Here we go again, you say. More speeches on what to do, but HOW do we do this? And how do we do this successfully, when everyone else is also looking for the answer.

An awful lot of people feel just like you, and as a result, they never find niches, because they never look for them. There goes much of your potential competition. Good for us, OK.

The search for good, usable 'keywords' is the answer to locating a potentially profitable business. Using the right tools makes the task a lot easier, a lot faster, and less stressful from a decision making point of view.

I was just starting to prepare the list of tools to use, when I remembered that they are all listed in the gratis course I offer. The Niche Madness eCourse is 7 days of power packed info on Affiliate Marketing for Niche Markets. Go to www.bestaffiliateproducts.com and sign up for the eCourse. Learn all there is to know, over a 12 day period, as the course is sent out every 2nd day.

But I also have to tell about a new tool I discovered. Every once in a while, a really great tool is created, and I believe that this is the case here.

It's called Adwords Equalizer. It is so loaded with features that it is too much to list here. The easy and important way to see all the benefits is at my Best Products page at BestAffiliateProducts.com

This is a Product and a Half, as the saying goes. You may no longer need expensive services like Wordtracker, where you never stop paying. But the only way to see if it fits your needs, is to visit the site at the site above.

We are finding some good keywords to work with, so what comes next. Regretably, we've run out of time here, so you take the course. Again, just sign up for the Niche Madness eCourse at the link below. The answer is right there.

I wish you Happy Keyword hunting, have fun with it.

Fred Farah copyright 2005

Best Affiliate Products and Niche Market Strategies
Subscribe to Niche Market Strategies Newsletter and the Niche Madness 7-day email course at: Best Affiliate Products

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Improved PPC Marketing Performance from Time-Tested 80/20 Principle - Ppc-Advertising

Improved PPC Marketing Performance from Time-Tested 80/20 Principle

As marketers and business owners, we're always looking for "the next big idea or strategy" to maximize our business performance. Yet, the application of time-tested principles consistently achieve greater results over efforts to create newer ideas and strategies.

For example, Stephen Covey's New York Times best-selling and world-renowned book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a self-proclaimed synthesis of principles taught by great teachers and philosophers over 150 years ago 1. The world-wide success of this book is evidence to the time-resistant power of principles.

In addition, many hugely successful Internet Marketers generated significant fortunes from applying 50 to 75 year old direct mail principles to the new Internet medium. Marketing strategies used by greats like Claude Hopkins, Robert Collier and John Caples have significant application in today's digital environment.

Although pay-per-click marketing is a relatively new Internet marketing strategy, its performance relates well to an old principle called "Pareto's Law" or better known as "the 80/20 Principle".

The meaning of the 80/20 Principle is best explained by a recent book, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less", written by Richard Koch:

"The 80/20 Principle states that there is an inbuilt imbalance between causes and results, inputs and outputs, and effort and reward. 80/20 relationships typically will show that 80% of outputs result from 20% of inputs; that 80% of consequences flow from 20% of causes; or that 80% of results come from 20% of effort." 2

When applied to pay-per-click marketing, 80% of outputs (or desired visitor actions on your website), result from 20% of the inputs (your keywords.)

Applying the 80/20 Principle to Pay-per-Click Marketing

One of the benefits of running a pay-per-click marketing campaign is the control gained from selecting keywords to bid on. In essence, the keywords you select enable you to target specific types of individuals among varying demographics and at various points within their buying cycle.

But because it is difficult to know specifically which keywords (inputs) will ultimately generate the most actions (outputs) the process of "keyword selection" should be applied liberally. This means that all possible keyword variations and associations should be selected to figuratively "blanket" or span across all potential search queries for your products or services. By relying on your keyword-level tracking system, over time, the resulting website actions will sort the top performing keywords from the poor-performing ones.

Under the 80/20 Principle, if you initially select 1,000 keywords for your pay-per-click marketing campaign, over a month or two depending on visitor volume, your keyword-level tracking system will uncover 20% of keywords that produce 80% of your results. Likewise, the 80/20 Principle will expose roughly 80% of the 1,000 keywords selected that produce minimal to no results.

Aside from seasonality variations and marketplace trends that effect keyword performance, the 80/20 Principle pinpoints a significant operational process that all Internet marketers should implement immediately. By tracking your pay-per-click marketing campaign at the keyword level and identifying the specific keywords that produce maximum results, you can eliminate roughly 80% of your poor-performing keywords. Through this "keyword filtration process" you will re-allocate budget dollars to the top performing keywords and reduce keyword management time spent on poor-performing ones.

