Pay Per Click

A Modern Day Fairytale: Pay Per Click Search Engine

2008-08-31T21:06:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Based on its recent share price, pay per click search engine, Google,
now has a stock market capitalization of about $107 billion, more than
the combined stock values of stalwarts like Boeing, Ford Motor and
General Motors! Its closest pay per click search engine rival Yahoo!
has a market capitalization of about $45 billion. So what's so good
about these pay per click search engines that has catapulted them in
the Fortune list of America's most admired companies?

To get to the root, you first need to understand the pay per click
search engine programs. Even though Google AdSense and Yahoo! Search
Marketing Solutions, like many PPC programs, are plagued by claims of
click fraud; they are clearly an effective revenue source for many
reputable web businesses. Publishers or webmasters insert a java script
into their web site. Each time the page is accessed or displayed, the
java script pulls advertisements from these programs. These ads are
targeted and related to the content contained on the web page serving
the ad. Google seems to be well content oriented and uses your meta
description and meta keywords, in addition to page content, in order to
serve up ads that are appropriate to the subject matter of the web site.

At its most basic level, advertisers do not pay anything for the ads
displayed until someone actually clicks on them and gets redirected to
the advertisers' website. Thus, advertisers are paying-per-click for
potential customers who have actually arrived at their websites. This
concept of pay-per-click has been around ever since evolution of the
Internet and the rise of search engines. However, this type of online
advertising in its current form began in 1997, when an entrepreneur
named Bill Gross developed an idea for the first-ever pay per click
search engine GoTo.com.

Conclusion

What has happened in the search-engine marketing arena over the last
couple of years, is a paradigm shift from the traditional means of
online advertising to a previously less-employed option called
pay-per-click advertising. Because pay-per-click (PPC) has plenty of
advantages, and only few shortcomings, many more companies are
beginning to experiment with this type of advertising, thus fueling its
growth. The introduction of localized search to the mix is the
decisive, convincing factor that further sways small and medium
businesses to consider this form of online advertising. I myself have
gotten plenty of leads and made sales due to pay-per-click advertising
on the Google search engine.

Pay Per Click Marketing - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly Ads Of Pay Per Click Marketing Advertisers

2008-08-29T02:45:00.000-07:00

f you are a pay per click marketing advertiser then you must have a full understanding of what makes a good, and a bad ppc ad. This article will discuss the good the bad and the ugly ads of pay per click marketers and also show you where to get access to the best pay per click marketing tool for maximum ppc marketing profits.

Bad pay per click marketing ads in a competitive market mean one thing - losing money hands over fist - and fast!

When we talk about good, bad and ugly ads of pay per click marketing advertisers we are talking about not only the keywords that those pay per click campaigns are targeting, but also the landing pages that those pay per click ads are redirected to.

Understanding The Fundamentals Of Bad & Ugly Ads

A pay per click bad ad will be completely unfocused and untargeted, will use only the most general keyword list and will probably send the ad traffic to the wrong landing page.

This will ultimately hurt the pay per click advertiser's click through rate, their conversions, their quality score and their hip pocket!

No matter what keyword their prospect has searched, they'll direct them to the home page, regardless of what specifically their prospect is looking for.

There are several things severely wrong with a bad ad:

1. They've placed every single keyword into the one ad group rather than just similar phrases.

2. Their headline is useless and ineffective.

3. Their description gives no reason for the prospect to click on their ad.

4. Their ad takes their prospects directly to their home page, regardless of what the keywords are that were searched for. It is far more beneficial to have visitors taken to an individual web page specifically designed around the keyword phrase searched for.

Understanding The Fundamentals Of Great Ads

1. The keyword is in the headline.

2. The first line of the ad contains the most powerful and compelling benefit to the reader.

3. The second line in the description contains the best feature.

4. The beginning of every word has been capitalized.

5. The display url has part of the main keyword either in the domain or in a subdirectory.

To get the highest click through rate you possibly can and the highest conversions you need to focus on targeting keyword sets, not a general keyword list. Not only that, you have to write your ads as a sales person would.

Let me show you how I would use the software Keyword Elite to easily separate my keywords into their own ad group.

Open up project 1 "create a keyword list". For this example I'll use the keyword insurance. In step 3 select Overture and in step 4 we'll select 500 keywords related to the word insurance.

Once Keyword Elite has finished processing this list of keywords right click on the mouse and select "export as groups to TXT". This will automatically allow us to separate all of our keywords into their own ad groups for us. It will create 1 text file for each group. All we would need to do then is open up each text file and paste the keywords straight in our Adwords account. For example, the text files for the insurance example would be car insurance, health insurance, home insurance, insurance and life insurance.

5 Reasons To Use Pay Per Click Internet Advertising

2008-08-29T02:26:00.000-07:00

If you want to drive traffic to your website and increase sales, chances are you are working hard on optimizing your website for SEO and trying hard to add new content regularly. The problem is, not only is this approach time consuming, it takes a long time and no doubt, many a webmaster has lost his desire and his hopes have fizzled because of the lack of short term reward. The answer may well be pay per click internet advertising. Pay per click internet advertising is a way of purchasing advertising space on a search engine page by bidding on a search term. If you bid competitively for a particular term, you may well be placed on the same page as hard working webmasters who have optimized website pages to appear naturally on search engine results pages.

Here are five reasons to use pay per click internet advertising:

1. Pay per click internet advertising can work very quickly, even instantly. This is a huge advantage for a webmaster, particularly if you want to get a product onto the market quickly and your advertising is targeting it with the right keywords. Getting a quick response from targeted visitors can also create a momentum that can drive a promotion forward and create positive energy and new ideas to work in tandem with your pay per click internet advertising campaign.

2. Pay per click internet advertising can by-pass time consuming SEO strategies. This is worth mentioning again. It is not easy to create organic growth and appeal to the different search engine algorithms in order to land on the first page of search engine results. With effective pay per click internet advertising, you or advertisement can appear on the first page of search engine results at a reasonable price.

3. Pay per click internet advertising can significantly increase website traffic if you choose a relevant and reasonably popular keyword and write an appealing advertisement. You don't need to spend a fortune to gain the first position, third or fourth position can work equally well and be substantially less expensive.

4. Pay per click internet advertising can be cost effective if used correctly. Not only can you save money by bidding for the third or fourth position, you can save a lot of money by bidding on a misspelling of a name. A lot of people typing in search terms spell the words incorrectly. If you were to research the common mis-spellings of your keyword, you may well be able to purchase it for next to nothing and yet gain a lot of targeted traffic.

