Pay per click (PPC) advertising can be one of the most effective ways to bring in targeted traffic, that can convert to sales, to the information, products and services that you offer.

The major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN entices one to use their pay per click services, by offering free credits to help you to easily get started. Even though, over time, it’s possible that one can become rich through successful pay per click campaigns, it can also be very frustrating and sometimes overwhelming.

If you’re new to PPC advertising, and decide to go at it on your own, there is a huge learning curve, especially, if you don’t know what your market wants. As a newbie, you don’t just pick an affiliate product, or any product or service, for that matter, and say, “hey, people are bringing in the big bucks using Google Adwords, I’ll go that route, too”, big mistake. It’s not a good idea to try to learn the market after you’ve set up a pay per click campaign.

You’ll be setting yourself up for disaster, this is how many people lose money and time on pay per click advertising.

Whatever product you’ve targeted, you need to know the market, what keywords to target, competition factors, among others things. If you don’t research anything else, at least learn the competition ratios for your product, which will then lead, to you automatically wanting to know the right keywords to target and other aspects of search engine optimization.

This in turn, with making other smart choices, will give you a successful pay per click campaign that you can take to the bank.

Get your AdWords campaigns optimized in less than 10 minutes. With this easy to use amazing system, your pay per click ads and landing pages will automatically change to match the keywords your prospect types in….sending your click rates and traffic through the roof. This is a Windows software application that brings the power of dynamic keyword insertion in ppc ads and web pages to everyone; not just us marketing geeks!

You can make a lot of money by using Google AdWords to drive traffic to affiliate offers from Clickbank. But you can also lose a lot of money if you don’t know what you are doing. I want to show you 2 insider ninja secrets you can use today to make more money with AdWords and Clickbank.

Ninja Secret #1:

Don’t try and compete on the high traffic volume keywords in your niche market! This is a major mistake that most affiliate marketers make and don’t ever know they are making it.

Just because a keyword gets a lot of traffic does not mean it will make you a lot of money! Focus on the long tail keywords in that market and when you have maxed out your traffic on the long tail keywords then move on to another market.

It is not about getting the most traffic to your site or affiliate offer – it is about getting the most profit from every visitor that comes to your site from AdWords. Focus on profit not traffic!

Ninja Secret #2:

Never ever send your affiliate traffic directly to an affiliate offer! You must always send your AdWords traffic to your own site and get them to optin to your newsletter! The reason for this is because you want to have the option to send that same traffic to multiple affiliate offers over a period of time.

Also – having a big newsletter list gives you leverage so you can get website owners to give you a better commission rate for promoting their products. You can become a super affiliate by doing this.

“I feel like I’m in a rut.” “I don’t know where to start.” “I’ve written about everything there is to write about.” If you can relate to these comments, you’re not alone. Many company marketers and copywriters suffer from writer’s block when it comes to PPC ads. Here are 25 great writing opportunities.

Ecommerce

1. Category Sales – Something like “all outdoor furniture 50% off until 1/31.”

2. Product Sales – Along the lines of “every monogrammed tote bag 25% off.”

3. Rebates – “$100 Rebate on Wireless Printers”

4. Coupons – Offer coupons for use on an immediate sale or use coupons as an incentive to get visitors to sign up for your mailing list.

5. Free Shipping – Always a winner online.

6. Holiday Sales – President’s Day, Valentine’s Day… heck, Groundhog Day can bring extra visitors to your site if you offer a sale.

7. Combos – Buy 1 of these and 1 of those and get a discount. A cordless drill and flashlight. A pair of shoes and handbag. Ice cream and cookies… it works for anything.

8. Buy One, Get One – Get one free, get one at half off, get credit toward a future purchase, etc.

9. New Products – Bring attention to new product additions by announcing them with PPC ads.

10. Seasonal Twists – “Women’s spring pants.” “Great summer markdowns.” “Your favorite fall fashions.”

Buying Stages

11. Need Recognition – “Time for a new lawnmower?” “Computer running slow?”

12. Information Search – “Search for __________.” “Scientific data on ________.”

13. Comparison / Evaluation – “Read reviews on plasma TVs.” “Compare flat screen TVs.”

14. Decision – “Buy netbooks at 30% off.” “Best-selling netbooks on sale.”

Proof of Performance

15. Statistics – “92% Felt Relief in 7 Days”

16. Case Studies – Offer case studies that focus on the results your clients experienced from using your services/products.