Remember These 5 Keys?

1. During your keyword selection process, "blanket" your target market with every relevant keyword variation and association used by your target market to find your products or services. Use Overture or Google Adwords' editorial review to define the relevancy boundaries (or "the ends of the blanket") for your target market.

2. Define at least one value-oriented action such as an opt-in, subscription, registration or sale that you seek a visitor to perform on your website. This action (called your "marketing objective") is the determination point for measuring how your keywords are performing.

3. Implement keyword-level tracking to identify which 20% of your keywords produce 80% of your actions.

4. Pay close attention to seasonality variations and marketplace trends that may cause fluctuations in keyword performance. Instead of eliminating all 80% of your poor performing keywords, identify the most relevant ones to your products and services and the ones with the highest demand volume and work on adjusting their bids, re-writing their titles and descriptions or re-engineering their landing pages to increase their performance.

5. If branding is your primary objective as opposed to "performance" remove your brand-oriented keywords from your 80/20 Principle analysis and associated performance metrics.

Analyze your pay-per-click marketing against the 80/20 Principle to see if an imbalance exists between your inputs (keywords) and outputs (actions). You will discover that a simple revamp of your pay-per-click marketing campaign will significantly increase your visitor-to-action conversion rates, reduce your cost per action and enable a more efficient allocation of your budget across your top performing keywords.

Sources:

1 Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (New York, Simon & Schuster Inc., 1989) pg. 18.

2 Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less (New York: DoubleDay, 1998) pg. 4.

Kevin Gold is a Partner and Co-founder of Enhanced Concepts, Inc., which specializes in turning website visitors into leads and sales through tested website conversion strategies and performance-focused search engine marketing. To learn how to generate greater performance from your search engine marketing and to turn more website visitors into leads and sales go to http://www.enhancedconcepts.com.

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The Click Fraud Problem - Ppc-Advertising

The Click Fraud Problem

Click fraud has become a major problem for online marketers. If you participate on Google adwords campaigns or Overture, you must already pay a lot for your campaigns.

What is click fraud?

Click fraud is the deliberate clicks to PPC search engine ads for completely other reasons than expressing interest for buying the related products or services.

Overture defines click fraud as clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a web site to purchase goods or services or to obtain information.

Google defines click fraud, or invalid clicks, as any method used to artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions.

In simple words, Click fraud means that someone is cheating you and that you pay too much for your pay per click campaigns.

Who is doing that?

Three main groups click on pay per click ads, without real interest in the offered goods:

People who joined Google AdSense or other per click affiliate programs click on the ads on their own web site to make a little income. Often, these people cooperate with other webmasters to click on each other's ads.

Some unethical companies click on the pay per click ads of competitors to drive up their advertising costs.

Companies (often in India, Russia and China) hire people who are paid to click on ads.

Google and other search networks provide refunds to advertisers when click fraud has been discovered.

Google and Overture employ "fraud squads," or teams of people dedicated to fighting click schemes. But at least two marketing executives say such countermeasures are missing fraudulent clicks that are responsible for between 5 percent and 20 percent of advertising fees paid to all search networks.

This is a huge problem. There is no "pay per click" Company denying that click fraud exists. Web analytics companies estimates that the 50% of all click activity is fraudulent.

This means that your pay per click marketing activities are half effective as they could be because of click fraud.

Overture spokeswoman Jennifer Stephens refutes that estimate, saying that the numbers likely represent acts of fraud that are ultimately caught. She added that Overture filters most fraudulent clicks with the best antifraud system in the industry, which combines technology and human analysis.

Most advertisers are aware of the click-fraud issue but have not delved into it because of the technical complexities involved. Others are concerned that they could jeopardize their relationships with the powerful search networks if they complain too loudly.

One of the best ways to eliminate click fraud is using anti click fraud services such as ppctrax (www.ppctrax.com). They provide services like the below:

IP address capture.
IP address geographic Location.
User Agent (browser, bot etc.)
See exactly what keywords are generating your clicks
Date and Time stamp
System detects sudden click spikes from one or more IP addresses
Real-time email alerts at 80% and 100% of your account's transaction utilization
IP address history - alert you to prior offenders

Another similar service is "who is clicking who": http://www.whosclickingwho.com

Other ways is the click fraud capture software like Click Auditor: http://www.keywordmax.com/click_auditor.html

Christos Varsamis is an internet marketing consultant. He is the creator and publisher of http://www.settinglifegoals.com & http://www.internetmarketingsuccesstips.com.