5. Pay per click internet advertising can also be used to build an offline business by using geographical parameters. Google, for example, offers a geo-targeting option that is very useful if you are wanting physical visitors to your place of business.

Used correctly, pay per click internet advertising can hasten the success of your business venture and protect you against the pitfalls of growth that is too slow. Long term business success requires momentum because without it any enterprise can stagnate and fail. If you stay within your budget and pay attention to what is working and what is not, being willing to make adjustments where necessary, pay per click internet advertising can be the difference between success and failure.

Affiliate Marketers Will Never Make a Dime Using Google Adwords

2008-08-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Most people start off their affiliate marketing business by getting traffic from google adwords. I know, because that’s how I started. If your anything like me, you purchased Google Cash or another pay per click ebook and you set up your first campaign. Latter on after many campaigns you found out that it was a lot harder than you originally thought.

Here’s why! Pay per click advertising works well for businesses that can count on repeat business. As an affiliate you usually don’t have that luxury. Your relying on one purchase per customer and then you’ll probably never see that customer again. A good E-business on the other hand knows that with every person that becomes a customer they can rely on x number of purchases from that customer. This also allows them to bid significantly higher than affiliates because they can make their profits from the back-end.. A business that can rely on a minimum of four purchases per customer for example, can burn up their profits on the first and second purchases and still make profits on the third and fourth purchase.

The last reason affiliates have a hard time is because conversion rates for a typical pay per click campaign average less than 1%. Its hard to make a profit with that kind of conversion rate. I’m not saying its impossible, but affiliate marketers utilizing pay per click advertising for their traffic are definitely fighting an uphill battle.

Secrets of Successful Affiliate Bloggers - Discover How They Make It Real Big

2008-08-26T02:06:00.000-07:00

There is no denying the fact that there are successful affiliate bloggers who take home over $200,000 monthly. The fact is that these successful affiliate bloggers have secrets that earn them this huge sum of money.

Discover in this article, secrets of successful affiliate bloggers that they use to make it real big in the world of blog affiliate marketing.

Here are two vital secrets that successful affiliate bloggers use:

Successful affiliate bloggers select the right affiliate program for their affiliate blogs.

Before successful affiliate bloggers decide to start promoting any affiliate program on their affiliate blogs, they must have made sure that they have started generating targeted visitors to their affiliate blogs. This will help them to understand the kind of visitors that they are generating to their affiliate blog. When they have effectively done this, they would then look for the right affiliate program that would interest their affiliate blog visitors.

Successful affiliate bloggers join two tier affiliate programs.

The success of any affiliate blogger comes to reality when such an affiliate blogger participate in an affiliate program that pays out commissions on a two tier level. What this means is that successful affiliate bloggers usually promote affiliate sites where they can earn commissions from people that they refer to the affiliate program, as well as commissions from there own efforts. Any kind of affiliate program that allows you to earn a two tier affiliate commission is called a residual income affiliate program.

There are two vital secrets that successful affiliate bloggers use to make it real big. Begin to use these secrets to your advantage and join the train of successful affiliate bloggers.

Affiliate Marketing- Information On Affiliate Content Sites-Blogs

2008-08-25T01:49:00.000-07:00

In affiliate marketing, there are different kinds of business models that you can choose to promote your affiliate product. One of the ways is call the affiliate content site or blog model.

So what the affiliate will do is to marketing purely through providing relevant content to the visitors. This can be in the form of articles, products reviews or even content that comes come multi media like audio or video.

If the affiliate has already set up one blog, he might just use it purely for reviewing and recommending products. On a normal website, the affiliate might put lots of fresh contents or tools so that the visitors will always come back to the site to look for new information.

So in order to monetize the website or blog that they have, they can actually put their affiliate links in certain places. He can put a link at the resource box which will be at the end of the article or he can even link certain words in the article to the affiliate products that the affiliate is promoting.

The next thing that the affiliate can put is a opt in form. In affiliate marketing, having a list is the most important assets that the affiliates can have. The advantage is that not only will the affiliate be giving visitors valuable content; he will also be able to build his own profitable list too. This is the biggest advantage of using this model to do an affiliate marketing business.

Advertising An Affiliate Program Effectively And For Free

2008-08-24T02:44:00.001-07:00

If a person can find a winning strategy for the free advertising of their affiliate program then success is assured. Yet after signing up for any affiliate program, this is the first major obstacle and challenge affiliates usually face.

Effective free advertising for any affiliate program must involve the generation of as much targeted traffic as possible being directed in the direction of the affiliate site. To accomplish this, the affiliate needs their own web site or blog site with an interesting topic and information that attracts the target market the affiliate is looking to refer to their affiliate traffic.

Well-written informative and valuable information needs to be included in the affiliate site or affiliate blog site. The affiliate should also be careful to ensure that the keyword phrases used are capable of getting him a presence in the top ranking of leading search engines. This is key free advertising affiliate program strategy.

Then every effort should be made to generate lots of links pointing at their affiliate site. This will help generate traffic directly but more importantly will improve on the sites' ranking with search engines.

These simple free advertising affiliate program steps will ensure that after a short while, the affiliate site will be generating a lot of traffic which can then be directed to the affiliate site.

Advertising An Affiliate Program Effectively And For Free

2008-08-24T02:44:00.000-07:00

These simple free advertising affiliate program steps will ensure that after a short while, the affiliate site will be generating a lot of traffic which can then be directed to the affiliate site.

How Much Does it Cost to Bring Visitors to a Website?

2008-08-23T06:37:00.000-07:00

Bringing visitors to your website is a must to make money, and it does cost something and should be considered as part of your marketing budget. The exact price it would cost you depends on a few factors as well as the methods you make choose to use to bring them to your site.

First of all, if you decide to use a method such as pay per click to bring people to your site, pay-per-click would cost you per visitor and your cost here would also depend on how much competition there is in your market. For example, if you start a pay-per-click campaign for the mortgage industry with a major search engine, your cost per visitor would be higher because this is a very competitive market online.

I would say that the average cost per visitor in this market would be about $0.75 using very specific keywords.

Pay-per-click is one of the paid methods to drive traffic online. There are some free ways to drive traffic such as content marketing in the form of articles and blogs. Both of these methods rely on getting listed in the organic search results (left side of the search engines) and would bring visitors back to your site this way.