17. Research Results – “88% Recovered in 24 Hours.”

18. Proof of Performance – Highlight anything that shows clients/shoppers know you can back up what you claim. Customer-generated reviews, testimonials, analytics, etc.

Differentiation

19. Exclusive Products/Services – Anything you have that they don’t should be mentioned.

20. Rarely Found Products/Services – Anything you have that most others don’t should also be mentioned.

21. Specialties – Are you a marketing agency that specializes in email marketing? Say so!

Lead Generation

22. Size – “Largest agency in the U.S.” “More partners than any other firm.”

23. End Results – “Improve your ROI by 22%.”

24. Preferred Clients – “Small business CPA” or “Marketing for Major Corps.”

25. Freebie – A free white paper, consultation or case study for those who respond.

While Google AdWords is the top pay-per-click marketing resource out there at the moment, did you know that AdWords only captures about 50% of the market? Yes, that means if you are only using AdWords, you are leaving out 50% of potential customers and traffic!

The next biggest pay-per-click search engine at the moment is Yahoo’s Search Marketing program. In some ways, it is different from Google’s program but it can be also massively profitable for you if you work it right.

Yahoo captures about 30% of the market share so that’s a good deal of traffic to leverage on. And combine that with this factor: most advertisers who advertise on AdWords completely ignore Yahoo Search Marketing altogether. Which means there is lesser competition and you can get more clicks for cheaper costs and hence more traffic and more bang for your buck!

Bidding on keywords on Yahoo is far more simpler than AdWords. Positions of ads are determined by the amount you bid. And you can also see what your competitors are bidding! Of course, this means you might end up in a price war. But fret not, it has been proven that it is actually to avoid the number one spot and be on 3rd or 4th placing because you’ll rack up less clicks from ‘impulsive’ clickers. Internet surfers who scroll down the ads to see all of them are usually much more targeted and responsive.

On Yahoo, it is also very easy to customize your ads for each keyword, so that makes them super targeted, getting you more traffic and more sales.

There are not many AdWords secrets because there is no secret for success. AdWords is a premier Google tool that is considered as a highly successful internet advertising tool. If you want to run an AdWords campaign then the biggest AdWords secret is to understand the requirements and how you can successfully implement it.

There are 5 simple steps in the AdWords strategy include the product you want to advertise about, finding the right keywords, providing attractive and relevant ad copy, focusing on bidding strategies, and finally tracking and testing. Everyone knows that keyword research and use is no secret anymore, so let us talk about bidding strategies.

Considered to be an AdWords secret, bidding strategies is related to the budget allocated per click. There is a lot of flexibility offered by Google in cost per click and this is one of the reasons for its popularity apart from the fact that it can get you targeted customers.

If you have a small budget then you can keep your bids lower, something like 10-25 cents a click. The trick here is to bid on as many keywords as possible. Initially, it is advisable to stay away from the bidding wars or ranking war because once you campaign starts to work, you will automatically get drawn into the ranking war.

Here’s how you can calculate your ROI: 5 sales x $25 per 100 visitors. The main thing is to know what your visitor is worth because once you know that you will be able to identify what your maximum bid should be.

Business nowadays is doing different kinds of austerity measures when it comes to advertising their products and services. This is because of high rates of placing ads on print and on television. But there is a fast growing approach that businessmen can utilize to bring their services closer to the people and that is through Internet Marketing.

One tool that is causing internet marketing popularity is PPC advertising. This is a technique used in search engine marketing that requires one to pay a fee every time someone clicks an ad on your website. Usually this placement is done through a bidding process. If you are a top bidder for your keywords/phrases, you are sure to be on the number one spot on all search engines. Just be sure of the effectiveness of your ad copy to get the most number of clicks you need for your business.

