How can we identify whether is ppc advertising a scam? If it is not, how a newbie can get started with it.

No doubt there are many scams online, the fact is it occupies only a very tiny percentage of the money making opportunities on the internet. It is usually the media who sensationalize the news and blow things out of proportion.

The only thing which you should really avoid is Ponzi scheme and fortunately, they are easy to identify. If a program claims that you can make money without doing anything and it sounds too good to be true, it probably is

When choosing money making program, do some due diligence and do not simply look at the income potential claim. Go and study the business model in details and ask yourself whether the model is sustainable and does it make sense. If not, simply do not join. In my opinion, just focus your attention on the traditional internet marketing activity like ppc and you will be safe.

The idea of pay per click marketing may sound like an easy way to make money online but it isn’t. Let me explain further.

Many people associate ppc with affiliate marketing. They think they just need to pick a Clickbank product, post a PPC ad, get instant traffic, make sales and they will earn lot of money. That sounds easy at least conceptually.

But the truth is even the best ppc expert needs to spend a couple of hundreds to test their ads before they can strike gold. Many people agrees that pay per click marketing has evolved so much in the recent years that it is getting much harder for newbie to get involved.

Why?

One of the reasons is there are many spying tools that can help you spy on other people ads and find out which keywords and ad phrases are profitable.

My intention is not to discourage you from ppc but to remove any misconception you have about ppc. The good thing about ppc advertising is that once you hit some ads that are profitable, they can be your cash cow for quite a while.

My advice is if you want to make money through pay per click marketing, make sure that you have some good education on the topic and you are definitely on your way to success.

If you are thinking of joining both programs at the same time, it is strongly not encouraged. You will achieve better result if you focus on only one of them. But to decide which company to join, the best way is probably to analyze their pros and cons.

First, let us start by examining Yahoo Search Marketing.

One of the biggest advantages to using them is their ads display frequency. Do perform a search with Yahoo. You will notice they have advertisements displayed on the top, bottom and right side of their search result page. This translates to a higher probability that your advertisements will be seen before the user click on any of the search result link!

But the main drawback of using them is they are still quite new in this area as compared to Google AdWords.

Next, let us look at Google AdWords.

As Google AdWords is the most established ppc program, this is probably the biggest plus point for choosing them. Also, you will not face with the issue of lack of support as there are lots of third party vendor providing value added services to assist in your pay per click campaign.

Despite being the market leader, there are some who says that Google need improvement in deciding where their ppc ads appear. It has been reported that some ads appear on pages that are unrelated to the pay per click ads.

The main problematic websites are normally blogs. As the owners regularly change the topic of their posts, it could pose some challenge for Google AdWords to detect consistent keywords and display relevant ads.

After reviewing both programs, they do share some common features. Both programs will only charge you if and only if your ppc ads are being clicked by a user. But there are unethical website owners who maliciously and repeatedly clicked on your ads. Luckily both programs monitor closely for any click fraud.  If fraud is detected, you will not be charged for those clicks.

Whether you choose to participate in Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing, they will deliver satisfactory results.

If you are unfamiliar with pay per click program, you may also be unfamiliar with CTR. In a pay per click program, a pay per click ads will be displayed on a website owned by a participating pay per click affiliate. Although advertisers hope that their ads will be clicked on all the time, the reality is that they aren’t.

There are many users who visit a webpage and never click on any advertisements. How often an ads is being clicked on is important to a pay per click program. That is where CTR comes from.

If you are a ppc affiliate who has agreed to display ppc ads in your website, you need to aim for a high CTR. Advertisers only have to pay when one of their ppc advertisements has been clicked. Therefore the number of click-through that you receive is extremely important as it will impact how much you make.

As a pay per click program affiliate, you actually have a large say in your CTR. Although you cannot control how many of them click on your advertisements, you can make it easier for them to do so.

It has been said that to be successful all advertisements need to be displayed above the fold. You want them to be able to see them immediately without scrolling and hopefully click on them.

As ppc advertisers, you also have control over your CTR. When signing up for a ppc campaigns, you get to choose the keywords that you would like associated with your pay per click internet advertising

These keywords need to be carefully chosen, as they will ultimately have an impact on the success of your advertisements and their CTR. For the best success, you will want to choose keywords that are used.

If users are searching for crib bedding and you sell nursery supplies, you may want to use “crib bedding,” as one of your keywords.  When it comes to nursery supplies, crib bedding is one of the most searched phrases.  If you give users what they are looking for, they will likely click your ads.

In short, CTR is an important part of ppc advertising. You should keep an eye on your CTR, track it and improve it as they ultimately will decide your profitability.

That is why it is important that you carefully choose your ppc advertising keywords.  Below are a few tips that you may find helpful.

1) One of the best ways to determine whether or not a particular keyword is ideal is by examining how much money they are selling for. When it comes to pay per click advertising keywords, you will find that the best keywords are the ones that go for the most money.

Since it is impossible to tell on your own how much the keywords are going for, you should use keyword worth tool provided free by most pay per click advertising companies to help you with the cost estimation.