The good thing about such a method is the fact that you could do it yourself but the bad part would be that it is harder to quantify how much you are paying for each visitor if you are handing all the work yourself, your investment would be more of time.

PPC Advertising - Knowing the Pits and Falls of PPC

2008-08-22T02:31:00.000-07:00

Pay Per Click or PPC Advertising is one of the newest and latest methods used by many marketers to generate traffic on anyone’s site. Although to a lot of people, the idea of pay per click advertising is always a vague, difficult to understand concept, it is apparently a new method that is very refreshing to learn and easily executed only when it is done and performed the correct and appropriate way. The concept of pay per click is to put up special keywords on your site that you think will drive potential clients going directly to your site. So, if you want to know more about pay per click advertising and how you can better do it, the steps below will help you:

a. Deploy the right kinds of keywords on your site. This means that you need to make sure that all relevant keywords that you think will attract people to make a visit on your site, put them all together on your site. It is the only thing that matters on your pay per click campaign.

b. Monitor your clicks. You have to make sure that you put an effective tracking method on how you can monitor the clicks that are derived from your pay per click campaigns. If the keyword is not generating the right amount of traffic then have it changed immediately and deploy a new set of keywords on your pay per click advertisement.

c. Experiment on other keyword combinations. In advertising, it is important that you bring the courage to do an experiment about various possibilities if you really want to know and unleash the right formula to attain success in pay per click advertising. After all, when there is no risk taken, no success is attained. So better risk and be successful.

Initial Steps to Take When Doing PPC Advertising

2008-08-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

Pay Per Click advertising or PPC ads is an evolving marketing technique that most business people used nowadays. Due to its massive capability to produce results by generating more traffic and increase the number of conversions, Pay Per Click advertising has become one of the most effective marketing tools. So, how does one make full utility of this effective tool then? I have cited below some of the ways on how you can ensure that have a Pay Per Click that works.

• It is mandatory that you create an individual landing page for each Pay Per Click campaigns that you have. This is done so that each page can contain the specific search terms that are popularly being used by a net user when he or she tries to search the net.

• Make an experimentation of the wordings on all your pay per click campaign materials. This is done to determine which arrangement of words can actually generate a lot better results.

• On your pay per click campaign materials, always include your call to action button or word box. By having these call to action boxes, you are directly inviting your visiting clients to click on the box.

• Refrain from using highly trademarked terms on your pay per click campaign. You are not supposed to be competing against the trademark of well-established trademarks, as your site will not be getting a favorable result.

• Since some of search engines offer the advertising of pay per click campaign materials with contextual programs, it is best that you take advantage of this privilege. Because thru this, you will be allowed to specifically determine the placement of your advertisement in terms of where it is going to be published.

Earning More Profits With PPC

2008-08-21T02:24:00.000-07:00

Pay Per Click is what most online business people think as a better and comfortable way to advertise their product. Instead of paying more to a lot complicated advertising methods, Pay Per Click is a sure, cost effective, and easy way to generate the traffic you want for your site and earn the best rank you can ever get from a search engine. Below are some the simple guidelines one can follow should he wish to engage on a pay per click advertising technique:

- Remember that when choosing keywords to be enlisted on search engines, it is a lot cheaper to use a keyword that is specific-based and less generalized. For example of a keyword that projects a broader meaning is the search term “shoes”, where in fact you can make it to a more specific one as “children’s shoes”.

- It is suggested that you come up with numerous landing pages for clickers of your pay per click. This gives your clickers a chance to see what they are exactly looking for in a product, instead of directing all of them to your home page and search from there. It is going to be a lot of wasted time for these people.

- Go to the right Pay Per Click search engine. There are numerous search engines offering pay per click. Try to study and learn the in and out of each search engine offering pay per click. It is only by doing this that you can be able to save some amount of money to be shelled out for your advertisement.

Pay Per Click Advertising - An Advantage Or a Waste?

2008-08-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

Website managers do a lot of things to generate traffic in their website. They adopt several marketing techniques, ensure website designing and content, develop trends and techniques that will help them generate traffic to their site. Amongst all these there is one technique known as the pay per click advertising technique which, has become a topic of debate with people into Internet business. To some Internet marketers, the pay per click services have proved to be quite beneficial, where as to others it is a loss of valuable resource. We shall now point out the various advantages and disadvantages that pay per click campaign surface.

Unlike the organic search services, the pay per click campaign is comparatively less tedious and does not require that much of effort. Another effective feature of PPC Services is that they provide a better ROI since, they are quicker is showing response on the search engines. The pay per click campaigns begin reflecting on the search engines as soon as the bid begins to function. The keywords begin to reflect your site ranking in the desired position and soon after, your click begin to generate.

The process being fast is extremely effective too, that ensures better ROI and higher traffic into the website. The paid search engine techniques have also been proven to be extremely effective in online advertising and promotion. The fact that websites are ranked better in the search engines, ensure a higher visibility to the websites than in any other advertising and promotion module.

Coming to the disadvantages of PPC Services, the biggest threat to the campaign is from 'Click Fraud' a mal-technique that has hampered the process of online marketing through paid techniques. There are a number of frauds that tend to hamper the process of pay per click advertising by generating false clicks on the search engines. For this reason, PPC services require rigorous checking and report generation, which will provide a detail description of the clicks that have been generated so far. This detail analysis of the pay per click campaign is necessary to make sure that the clicks are genuine and to find out about the so far unbeatable threat of fraud clicks.

Is Pay Per Click Right For You?

2008-08-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

Most people who market products online know what pay per click advertising is... You simply have a text ad, and whenever someone searches your chosen keywords in the search engines, your ad will appear and you will be charged each time someone clicks on your ad.

In my opinion, this was once one of the best forms of advertising but it has gotten way out of control... There's just too much competition, even if you're better than all of your competitors it still may not be worth it; why? Because no matter how hard you try you're not going to be able to make a good return on investment... Now, this isn't true for all markets, so don't start cursing me out just yet.

Sure ppc can work but if you're in a very competitive market then it's probably not the best thing to do unless you're very experienced with it... You see, pay per click is now so crowded that $1 clicks are no longer looked at as expensive... Just look around, in more seriously competitive niche markets like insurance and web hosting you have cost per click up around $20 or more!

Some people will tell you to just use smaller pay per click companies so that your cost per click will be much less. While this is true, the reason why it is so cheap is because most people realize that it's not worth it anyways, so they don't even bother. You'll get cheaper clicks, but the visitors won't be as targeted.

