Pay Per Clicks
         By Lisa S. Lawless, Ph.D., Holistic Wisdom C.E.O.

If you want to get traffic to your site quickly, then you should try pay-per click search engines. You should note that many pay-per-click search engines are out there and only a few offer protection to their clients. For example, let's say that you go to a no-name pay per click search engine, and you submit a key term... what is to stop someone from going to your listing and clicking on it many times drying up your funds? It happens. Especially your from your competition. Companies like Yahoo.com and the others listed below have special protective programs designed to keep that from happening. So, if you decide to do a pay-per click marketing campaign... remember to be careful whom you list yourself with. Here are the programs I recommend-

Google.com’s AdWords Program

Google.com is one of the largest and most popular engines on the Web today. Just thinking of the thousands of searches that are conducted on Google.com every day using keywords related to your site is enough to send you there in a hurry.

Google.com offers a new advertising service, AdWords, which allows you to purchase search terms. When a user enters these terms, your text ad, appears on the search results page. The price you pay for your AdWords is based on the position in which the results appear on the results page. And Google.com determines this position according to how many users click on those particular words over time.

The key is to buy highly targeted keywords, so that only those web surfers that are searching for specific information will be exposed to your ad. Having your ad shown only to those who are genuinely interested will increase your conversion ratios (traffic to sales).

Pay-Per-Click with Yahoo.com

Yahoo.com is a powerful pay-per-listing search engine. The key is to pay for a position within the top three. Depending on your product, how much gross profit you make, and what your conversion ratio is, you may be able to profit very well with the top spot. Why is the #1 position so important? Yahoo.com is actually a relatively small search engine compared to the others, but its power comes from search partners with which Yahoo.com is affiliated. Yahoo!’s top search results reach 75% of all Internet users, through their affiliate partner network, which includes Yahoo!, Microsoft Internet Explorer, EarthLink, Lycos, and AltaVista! But these partner sites only show Yahoo.com's top one to three results for any search - so bid for the top spot if you can afford it.

The good thing about Yahoo.com is that you only pay when someone clicks on your link. Top spots can cost you anywhere from 0.10 cents to over $4, depending on the keyword, and your listing appears in around 3 days. It’s more effective to buy about 20 highly targeted keywords, than it is to have just one very expensive but more general keyword. So, with pay-per-click engines like Yahoo!, it’s worth doing your homework and compiling a number of very specific and targeted keywords.

Pay-Per-Click with Miva.com

Miva.com is similar to Yahoo, but with less traffic. Still it is significant enough that they are worth submitting terms to. Due to the lower traffic, the cost of bids is lower. Like GoTo.com, the good thing about Miva.com is that you only pay when someone clicks on your link. Top spots can cost you anywhere from 0.05 cents to over $2, depending on the keyword, and your listing appears in around 3 days. It’s more effective to buy about 20 highly targeted keywords, than it is to have just one very expensive but more general keyword. So, with pay-per-click engines like Miva.com, it’s worth doing your homework and compiling a number of very specific and targeted keywords.

DirectHit/AskJeeves

DirectHit/AskJeeves offers a paid text ad system similar to Google.com's. Your linked ad appears alongside the search results for every search topic you sponsor on the AskJeeves site. Your ad also accompanies relevant search results on all Jeeves Text Sponsorship Network participating sites, including MSN, Searchalot, Bomis.com, SuperCyberSearch, and Direct Hit. Your ads appear within a few days, and a minimum deposit of just $35 will get you started.

*** This article was updated on April 2007. Prices may have changed since then,
     so check with the pay-per-click search engines for current fees.