By Virginia Culp
There will come a time, that a budding internet marketer will be enticed by the many programs available - which sing the praises of adding PPC (pay per click) to your traffic arsenal.
In fact, many experts preach from the mountain tops that by adding Google AdWords, you can bring in traffic by the thousands, for as little as 5 cents a click. Now although you can tightly control your daily and monthly budget with a PPC program, an inexperienced user can rapidly lose their shirt. And I certainly heard of those who have spent THOUSANDS of dollars ... racking up their credit card ... only to find they aren't even bring in one dollar of revenue. And once you feel that pain - it really hurts! You wonder ... where did I go wrong? It looks so easy? Isn't everyone else doing it profitably?
For those who succeed at PPC, and for those who fail at PPC, many elements go into the equation which will determine your success or failure.
The primary reason why any entrepreneur would want to even USE ppc in their advertising, is to generate QUICK traffic, and or do some QUICK research. After all, when you split-test one ad versus another, you can easily determine which ad is the winning ad by tracking both the number of clicks it receives, and tracking the conversion figures too.
When a new internet marketer starts out, generally they have time on their hands but not a lot of money to spend. So in all reality, PPC is NOT where you want to put your first $50.
In a few minutes, we will cover how you can benefit from PPC without spending any money, but for the moment, I'd like to discuss where you WOULD put that 50 bucks if you had it to spend.
Begin by taking a day or two, to learn all you can about PPC without spending money. This is done by reading free articles, blogs, and doing a little googling. Pick up some free reports and study up. Remember that since the pay-per-click business model has been around for more than a few years now, and since business on the internet moves at lightning speed, it's very easy to be led astray by reading out of date material.
The number of Google AdWords and other PPC program users grows every day, so your competition for those hot keywords will increase daily, and this will drive your cost per click through the roof.
That fifty bucks we talked about? It's better served on education. Those that have truly MASTERED PPC share their knowledge via downloadable ebooks and audios. For a small investment you can save hundreds or thousands of dollars before you've even spent your first dollar on PPC.
Other PPC experts even offer their services to set up your campaign for you. Fees for this typically run around $200 and up.
Now here's how you can use PPC without spending any money.
Although yahoo search has a similar model, we'll cover Google AdWords only today.
Your free Google account comes with many features that will help you whether you use PPC this week ... or you never ever spend a dollar on it.
(1) Keyword research.
By preparing a campaign AS IF you planned to activate it and put it into action, you can see what other keywords are relevant to your product or service. Google's keyword suggestion tool will help you with this. The more expensive keywords and keyword phrases might even be "inactive" because your bid amount is too low. This will show you which keywords and keyword phrases are most popular <- though not necessarily most profitable.
(2) Competition
Once again ... you'll be able to see the position that your ad might appear. Remember you've spent nothing ... just added an inactive ad to your campaign.
(3) Google Analytics
Within the past couple of years Google bought URCHIN which until then was a $5,000 tracking and conversion program you could add to your server. Previously only the larger and more profitable online businesses were able to afford it. Google Analytics will provide you with the ESSENTIAL information of where your traffic comes from, and what they are doing on your web site or web sites.
(4) Website Optimizer
This service introduced last year by Google - also free - allows you to split test your web site content. Ever wonder if your headline is perfect? What about other content on the page. This very powerful tool will allow you to have portions of your site alternate from one visitor to the next so you can track which content is strongest.
The final decision to make regarding PPC, is to decide if it's a traffic tool you will use down the road when you have your site working and perfected to the point of generating profitable sales. Then it might be safe to add PPC.
The second option is to use PPC for fast and immediate research and testing. With a small budget of $100 to $200, a 2-3 day campaign when configured correctly, can drive in enough traffic to answer questions about your visitors that otherwise might take a month to research with free traffic.
In conclusion, pay per click is a powerful tool when used correctly. The wise PPC buyer will educate himself first instead of learning the ropes as he goes. Remember the points revealed in this audio ... and you can use PPC without spending money to benefit YOUR online business.
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