For a small business competing in a niche market it is 
becoming ever harder to achieve high rankings in the free 
search engines. Pay-per-click ("PPC") advertising can be 
a great alternative. 

Learn the secrets of PPC search engines and success on the 
internet could be yours. Be warned, however, a lack of 
understanding could put your business on the road to 
insolvency. I can't emphasize this strongly enough. An 
understanding of PPC can be a great advantage to your 
business.

If you've ever attended an auction to bid for a piece of 
furniture or artwork you'll have some idea of how to 
advertise on the PPC search engines. In this case you're 
bidding for high ranked spots on the keywords you've 
identified for your business. Visitors will arrive at your 
site by clicking on your search engine advert, and each 
time that happens you'll pay the search engine the value of 
your bid. A bid can be as low as 5 cents, but some highly 
competitive keywords can cost several dollars.

Now I'd like to discuss some advantages and disadvantages 
of advertising with PPC search engines. Advantages first  :-

1. Only when someone clicks on you advert are you required 
to pay.

2. Can be an inexpensive method of attracting targeted 
traffic to your site.

3. Outbid the competition and that top advertising spot can 
be yours, no matter how small your business.

4. Some PPC search engines enable a campaign to be up and 
away in minutes. Not very long after you could be taking 
orders.

5. If your advert is not successful you can cancel or amend 
your listing with immediate effect.

6. You can test your advert, making amendments quickly and 
simply.

However, be aware of the disadvantages :-

1. Not everyone who clicks on your advert is a potential 
customer. You will have to pay for these junk clicks though.

2. The cost per click can escalate if you and and your 
competition become involved in a bidding war over that top 
spot.

3. Your advert may be subject to a strict review prior to 
approval. This can delay the start of the campaign 
considerably, and you may not like the final advert they 
approve.

4. A poorly worded or, even worse, misleading advert could 
generate traffic but not make sales. Unless you've placed a 
restriction on your advertising budget, your business could 
quickly be on the road to insolvency.

So how do you tip your toe in the water with PPC 
advertising? Before you do anything else research the 
keywords that your target market are searching on. You 
wouldn't want to bid for traffic on an irrelevant keyword 
would you? The methods for carrying out this research are a 
fully fledged topic in their own right, which I'll cover in 
a future article.

Another essential piece of knowledge you require before 
entering the bidding fray, is the monetary worth of a 
visitor to your website. By this I mean the average revenue 
generated by each visitor. This will be your guide to how 
far you can push it in the bidding process.

If you want to use PPC advertising to test your sales copy 
on a new site with no visitor knowledge, then monitor your 
costs versus sales closely. A daily budget is advisable at 
the outset. Limit your spending to something you can afford 
to lose if the worst occurs and you don't make any sales. 
Raise this as appropriate once you can see the sales 
conversion rate.

You're almost ready to get going. What I've provided here 
is an overview of PPC advertising. Use this as the first 
building block in your quest to master the PPC search 
engines.

Wishing you every success with your online advertising. 

Mark Vandorone offers specialized online advertising 
campaigns at Five Marketing. Not happy with your results
from the Pay-Per-Click search engines? Pay Mark a visit at: 
http://www.fivemarketing.com or contact him by e-mail at: 
support@fivemarketing.com