Whatever stuff you are selling (or planning to sell) online, you need to put an advertising campaign together and for the majority of web marketing folks, that means a Google pay-per-click campaign. I am not disregarding Yahoo and Microsoft, but where market share is concerned, the name of the PPC game is Google.



Of all the traffic generation methods that are available, PPC is probably the easiest to implement. Think about it – you can set up an Adwords campaign in a few minutes and a few more minutes later, your ad is showing on the search network (and if you have chosen, the content network also).

Getting clicks, or website visits, is your main objective. Specifically, you are looking for prospective customers, not just browsers. By carefully adjusting your bids and your daily budget, you can tweak your campaign to where you are getting a steady flow of traffic (a good click-thru rate). I am assuming here that you are dealing in a market niche for which you have done some detailed research, and which is far from being at saturation point.

You can choose to market to the Internet Marketing industry, with whatever information product or course that you have available, but be warned. If you want to see some action you will either need deep pockets to to pay for clicks, or hire a really good copywriter. And I'm not talking about $8-per-hour Elance journeymen, bless their souls. Seriously, know what your niche is and make sure your sales campaign is in place (front and back end) until the last link in the chain is your PPC ad. Yes, it can be set up in a few minutes but some time spent in preparation will make success more probable than possible.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most dependable (and convenient) ways to earn onlime income. Direct linking, where the PPC ad is pointing at the affiliate link, is very easy to implement but Google does not view direct linking favourably. You can go ahead and set up direct linking, but it seems to be an uphill battle to get good positional ranking and a reasonable keyword bid price. What they are looking for is content, not just a link. The advertiser must be providing value of some sort. This is why it's important to spend some time preparing your own sales page, capture page or whatever will make the campaign uniquely yours. Google likes originality, and it likes to see that there has been some value added. This could be in the form of an impartial review of the product, or even a bonus that is unique to the marketer in question.

While some marketers might bemoan the fact that they have to provide the extra content and bonuses, the advantages to be gained far outweigh the negatives. For one thing, you could make your content available in the form of a “review page” or “review site”, which would give you opportunities to cross-sell multiple products, have OTO's and introduce the customer to other products in your inventory.