The main point I'm trying to get across is, pay per click can still be very useful, but you need to be mindful of your niche and keyword competition.

A Fundamental Overview Of Pay Per Click Search Engines

2008-08-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

Forbes magazine has reported that pay per click ad sales are
expected to increase to at least $8 billion by 2008.

The three fundamental core elements that form the basis of a
successful pay per click ad program are constant monitoring,
analysis, and refinement.

Pay per click search engines offer a way to buy your way to the
top of search results for any term you wish. With proper
management, and a clear focus, pay per click search engines can
offer some of the most well targeted and economical advertising
on the Internet.

Pay per click advertising works through a bidding process, and
the ads appear prominently on the results pages of search engines
such as Google and Yahoo. The highest bidder for a particular
word or phrase receives top placement, and depending on the
engine, the top three to five bidders also generally also receive
placement on the first page of unpaid search results.

Fundamental questions to be addressed when formulating a pay per
click search engine strategy include the following:

When is the top pay per click bid necessary for highest
conversion, and when will bidding for a second or third place
position create a more attractive return on investment (ROI)?

How can you keep your PPC bids from cannibalizing your search
efforts on other (non pay per click) search engines?

What percentage of your pay per click budget should go to each
search engine?

Does either Google Adwords or Overture work better for your
particular product or service? Or, perhaps neither one is
appropriate from a return on investment (ROI) perspective.

It is of critical importance to focus sharply on identifying
the search terms that convert most frequently for your particular
site, eliminating those that don't perform, and most importantly,
calculating and maximizing your return on investment.

The cost structure of pay per click is action-driven and each
time a user clicks your ad, the pay per click engine deducts the
amount of your current bid from your account. Pay per click
offers a high level of assurance that your ad is reaching the
proper target.

Pay per click campaigns, however, are not perfect. Without

CONSTANT monitoring, you sometimes risk incurring advertising
costs that can spiral out of control, focusing on terms that
don't convert well for your product or services, or falling way
down in position during a bidding war.

PPC advertising can be a great help to a site's success, but only
with very close supervision and a thorough knowledge of the
unique characteristics of each PPC search engine.

The Truth About Pay-Per-Click Ads

2008-08-16T21:00:00.001-07:00

Are pay-per-click ads the best method of getting customers to your website?

Essentially there are two ways your website can get to the top of a search engine's results:

* Pay-per-click ads, where you pay for your site to appear in the “Sponsored Links” area on the right side of the results page

* Search engine optimization, where your site is optimized to be at the top of the natural/organic results on the left side of the results page (link to our SEO page)

JupiterResearch analyst Niki Scevak stated that one in seven searchers click on a paid/sponsored link. If you do the math, that's only 14% of searchers who are choosing the pay-per-click ads to get to the information they are searching for. It also means, if you concentrate all your search efforts on pay-per-click you will only be reaching 14% of your potential customers.

So while pay-per-click methods might get your listed quickly they may not be driving as much traffic as you want. That is why investing time towards a solid search engine optimization and link management campaign is needed to get your site listed highly in the natural results is a step that cannot be ignored. It helps you reach more searchers.

Shell Harris is an Internet marketing consultant and an SEO Specialist.
He provides proven results for Website promotion. More articles can be found at

How Pay Per Click Search Engines Work

2008-08-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

Pay per click search engines are an effective way to attract cheap, targeted traffic to your website. The best and most popular pay per click search engines are Overture (GoTo) and FindWhat.

So, how do these sites work?

Advertisers bid on search result words and phrases. A Pay Per Click (also known as Pay Per Ranking, Pay Per Placement or Pay Per Position) search engine enables you to list your site at the top of the search results according to the keyword bid.

You list your website by selecting keywords that refer to your product or service. For each keyword you determine how much you are willing to spend. The higher you bid, the higher you will appear in the search results.

In pay per click search engine, you only pay for clicks or click throughs to your web site. Pay-per-click search engines play an important role in driving traffic to your site because you only pay for actual clicks. It is risk free and a cheaper alternative to listing with the bigger search engines.

Before you do anything with pay per clicks, you might want to learn more on Pay Per Click Search Engine Theory:

Bizweb.com

A few other helpful sites:

Payperclicksearchengine.com

This is a good site that is full of information and links related to pay-per-click search engines, including Overture.

Compareyourclicks.com

This is a site that lets you see, in real-time, what it will cost to bid for particular keywords on a number of the major pay-per-click search engines

Here is my favorite Pay Per Click Search Engine:

- Google adwords

- Overture

Go to Payperclickanalyst to check out other good Pay Per Click Search Engines or check the resource section for other alternatives.

Lucrative PPC Advertising - The Realities of Pay Per Click Publishing

2008-08-16T00:20:00.000-07:00

Pay Per Click publishing is another online business that is beginning to capture massive audience. It may have not been accepted with confidence at first but with its convincing effectiveness and lesser drawbacks, it has now positioned itself to becoming one of the most profitable online businesses.

The aim or objective of the Pay Per Click -Publishing is to cover the strategy of producing content for the purposes of attracting (contextual or otherwise) advertising revenue on a Pay Per Click basis. This only means that with the Pay Per Click, one is capable of earning a profit on two ways. One is being the publisher, meaning you write the content of the article, publish it. And the other one is accepting other article writers to use your web site to publish their articles in exchange of an ad space on the article. So every click that the article gets is an amount equivalent for you.

So how does a pay per click publishing work?

For a start, you will have to create a keyword for your site. Afterwards, you can start bidding on your keyword. You may be caught up in the bidding that takes place for the top keywords. Or the otherwise, you may end up bidding for the lowest in the rank. This, of course, all depends on your capability to determine what is the best keyword to use.

Finding the best keyword and less expensive pay per click is not a matter of luck, though. You have to be very careful in building your keywords

Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs - Still Worthwhile?

2008-08-15T23:56:00.000-07:00

Pay per click affiliate programs have received plenty of criticism in the last few years. They have been a victim of click fraud and many affiliate marketers do not find them worthwhile because of the low revenue per click and prefer instead to promote other affiliate program models like pay per action and the ever popular and traditional pay per sale model.

In truth, pay per click affiliate programs can still work as long your website provides valuable and updated content. This will make your visitors repeat visitors; they will want to return, making it far more likely that they will click on your ads, giving you a commission.

One of the main downsides of pay per click affiliate programs is that they usually require more traffic to earn a substantial income. Since you earn so little per click, you have to drive lots of traffic to earn a worthwhile income. For the pay per sale and pay per action models, it is possible to earn hefty commissions even with little traffic, especially if the visitor is very targeted.

