Note from the Editor

Not really business related, but happy Valentine’s Day to all. I hope it went well for you both personally and professionally if you sell anything remotely related.

I’ve been working hard on meeting my goals. Yesterday I met my goal of posting a good number of quality comments on interesting and relevant blog posts. I think it went well enough that I will try increasing the goal next week. My feeling is that I can build up a good list of blogs for regular comments and combine that with finding new ones to balance things out.

Marketing has long been one of my weak points. It’s just more challenging to me than creating content. But I’m determined to make it work for me so that I see more money coming in for my efforts. After all, the bottom line is, err, the bottom line.

Getting Pay Per Click to Click for You

One of the fastest ways to get traffic to your website is to start a pay per click campaign. This can take you from zero visitors to as many as you can target and afford very quickly. But it can also be a disaster if you don’t manage your campaigns well, don’t do your keyword research and don’t really look at your overall profit.

The principles sound easy. Find keywords. Write an ad. Set a price per click and a budget. Watch what happens.

Oooh are you asking for trouble if you think that’s all there is to it!

Solid keyword research is vital. I do like Wordtracker personally. You can use the free trial to get started, but if you’re going to get serious about pay per click I strongly recommend you switch over to the paid version after you’ve done some brainstorming and know where you want to start off. It really does help.

Think about which search engines you want to use. Google and Yahoo are the big ones, but some people like to test their campaigns on the minor engines. Doing so may or may not be a good thing. Some people feel there may be more risk of click fraud and poor quality traffic on the minor engines. On the plus side, cost per click is typically significantly lower.

No matter which engine you use, make sure you test several different ads. You cannot assume that you will get it right with the first one you write. Even so small a difference as singular versus plural can make a difference.

You will want to use negative keywords. These are keywords which you do not want included. In many cases this will include words such as “free” or “cheap,” but can also include words that make phrases unrelated to your offer. If you’re bidding on “soap,” do you want it to go along with “opera” or “dishwasher?”

Consider including your price. Some find this works very well for their conversion rate, as those scared off by the price won’t click if they don’t like it.

Unless you are experienced and have a large budget, don’t go for the most obvious keywords. Sure, you’d love to get found by people typing in your dream keyword, right?

Actually… no, probably not. In many cases people who type in the plain keyword are researching, not shopping. If they type in more details they are often more serious about buying. Use phrases, not individual words.

You will also want to use either exact or phrase matching. These are indicated by [] or by “” around the phrase you would like to bid on. This will lower your costs and get you the most qualified visitors. Without either of these you will probably get traffic that is not as well targeted.

Be prepared for differences between the different search engines. That campaign you test on a small engine may be a flop on Google. Or it may still perform brilliantly. No matter what you think will happen, be prepared to test, test, test.

Watch your bids, your budget and your profits. You may find out that you are overpaying for clicks. You could also be underpaying. Sometimes even the position on the page can determine how well your ad performs.

Mastering pay per click is tough. Some will succeed brilliantly at it and make delightful profits with little efforts. Others will struggle. But no matter which way it goes for you, you need to keep an eye on the bottom line and know when to change things.

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