Buying Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

The two biggest companies offering pay-per-click are Google AdWords and Overture. You can make text advertisements that are connected to search terms you choose yourself, and prices start at 5-15 cents per click. It is easy to filter to the desired language and/or several countries' IP addresses, in case you only want to reach a national audience. As of today, pay-per-click is the largest, best and cheapest solution you can get when it concerns advertising online. Check this out before you try anything else.

Go to Google AdWords

Go to Overture (now renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing)

For both of these services, each click for a search term costs an amount proportional to the number of buyers interested in that particular search term. You bid for each word or combination of words you want to appear with, and those who bid highest come first. The others follow in sinking order.

On American Overture, the starting bid is 15 cents, while it is only 5 cents on Google. Whether this pays off for you depends on your own calculations. If you know that one out of every 100 visitors to your site will make a purchase, then the price you pay per customer will be roughly $15 (if you paid 15 cents per click). In some cases, this can be an inexpensive way to get customers; in others, it won't. Using AdWords, you pay only $5 per customer if every 100^th visitor makes a buy, as long as you can find a search term facing less competition.

In practice, you will often see a price of 1 buck per click for the most popular search terms. Then the best thing you can do is increase your conversion rate, such that not just every 100^th visitor becomes a customer, but every 10^th visitor. If you manage this, you're still only paying 10 bucks per customer.

Success factors when using pay-per-click advertising are these:

• Choice of search term (tip: choose as many as possible, every possible synonym, combination of theme and place name, in singular and plural - you're still only paying for each click, the number of search terms doesn't affect the price)
• Wording of text advertisement (tip: try out several alternatives and see what works best. Pay attention to those who have gotten top placement in the blue field highest on Google today, and see what they've done. Nobody gets that kind of placement on Google unless they deserve it in number of clicks, so these are undoubtedly the web's most effective ads. Learn from them!)
• Design of the landing page (tip: don't send users straight to your front page. Send them to the offer or product you're promoting. Make it clear to the user what he can gain by buying your product, and don't forget to encourage users to make a purchase or take contact!)

Each of these points is a field unto itself, but the best way to learn is by practice. Start an account and launch a campaign (with a low budget). You'll quickly see how it works.