What is Pay Per Click Advertising?

Pay per click advertising (PPC) is a widely used form of paying for advertisements on the Internet. This method of charging advertisers for clicked links is usually credited to Bill Gross, who founded Idealab and Goto.com. The idea of pay per click advertising was first introduced in 1998

The basic premise of PPC advertising is that people who purchase links on search engines or on sites that employ search engine ads, like blogs, only pay for their ads when a customer clicks on the advertisement link. Fees vary considerably. Search engine terms or keywords that are used frequently cost much more on a per click basis than do ones that are searched infrequently.

Many people may be familiar with pay per click advertising as offered by search engines like Google. Most other search engines have some form of this marketing strategy for commercial clients. Many search websites have two separate ways in which your ads can be featured. In sponsored match pay per click advertising, ads show up on search engine pages. When people search for a term, if your ad is related, it may pop up, often to the side of search engine results.

The other form of pay per click advertising is called content match. When people create private content driven websites, they can choose to participate in programs that allow ads to run on their pages. They usually are reimbursed on a pay per click basis too, though they only make a percentage of the total the advertiser pays. Search engines look for ads that will match content on private sites, so that people interested in the content would also be the most likely customers for any ads shown.

A few companies offer variations on the pay per click advertising format. For instance a private website can set up links to things like Amazon books or products. If someone clicks on these links and actually purchases the book or product advertised, the website owner may receive a percentage of the sale. This is called pay per action. Google briefly tried a pay per action model in the late 2000s but abandoned the program in 2008.

If you’re interested in pay per click advertising for your website you’ll find varied programs on most major search engines. It’s important to note that your site may not be among the first sites shown when a person uses a search engine to look for something. Many search engines rank pages and will still choose what they consider the best pages in their sponsored results. Though pay per click advertising may not cost you anything if no one is clicking on your ad, it also doesn’t bring you business if no one visits your site. (www.wisegeek.com)

What is Affiliate Marketing?

What is Affiliate Marketing?

It seems that more readers are asking this question than I previously thought.

In a recent poll here on ProBlogger I asked readers whether they’d done any affiliate marketing on their blogs. The results revealed that:

• 29% of readers regularly do it
• 24% occasionally do it
• 27% have never done affiliate marketing on their blogs
• 6% used to do it but don’t any more
• 14% don’t know what affiliate marketing is

There’s some interesting results there but it was the last category (of bloggers not knowing what affiliate marketing is) that I wanted to write this post for with the hope of answering the question. It’s pretty basic and quite beginner focused but for the 14% of you who don’t know what affiliate marketing is - here’s a brief introduction.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Perhaps the simplest way to explain affiliate marketing is that it is a way of making money online whereby you as a publisher are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product, service or site.

There are a number of forms of these types of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher earning a commission when someone follows a link on your blog to another site where they then buy something.

Other variations on this are where you earn an amount for referring a visitor who takes some kind of action - for example when they sign up for something and give an email address, where they complete a survey, where they leave a name and address etc.

Commissions are often a percentage of a sale but can also be a fixed amount per conversion.

Conversions are generally tracked when the publisher (you) uses a link with a code only being used by you embedded into it that enables the advertiser to track where conversions come from (usually by cookies). Other times an advertiser might give a publisher a ‘coupon code’ for their readers to use that helps to track conversions.

For example: when I recently released my 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook I also give people an opportunity to promote the workbook with an affiliate program whereby they could earn a 40% commission for each sale. When you sign up to become an affiliate you are given a special code unique to you that enables you to promote the workbook and make $7.98 per sale. The top affiliates earned over $2000 in the first few weeks after launch through these commissions.

• Advertisers often prefer affiliate marketing as a way to promote their products because they know they’ll only need to pay for the advertising when there’s a conversion. I knew when I started this affiliate program that while I’d earn less for each sale that having a network of affiliates promoting it would almost certainly increase overall sales levels.
• Publishers often prefer affiliate marketing because if they find a product that is relevant to their niche that earnings can go well in excess of any cost per click or cost per impression advertising campaign.

