Introduction to Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click is a flexible tool for billboard advertisements in the internet.
Per-Per-Click brings potential buyers to the advertisers' web page by the trigger of an internet user query.

Pay-Per-Click offers good returns on the advertiser's investment with minimal risk. The advertiser pays only when an internet user clicks on his advertisements. It gives the flexibility of unlimited changes on advertisement to achieve results. In addition, it takes 15 minutes to start a Pay per click advertisement.

With thousands of other companies who are competing with the same products or services, how can YOU catch the attention of a website surfer who are skimming carelessly through the web pages and will not spend more than thirty seconds on one particular site; or the wandering eyes of a typical website reader who will most probably spend not more than half a minute to read any given article online?

One marketing technique is to list and advertise in search engines but similarly, how can your scream for attention be heard over the many other choices? How can you guarantee to make and garner potential customers and sales or expand your clientele base online?

A simple way is through Pay-Per-Click advertising, or PPC. Whenever a search engine user goes into an advertiser’s web page, the advertiser pays for each click that gets the visitor to read his advertisement. There are many Pay-Per-Click advertising services available but currently, Google’s Adwords and Overture are the most popular.

In a past issue of Forbes magazine, it has been reported that Pay-Per-Click advertising amounted to almost $2 billion in the previous few years and is most expected to reach $8 billion by year 2008.

Pay-Per-Click advertising works through a bidding process. The advertiser writes an advertisement, place it in a search engine such as Goggles, Yahoo or MSN so that the advertisement can appear prominently on the results pages of the search engines. Then the advertiser has to choose key words or phrases that are used in his advertisement and bid online on the placement of the advertisement. Through bidding, Pay-Per-Click search engines allow the advertiser to buy top positions and the highest few bidders for those particular words or phrases generally receive top placements on the first page of the search engine results.

From experiences, more visitors should be going into the sites that are on the first page of the search results. Whenever, a website browser finds the advertisement, clicks it and goes into the website, the advertiser will pay the bid price. Although Pay-Per-Click may bring in more customers or even increase the profits, it can also be expensive, especially if the visitors click on the advertisement accidentally or only out of curiosity.