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The Click Fraud Problem
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How to Profit from Knowing the Most Expensive Keywords - Ppc-Advertising

How to Profit from Knowing the Most Expensive Keywords

By knowing the most expensive keywords on the internet, you can create websites and web pages based on these keywords. On these sites and pages, you can serve expensive ads and/or promote affiliate offers that reap high bounties when clicked or completed.

The challenge lies in driving traffic to these sites. One way to drive traffic is through search engine optimization, whereby you create a website that ranks highly on the search engines and receive "free" traffic. Or, if you already have an existing well-ranked site, you can create new pages linked from your existing pages. A second way to drive traffic is through online advertising.

With regards to advertising, one key is to understand correlations between keywords. By determining correlations between inexpensive and expensive keywords, you can advertise on the inexpensive keyword (via pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on search engines) to drive traffic to your website that serves ads based on expensive keywords. For instance, advertising on the keyword "painting" ($0.20 keyword), and sending visitors to your site about the related topic "home remodeling" ($2.00 keyword) allows you to profit from the wide spread between the keyword prices of the two correlated keywords.

Likewise there are many opportunities to run banner and other ads through online advertising networks to drive traffic to your website. These ads can run on both "painting" and "home remodeling" websites. The cost of CPM (cost per impression) advertising typically does not reflect the price of the keywords. That is, a banner ad on a "painting" website typically costs the same as a banner ad on a "home remodeling" website. This sharply contrasts the price of PPC advertising on search engines which vary widely based on the keyword.

There are two other ways to profit from knowing the most expensive keywords. The first doesn't even require you to own or operate a website. In this method, you advertise using inexpensive means (e.g., via pay-per-click advertising on inexpensive keywords or CPM advertising) and direct traffic to high paying affiliate offers. The second method is to set up your own search engine. There are several companies that allow you to easily set up a search engine that serves PPC ads syndicated from Google, Overture or other PPC search engine networks. Once you create your engine, you can drive traffic directly to your PPC results, and get paid every time someone clicks on one of the results. Likewise, on your search engine's home page, you can include many links to expensive keywords, so that when someone clicks on it, the engine shows expensive ads based on those keywords.

Understanding keyword pricing is critical to the online advertising, PPC search engine and affiliate marketing businesses - businesses that combine for over $25 billion a year in revenues. With a market of this size, generating substantial profits, if you have the right information, is really not that challenging.

Dave Lavinsky is the President of TopPayingKeywords.com, a firm which tracks and publishes databases of the 15,000+ most expensive PPC keywords. http://www.toppayingkeywords.com

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Pay Per Performance Advertising : What is it? - Ppc-Advertising

Pay Per Performance Advertising : What is it?

Pay Per Performance Advertising is when the advertiser pays a fee based on an action which a visitor to his website takes.

Pay Per Performance Advertising could cover several things, such as pay per click advertising,

This type of Pay Per Performance Advertising means that, you list your website in a pay per click search engine, and when someone types in your term and clicks on your website listing, you are charged a fee for that click.

Another type of Pay Per Performance Advertising could be pay per subscriber. What this means is that you will pay a fee for every subscriber that is sent to you through a subscription form.

There are many types of Pay Per Performance Advertising but the ones above are the most common, especially pay per click.

Pay per search is another one. This was done by askjeeves.com a few years ago, I'm not sure if they still do it though. What basically happened was you would put an askjeeves search box on your website, and whenever someone searched askjeeves through your website, you were paid a small amount each time.

Not recommended for small websites with little traffic. The return just wont be worth it.

Pay per impression is another one. This is quite rare though, or at least it should be. I don't think many, if any websites do pay per impression any more, it's so expensive and easy to make fraudulent impressions. However, in some places CPM is quite popular. This means cost per thousand impressions. So say the CPM was $5, this would mean that for every thousand people that saw your advertisement you would pay $5.

Out of all of the above, I would much prefer paying for every action taken. This way I get what I want, and there is less chance of fraud happening, which is just a waste of my time and money. Sure it costs more, but I think the results are well worth it.