Why Affiliate Marketing Can Work Well on Blogs

Affiliate marketing isn’t the only way to make money from blogs and it won’t suit every blog/blogger (more on this below) but there are a few reasons why it can be profitable in our medium. Perhaps the biggest of these reasons is that affiliate marketing seems to work best when there’s a relationship with trust between the publisher and their readership.

I’ve found that as this trust deepens that readers are more likely to follow the recommendations that a blogger makes.

Of course this can also be a negative with affiliate marketing - promote the wrong product and trust can be broken (more on this below).

Affiliate Marketing - Easy Money?

While affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative it is important to know that affiliate marketing is not easy money. Most people who try it make very little as it relies upon numerous factors including:

• traffic (high traffic helps a lot)
• finding relevant products
• finding quality products
• building trust with your readers
• having a readership who is in a ‘buying mood’
• you being able to write good sales copy (and more)

There’s also some risk associated with affiliate marketing in that if you push too hard or promote products of a low quality you can actually burn readers and hurt your reputation and brand.

It’s also worth noting that affiliate marketing doesn’t work on all blogs. Some blogs are on topics where it is hard to find products to promote - other blogs attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and for other blogs it just doesn’t fit with the blogger’s style or approach. (www.problogger.com)

What is a Blog?

So what is a Blog anyway? I am asked every week via emails, conversation and Instant Messaging chats to define: ‘what is a blog’. If you’re reading this you may well be asking the same question. There are a number of ways I could answer this question ranging from the broad to the highly technical.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic - there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies - blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

Blogs usually have a few features that are useful to know about if you want to get the most out of them as a reader. Lets examine a couple briefly.

Archives - You might look at the front page of a blog and think that there is not much to them. A few recent entries, some links to other sites and not much else. However its worth knowing that there is a lot more going on under the surface that might initially meet the eye. For example in addition to the main page of this blog - at the time of writing this post there are over 520 other pages or posts below the surface that I’ve written over the past few months.

When I write a post like this one it goes to the top of the front page. As it gets older and as I add more current posts it begins its journey down the page until it disappears from it. This is not the end of its life however, because it goes into the ‘Archives’ of my blog. It sounds like a dusty dark place but its really just like a filing cabinet that is easily accessible in a couple of ways. You can read my ‘archives’ simply by looking on the ’sidebar’ (over on the left of this blog) at the ‘archives’ or ‘categories’ section. There you will see links to all my old posts which you can access either by category. You’ll see a category for ‘Advertising’ - click that link and you’ll see all my old posts on the topic of Advertising with the most recent at the top and the oldest at the bottom.

Comments - Not all blogs use comments - but most do. This blog is not a monologue but a conversation. You can give me feedback on almost everything I write simply by clicking the ‘comments’ link at the bottom of each one of my posts. This will take you to a little form where you leave your name, email and a link to your own blog if you have one as well as your feedback, comment, critique, question, essay on why you love my blog, promise of money…. etc). Try it now. Scroll to the bottom of this page, click ‘comments’ and fill in the blanks with a little introduction to yourself.

A great way to learn about blogs is to read a few. Leave some comments, ask questions and bookmark your favourites. An even better way to learn about blogs is to start your own. Ok - you might be laughing at me now - you think you are not web savy enough to have your own site? You wouldn’t know where to start? You don’t know how?

My Secret

Let me share a secret with you - three years ago I knew nothing about blogs, I had never used the internet for anything more than email, surfing and chatting to friends and I could only barely do any of that! But one day I discovered a blog and after surfing from one to another (blogs tend to link up to other blogs a lot) for a few hours I was hooked and wanted to start my own. I found that there are free blog services that almost anyone could set up in a matter of minutes. Really it is that simple. Literally millions of people blog from around the world. Its not just something for young people, or geeks, or cool folk, or Westerners, or even for people with their own computers - instead its something virtually anyone with access to a computer and the internet once or twice a week can start up.

