Leveraging Pay Per Click for More Value
Pay Per Click is not the instant wealth machine that some people think it is. It is tricky business at best, and requires a high learning curve just to get it to work successfully. And in all the hype about using it to get traffic to your site, there are many overlooked points which can help you use it more successfully.
First of all, do the math. Don't venture in unless you know that you have a product or service that will allow you to profit from it.
Don't risk more than you can afford. Figure out just how much that is, and risk only that much. If there are no results when your mad money is gone, then either quit, or do a serious overhaul and be prepared to risk another sum of money. Set a specific target goal to define what success is - how many sales of product will you have to make, or how much ad income will it have to generate in order to justify itself?
When you assess the results, be sure that you assess ALL of the results, not just the ones that are easy to see. Because Pay Per Click can have unexpected benefits if you have the business structure to benefit more than just directly.
You can actually set up your business so that advertising one site benefits others, if you own multiple websites. For example, if your sites are interlinked with one another (see the right side column of this site for an example of how we do this), then marketing one site can benefit the others. I use Pay Per Click on just one site, and that site in turn brings an additional percentage of pass-on traffic to my other sites. Because my sites are interlinked in a way that is obvious no matter what page someone comes in on or exits on, if the traffic increases on one of my sites, it increases on all of them. This translates into increased revenue also, since many are ad supported, and in general, income rises as traffic increases.
There are also more options for Pay Per Click than just Google. Overture also gets some attention, but the fact is, those two systems are so highly competitive that they may not be the best place for someone to start. They also have more sophisticated systems, so it is MUCH harder to learn how to use them effectively. Google now has some simpler startup choices, but they are also limited in flexibility, while still being just as competitive. To venture into either one without some serious study ahead of time is nothing more than gambling - and remember, with gambling, there are far more losers than winners.
Check out some of the smaller systems for a chance to get consistently low cost keywords, and a simpler interface for controlling your ads. You can try Kanoodle, or any one of the other smaller pay per click companies - after all it does not matter WHERE your clicks come from, if you have the ability to target them carefully. Kanoodle lets you control when your ads run, so that if you are targeting people in a certain geographical area, your clicks won't be all used up before they even wake up in the morning. You can get keywords for $.05 apiece easily through their system. Once you learn to use it well, you can move on to another company if you feel the need to more precisely control your ads.
In general, an advertising supported site has a very hard time profiting through Pay Per Click advertising if they are using it as a means to bring traffic in. You may have better luck using AdSense on your sites if you use a different (lower cost) option than AdWords to drive traffic in.
If Pay Per Click still seems too risky for your business, then you can try Paid Inclusion (Paid Directory Listings). Look for one with justifiable risks, and low cost to start. We like Exactseek, which gives you top 10 listings within their growing network, and the cost is extremely low. For $4 per month we get the same number of hits that we get for $50 per month through Pay Per Click. We saw an instant increase in traffic to our new site that we advertised through them - it did not explode, but it did increase significantly.
Pay Per Click may have unexpected results, both good, and bad. Educate yourself and monitor the results to keep the risks low. Then choose carefully, and try interlinking your websites, to leverage the full power of your ads so that you get the maximum value from your advertising dollars.
Written by Laura Wheeler