If you are looking for a PPC search engine, then I would definitely recommend overture. They will display your website in several different search engines, making sure you get maximum exposure.

If you want to do a subscriber deal by paying for each subscriber that is sent to you. This is best set up yourself and joint venture with another website. This means you can customize it yourself. Or you could leave it open to everyone and have many people sending you subscribers. I don't know of any websites that provide software for this, so you may have to get a programmer to do it for you.

Please be careful though. You CAN have anyone and everyone promote your newsletter and generate you subscribers, however if you allow this, it will be easier and easier to lose track of genuine and fraudulent subscriptions, making it hard to distinguish between them.

Make sure you have a good email handling solution.

I would recommend that you don't automate this process unless you are feeling brave.

Verify each request personally and manually.

Or you could go out looking yourself.

This is probably the best way to go, it gives you total control and allows you to pick and choose exactly who you want and who you don't want.

However, if you are feeling brave, or you have a good email handling solution then go ahead and spread the word about your newsletter subscription box. Let everyone promote it. This means more subscribers for you, which means more people to sell to.

In conclusion, if you want to advertise in this way, make sure you keep a tight grip on your budget. Put some restrictions on how much you can spend so you don't go overboard.

Overture allows you to deposit as much or as little as you like (Though a minimum deposit of $20 does apply). This way you can't overspend unless you manually choose to.

But, this brings on the issue of self control. Set yourself a personal limit and don't exceed it.

By Stephen Warren, the creator of http://www.marketershandbook.com, the completely FREE guide to marketing online, with useful articles and links.

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Market Research Means Money - Ppc-Advertising

Market Research Means Money

I recently made a critical mistake in my progression towards business success: I forgot about market research. I had decided that I was going to make some money with an online store. I thought to myself, where should I start? What can I sell? After a bit of brainstorming, I picked a few things that I thought might be good to sell online. I then proceeded to start looking for suppliers. This may seem like a reasonable course of action, but it is not. It is missing a key component of any business plan.

A basic assumption for the purpose of this article is that there is competition involved with any business. Even if you make your own, unique product, similar products will compete against yours. However, the existence of competition is not necessarily bad. The fact that online retailers are selling items similar or identical to your own means that there is demand for your product. Competition is only bad for you, as a retailer, when the market is becoming saturated (or is already at that point).

Check the electronics market for a good example of this principle. Electronics go for rock-bottom prices online because there are so many different stores that sell them. The difference in prices between stores usually comes down to the cost of shipping. The competition in this area is extreme. If retailers cut their prices any lower they won't make enough to survive.

The first person who had the idea to sell VCRs online probably made a killing. Nowadays, nobody makes anything more than a buck or two per unit. For a home-based business, that's not good enough. Today's electronics dealers depend on volume, and very good supply sources, in order to make their money. Generally speaking, small retailers cannot sell at those prices and turn a profit.

In order to be successful it is essential that you know what you're up against, and that means market research.

If you are selecting your products, then you need to know which stores already sell those products. You also need to know how many stores there are, how much they are charging and, if you can find out, how well they are doing. Could you sell for less (if only a little)? What are other ways you could differentiate your store from the rest?

If you already have your product, then you need to know where and how your competitors are advertising. Are they concentrated in one location? Are there good places that they have overlooked? How much is it going to cost to compete with them for prime ad space?

So, you may ask, where do I begin? The answer is Overture. Owned by Yahoo, Overture is one of the largest and most reliable pay-per-click advertising services. Their program can be an extremely effective, but that is something for another day.

What you need for research requires no sign-up and belongs to no program. There are two web tools in the Overture Advertiser Center that can be amazingly useful. The first is the Search Term Suggestion Tool. This tool allows you to look up a keyword, like "digital camera", and find out how many people searched for that term last month. Not only that, but the tool will suggest a list of related terms, like "digital camera review", for your consideration.

The number of searches per term comes from Overture's partners like Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, CNN, etc. This is critical information because it tells you whether or not people are looking for your product online and, at the same time, shows you how they are searching for it. This indicates a certain demand for your product.

