Of all the names given to all the processes and all the businesses, that don't seem to make much sense, pay-per-click advertising seems to make the least senseat least to the uninitiated. If you happen to be one of the people who are familiar with internet marketing and the 'world wide web' then you know that pay-per-click makes perfect sense.
Consider this. Operating a webpage on the internet costs money, particularly if you happen to be a big, powerful search engine. You are going to have to pay the fees to hold on to your domain and pay for the staff to keep it up and running (after all, you are a big, powerful search engine, not some small soap opera review; your people are going to need to be on hand night and day and give you their undivided attention in order to assure that you are ahead of the game and operating as you should be).
This is not free, yet no one offers to send you money just for being the greatest search engine ever (ungrateful peons).
The question is, how are you going to get the money for operating expenses? Being a search engine you are occupied round the clock delivering searcher to their desired destinations. What's a search engine to do?
Then it occurs to you. Every day hundreds upon thousands of people come to see you. They see everything that is printed upon your pages. What if you offered to let advertisers take advantage of that fact and use you to advertise their products? They gain much needed exposure and you can charge them as much as you like for the service because they are not going to get this opportunity anyplace else.
One problem stands in your way. There are way more people searching on the internet than there are reading newsprint ads and seeing television ads.
Doesn't seem right if you charge them the same way as tv and newspaper's do. That is how you come to dream up pay-per-click as your answer.
Here is a thought. The more visitors to his web site the greater the advertisers bottom line will end up being.
This is a great opportunity for you. If you charge the advertiser a small fee, maybe $0.05 or $0.10 each time a surfer comes through on the web and chooses their advertisement and clicks on it, even if the surfer doesn't buy anything, your advertiser is not going to complain.
Because they can gain back the fees you charge with the growth they have, there isn't a problem, but you realize that web surfers are often fickle and they sometimes click on the ads for no real reason.
You then come up with a way to help the advertisers by letting them choose a budgetary limit for the service you offer. They can set a limit of how many 'hits' they can get before they have their advertisement not be shown anymore to limit the expenses they may have. In this manner a surfer who wants to click on your ad many times will not be allowed to drain your advertising coffers dry.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pay per click advertising.
About the Author:
Need to optimize or "fix" your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When it comes to professional ppc management, he's the man!
