What Are Pay Per Clicks?

Pay-Per-Clicks are one of those things in life that don't require a lot of explaining. But somehow, every time I mentioned it in a consultation I would hear, "What's That?" And although I was always tempted to gasp, or laugh, I kept my mouth shut. But not this time. For all of you reading this thinking "What are Pay Per Clicks:" or any variation on the question I am going to let it out a little. Three, simple, one-syllable words, what is there not to understand? Now I realize that the question is probably based more on fear or disbelief than on a lack of understanding. But the concept really is as simple as the name implies, you pay for every click that comes to you.

Without fail the next line is a confident, "Oh no, not yet, I want to wait for a while before I start Pay Per Clicks. I want to find out what is going to be successful before I spend money on traffic, that might be wasted!" Now there is a legitimate misunderstanding that we can work with.

With Pay Per Clicks, There is no Such Thing as Wasted Traffic

With Pay Per Clicks there is never be a wasted visitor. Unfortunately, that does not mean that everyone will buy. It does mean that ever visitor to your site tells you something about your site. you can see which words people are clicking on more, even if all you do is set up a single campaign, with a few words in it.

But with the tools that are available you can see where people are coming from, what keywords they are using to find you, where people are clicking on your site, which pages on your site people are leaving from, which keywords are leading to conversions, and much, much more. Paid traffic is SO valuable because you can analyze EVERY piece of it. It seems like these things are all bonuses that you get free with the traffic that you are buying, but it should be the other way around. With Pay Per Clicks you are buying information about a your website, and you get traffic, and potential sales as a bonus.

After successfully setting up Pay Per Click campaigns, analytics, goals, and conversion tracking you will have enough information about your business to make decisions based on fact, rather than hypothesis, or hope. Pay per clicks tell you which keywords should be the focus of your link building, and on site optimization. Your pay per click campaigns will tell you gender, times of day, and regions that you should target your marketing toward. In short, your pay per click campaigns take full advantage of the power of Internet Marketing, and hopefully you will have a bonus of some sales, or contacts along the way.

The Other Way to Do it...

Now, Let's be honest. it is possible to learn all of this information without ever starting a Pay Per Click campaign. You can build a site, build links to it, optimize to the most popular keywords, set up an analytics campaign, and see what your traffic does that way. For MOST websites, this method yeilds a slow trickle of traffic within the first month, significant, usable traffic within 6 Months, and real, actionable data, within the first year. With Pay Per Clicks, you can have significant traffic this week, and solid actionable data by the end of the month. And after all, time is money.

Conversion: What you Want Your Traffic to Do BEFORE it Comes

This will be different for every website. You need to decide if you want people to fill out a contact for, buy a product, sign up for a newsletter, or simply click to another page. This is your Conversion. Then you can start sending traffic to your site. In my years teaching SEO and Internet Marketing I found that a good range to start with is 100 visitors per day. It gives you an easy percentage to start with. 3 conversions is a 3% conversion rate, and it won't cost outrageous amounts of money.

Once you have 100 visitors per day, you can begin to dial in your website. But that is for another post. First focus on getting your Pay Per Click campaign set up to send 100 visitors per day to your website.

Where to Start with Pay Per Clicks

So, if time is important to you, and you are building a website for something more than a hobby, then you need to start with your pay per clicks. In the next few days I will focus on setting up all of the basic tools so you can make the most of Pay Per Clicks, for tonight I am just going to give you a place to start.

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