Google was the first company to make serious money out of selling advertising services on the Internet, with a service called Google AdWords. Prior to AdWords, the basic model of advertising on the internet was based off of the display rate and frequency. You paid a certain amount per thousand impressions, and it ran like magazine advertising.



Google AdWords changed this; you only paid for the display of your advertising that a customer clicked on. AdWords, coupled with Google's search engine popularity, redefined marketing on the Internet. The other major benefit (beyond a nearly unheard of "Pay for what's actually gotten") is that AdWords tend to get targeted searchers.

Making AdWords work for you is a little bit trickier, as an affiliate marketer. You want the clicks to hit your web site, not your vendor's web site; you want the customer to go through your squeeze page (a simple form that asks them for their email address) before directing them through your affiliate link to your vendor's site. To make this work in your favor, you have to understand how AdWords work.

First, pick AdWords that are short - one to three words, tops. Don't forget to pick a couple of common mis-spellings of the word you're running with. Second, make sure that the place where the pay per click advertising takes the customer is optimized for humans as much as it is for Google's search engine algorithm. In particular, a bare "squeeze page" will quickly get your AdWord rates skyrocketing, because of how Google ranks pages and sorts by "relevant content".

Next, make sure your content remains fresh. People are looking for information on the Internet, and you need to provide enough information so that the person who hits your site feels that they've spent their time well. While you need your AdWord to appear in your site for search engine optimization, make sure that it shows up in complete sentences, and with not much more than 3% density. More than 3% density (3% of the words being the same turn of phrase) will cause Google to think that you're gaming the system - and they'll be right.

Finally, once you get people on your list, don't forget the basics of relationship building with your readers. Give them updated content at least weekly, so that they have a solid reason to come back every week, and will expect your newsletter in their inbox. You want repeat visitors, and repeat buyers to make your business thrive, and for that, you need to give them a reason to keep coming back to the web site. (This is also why it's important to have multiple vendors that you're affiliated with, so that you can run out new content every week to broadcast to people who're already on your list.)

Pay Per Click advertising can generate a lot of traffic for you for minimal cash outlays. Use it to build the business you've been dreaming of.