You may be able to judge the size of the demand, to a certain degree, by the number of searches for your terms. For example (numbers taken at time of writing and may not reflect current rates):

Digital Camera - 1,337,422 (high interest)


Used Car - 890,346


Mountain Bike - 133,553


Blender - 26,648


Bubble Gum Machine - 1,502


Chapstick Raspberry Vanilla - 25 (very low interest)

Keep in mind that users searching for 'digital camera' are not necessarily shopping for one. They may just want information such as reviews or feature lists. It is also good to remember that if people are searching on Yahoo and MSN, as in the case of digital cameras, then you can safely assume that even more people are searching for the same things on Google.

The second tool Overture provides is the View Bids Tool. This tool allows you to take the keywords that you found with the term suggestion tool and see how many ads there are for each term and how high the bids are (in order to be listed on top of your competition you must place a higher bid for the term you want). This tool can help you judge your competition.

For example, at the time of this writing there are 131 ads associated with the term digital camera. The top bid is 79 cents per click. Bubble gum machine has 13 ads with a top bid of 49 cents. Chapstick Raspberry Vanilla, not surprisingly, has no bids on the term which means that the top spot could be purchased for the minimum price of 10 cents per click.

After you have your information from Overture, Google is your likely next step. To my knowledge, Google does not provide any analysis tools to the general public, though information is available to registered advertisers. Despite this limitation, it is easy to find your competition on Google. Simply enter your search term and check the right side of the results screen. The first page should show the top advertisers. Checking subsequent pages will reveal the entire list of advertisers for that term.

Tip: Sometimes advertisers may be targeting your term, but not selling your product. Read through the ads and visit the sites to get a more accurate idea of your direct competitors.

The natural results (the normal, non-ad results) of your search are important as well. Check those to see the top ranked sites in your market. Those sites are probably there because they employ search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Users are much more likely to click on the natural results than they are the ads. The stores at the top of the list are likely to be well established and may represent some solid competition.

Visit your competitor's web sites and see what they are selling. Check for site quality, organization, ease of use and amount of products sold. Perhaps they sell your product, but it is lost in a vast sea of other related merchandise. That means better chances for your niche store. Maybe their site is ugly or hard to navigate. These are points at which you could gain an advantage over your rivals. Checking other sites will also give you ideas about how to run your own store.

The third step in this process is to check out Yahoo! Shopping. Yahoo! hosts what is known as an online mall. That is, retailers setup stores with Yahoo!'s services and are then included in Yahoo! Shopping's listings. This can be a good way to get fast traffic. For market research, it means easy access to competitor sites. On the Yahoo! Shopping main page, do a search for your product (Braun blenders for example). The results will show sponsored ads and normal listings. The sponsored ads come from Overture, so you should already be familiar with those.

The normal listings come from a combination of Yahoo! Product Submit results and Yahoo!'s web-crawler search database. What is important in this list is actually displayed just below the top sponsor listings and just above the normal listings. There should be two numbers: the number of products found and the number of stores they were found in. For 'Braun blenders' there were 989 matches from 76 stores (at time of writing). Those numbers give you an indication of how many stores you're up against.

Note: If there are too many matches, the number of stores will not be displayed (ex. 'sony dvd player' yields 3,660 matches). Of course, numbers that high shout, "big competition," even without store numbers.

Here again you have the opportunity to scope out competing stores. The thorough researcher would get their names and site locations. This may seem time consuming, and it is, but it will help with future research.

Our final recommendation is to visit eBay. Once there, find the eBay Stores area (located in the Specialty Sites box on the homepage at time of writing). Enter your search term to see how many eBay stores are selling your product. 'Braun blenders' shows ten items in eBay stores (not bad compared to Yahoo!). In addition, the search may show regular listings below the store results. These results should give you some idea of the popularity of your product as well as the feasibility of selling it on eBay.

Quick Recap:


Overture (free analysis tools)


Google (ads and natural results)


Yahoo! Shopping (number of stores)


eBay Stores (same deal)

Remember, some competition is good because it shows that there is an interest in your product. Too much competition is bad because it means low profitability. The spot where you can make good money is somewhere in between (most likely on the low end of the competition scale). Unfortunately, I know of no exact way to calculate your chances of success. For those who can afford it, hiring a market research professional might help considerably with that calculation. In any case, a solid business plan built on thorough market research will certainly boost your chances significantly.

About The Author

Jason Carr is a small business owner, dedicated student of e-commerce strategy, and producer of BeginBiz, an online resource for those looking to start an internet business.

BeginBizAdmin@startnetbiz.com

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