As of the current situation, pay per click affiliate programs are becoming less popular. More affiliate marketers are moving towards the pay per action route. This is evident even with search engine companies, as they are looking to bring out more cost per action models for advertising. Pay per click affiliate programs will remain for some time to come, but expect it’s popularity to decrease even further as time goes on.

How to plan a pay-per-click ad campaign

2008-08-14T05:40:00.000-07:00

OOGLE ADWORDS and
Yahoo Advertising are the current darlings
of Internet advertising and with
good reason: They are almost instantaneous;
they get the message in front of
prospects at the time the prospect is
looking for the product or service; and
their effectiveness can be tracked!
If you are thinking about giving
pay-per-click a try, here’s the skinny
on setting up a successful campaign.
You will get the best results if you
know where you stand in terms of
Web site traffic and conversion rate
(number of leads or orders as a percent
of visitors to a site). To get this
information you need a “Web logs
analysis” report.
Your hosting company should provide
this as part of your hosting service.
Find the number of visitors (not
hits) coming to your site during a
given period of time. You will also
need to find out the number of leads
or sales made from your site during
the same period of time.
To find the conversion rate go to
the calculator at
www.markneting.com/calculator.asp.
Select “conversion rate” on the dropdown
menu and enter your number of
visitors and leads or sales as prompted.
Click calculate and you will have
your conversion rate.
For even better conversion statistics,
invest in a tracking tool or service. A
tracking tool tracks the source of any
lead right back to the referring search
engine or site and it calculates information
such as conversion rates. It
sometimes can tell if multiple visits
were made before an action (lead or
sale) was made.
Assuming that you are advertising
in order to get leads or sales, the conversion
rate from your site will help
you to determine what your target
average cost per click should be. Your
cost per lead or sale from the site is
basically the number of visitors you
have to bring to the site in order to
generate that lead or sale, multiplied
by the cost to bring each visitor.
So, if your conversion rate is 1 per-cent, you need to bring 100 visitors to
your site in order to get one lead or
sale. If you are paying an average of
$.45 per visitor to your site, you will
be paying 100 x $.45 = $45 per lead or
sale. However, if your conversion rate
is 2 percent, you only need to bring
50 visitors in order to generate a lead
or sale and your cost will be 50 x $.45
= $22.50.
Setting the goal
Knowing the conversion rate of the
Web site and your target cost per lead
or sale, you can determine your target
average bid for your pay-per-click
campaign. You can use the same calculator
as above, but select “pay per
click goal” from the drop down menu
and enter the cost per new customer
(or lead) goal and the conversion rate
at the prompts. Click calculate and
you will get your average cost per
click goal.
Now that you have goals set, you
can think about the keywords you will
want to bid on and the copy for the
listings. We will not go into detail
about how to select keywords at this
point, but rather discuss concepts
about keyword selection.
Yahoo and AdWords are by far the
most productive pay-per-click listing
engines. Each has keyword selection
tools that are helpful for determining
which keywords should be chosen.
There are some basic strategies for
selecting the best keywords for your
purposes. When searching on the
Internet, people are very direct, so
don’t rely on euphemisms or insider
jargon for your keywords. Include
those terms that the public you are
trying to reach will use when trying
to find the product or service you
offer.
The road less traveled may be a
good strategy if you have a small
budget and are in a competitive marketplace.
There are keyword selection
tools available that help you to find
the holes in general bidding strategies.
One example is to stake out common
misspellings. Can’t afford to bid on
the term “phonics?” Try “phonix.”
(The people who find your ad could
probably use your service.)
If your pay-per-click goal is ample
to cover the most costly keywords that
you will want to bid on, then go for
the top two positions in your best keywords.
We have found that there is some
benefit to being lower in the bidding
rank, however — even eighth or ninth
position. For example, Powdered
Technology Inc. provides all kinds of
materials in powdered form including
“glass beads.” The average searcher
for glass beads is not looking for a
powdered form, but by bidding the
term farther down the list, the site has
been found by persistent searchers
looking for micro glass bead for
industrial applications.
We use a spreadsheet with our estimate
of click-through and planned
bids to plan the budget for Yahoo bidding.
It is more difficult to plan the
budget for Google, because the keyword
estimation tool is not very accurate,
at least not in our experience.
Google and Yahoo allow you to set
daily budgets, which helps to avoid
runaway costs.
Both Google and Yahoo provide
free tracking of the “conversions,”
whether they are leads or sales. You
define what a conversion is, whether it
is filling out a form or making a purchase.
If phone contact is made, you
will need to ask if the call was made
from the Web site or provide a unique
phone number for Web site contact.
Phone contacts cannot be followed
with the Google and Yahoo tracking
tools. These tracking tools will report
by keyword the results you are getting
from the campaign, which allows you
to experiment with listing copy and
bids and follow the results in real
time.
You might want to try other payper-
click versions for various reasons.
Listing of most general pay-per-click
engines along with ratings and
reviews can be found at www.payperclickguru.
com.

[contact]
Miki Dzugan is
founder of Rapport
Online Inc., an online
marketing firm in St. Paul:
651.224.2277; mdzugan@roiweb.
com; www.roi-web.com

Site Intelligence Tracking – guidance notes 1

2008-08-13T02:14:00.000-07:00

1. Overview

These guidance notes expand on the overview of Site Intelligence (SI) tracking for web based campaigns, “Campaign tracking tools – Agency briefing 24/05/07”.

‘Pay per click’ (PPC) campaigns are tracked in two ways

Simply placing Site Intelligence parameters on the campaign landing page URL and using these within the Google etc
Using combination of BidCentre tracking and URLs with SI parameters in redirect

All PPC campaigns are required to carry SI tracking parameters to enable identification of traffic channel and type within strategic web traffic flow models.

2. Parameter formats

Site Intelligence parameters for PPC tracking follow a standard format. A spreadsheet template is available to assist with the creation of SI parameterised landing URLs (available from http://www.open.ac.uk/online/p4.shtml)

2.1.Part 1, this section identifies the agency and parent campaign

2.1.1. Format

kwcampaign=<>

2.1.2. Example

kwcampaign=zed_ generic

2.1.3. Standard managing agency ids should be used when constructing this part of the parameter. These are listed in Appendix 1.

