Pay-for-Performance or Pay-per-Click Internet advertising is making big waves lately, and the two biggest players are Google and Overture, which was recently purchased by Yahoo. Microsoft has since joined the fray with MSN Search and there are numerous other fish (albeit tadpoles) in the pond.
When it comes to promotion, the advantages of internet advertising over traditional print advertising can be summed up with the following acronym-rich equation: CPC - CPM = PPC. Thats CMO-speak for expressing how much more cost effective cost-per-conversion analysis is to cost-per-thousand analysis.
With Pay Per Click advertising via Google and Overture, the cost of the ad is based upon the performance of the ad; however, the effectiveness of the ad is gauged by its conversion ratio. Thanks to tools provided by both Google and Overture, these conversion ratios can be calculated automatically.
Traditional print media, on the other hand, provides a CPM (cost per thousand) to demonstrate cost (value) of an ad. A certain number of people will see the ad (and believe me, this number is pie-in-the-sky, based upon circulation times readership). Therefore, the cost is X.
Its easy to recognize the advantages of pay per click advertising, but before jumping head first into the PPC arena, review the following tips:
1) Be aware of the differences between Google and Overture
Google is the leading search engine at the moment, but their reach never exceeds their grasp. Overture technology, on the other hand, currently extends to Yahoo, AltaVista, CNN, Infospace, and others. Overture requires you to deposit money into an account in advance. Said account is then depleted based upon your campaign selection. Meanwhile, Google simply bills your credit card based upon your expenditures. Overture provides more intuitive and complete reporting functionality that enables you to analyze the effectiveness of keywords, but Google allows you to enter a maximum expenditure-per-day. This daily cap provides more control over your monthly spending while Overtures system simply draws money from the online account until depleted. This daily draw can vary substantially from one day to the next. Also, Overture requires you to keep 3 days of extra cash on hand. Do you earn interest on the money youre loaning to Overture Forget about it.
2) Be aware of the similarities
Both Google and Overture differentiate their paid clicks from their free, contextual algorithms, usually by featuring the sponsored searches on a different part of the page and by highlighting them in a color box. Recently, Overture launched a new product, or search mechanism, whereby an advertiser can choose to be listed among the contextual content, also. Thats kind of like paying for a meal after youve already eaten it.
Both services also experience infrequent, yet unexplained, spikes that decimate your daily or monthly budget in a matter of minutes or hours. Its a little unnerving knowing that you could blow through $500 or $1000 in a matter of minutes with absolutely no recourse. Staffed to handle these anomalies, both services feature barely adequate customer service with representatives who often reply to such technical idiosyncrasies with hostile ambivalence. Sounds like an oxymoron, but its not.
3) Start conservatively
That said, realize that pay-per-click campaigns are not an exact science and contain the potential to be ridiculously expensive if youre not careful. Start a campaign on either Google or Overture, but not both. Become familiar with the mechanics before launching full scale advertising campaigns on the other service.
4) Understand the mechanics
The way pay-for-performance works is simple. You bid on search terms, either words or phrases or a combination of both. Your webpage link then appears in search engine results relative to the price of the bid. If youre the highest bidder, your webpage appears at the absolute top of many search engines. Remember the frustration of typing in a search for your webpage and never finding your link No longer!
5) Understand the advantages
Perhaps the best part of pay-for-performance advertising is the pay for performance part. Unlike traditional advertising where you pay based upon the number of impressions, here, you only pay if people click on your link. In essence, they are pre-sold.
6) Select the appropriate keywords
Lets look at an example. Say you have published a mystery novel about the death of a land baron in Louisiana. Not exactly a new plot and yet millions of whodunit readers may be interested in reading it. Your solution Open a pay-for-performance account and bid on search terms like Louisiana Mystery Novel and Mystery Book Plantation and other similar search terms. Counter-intuitively, the more specific the term, the better your campaign will perform, since very specific searches deliver very motivated buyers to your page. Since youre paying for each click, you want those browsers to buy! Thats where conversion comes in to play.
7) Understand the disadvantages
You have to be very careful managing your bids and selecting your keywords, or pay-for-performance advertising can become ineffective. Do not bid on ridiculously vague and popular words like book or fiction because you will never recoup your money. Instead, focus your search terms as specifically as possible.
Its only a matter of time before traditional print media finds some way to adopt this new method of cost-per-conversion and pay-for-performance advertising. Those who dont will die trying. Viva la digital revolution!
Brent Sampson is the President & CEO of Outskirts Press Publishing at and author of Publishing Gems: Insider Information for the Self-Publishing Writer. Information at
All of my keyword research/analysis and search engine optimization skills suddenly came together in October 2004.
I had just written my first book, and I just wanted to get some free traffic to my website so I could start selling the it.
Triple Your Income with Ad Layout Changes
I had been making about $600 per month from Google AdSense for a long time. As I was researching traffic and revenue techniques, I ran across a tip on how to triple your adsense income (by tripling clickthrough rate).
I implemented the change (relax, Ill put all the tips below) and it worked! I went from $20 per day to $40, $50, and $60 days, with the same amount of traffic! My click through rate actually quadrupled in 10 days.
