A unique instrument, Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing is most commonly used by e-commerce sites to draw pre-qualified traffic to your internet business. In case you are not familiar with the words PPC then type a common term, like "cars" in Google. You will come up with an index of approximately 10 natural or free searches besides which you will also notice PPC ads that are displayed at the sides and top of the majority of search results in Google.

These commercials look very much like the index of free search result but they all are commercials deliberately placed by businesses to attract targeted traffic to their websites. At my website of natural skin care, you might come across my ad under the words like "natural soap". I pay only when somebody clicks on that commercial. This enables me to fix the highest amount I am ready to shell out for a commercial click. A few key words, that is, the terms used in search engines, are not expensive and may cost little per word. However, the majority of keywords have a competitive edge and the keywords that have a high demand, like refinance, may come at quite a few dollars for each click.

PPC advertising appears to be the Holy Grail to most newcomers just beginning their first site of e-commerce. However, it should be handled both with some caution and careful planning. Choosing a keyword that has poor performance can cost you heavily.

The following are some important ways to a successful pay per click marketing campaign:

* Install a tracking code in your website - every PPC ad host like Google, MSN Yahoo!, provides code snippets that you can keep in your checkout process on your site, letting you to track the keywords that really pull sales to your e-commerce. This method alone is enough for using PPC - what your publicity medium can help you in tracking?

* Calculate a cost per sale that your budget can bear. Usually, your cost per sale should be linked to the profit you can get from making a sale. Basically, cost per sale is your total PPC spend divided by the number of sales you make. If you spend $100 and make 10 sales that your Cost Per Sale comes to $10. I have given an overview of my cost per sale for October 2007 at the end of this article. For everyone this may have different meaning, but my average sale runs about $40 and my average cost per sale approximately $15. Probably I break even on the first sale - my plan is to develop repeat clients and make substantial profit on the second and the following sales.

* Keep a close look at what you are spending. When you first begin with a PPC campaign you may spend more than what you can afford. You need to do this for sometime letting the law of averages to catch up and conclude what keywords do the trick for you. I would suggest letting your campaign run on a real set of keywords for almost thirty days before an appraisal of your campaign. All this while you will be looking after developing a set of keywords that work for you.

I sincerely hope that you and your business find this information useful.