If i want to advertise my site, do i pay for the clicks in advance and then wait for the hits to come or do i pay whenever someone clicks?

If I'm not mistaken, I believe you bid on keywords. Your bid is the price you are willing to pay when someone clicks your link. Higher the bid, the more prominent and often your ad is shown.

so if smeone repeatedly clicks on your link really quickly do you have to pay for it?

Yes. You pay for the quick clicks, but you also set a daily budget. Once the budget is reached, your ad is no longer shown.

csmith

Hi,

As csmith said, you can set a daily budget... You also set a Maximum Cost Per Click (CPC) that you want to pay.. it won't go over that, but it can go below that. For instance, if you set your CPC at $0.25 Google might only charge you 10 or 15 cents... it's widely dependent on the keywords you're bidding on and other factors.........

Originally Posted by webfreak

If I'm not mistaken, I believe you bid on keywords. Your bid is the price you are willing to pay when someone clicks your link. Higher the bid, the more prominent and often your ad is shown.

Your rank is based on CPC and the Quality Score.... the Quality Score is determined by your Click Through Rate (CTR), the Relevance of your Ad Text, historical keyword performance and some other secret relevancy factors.

So actually how much you bid is only part of the formula for ranking in the results... if you have a way better CTR then your competition then CPC becomes less of a factor...

But as I said above, it's widely dependent on the market you are targeting...

I agree with csmith, you can make budget of your ads and accordingly follow it up. I think you should also visit this article. That might be helpful to you.
http://www.seoconsultants.com/articl...k-programs.asp

Without a doubt, Yahoo search is better quality traffic than Google.

What data are you basing that conclusion on? What market? What product/service?

Which of these PPC are more effective, in other words, which give the most customers (not hits)?

- Google adsense
- Yahoo ads
- Less famous PPC ads like Cliksor
- PPC Search Engines that mainly get traffic from affiliates advertising on PTR's and PTC's etc.

I think writing a good ad is what will get you the customers. It's more about what you put up than which ppc you use. Since you can set budgets with them you can try a couple and see which is working better for you and then move more of your budget to that campaign.

MSN is also offering a ppc program though I forget the name at the moment. Also the Google program is called AdWords. AdSense is the program where you can add sponsored links to your site.

When you write your ad make sure to link it the most direct page to what you are advertising. Take people who click directly to the product or service you are advertising instead of just the home page of your site.

It's also not necessarily best to be the highest bidder for your keyword phrase. There's been some research that being #2 or even #3 will sometimes be better. You won't get as many clicks, but you will get more customers.

Which of these PPC are more effective, in other words, which give the most customers (not hits)?

- Google adsense
- Yahoo ads
- Less famous PPC ads like Cliksor
- PPC Search Engines that mainly get traffic from affiliates advertising on PTR's and PTC's etc.

You can sign up to be put on the list for MSN if you are in the U.S....

http://advertising.msn.com/searchadv/PilotForm.asp

I've tried many of the smaller PPC Engines... I mainly concern myself with Adwords... Yahoo... and hopefully soon, MSN. I'm on the list.

I think writing a good ad is what will get you the customers. It's more about what you put up than which ppc you use.

It is true that writing good Ad Copy is very important. It's important to follow all the basic principles of copywriting... but the PPC Engine you are working with can have a big impact... From my experience, you'll find vast differences in the quality of traffic you get from your Major engines like Google or Yahoo compared to engines like GoClick, 7Search or FindWhat....

I didn't realize MSN was only in the U.S. at the moment. I haven't used it and just knew it existed. Hopefully you'll get the invite soon.

That makes sense about the quality of traffic too. I recently read something where more men tend to use Google and more women tend to use Yahoo. I have no idea if this is true, but it does make sense that different search engines would have different subsets of the overall market.

It's probably still best to try a few of the engines for a month or two to see which ones will provide the most qualified traffic to your site.

mlevenhagen, do you find that one of the major engines stands out from the others for your site or do all the majors bring the same amount of qualified traffic?

My main focus is Google Adwords and the Yahoo. I haven't bothered with anything else for a long time (although I have been trying ISearchNaked.com just for fun, lol). I'm not only in one market though so really the traffic I go after is unlimited. If you just have one site and one market, of course you'd have to expand out into Yahoo and beyond...

I have my own products and websites I promote, but I also do affiliate marketing using Adwords mainly.... and there are 100s of thousands of affiliate programs and niche markets on the net waiting for me to promote them. So if a market of mine gets tapped out and I can't get any more traffic, I just move to another market/product.

No, you don't have to pay for clicks in advance. You are charge for clicks everytime someone clicks on them.

i think u will not pay the amount tat u bid
u also have to depend on the competitor.
if u bid $1 and the next highest is $0.5 google will reduce ur cost to near to $0.5
this is wat i read about

Originally Posted by Gerardas Norkus

No, you don't have to pay for clicks in advance. You are charge for clicks everytime someone clicks on them.

thats the case with Google, but you pay upfront for Yahoo. ...im getting about 3 times as many clicks with google as yahoo currently.