I then wrote keyword-optimized articles on 90 keyphrases I had found. This led to a 150% increase in traffic - no small feat considering that my website already had 300 articles.
The following month, I averaged $98 per day from AdSense - I had some days above $100, and one day I almost broke $200. I was getting pretty excited. I felt I had broken a code, finally developed a cash system that worked. Google was my new favorite sugar daddy!
Get Better Rankings and More Traffic by Targeting Only Vulnerable Keywords
I got into the math of keywords- I looked at those 90 keywords and compared the ones that had ranked well against those that hadnt. I also compared those that brought in traffic as expected and those that didnt, despite ranking well.
I developed a keyword evaluation equation that I believe is superior to KEI. Ive written elsewhere about the weaknesses of KEI - it can tell you the value of a keyword, but not every site can compete on every keyword. Because it overvalues demand and only reflects the exact-match supply, it doesnt help new websites identify their most vulnerable targets.
My equation, which calculates the "vulnerability" of a keyword. Vulnerability is expressed as a percentage- so 95% is good, 97% is pretty darned vulnerable, and 99% vulnerable is nearly a done deal. Using this equation helped me reduce inefficiency and increase my success rate with rankings, thus increasing traffic and revenue opportunities.
Partner with Writers to Increase Volume of Web Pages
The next major development was my response to discovering there was an immense number of vulnerable keywords to write about. I couldnt possibly write about all of them. So I found freelance writers who were willing to profit share with me. I gave them 50% of the adsense earnings on any article they submitted. But they could only write on the keywords I gave them, and they had to include the keyword in specific places.
Thats the other key to website ranking success- putting your keywords in the right place in your web page. I worked on this quite a bit as well. As time went on, I got more and more writers, some of whom were very prolific, writing 100 or more articles in a few months.
With everything that occurred, I kept tracking statistics, rankings, success rate, etc.
I fine-tuned the vulnerability equation. I discovered which topics get advertisements that no one clicks on. And I learned some things about what kind of writing leads to better click through rates.
Follow Me to Huge Online Profit Boosts
In just 6 months, we put up 2000 articles, boosted monthly page views more than 5 times, from 100,000 to 525,000, and boosted profits to $21,398.85.
How did we do it There are so many details that it would take a whole book to tell you everything - which is why Ive been writing one on this subject - but here are some helpful tips to start with:
1. Strike Gold With More Precise Keyword Targeting: make sure the monthly demand is at least 300. Im withholding my vulnerability equation right now for those who will purchase my ebook when its released, but Ill tell you the essence of it: check the supply of existing pages on Google for the keyword both in quotes, and not in quotes- this takes care of exact matching and partial matching respectively, and both are essential. If one or the other is too high, chances are the keyword is too competitive.
The threshholds I put in the vulnerability equation are based on my PR5 site, but for newer sites you can use only the 99%+ vulnerability keywords.
2. Boost Traffic With More Thorough Keyword Optimization: without spamming or stuffing, write the whole keyword phrase (exactly as searchers type it) at least 5 times in your article. Include it in the meta keywords, meta description, 1 or 2 image alts, and in the <title> tag. Write a <title> tag that not only includes the keyword (just once) but will also look interesting to searchers in the search results. Its also a good idea to have your keyword in an <h1> tag and in bold somewhere. Finally, if you aim for a word count of about 566 words per page, youll please 4 of the biggest search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista).
3. Increase Earnings by Considering Keyword Profitability: Neither every niche, nor every keyword is equally profitable. For example, I found that sports keywords didnt lead to many clicks, presumably because when fans are looking for game scores, they probably arent looking to buy a baseball cap. Also, famous people (perhaps with the exception of musicians) generally dont generate profitable clicks, because people usually just want free news or free pictures. The most profitable niches will be those in which the best information is not readily available, which require some specialized tools or services, etc. I found that health and electronics keywords were above average in profitability. Again, there are ways to get numbers for the monetary value of keywords- can you guess what Im going to explain this in more detail in a special report after the ebook is all taken care of.
4. Increase Earnings by Improving Ad Placement: Google has added a lot of new options to the layout code - I suggest you test with multiple channels to see what works best. Regardless of what I suggest next, testing is the key to all online success- whether you want rankings, traffic, or earnings. The internet affords accurate and detailed metrics- use them.
The tip that initially tripled my AdSense income was: put a 250x250 ad in the horizontal center of your page, above the fold, and make sure the border is white.
Ive found that making the ads look like any other part of your site is important. The ads are valuable, but if they look like ads, people will tune them out. So make sure the color scheme for your ads in the same as your sites. Since you can place 3 ads on one page, Id suggest a dead center one (as mentioned above), a left or right side skyscraper, and a wide banner one at the bottom of the page.
Thats plenty of meat to sink your teeth into. Ive learned a lot more, but another time, another article... Good profit hunting!
:-)
Since 1999, Brian Carter, MS, has reached more than a million visitors with his websites. His PulseMed.org ranks in the top 1% of all major websites. His second book,