Lesson #34 Pay Per Click: Options & Advantages
Written By Cyndalie

Webmasters have a tendency to think that all advertising is expensive. Search engine marketing experts charge anywhere from $500 to $20,000 and up for optimization campaigns, print ads are very expensive and difficult to track a return on investment, banner ads are becoming less effective as time goes on, and often when you buy traffic in bulk it is either not targeted or “recycled” traffic that you never know where it is coming from.

One of the best options for low, controlled marketing budgets is pay per click search engine marketing. Search engine traffic is still one of the highest converting forms of advertising on the Internet. Since you can see where your clicks are coming from and maintain daily spending allowances, tracking your return on investment is easy and there are lots of advantages that will be covered in this article.

First let's start with a run down of the 2 top PPC options that are available to adult webmasters who want to explore some pay per click marketing options from the more mainstream sources.

Google AdWords

The first advantage of opening up a Google Adwords campaign is if you are having trouble getting into Google, your site is more likely to get indexed and included if you are an Adwords customer! Found only through experimentation, it can speed up your inclusion into Google by a few weeks, regardless of how large or small the campaign you create is.

Google Adwords features very advanced controls for your “sponsored ads” which appear to the right of the search results. Adwords that appear at the top, before the search results, are campaigns which spend $5,000 a month or more. Placement is determined by your daily or monthly spending averages, your click thru rate, and the number of bids for that keyword. Cost per click starts at .05 cents (US) and ranges up to $50 per click. Daily spending budgets start from .05 cents as well. Realize that the more effective your Adwords Ad is, your click through rate will increase and you will notice a drop in cost per click. Once your daily spending allowance is used up, your ad will disappear until the next day.

Google now has a Keyword Suggestion Tool which is also a great resource when generating targeted keyword lists. Ad Geotargeting is also included to limit your demographics to only countries you can do business with or accept payment from. Adwords appears at AOL, AskJeeves, Earthlink, and of course, Google.

Keep in mind that the more targeted the keywords you select, and relevant to your site, the more sales you can generate without blowing your entire cash flow on “the most popular” keyword phrase. If your goal is to make more SALES than don't focus on traffic, focus on keywords that will drive you sales and identify them. If you have an affiliate system (often included with your billing solution) provide yourself links to track the success of different Adwords and PPC campaigns. Once you have identified keywords that drive you sales, note them and optimize your site for them in the main engines where you can get more of this traffic for free.

Note that Google does not allow Ads that send traffic to an affiliate link code string. Send the traffic directly to your site and promote your sponsors there, or setup an invisible frame set with your affiliate code as the main frame, so that it appears from a page on your domain.

Kanoodle

Kanoodle is similar to Overture as it is an ad serving search engine that features PPC bid rankings. This means that whoever pays the most money per click per keyword appears at the top of the rankings. PPC in this way helps to level the playing field allowing for everyone to have a chance at the top. Keyword bidding campaigns can take a significant amount of time to create and maintain, however with the same ideas in mind as suggested with Google Adwords, finding the happy medium between keywords that drive you both sales and traffic and how much you pay per sale, can be achieved using an engine like Kanoodle.

Kanoodle powers DogPile, Search.com, WebCrawler, MetaCrawler, and Galaxy which push over 1 billion searches per month. Kanoodle's adult content filter is not automatically turned on so adult traffic is not filtered out by default. Minimum account deposit is $50.00 and Kanoodle raised their minimum bid per keyword from .01 cent to .05 cents in July. Many marketers find it advantageous to include the price of the pay site subscription, if that is what is being promoted, in the title or description of their listing so customers are aware that it is not free. Why waste money in clicks where consumers are not looking to purchase anything?

An advantage to advertising at Kanoodle is their staff interaction and willingness to work openly with the adult Industry. Deals can be negotiated and their multiple types of programs offer webmasters an opportunity to work with Kanoodle as a sales or traffic affiliate in exchange for bidding credits. Contact Chris O, the director of adult marketing for assistance; chriso @ corp.kanoodle.com

PPC Resources

The site Go Toast, which provides PPC management software that is helpful if you run multiple campaigns with multiple engines, also provides a nice summary on a number of PPC engines that are available. I did notice that some of the information is outdated; however on the whole the information is fairly beneficial. Be sure to check all the terms and conditions of each engine before you setup an account.

The PPC Directory is an excellent resource for all types of PPC engines and tools for managing campaigns. With links to forums and articles for optimizing your campaign this site should be a definite stop before opening your PPC campaign. Check out the multiple language keyword tools!

Pay per click engines offer a large variety of new traffic sources for adult site webmasters without breaking the bank. Although they take a little time to tweak out and get to familiar with, there's nothing better than seeing instant results in the search engines while you wait for the major engines to index your site, as well as to test out new target keywords. Why spend hours optimizing for keywords that do not drive your site or your sponsor's sales? PPC engines can show you and allow you to experiment to find what works for your site.

There are a number of PPC engines that are also viable and should be explored, especially if you find success with PPC marketing which we will cover in a future lesson of Traffic Lounge. For now, take advantage of every opportunity to spread out the types of marketing campaigns you can utilize and make them work for you!