Making Money with Pay-Per-Click Advertising

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by: Jason Deines
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Even though pay-per-click advertising is an affordable and effective method of Internet marketing it is not without its challenges.  Pay-per-click advertising companies make it easy to set-up an account and deposit funds in order to get your advertising under way.  Some would lead you to believe that all you have to do is choose your keywords, write an ad, and sit back and watch the money roll in.

Unfortunately we would like it to be that simple but the truth is it can be difficult making money with pay-per-click advertising.  Month after month as you watch your money going down the drain wondering why your ad is not converting into sales  begins to become discouraging.  So what is a person supposed to do?  The first thing is to put your pay-per-click advertising campaign on hold.  It is already clear that you won’t make money with the way things are currently set up so don’t waste anymore of your hard earned money.

Once the hemorrhaging is under control it is time to dissect your pay-per-click advertising campaign.  The first thing you want to look at is your keyword phrase.  Is it to general or even too specific?  Chances are the phrase is much to general and you are spending money on individuals merely seeking information.  If you are trying to make money by selling a product then this is bad.  These are the type of customers you want to convert through newsletters.  For example, let’s say you are selling an ebook on how to quit smoking.  You have chosen the keyword phrase “quit smoking.”  For starters by typing your keyword phrase into Google search, don’t forget the quotes, you can see by the number of results returned that this is a highly competitive market.

Using the keyword phrase “quit smoking” is only going to drain your advertising fund if you are simply trying to sell an ebook on how to quit smoking.  You want to target a specific audience, those that are looking for methods to quit smoking.  Therefore, you would want to look at more specific keyword phrases such as “quit smoking book”, “quit smoking program”, and “quit smoking naturally”.  Not only will the cost per click be lower but your conversion rate will most likely be higher because you are targeting individuals looking for different, specific, methods to quit smoking.

By making this simple change to your pay-per-click advertising campaign you will see a significant decrease in your ad impressions.  In itself this is not a bad thing.  Before you were wasting money on general traffic.  Now that you have targeted your keywords you are going after a smaller piece of the pie than before, the piece that is ready to buy!  If you want to get more traffic all you have to do is find more targeted keywords to apply to your campaign.  The goal is to drive targeted traffic to your website that will convert into sales, not to merely drive traffic to your website in large quantities hoping you might get a sale or two.

Now that you have your new keyword phrase you will want to look at your ad and make sure that you include your keyword phrase in the header and once in the body.  This will make your ad standout and increase your CTR.  Make sure your ad is specific and well worded.  You want people to know exactly what they will find at your site so they don’t click on your ad simply to click the “back” button because it was not what they expected.  Again the goal is to drive targeted traffic to your website.  Take the time to measure your results and continue to improve on what you have going.  Over time this will become second nature to you and your hard work will pay off.