Here are the benefits of PPC advertising are:

1. You need not be a genius in computer and technology to be able to run this ad campaign.
2. Immediate results are seen after a few days.
3. No need to make a website conform to the SEO rules.
4. Nothing to lose even if you do not top the pages of different search engines. You can still always choose PPC advertising.
5. You can make use any search engine available.
6. You can type in any keyword you like.

Cons of PPC advertising includes:

1. Fixed payments every month to the search engine you choose.
2. Pay for each click received by your website. At times, visitors are just competitors or people playing pranks on search engines. This hassle wastes money you put in to this advertising.
3. Inability to pay for the fees next month would mean removal of your website on the paid listings.
4. This advertising can only be used temporarily because it is difficult to handle in the long run.
5. Pay-per-click pricing can be costly for long periods of time, therefore, this should be stopped after an ad campaign.

But how exactly PPC advertising can increase traffic, leads and sales?

PRE-QUALIFIED TRAFFIC. All visitors of your website are already considered as a qualified consumer or buyer of your product. PPC advertising leads your customers to you for a lesser cost.

INSTANT EXPOSURE, IMMEDIATE PROFITS. PPC search engines enable you to get your desired results fast. They will have your website live within just a few hours which means immediate increase in sale.

CONSISTENT TOP LISTINGS. This is to get your website on top of the sponsored search results for free. You just have to choose the keywords related to your site and business and place them within your web pages. After this, you are done.

PPC advertising enables advertisers to control their advertising campaigns. Advertisers have effectively targeted their audience and set their own price per click. PPC advertising networks provide the platform to identify the desired audience by geographic setting, topic and industry.  These networks have a list of websites of the publishers where the ads will be placed.

Tools are provided by the networks to check how the pay per click limit is working for a certain advertiser. If its still competitive, would it be even listed among the paid search lists or does it generate sales? Of course, if the advertiser made the highest bid, the better chances the ad will be seen in the search engine. These networks too provide protection for the advertisers against click fraud. This advertising set-up allows advertisers to set a daily budget for his ads, thus, less spending for unnecessary clicks. Advertiser will never go over his budget.

In PPC advertising, what are important are the keywords and phrases. You have to select at least ten “very specific” keywords that would give you the best traffic in the search. Then, write the ad creatively but straightforward. Tell the truth about your product or service and do not lie. Good thing if your product or service will not disappoint those that are relying on your ad’s promise – but what if it did otherwise? Important too is the clarity of the ad. Do not use very vague languages. Include important details like the price.

You should also remember to budget your bids. Do not go overbidding because you will only lose your money and do not go so low that your ads will never get the chance to show up. Check your profit against your spending. If you see no progress then most likely you have to drop your ad campaign.

More and more advertisers have been using PPC advertising and it will continue to grow faster than any online advertising techniques. From revenues of $2.6 billion in 2004 to $5.5 billion in 2009, cost per click will dramatically go up as well from $0.29 to $0.36.

PPC advertising is new in online marketing and it is going to continue in the years to come. For advertisers, this means increase revenues with fewer advertising expenses, savings, more sales, good return of investment (ROI) and effective ad campaigns in the days to come.

Throughout this article I will compare and contrast the three giants Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and the freshly launched Microsoft adCenter in order to shed some light on the unique aspects and features of each platform. I will cover three main areas of each platform consisting of ad distribution, demographics and tools. When you have completed reading this article you will possess the knowledge required in order to make an informed decision on which of these marketing platforms is the most beneficial for your company to launch a successful PPC campaign.

Google AdWords

Google Adwords is currently the most popular of the three advertising platforms. They continue to develop new tools and features that secure their footing upon the top of the PPC Marketing podium.
Ad Distribution:

The Google Network consists of thousands of web properties including search sites, content pages, email services (Gmail), newsletters and discussion boards. According to Media Metrics Data 80% of internet users in the United States will view an AdWords ad within the next month. You may choose to show your ads on the search network the content network or perhaps both depending on your custom needs. A few of the search sites that your ads will appear on when utilizing the search network are Google network consist of Google, AOL, Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves), Amazon and Shopping.com. Several examples of where your ads will appear when advertising on the content network are HowStuffWorks, New York Times, Washington Post and Forbes.

Demographics:

The Google AdWords system allows you to target users in several different ways. You are able to target users by specific locations or by specific languages. This is achieved by determining a users IP address, search query location, internet domain or the users set language preference.

