Friday, January 16, 2009

The Drawbacks Of Pay Per Click Advertising

By Brian Basch

Pay per click advertising is the latest and greatest thing to hit the Internet. It seems that everyone wants to give it a try. The concept of just writing an ad and leaving the work to the search engines is very tempting to advertisers.

At first sight the partnership of search engine and advertiser looks ideal. The advertiser will generate an ad and rely on the search engine to do the rest of the work. The search engine in turn will get leads for the advertiser through keywords. When a person types in a keyword into the search bar, the advertiser's ad will be seen when search results come up.

However this is not really as simple as it looks. This is because keyword research is not so easy. Tracking through the search engines is not enough. The keywords you find here are popular and will bring up too many pages of results. It is good to know that most searchers will not look beyond the first 5 pages of their search results. This makes it very important to be listed in the first five pages, if you want to make money.

A second thing to consider is the fact that the amount you bid per click on your keyword will be the deciding factor for how you are positioned in the search engine. With the old form of advertising you would be paying for the length of time you wanted your ad to be seen, not the mount of traffic it created. The drawback with this form of advertising was that it could cost a lot of money.

The idea of pay per click advertising then emerged. The advertiser paid for the amount of times viewers clicked on their ad. With good click through advertisers saw greater profits from their ad. The next thing to do was to establish a good position in the search engine for your ad. To achieve this the advertisers bid against each other, with the highest bidder getting the best position.

You need to exercise caution when using pay per click advertising. The reason for this is the fact that costs can rise quite fast and take you by surprise. Ads in top positions will generate a great deal of traffic but also a lot of wasted leads. This can drain your budget.

Pay per click advertising is full of pitfalls, especially for the new marketer. It is not the smooth ride that the ads proclaim. The good news is that there are many other resources to help you and other methods of marketing for those who want to look.

So consider your options and do not rely on one method of marketing. Remember the more methods you use the better chances you have of making a profitable business. - 16747

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