It’s a simple enough question right? What is PPC.

In it’s simplest explanation, PPC is an acronym for Pay Per Click. It refers to an advertising model where an advertiser pays every time a viewer clicks on their ad.

In general how it works is that you bid on a keyword or several, in an Ad Campaign that has one or more Ads. Typically the Ad is made up like so:

Headline : Generally a catchy headline that includes your Keyword
Line 1 : Primary phrase to give information on the product or service.
Line 2 : Secondary phrase to reinforce the benefit of the product or service.
Target URL : Where the viewer is going to be sent, usually a full domain like www.FooBar.com
Landing URL : The actual landing page which can include affiliate links or tracking information. www.FooBar.com/product_1&?Keyword&?Affiliate_ID

You put in a maximum price you are will to pay every time someone clicks on your ad. They click on your ad, your account is racked up a charge to the amount of the bid and the viewer is sent to the target url you have in your ad.

Your bid goes into a bucket along with everyone elses for that keyword or phrase. When a search is done with that keyword the bids are ranked and if your bid is high enough and your ad is relevant enough your ad will be ranked and displayed.

The actualy algorythms that the various companies use to rank your ads is a bit of black magic, but are usually made up of a percentage being your bid price, a percentage of the quality of your ad and it’s relevance to the product and a percentage of history.

It’s not unusual to get clicks for less than your maximum bid, but you certainly shouldn’t be bidding big unless you know you are going to make money from the conversions.

PPC is a very quick and effective way to testing products, web sites, sales copy and conversions. It doesn’t take long to set up and you can be driving traffic to your site or to an affiliate site same day.

In some circles PPC is interchangeable with Google Adwords, however Google isn’t the only game in town. There are a whole host of providers who offer PPC services along with several other types of advertising models.

The main ones are Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter and Yahoo (Formerly Overture)

There are several good systems that teach you how to come up to speed on Affiliate Marketing in general and PPC in particular.

Some of my favorites are Matt Levenhagen’s Blast Method, Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker’s ShoemoneyX and the one that got me started Chris Carpenters Google Cash.

What are some of your favorite systems?

Ooroo,
Shane

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