2.1.4. Underscores should be used to replace spaces

2.2.Part 2, this section can be used to identify the location, search engine and individual keyword

2.2.1. Format

keywordid =<>

2.2.2. Example

keywordid =ukggl_open_university

keywordid =ukmsn_open_university

2.2.3. Standard international country codes and search engine ids should be used when constructing this part of the parameter. These are listed in Appendices 2 and 3 .

2.2.4. Underscores should be used to replace spaces

3. Appending to campaign landing page URL

3.1.1. Parameters are appended to the landing page URL using a ? unless the landing page URL already contains a ?, in which case they are appended using &.

3.1.2. The join between the Part 1 and Part 2 parameters is made using &

3.1.3. Format

<>?(&)kwcampaign=<>& keywordid =<>

3.1.4. Example

3.1.5. http://www.open.ac.uk/cam/masters/index.shtml? kwcampaign=zed_mba& keywordid =ukggl_specialist_masters_degrees

4. Using SI tracking with BidCentre

4.1.When uploading landing URLs into BidCentre ensure parameters are allocated to the landing page URL as described in sections 2 and 3 above.

4.2.BidCentre creates it’s own URL for the keyword/creative which redirects to the uploaded landing page URL which carries the SI parameters

4.2.1. Example

http://cust011.pool001.bidcenter-14.inceptor.com/74764/adult+basic+learning+skill/Google?source={ifsearch:search}{ifc ontent:content&placement=}{placement}&creative={creative}&keyword={keyword}

Re-directs to http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?A02&kwcampaign=zed_gen&keywordid=ukggl_access_further_education

The OU website

Appendix 1 – Managing Agency IDs

Managing Agency	ID
Green Cathedral	gc
Cybercom	cy
Tim	tod
Zed	zed

Should further ids be required please contact v.l.stirling@open.ac.uk

Appendix 2 – Search Engine IDs

Search Engine	ID
Google	ggl
MSN	msn
Yahoo	ysm

What To Do About Click Fraud?

2008-08-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

There are a variety of best practices, services and technologies
available to identify and protect yourself against click fraud.
Know Your Pay-Per-Click Vendor
Before signing up for a pay-per-click program, research where and how
your sponsored listing will appear. If your listing appears on obscure
web sites that seem irrelevant to your potential site visitors you may be
exposing your self to click fraud. Many pay-per-click programs provide
the option to include or exclude affiliate properties. Make sure you are
comfortable with where your sponsored links will appear. Not only
will it mitigate click fraud, but it helps you control your brand.
Develop a Baseline
Establish expected results for your site visitor behavior from pay-perclick
programs. Many live web site statistics products are available
that are affordable and easy to implement. These online services
typically provide hundreds of web site statistics, pay-per-click
conversion tracking, visitor behavior and more. It is important to have
comprehensive reporting to establish your baseline. Repeat visitors by
campaign are not enough to determine whether the clicks are from a
customer, prospect or an erroneous visitor with the intent of click
fraud.
ANALYZE your Navigation Paths to determine what paths your visitors
usually take. Unusual and repeated paths from a repeat visitor may be
a spider trying to trick you.
LOOK at the Page Depth and Average Time spent per page for your
visitors. Repeated visits with minimal page views and short time spent
per page may again be a spider clicking on your sponsored links.
REVIEW visitors by country to identify increased traffic from suspicious
countries of origin. Unusual patterns in visitor traffic by country may
be a sign of outsourced click fraud.
ANALYZE your referrals by search engine and search term. Make sure
the referral source for your pay click visitors appears valid. Check
these referral sources to make sure your ad is appearing. If you are
getting clicks from a search engine, but don’t see your ad, you may be
a victim of an affiliate scam.
KNOW your typical pay-per-click conversion rates. Review your
campaign activity summary reports to identify any underperforming
pay-per-click campaigns. Make sure to compare these to similar
campaigns over the same time period. All else equal, you should get
similar results from similar search terms with similar ad copy.
Implement Click Fraud Detection Technologies
Tracking repeat visits by IP address from your pay-per-click campaigns
is your first line of defense against click fraud. Comparing this data to
information such as number of visits, page depth and minutes per
session are ways of identifying suspicious activity from your pay-perclick
marketing programs.
You may consider SETTING UP EMAIL ALERTS to notify you of multiple
clicks from the same IP address. By proactively monitoring and
reporting click fraud you can do your part to stem the flow of
erroneous charges to search engine marketing budgets.
In addition, there are some ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES from a variety
of vendors that incorporate sophisticated statistical models that can
analyze your site activity and “predict” potential click fraud behavior.
Beyond the first line of defense these techniques can assist in
identification of click fraud that may go undetected by the human eye.
If your budgets dictate, there are also PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
available to audit the performance of your pay-per-click programs.
These programs are comprehensive and provide a definitive method of
identifying click fraud. If your company has spent hundreds of
thousand of dollars or even millions on pay-per-click and feel they
have been victimized, this option will allow them to look back, identify
and quantify exposure to click fraud.
These items listed in this section are suggestions for steps to take.
They do not constitute a complete list of methods and techniques for
the detection of click fraud.

Tips for Successful Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

2008-08-11T06:11:00.000-07:00

Pay per click (PPC) is by far one of the easiest and quickest methods of driving targeted, consistent traffic to
your website. While this may seem like a daunting method of advertising for some, it's actually quite easy and
can end up becoming that one marketing method that you can't live without.

What I'd like to do today is provide some tips and techniques that I personally use when creating and
monitoring PPC ad's. Hopefully these tips will help you in your future marketing endeavors.

Experimenting With Different Search Engines

There are many PPC search engines, with some being better than others. The top two are Google and Yahoo,
which was previously known as Overture. It's a good idea to start your PPC campaigns with a small budget,
spreading it out over a few different search engines to experiment and see where your target market may be
lurking.

Generally speaking, I've found Google Adwords is better for more technically orientated products or services,
including software, hardware, web design etc. Yahoo, on the other hand, is better for general consumer
products, including insurance, toys, music etc.

What I wrote in the previous paragraph is very general, and you should analyze your campaigns carefully to
see where they are performing their best. We'll discuss this in detail a little later in the article.

Selecting the Right Keywords

The keyword selection process is probably the most important of all when it comes to creating your PPC ad's.
You'll need to select keywords that are specific to your product or service offering, but you need to be careful
not to select keywords that are extremely popular, as this may deplete your PPC funds sooner than expected.

The keyword selection process begins by asking yourself just one question:

"If I was searching for a product just like mine, which words or phrases would I search for?"