Researching a keyword’s current bid will not only help you choose which keywords are popular, but it will also give you an idea how much you will have to pay.

2) Although it is best that you determine the worth of each keyword, you can also research popular keywords with keyword research tools or keyword suggestion tools.  These tools allow you to enter in a particular keyword and you will get results that include the exact way that those keywords were searched for and their frequency.

Both of the above mentioned resource tools are extremely helpful, alone, but when combined they can provide you with everything that you ever needed.

For instance, if you first use a keyword research or suggestion tool, you will get an idea as to what keywords are popular and which ones are not.  Once you have a list of popular keywords, you can then use a keyword worth tool to examine the average cost of each ppc ads.

Since most of these tools are free to use, there is no reason why you shouldn’t at least give them a try. As it was mentioned above, the most popular and effective will be the ones that cost the most money or the ones that have the highest bids.  Although associating these keywords with your ppc campaigns will cost money, it is worth every penny.

Checking the current bids of popular keywords is indeed an easy and effective way to make the most out of pay per click internet advertising.

Firstly, you should carefully choose your keywords wisely. Secondly, you should also make sure the keywords you chose are performing well by testing and tracking them.

Before examining how you can go about testing and tracking your keywords, it is crucial that you understand why those two activities are so important.  Pay per click advertising costs money. Any good businessman will want to receive feedback on exactly how their money is spent and their return on investment.

The testing and tracking of keywords will ensure the money is not wasted and it will tell you whether are you profitable. It will also let you know if you are wasting your time and effort on any low performing keywords.

After knowing why it is important to test and track your keywords, you will understand better on how to do it. As an advertiser, all your ppc ads are associated with some keywords. This association is used by pay per click companies to decide which websites to display your ads.

To track your ads, you can use the information provided by your pay per click program to see the number of times your ads are clicked. With this information, you can compare and decide which ads are more effective and you can improve on the poor performing ones.

To test your keyword ads, you can perform a simple internet search on those keywords or keywords phrases that you have associated with for your ads. You can also examine popular and high ranking web pages that display your pay per click company ads to see whether your ads appear there.

If your chosen keywords are performing well you should easily find some of your ppc ads showing up on those pages. If you did not, then I urge you to review those keywords that you have chosen for your ads.

It is highly recommended that you track and test your keywords to ensure they are delivering good results. It will only take a few moment of your time but it is time that is well spent.

Keyword tracking and testing is an important step you must do in ppc advertising to see if you are reaping the benefits from the money you have invested.

If this is your first time participating in a ppc bid management, you may be unfamiliar with position preference. When you sign up initially, you should be given access to a map. That map should outline the various positions where ppc ads are often displayed.

In most cases, these positions are numbered. The number scale used by Google is 1 to 10+.  One is the best position. As for positions 10+, they are usually found at the bottom of the webpage.

With online advertisements, it is known that those above the fold often receive the most clicks.  “Above the fold” refers to the part of a website that can be seen right away.

Since many users do not scroll down and examine the whole webpage, most advertisers try and get their ads placed above the fold.  This is typically where positions one, two and three are located.

Before automatically trying to get into the top slots, you should examine whether it is worth it.  To do this, you will want to examine the pros and cons of it

Advantages
The biggest advantage to scoring a first, second, or third place advertising position is placement. These advertisements are ones that are likely to be seen immediately as no scrolling down is required.  It is a fact that those ppc ads are more likely to be clicked and this will mean more sales.

Disadvantages
There are disadvantages in seeking those positions. As these positions are the ones that are most sought after, pay per click companies knows this and therefore they charge more money for those positions. The amount of money that you will have to pay will depend on your maximum bid.

What is nice about many pay per click programs, including Google AdWords, is that you are able to set yourself a daily budget. This means that you can have your advertisements displayed in the first, second, or third place positions, even if you are on a budget.

Once your daily spending limit has been reached, another advertisement will take over your top position.  This allows you to experiment with position preference without exceeding your budget.

Position preference is a popular feature that is used by many pay per click affiliate and it can be powerful if used properly.

You may have heard about the importance of keywords if you have been trying out before with pay per click advertising. A common advice given is to choose popular keywords. No doubt that will bring success to your PPC campaign, but this method is associated with the high cost and remains a major concern for many.

There is a better strategy and it involves using long tail keywords. Before looking at how they can make pay per click advertising affordable for you, it’s important to understand what they are.

In ppc campaigns, you associate your ads with a few of your chosen keywords. For example, if you own a nursery supply business, you may want to bid for a popular keyword such as “crib bedding.

Crib bedding is a very popular word and it’s no surprise that will cost a bit. Alternatively, you can choose a long tail keyword and bid for “crib sheets” instead. It can still give you good results even though it has much less competition.

As you probably guessed, the long tail keywords are cheaper. The low cost of long tail keywords is a strong reason why you want to consider this strategy. As a matter of fact, using these low competition keywords is also examine how effective is your ads.

Finding long tail keywords could be tough but there is an easier way. Personally, I will use some keyword suggestion tools to help me locate those related keywords.