Are you still confused? Would you like more information? Below are a few helpful articles on the topic - there are many more on the web - just do a search on your favourite search engine. Otherwise shoot me an email using my ‘contact’ button with your question and I’ll do my best to get back to you. (www.problogger.net)

What is Internet Marketing?

Depending on whom you ask, the term Internet marketing can mean a variety of things. At one time, Internet marketing consisted mostly of having a website or placing banner ads on other websites. On the other end of the spectrum, there are loads of companies telling you that you can make a fortune overnight on the Internet and who try to sell you some form of "Internet marketing program".

Today, Internet marketing, or online marketing, is evolving into a broader mix of components a company can use as a means of increasing sales - even if your business is done completely online, partly online, or completely offline. The decision to use Internet marketing as part of a company's overall marketing strategy is strictly up to the company of course, but as a rule, Internet marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company's marketing mix. For some online businesses, it is the only form of marketing being practiced.

Internet Marketing Objectives

Essentially, Internet marketing is using the Internet to do one or more of the following:

• Communicate a company's message about itself, its products, or its services online.
• Conduct research as to the nature (demographics, preferences, and needs) of existing and potential customers.
• Sell goods, services, or advertising space over the Internet.

Internet Marketing Components

Components of Internet marketing (or online marketing) may include:

• Setting up a website , consisting of text, images and possibly audio and video elements used to convey the company's message online, to inform existing and potential customers of the features and benefits of the company's products and/or services. The website may or may not include the ability to capture leads from potential customers or directly sell a product or service online. Websites can be the Internet equivalents of offline brochures or mail order catalogs and they are a great way to establish your business identity.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is marketing a website online via search engines, either by improving the site's natural (organic) ranking through search engine optimization (SEO), buying pay-per-click (PPC) ads or purchasing pay-for-inclusion (PFI) listings in website directories, which are similar to offline yellow page listings.
• Email marketing, which is a method of distributing information about a product or service or for soliciting feedback from customers about a product or service through Email. Email addresses of customers and prospective customers may be collected or purchased. Various methods are used, such as the regular distribution of newsletters or mass mailing of offers related to the company's product or services. Email marketing is essentially the online equivalent of direct mail marketing.
• Banner advertising, which is the placement of ads on a website for a fee. The offline equivalent of this form of online marketing would be traditional ads in newspapers or magazines.
• Online press releases, which involve placing a newsworthy story about a company, its website, its people, and/or its products/services with on online wire service.
• Blog marketing, which is the act of posting comments, expressing opinions or making announcements in a discussion forum and can be accomplished either by hosting your own blog or by posting comments and/or URLs in other blogs related to your product or service online.
• Article marketing, which involves writing articles related to your business and having them published online on syndicated article sites. These articles then have a tendency to spread around the Internet since the article services permit re-publication provided that all of the links in the article are maintained. Article marketing can result in a traffic boost for your website, and the distribution of syndicated articles can promote your brand to a wide audience.

Internet Marketing and Home Business

Of all of the components of Internet marketing, prospective customers and clients expect a business to have a website. In fact, not having one could raise a red flag to a prospect. Online usage has become so pervasive today, many prospects might easily choose to do business with a company that they can get up-to-date information on 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Even a business that only has very local customers, such as a single location restaurant or shoe store can benefit from having a website and engaging in online marketing. And, those businesses whose customers are not restricted to a geographical area might have a difficult time finding an alternate method of attracting customers that offers the reasonably low expense and worldwide reach of a Web presence.

Because of the "virtual" nature of most home businesses, websites, if not an absolute necessity, can certainly provide benefits to a home business operator. Since most home-based businesses don't have a physical location, a website provides an inexpensive means for prospects to get to know what you do or what you sell and can even be a "storefront" for selling goods and services directly.

The Internet has greatly enabled home businesses to prosper because of the reasonably low cost to start and maintain a web presence. Therefore, Internet marketing should be part of your business plan and your marketing strategy. (www.about.com)