Tools:

Google AdWords comes equipped with a robust toolbox that can streamline your PPC campaign management.

The site exclusion tool allows you to block your ads from appearing on any sites that you feel may be irrelevant or inappropriate for your advertisement. The keyword tool grants you the ability to help you improve your keyword lists, estimate your individual keyword traffic or find new negative keywords. You may add your new keywords directly to your selected adgroup or download them to your computer.

You can best utilize the traffic estimator by utilizing it to estimate your position based on your max Cost-Per-Click (CPC), your daily spend, impressions and clicks as well as your keyword status. The My Chang History allows you to view any changes that have been made to your account within a particular time period.

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) is the pioneer of PPC advertising and a global leader in commercial search services.

Ad Distribution:

The Yahoo Publishers Network is a collaboration of web properties consisting of search web sites, content publishers, email clients and more. Much the same as AdWords you may choose if you would like to show your ads on search or content sites. Several of the search sites that make up the Yahoo! Publishers Network are Yahoo!, Excite, iVillage and Sympatico. A few of the content sites include Advertising.com, CNN, ESPN and National Geographic.

Demographics:

The Yahoo! Search Marketing platform in my opinion trails the pack when talking about audience targeting demographics. The option available to you are very basic, however Yahoo! makes up for it with their Local Sponsored Search options.

Local Sponsored Search allows users who have a brick and mortar location to participate in gaining business from internet users who prefer to research online but purchase locally. Local Sponsored Search allows you to target visitors by a specific territory or service area up to a 100 mile radius.

Tools:

Conversion Counter is Yahoo! Search Marketing’s tool to help you measure the conversions of your advertising campaigns. Simply install a small segment of code onto the conversion page of your web site. Yahoo! breaks the stats down into information that is truly useful for your online marketing success.

Easy Track helps you in distinguishing web site and search engine traffic that result directly from your Yahoo! PPC Campaign.

Search Optimizer automates bidding strategies based on your keyword performance history. Yes, this tool does have it’s time and place but is still no substitute for manual optimization of your PPC campaign.

Microsoft adCenter

Microsoft adCenter is the newest competitor to the PPC advertising arena. Although there are still a few glitches that need to be ironed out adCenter has the potential to be a real competitor.

Ad Distribution:

Unlike the previous two PPC platforms we have gone over Microsoft adCenter only facilitates advertising throughout the MSN Search Engine. There is still potential that your ad will be viewed by a large audience, 40 million people per month to be precise. Out of the 40 million people who utilize MSN search 93% shopped and 81% of them made online purchases in the US. I feel that it is safe to say that we may also expect adCenter’s ad distribution network to expand over the next several months.

Demographics:

With the Microsoft adCenter you are able to find out who the searchers are, identify their geographic location as well as time of day information. adCenter takes the time of day information to the next level with targeting of ads by day of week as well as a precise time of day. The adCenter platform is the first of the PPC search engines that gives you the ability to target a select age group and even the gender of the searcher can be determined. The age and gender targeting feature could come in very handy depending on your product or services. MSN is able to provide such precise targeting demographics by pulling their information on individuals from Microsoft Passport accounts. What that means is anyone out there who has either a Hotmail account or a MSN Messenger account is easily trackable.

Tools:

adTracker is a mechanism used by Microsoft adCenter to track all clicks from ads served throughout MSN Search. adTracker measures the effectiveness of an ad by tracking which clicks result in a web site visit.

Bid Boost is a very interesting tool that is exclusive to Microsoft adCenter advertisers. The Bid Boost tool raises the value of a bid by a preset percentage after it recognizes that the individual is from your optimal user demographic.

In conclusion as you have read through this article you can see that there are pros and cons that come along with each one of these PPC advertising platforms discussed. The goal of this article was to arm you with a few facts that lend a hand in helping you to deciding on which PPC advertising platform is the most beneficial for you to launch a winning advertising campaign that produces highly qualified relevant traffic at an optimal return on investment.

How about a sure-fire way to absolutely dominate your competition in the Google AdWords game? Focus on your landing page. It IS the landing page, stupid…and many companies have stupidly taken the advice of so-called Google AdWords experts and played the game all wrong.

