Many people new to internet marketing will certainly be new to the term ‘Pay Per Click’. If you have a product or service that you want to promote online, then you should get educated on this marketing technique.

Accurate and unbiased information on the intricacies of Pay Per Click is scare, so here are some basics:

Pay Per Click is an advertising model created by the internet. It can be used in ad websites, search engine results and content sites. These websites will have ads placed on the said websites (called hosts), and when they are clicked, the viewer is led back to the advertiser’s website site. The best case scenario is that every person who clicks on the ad link becomes a customer. So the advertiser is charged by the host an agreed amount each time a potential customer clicks. This explains the term “Pay Per Click”.

There are many Pay Per Click providers, and the largest and most famous network operators are Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and Google AdWords. These providers are bid-based models. Pay Per Click models can be bid based, like the three networks mentioned above, or flat rate models.

Bid- based models are the most common ones in Pay Per Click, and they work by website owners, publishers or network operators opening up or providing space/opportunity for online ads. Advertisers competing in that niche will bid against each other to get the best exposure for their ads. This is done by website owners asking potential advertisers the maximum amount they are each willing to pay for each click on their ad. The price is usually determined by the advertiser’s number of targeted keywords. So the more you bid, your ad is gets more chance of exposure than other advertisements.

While Pay Per Click seems like a good idea, there is also a big risk for PPC fraud. This happens when one person clicks your link over and over again, and you having to pay for each click. This is a slowly increasing problem for Internet businesses but the Pay Per Click network operators have put systems in place to detect overuse of clicks from the one source. If you are running a Pay Per Click campaign and detect some foul play, you should immediately notify your Pay Per Click network operator or search engine. You should be able to back those claims up with proof that someone using the same IP address is repeatedly clicking on your ads.

Pay Per Click is one great way to advertise without spending much, because you only pay when a person clicks your ad. While it can be helpful to your business, it is always important to ask for opinions and tips from other people who have used this type of campaign in the past in order to gain more insight on this type of campaign.

Learning about proven PPC systems and techniques is the next step that every internet marketer should take – there are ways of beating the search engines at their own game and reduce your costs per click.

By: Janelle Elizabeth

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