At this point, if you are concerned about the negative effect that long tail keywords will have on your PPC ads, do not worry. It will not.

If you are unsure of whether to join a pay per click program, this will be an ideal way for you to try. If you get the results you expected, then you can go all for it.

Long tail keyword is one way to reduce the cost of pay per click advertising. Besides, most companies pay per click allows you to set a daily limit for your PPC campaign. This means you can stay within your daily budget while participating in a pay-per-click program.

Of course it is possible to reduce the cost by avoiding popular keywords, but still reap the benefits of pay per click advertising.

Once you have determined what keywords you want, you will then want to examine how much it will cost you.  Different pay per click bidding operates in different ways, but the overall concept should be similar.

Different pay per click programs do offer tools to let you have an idea as to how much those keywords are going for.  It may also help you save money. Having an idea on how much you should pay may end up preventing you from paying too much or bidding too high.

When choosing your ppc bid max amount, there are a number of important factors that you need to keep in mind.

1) What are you promoting?

2) Are your advertisements going to bring users to a specific product or the main page of your website?
If you are only promoting one product, you should only take into account that one product. If you are hoping that your customers will make multiple purchases, you may want to determine what your average sale amount is.  This will make it easier for you determine how much you can afford to bid for while it remains profitable.

3) How much profit you would like to make?
For instance, if you are looking to make the largest profit, you may only want to pay ten cents for each of your ppc bidding.  When those advertisements were clicked 30 times, you will be charged $3 total.  Now say that 10 of those clicks result in an average sale of $20, you will have made a total of $200. Not bad for only spending three dollars in advertising!

If you can choose to increase your max bid, it may result in a smaller profit but your long-term sales result may improve due to exposure and referral.

The above mentioned formula is just one of the many ppc bid management methods that you can use to determine how much to pay for your pay per click bid.  There are a number of other formulas that you can use but it will come with up the same or similar results.

Pay per click advertising may help you generate sales, but it will not do you any good if you cannot profit from those sales. That it is why it is important to estimate your profitability and keep that profitability in mind when choosing your max bid.

A simple way to tell is by examining the profitability of your pay per click keywords. With that, you can easily determine for yourself whether you can benefit from PPC advertising.

However if you have new to pay per click program, you may not be familiar with keywords and their role in ppc.

In all PPC advertising, all ads you place are related to some keywords. Not only are they used to match with the keywords in various online websites that are participating to display your ads, they also determine the amount of advertising costs that you will pay.

If you want your ads are seen by the right people, there are a couple of important factors to consider during your keyword selection for your pay per click ads.

1) Relevancy of your keywords
The keywords you choose should be related to your products or services that you are promoting.

2) Popularity of your keywords
It is wise to choose keywords that are being actively sought in the search engines.

Once you have determined which keywords to use, the next step is for you to go to http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and determine how much you are expected to pay for your chosen keyword.

The next step in determining if it is profitable to continue with your ppc campaign, do take a moment and look at what are you selling. Subtract from your product selling price the estimated keyword cost that you were given. Decide whether it is still a positive gain for you.

The above formula is a simple way to calculate the return on a pay per click advertising campaign. On top of that, there are some additional factors that need to be factored in. For example

1) The cost per click can vary from time to time.
2) Not all the clicks result in a sale.

So for a more accurate estimate of profitability, you should factor in those two factors and you will have a better estimate of your return on investment of your participation in a pay per click program.

In summary, you can determine whether pay per click advertising is for you by simply estimating the amount of money you have to pay for PPC advertising and its returns.

If this is your first time using a pay per click advertising program, you may be unfamiliar with keywords and their purpose. Pay per click programs use keywords to make sure that your ads appear on relevant pages. Having your ads appear on relevant pages can improve the chances of a click and later a sale.

The keywords that you choose can ultimately decide whether you can successfully benefit and profit from joining a pay per click advertising program. Not only will the right keywords help to increase your sales, but they will also help to save you money.  While you are only charged when one of your advertisements are clicked, it can get quite costly when your ads are being clicked with no purchases made.

That is why it is extremely important that you choose your keywords wisely. Unfortunately, there are many online business owners that do not realize there are many keyword research tools online that can help them research and examine keywords.

There are multiple keyword research tools out there. For a start, you may want to examine the keywords suggestion tool hosted by Digital Point at www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion.

Step 1 – Enter a keyword or a keyword phrase. For the most results, try one word, instead of a phrase.

Step 2 – Enter the security verification code when prompted.

Step 3 – You will be provided with two lists, one from Overture and one from WordTracker.  These lists contain keywords or keyword phrases that internet users searched with through search engines and how often those searches were performed.

Step 4 – Select keywords that are related to your online business or the products that you will be selling.

For instance, if you run an online store that sells bedding, you will want to use a few of these popular yet related keywords “crib bedding,” “bedding,” “baby bedding,” and so forth. Related keywords ensure that the right market is targeted thus increasing your sale numbers.

Perhaps keywords are the most important aspect of pay per click ads. For the ultimate chance of success, choose your keywords wisely.