Using your answer(s) to this question as your base, you can then use a thesaurus and common sense to start
building your keyword list with plurals, synonyms, similar words, etc.

To see which keywords your competitors are using, simply try searching for them. If you see a PPC ad along
the side for your competitor, then note that keyword down and add it to your list.

Another way of coming up with great keywords is to use the overture search suggestion tool:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Type in a set of keywords and it will list similar keywords, including the number of times that keyword has
been searched for on Overture (Yahoo) in the last month!

There's often a fine line between selecting keywords that are either too specific or keywords that are too
general. Try to keep away from these, as they can often result in wasted PCP funds.
A typical example of this would be an ad that I created recently for our latest product, TrackPoint, which -- not
coincidently -- is an internet marketing return on investment (ROI) tracking tool. Although the product is
heavily geared towards internet marketing, using such a broad term would have made it virtually impossible to
compete with the other advertisers.

The term "internet marketing" is searched for 825,674 times per month on Overture alone. Combined with the
huge number of different advertisers that target this keyword, the top bid for "internet marketing" on Google
AdWords is $13.84 per click! With an average of 240 clicks per day, a single day of advertising alone would
cost $505!

Now, unless you have an extremely high conversion rate of visitors to sales, or you're selling a high priced
item that usually has a high customer acquisition cost, I suggest targeting more specific keywords. Not only
will this decrease your overall competition with other advertisers, but it will also increase the chances of
turning your newly found web site visitors into customers.

Back to my earlier example, I chose to be specific with my keywords. One keyword was "ROI tracking",
which is searched for 1,828 times per month on Overture and has a much cheaper top bid. This keyword is also
more targeted to the product I was marketing, meaning that a large percentage of people clicking on my ad
should turn into customers.

It's also helpful to note that taking the top bid is not always necessary, and anywhere in the top 5-10 can
generate great leads. This really does come down to budget and analysis.

Attracting People to Your Ad

Now that we've selected our keywords, we need to get those searching to click on our ad, which in turn will
result in them clicking through to our web site and potentially purchasing our product.

One of the simplest ways to get peoples attention is to use their search keywords in the title of your PPC ad.
This has been proven to increase click-thru rates on ad's by over 50%.

Why? Simple. If the potential customer is searching for "ROI Tracking" and the title of a PCP ad begins with
"ROI Tracking", then their attention will be grabbed instantly. He or she doesn't need to know much else, other
than that the PPC ad is catered specifically for him or her.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can sometimes create a more relevant title by combining your different
keywords into one PPC ad. For example, I could have easily used something like "ROI Tracking PHP Script"
as the title of my ad, which effectively would have decreased my click-thru rate, but definitely caters my ad
more to a specific audience. Once again, this comes down to analysis and adjustment.

Another important technique to attract attention to your ad is to differentiate yourself from your competitors. In
our particular case, the majority of our competition offer hosted solutions, whereby they manage the software
on their servers in return for monthly or per traffic fees.

Our product caters to a different audience, those that want more control over their software, as well as those
not wanting to pay monthly fees. So, in this example, I would make the title of my ad "Pay no monthly or per
traffic fees".

Next -- and this is where experimentation is extremely important -- we need to create a description for our PPCad that will attract the potential customer and let them know that our product is exactly what they are searching
for. To do this, I start my ad's description with "Track PPC, campaigns & search".

Finally, it's good practice to add a "Call to action" at the bottom of your ad. If you're not familiar with this
term, its usually an instruction to tell the person to do something, such as "Click here to view a demo",
"Download Now", etc.

Marketing experts seem to agree that the average human needs to be prompted to click on an ad or take action,
so we'll add this line to the end of our PPC ad's description:

"Track PPC, campaigns & search. Try demo!"

Reducing Click-Thru's

Sometimes it's important to reduce the number of clicks your PPC ad is receiving. This could be because you
are attracting people who are only after free products/services, or even the wrong target market.

The two quickest ways to reduce click-thru's are to make the description of your ad more targeted and to add
the price of the product to the ad.

Making the description more targeted (as I've discussed above) can reduce your overall click-thru rate, but
potentially increase the likelihood of a click resulting in a purchase.

In my earlier example, by adding the words "PHP script" to the description, we are effectively filtering out
those looking for a hosted solution, downloadable software or even those with a server that isn't capable of
running PHP scripts.

We also increase the targeting of our ad because we now know that the majority of those clicking on the ad are
looking for a PHP script, which is exactly what our product is.

Secondly, by adding the price of the product you are selling to the end of the ad, you instantly eliminate those
looking for free products, and target those willing to purchase your product or service.

Tracking Your Clicks and Conversions

The fundamental core of a successful advertising campaign -- whether it be a PPC ad, banner ad or even
newspaper ad -- is knowing whether or not your ad's are actually converting into sales or not.

If your ads aren't making you money then you're more that likely better off saving your advertising dollars and
adjusting your ad's or using your marketing budget elsewhere in your company.

Both Google and Overture have built in tracking and conversion tools that you can use to get a holistic view of
your current PPC ad campaigns. You can even use external tools which let you add conversion code to your
website to tell you exactly which of your ad's are converting into sales and which aren't. This is often referred
to as knowing your ROI or Return on Investment.

We need to know exactly how much money we are making per dollar spent on every PPC ad. If the ROI is
positive and we are making more money than we are spending, then the ad is working and we can use this
knowledge to further improve our other ad's or increase ad spending for that particular ad/set of keywords.
If, however, our ad's are costing us more than they are returning, then we can reduce our spend, change our
approach, or remove these ad's altogether. It's a rather simple formula, but frustratingly ignored by many
advertisers.

You must track your ads if you want to succeed with any form of Internet advertising. You should also
constantly monitor and adjust your ads according to how they are performing, your return on investment, etc.

Conclusion

Hopefully I've provided you with a clear insight into PPC advertising and techniques that you can use to
improve your advertising campaigns. It pays -- pun intended -- to do your research and understand your target
market, because the rewards can sometimes be much more than you expected.

About the author:

Eddie Machaalani is the Interspire marketing and project manager. He's most recently been kept busy helping
out with the interface design for Interspire's ROI and Conversion Tracking Application, TrackPoint. To see
how TrackPoint can help boost your revenue, go here: http://www.interspire.com/trackpoint

Pay Per Click Search Engines

2008-08-10T02:32:00.000-07:00

Pay per click search engines can give you instant traffic and allow you to test

new business models in real time. The pay per click market is competitive

though. It is worth spending an extensive period of time learning how to

write and target ads, tracking your competitors, and doing deep keyword

research before jumping in.