While your competitors are focusing on things like keyword research, writing good ad copy, attractive headlines, and worrying about what to bid on keywords, YOU should be focusing on your landing page. Oh, yes, focus on the other aspects of running a successful Google AdWords campaign, but never lose focus of the most important piece of the whole puzzle…your landing page.

So what is a landing page? Let’s start by defining what a landing page is not. A landing page is not the home page. It COULD be, but in most cases we have found that the best page in a website for the customer to “land” when they click on your ad is the page that has the information that the searcher was looking for.

For example, if you are a legal firm that offers a wide variety of services, and a prospect types in “accident attorney” doesn’t it make sense to send that prospect to the page in your website that talks about your services for accident victims? What if you sell all different types and colors of widgets and your prospect types in “green widgets”, would you send him to your home page or to the page that has pictures and pricing of the green widgets that you sell? Duh.

In fact, having the wrong landing page is perhaps one of the most common mistakes that newbies and (unfortunately) the “pros” make. I challenge you to do a search in Google and click on some of the ads that display for that keyword and notice how many times you end up on a page that has absolutely nothing to do with what you searched for. Chances are that you will have to do some clicking around to find out exactly what you want. Not good.

There are also ways to take advantage of captivating the searchers attention by using a little “keyword magic” on your site, where the keyword that the prospect searches for is automatically inserted into the headline. For example, let’s say that someone types “defense attorney” into Google and you had bid on that keyword. Your ad appears, the prospect clicks on your ad, and they land on your website. Now imagine a huge headline that says, “Looking for a defense attorney?” The prospect is now overjoyed because they easily found exactly what they were looking for.

But in the next moment another prospect types in “malpractice attorney” and your ad appears because you offer those service as well. When the prospect clicks through to your site they see a headline that says “Looking for a malpractice attorney?” Same site; same landing page, but different headlines. Wow! With the proper tools and the right expertise, this “magic” can easily be accomplished.

There are other things that must be done to a landing page in order to help you get more conversions. A few of them are as follows:

1. Keep it simple. Remove anything that would distract your prospect, such as excess navigation links.

2. Have a clear call to action. If I had to guess how many websites using Google AdWords have clear calls to action, my guess would be about 2-3% of them. Trust me. LOTS of money being wasted here.

3. Judicious use of audio or video on the landing page. Using audio or video you can easily satisfy requirement #2. Not only can you give your visitors a sense of warmth, but you can tell them exactly what to do in order to contact you so that you can help them.

Of course, there are MANY more things a proper landing page should include, but you are starting to get the picture. Proper Google AdWords campaign management may begin with good research and a good ad, but that’s not where it ends. “It’s the landing page, stupid,” and if you are having trouble, then get professional Google campaign management.

Microsoft’s adCenter is a new low cost pay-per-click method to get new customers to your website. Doing an adCenter campaign will allow your website to be found under the “sponsored site” section in MSN’s search engine. This means that when a customer does a search for a specific keyword your site will come up. The good news is that no matter what your business sells, your website will gain maximum exposure to new clients. However, after you decide to use an MSN adCenter campaign there are a few tips to remember to assure your success.

One of the most important parts of any adCenter or pay-per-click campaign is targeting your customer. It can be very easy, especially when first starting your campaign to lose sight of who and what your customer is searching for. Remember, that with any pay-per-click advertisement, the customers are directly searching for your business. This means that you must understand what keywords and phrases they are using to find you. Once you have figured out the best keywords to use, you can successfully begin your adCenter campaign.

3. Analyze Results

After starting your advertisements, do not forget to routinely check up on how your adCenter campaign is doing. Doing so is very easy because adCenter breaks down daily results of exactly how many customers are clicking on your ad and at the same time tell you how effective your keywords are working. Many companies forget to analyze these results and effectively waste time and money on a campaign that is not getting optimum results.

Using adCenter to increase traffic to your website can be a very easy and effective advertising vehicle. However, do not take it light heartedly, and make sure to plan your campaign ahead of time. Without the proper planning, your adCenter campaign will not obtain the results that you are looking for.