[INFO] Calculating the Costs and Benefits of Pay Per Click Campaign

by Jeremy Gislason

Is a Pay Per Click Campaign In Your Future?

Pay Per Click

You have no doubt noticed the abundance of PPC ads when you're online. And when you perform a search on most search engines, there are tons of links at the top or side of the results list that are different from the rest.

What differentiates these ads from each other? What costs more? What offers the best results? The answers are in the testing of your particular ad. Nothing more, nothing less. Don't let anyone else fool you

You bid to have your site link displayed on the results page for that particular keyword search. Depending on the search engine you use, either the highest bid or the best performing link will be displayed first on the page.

You pay the amount of your bid every time someone is directed to your website by clicking on the advertised link. It doesn't get any more straightforward than that.

The cost of Pay per Click advertising

Depending on the search engine you use, you may have an initial deposit when you open your Pay per Click account of around $50, and a minimum monthly spend of around $20. Your bid amounts will depend on your chosen keywords.

The bidding system means that the more popular keywords will end up being very expensive. Keep a careful record of what you are spending on PPC advertising as the costs can quickly mount up and you can end up paying more than you are making.

The following simple calculation will help you decide what you can afford to pay for Pay per Click advertising.

PPC Revenue
------------------- = Revenue
PPC Visitors

To get the most out of Pay per Click advertising, bid on as many keyword phrases as you want to afford. Consider less popular keywords that are more targeted to your potential members, and which will command a lower price per click-through.

Monitor and analyze your Pay per Click results carefully. Look both at which keywords are getting you visitors and which of these visitors are actually signing up to your membership site, or buying a product from you. Focus on the keywords that are getting you the most sales rather than the most visitors.

If you are using PPC advertising extensively it may be worth using a bid management system, or even employing a bid management company to manage your advertising campaign. This will ensure you are not spending more than you are making, and will help you to focus on the keywords that are generating valuable, targeted traffic to your site.

Researching Your Keywords

Do this correctly and you'll be able to drive hoards of very targeted visitors to your sites instantly.

Here's a method you could use to discover the ads that are working and where to put your ads.

Type in one of your best keywords into Google.com search and look at both the natural results that come up as well as the paid results that appear.

Visit the top 10 - 20 sites that come up in the natural results and see if they also have google ads on them. If so - you should copy and paste those urls in a notepad or doc for your natural search research, I'll explain why shortly. Only write down the urls that also have google ads on them.

Then take a look at the top and right side paid results and either take a screen shot or just copy and paste the ads into a notepad. This will be your paid ad research notes.

Do the above for as many keywords are you want to use yourself for your ppc campaigns.

Now, come back the next day and do the same process on the same keywords. Do this daily or maybe every couple of days if you like over a period of several weeks.

What are you looking for? You are looking for consistencies.

First of all, keep your eye on the natural search results if those same top 10-20 website urls keep appearing everytime in the same order or if they are changing. Reason is sometimes a site can get ranked #1 or #2 for a keyword right away but then dropped down after a few days or weeks.

What you want to find are the sites that have good page rank and are consistent with natural search results for your keywords. Now what you want to do is go into your Google Adwords account and set up a campaign - simple yes? But here's the key, instead of just setting up a campaign in niche market categories you are going to set up campaigns where you control the exact url your ad will be shown on.

Following me where this is going? Remember that list of natural search result that also display Google ads you have? Now is the time to use it. You simply use the Google Adword options to set up specific urls for your ad. Not just the domain but the exact url which could be an inner page with content directly related to your keyword.

Now your ads will only be shown on highly targeted content pages that you control. Meaning you now have highly targeted ads set up and if they are on very popular sites such as say CNN, Entrepreneur.com, or the New York Times etc you could instantly send hundreds or even thousands of visitors to your sites.

Now, part 2, back to those paid ad research results you have jotted down in your notepad. Again, you are looking for consistent ads which keep appearing all the time for your keywords. Most likely those ads are profitable (unless the owner just likes losing money or something) so you could model your own ads after those that seem to be working well.

Just change the niche words around and more than likely you can use very similar phrases in your ads. By doing this you are setting your ads up for potentially higher click thrus.

Doing this along with the targeted ad campaigns and you can be sure to expect some heavy traffic to your sites.

Side note: While the description text you use for general SEO is designed to get as much traffic to your site as possible, your description text for PPC advertising has a different purpose. Because you are paying for each visitor, you want to make sure that only people who are likely to join your membership site actually click on the link. Your description will make it very clear what your site is about to attract the visitors that are most likely to generate revenue for you.

Make sure you test, track, and reevaluate. One campaign may not generate the results that you like, but another may. Keep track of not only the clicks that you receive but the actual purchases from those clicks, that is where the real power is.