Before You Start

Metrics Based Marketing:

PPC search engines provide a highly trackable marketing medium. Frequently

people begin marketing without any idea as to the approximate value of a click. If

you do not set up a value range and track the results you have no way to distinguish

good marketing from bad marketing.

To know the value of a click, you need to decide what the goal of your marketing is.

If you are just branding, then you should expect to lose money to gain mindshare

or reinforce your brand, and tracking may not be that important. If you are using

pay-per-click search engines for direct product marketing, you need to know how

much each click is worth.

Typical Conversion Rates:

Lead generation sites typically have a conversion rate around 10 to 12%, but can go

as high as 30% + if they are properly targeted and exceptionally appealing to

visitors.

Since little investment is needed to arrive at your website and many other sites are

just a click away, selling stuff on the web has a conversion rate similar to direct mail

advertising. High ticket items have a lower conversion rate and unique cheap items

tend to have higher conversion rates. Many stores find typical conversion rates

might be anywhere from .3 to 5%.

Doing the Math:

There are a ton of factors that go into click price. It is somewhat hard to measure

branding, but ad distribution can help with that. Most other things are tangible.

If you know your average order size, profit per order, and estimated conversion rate

you can get a good idea what clicks are worth. Some people also factor in lifetime

Pvalue of a customer, but it is harder to measure and there is still enough opportunity

in many markets to do your math primarily based on direct return.

Before You Start:

It is a good idea to look at the various ads which are displayed in which order over

time. The top guy might be an idiot losing tons of money or a person who is paying

an extreme premium for branding.

If ads from affiliate marketers or smaller sites are ranking around the same ad

position over the course of a few weeks to a month then they are probably doing

something right (generating profits). It is worth it to take a couple weeks to do deep

keyword research and market analysis before jumping into pay per click search

engine marketing.

You Will Lose Money:

Most clicks end up being failures. Even if you have a 30% conversion rate that

means that 7 out of 10 clicks did nothing for you. When you dip your toes into the

pay per click market there stands a good chance you will lose money before you

start making money. The main reasons are:

• You need to learn how the systems work, learning:

o what terms are important and what ones are not.

o how to target the ads

o how to write the ad copy

o how to bid

o where to rank

o what terms are overpriced

• You are competing against the best accounts.

o Some competing advertisers may have other intangible assets

which give them an unfair advantage.

o If you are brand new your competitors have more experience than

you do.

o Some ad campaigns have been fine tuned for months or years.

o Search engines are building trust factors into ad accounts. Some

advertisers may get quality boosts and cheaper ads just for being

long-term advertisers.

Search engines try to sell the concept of pay per click marketing saying that it is so

targeted that everyone makes money, but in the real world that is not how thingswork. Some markets are competitive and will require learning, sound strategy, and

tracking to generate profits.

CLICK FRAUD

2008-08-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

Click fraud has recently emerged as a topic of discussion and debate
regarding the potential of undermining the pay-per-click revenue
model that has made Google and Yahoo the financial success that they
are today.
At its essence, click fraud is the willful act of clicking on a search
engine sponsored listing or banner ad with the intention of falsely
increasing clicks while consuming the advertiser’s pay-per-click
budgets.
While there is little consensus that click fraud will undermine the payper-
click market, most search engine marketers agree that click fraud
does occur and diminishes the success rate of many online marketing
programs. Below are the results of a recent survey conducted by the
Search Engine Marketers Professional Organization (SEMPO).*

Click Fraud - Why People Do It?

There are numerous reasons why someone will intentionally commit
click fraud. In some cases, click fraud may be an isolated occurrence.
In other cases, click fraud may be a malicious and well thought out
systematic method of generating excessive and erroneous click
activity.
The Covert Competitor
In some cases it may be a rival competitor who jealously has clicked on
a top sponsored ad to visit your web site. In this case the click fraud
may easily go undetected if the number of clicks is not exceedingly
high. Even if identified, the time involved for seeking
remuneration from the pay-per-click network may not justify the time
involved in the research and pursuit of the credit.
However, some more sophisticated unethical marketers have
developed a variety of programs and techniques in an attempt to out
wit other advertisers by depleting their budgets, daily allocations or
reducing return on investment in an attempt to take top position for
sponsored links. In some cases, these marketers utilize cloaking
technologies to generate clicks while going undetected. In addition
they may develop “spider” technologies that automatically and
systematically click on sponsored links.
In the cloaking example, a click fraud perpetrator may be accessing the
Internet using a single IP address or block of IP addresses, while
fraudulently clicking on your ads. They may cloak or disguise their IP
address (similar in manner to a spammer using an erroneous reply to
an address) so they appear to be accessing your pay-per-click ads from
a variety of IP addresses in an attempt to avoid detection
Alternatively, the click fraud perpetrator may develop a computer
program that automatically “crawls” a search engine or their affiliates
in a spider like fashion looking for competitor pay-per-click ads and
generating erroneous clicks on sponsored links.
The Advertising Affiliate
Some search engines with pay-per-click / sponsored listings have
developed a network of affiliate sites that distribute listings based on
search term results in what is known as contextual advertising. The
ads or sponsored links are served up in the context of related Web site
copy. For example, a search request for news on the Apple iPod™
may direct the user to a news Web site that displays a sponsored link
along with an article about the new iPod Shuffle.
The advertising affiliate is compensated with a percentage of the
revenue associated with “click” resulting from the display of the
sponsored link. Some affiliates have actually generated erroneous
clicks in an attempt to boost their own revenue. In addition to using
spider technologies that generate click fraud, some of these affiliates
have resorted to a form of “outsourced” click fraud. In this case, they
enlist the help of foreign labor who click on advertiser listings with no
intention of looking at your site. These clicks increase the amount the
advertising affiliate gets from the pay-per-click network.
Recently, Wired News** reported that Auction Experts International, a
Google AdSense partner located in Houston, allegedly reaped $50,000
in commissions by hammering away on ad links until Google sued in
November 2004. Its principals never showed up in court, and Google
won by default.
In summary, there are a variety of factors that induce click fraud.
Some of these perpetrators have developed sophisticated technologies
and business processes in order to fraudulently generate clicks without
getting detected. Others are less sophisticated, but still poise a threat
and burden for accurately measuring a campaigner’s online success.