-by Sid Hale

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is not new, and there are a number of models, but I've been really conservative (cheap) and hadn't tried them until about a month ago.

You probably have at least a rudimentary grasp of PPC advertising offered on the search engines, but for what it's worth, I prefer Google's format.  

Google's AdWords are displayed vertically to the right of the search page, rather than pre-empting the legitimate search results by pushing themselves in at the top of the page to imitate normal listings.  

My gut says that the consumer probably prefers this format, too.  And maybe that's one small reason for their increasing popularity in the marketplace.

So why now, after all these months, have I decided to look into PPC ads?  

A couple of things happened lately, that caused me to look at Google AdWords, and I thought I would share my actual results with you. 

First, Ken McArthur and I were getting ready to launch jvAlert.  It's really the most exciting product I've worked with on the web, and I wanted to contribute as much as possible to the early success of the site.  I needed to extend my marketing reach beyond my own mailing lists.  Besides, jvAlert has been so well accepted that someone is going to get those signups - it might as well be me!

As luck would have it, I came across an ad for an ebook called Google Cash, by Chris Carpenter.  The sales page convinced me that it was just what the doctor ordered in my situation, so I bought it and read it in one sitting.    

Chris advocates using Google AdWords for promoting all sorts of affiliate programs by paying very small sums for very targeted ads, and sending them straight to the merchant's sales page.

"Very targeted" is the next best thing to opt-in, and it is also key to keeping your costs down with PPC ads, so this fit my "conservative" nature to a tee.  Due to the exclusive nature of jvAlert, the last thing you want to do is offer the standard "hyped-up" sales page to get a lot of inexperienced marketers to sign up.  So Chris' Google Cash strategy was looking more and more like the perfect fit for someone with a "not so big" list.

Since jvAlert is "By Invitation Only", you really want to pre-qualify anyone you send an invitation.  Besides, I've always been much more comfortable with  "recommending", rather than "advertising".

There was my big sticking point.  I've come to know many of my readers and customers through support emails, forums, etc.  But you have no idea who is going to run across your ad on a search engine.  Or do you?

After all, if you select the right key words - your ad should only be seen by fairly well targeted searchers.  Then because you have control over the wording of your ad, you can use it to further qualify anyone contemplating a click on your link.  But would I feel comfortable going directly from a short 2-line ad to an invitation to join jvAlert?  If jvAlert hadn't been designed to be so exclusive, maybe.  But...

you pay for each click with PPC ads, so the last thing I wanted was to attract curiosity seekers who might read half-way through the sales letter and bail out.

Are you beginning to understand how I wrestled with myself over this?

I wanted to perform well for my partner, certainly for myself, and also for the other members.  Because every new, quality member just adds to the value of jvAlert, I wanted to do as well by the other members as possible, too.  I didn't want to extend invitations to someone who might ultimately be disappointed and feel cheated.  At a minimum, I wanted to attract members who already understand that their success or failure is ultimately their responsibility.

At this point, I was just about to write off the whole idea as being ill-conceived.  Then I had a revelation!  

Why not let my prospects qualify themselves?  

It happens that we had created a 5-day Introduction to Joint Venture Marketing that was designed to spark the imagination of the "fence-sitters" - those with interest, but maybe a lack of confidence.  Besides being a good solid course, it promotes our jvAlert service.  I decided that by offering the course from my Google AdWords ad, I could get much more mileage out of the course than by simply sending the visitor to the sales letter, and the visitors could then qualify themselves.  

Ultimately, the visitor gets to decide if they are a "qualified" prospect, and I get 5 daily opportunities to help them with that decision.

Yes, I'm paying people to take my free course.  But only targeted visitors.  The strategy is working great!   My keywords are targeted well enough that my ad is consistently showing as the top ad when you search for my chosen keywords.  

Google uses a proprietary algorithm to determine the position of your ad, but Google Cash explains that this is a function of your bid as well as your click-thru rate.  Of those that click-thru (and I have to pay for), about 25% follow through by signing up for the course. :^)

Chris suggests that initially you might want to set your bid low, so that you don't break the bank before you know it.  But I was targeting search terms that already had 8 sponsored links down the right hand side of the search results page.  Some of them appeared "below the fold", so you would have to scroll down to see them.  I was sure that the word "free" in my headline would help, but not if my ad was buried somewhere below about the 3rd ad on the page.

They can't click it if they don't see it!

I decided to set my per click bid rather high, and limit my expenditure by setting a low per day maximum.  That served to position my ad high (in fact no lower than 2nd from the very outset), and AdWords spread my ads over the entire day based on my maximum daily budget.  

As it turns out, I never reached my daily budget, because Google provides another safeguard for your funds.  They have an automatic feature that they call AdWords Discounter.  You don't have to tick an option or anything.  It just happens.

With AdWords Discounter, they use their algorithm to rank the ads, and then calculate your price for a click at one cent above the price for the next lower ad.  This means that if there are 5 sponsored links shown on a page, the bid price for the lowest ranking ad is used to determine the base price for the page, and there is only a 5 cent spread between the cost per click on that ad and the ad at the top.  Likewise, if there were 7 ads on the page, the spread would only be 7 cents.  This resulted in my costs usually being less than half my bid cost, and only rarely did I pay more than half what I had bid for a single click.

Late Breaking Development

This came as quite a surprise.  I was already writing this article late last week, and during a break I did a Google search on one of my keyword phrases.  My ad wasn't in the list of sponsored links down the right hand side.  It was sitting ABOVE the search results on the page!  

A little research revealed that Google also has something they call Premium Sponsorship Ads.  Now, I didn't dig too deep into this (I told you right up front I'm cheap), but I did find that if your click thru rate (CTR) is high enough, Google may opt to "promote" your AdWords ad to the spot normally reserved for a Premium Sponsorship Ad.  Boy was I excited!!

Whoops! 

All of a sudden, my CTR was down about 25%.  What most would consider to be the best ad spot on the page, appeared to be having an adverse effect on my ad.  I didn't know what to do.  I hadn't asked for this "promotion" - it was automatic!  I couldn't find any way to "demote" my ad back to where it had been pulling so well.

Well, it was just a stab in the dark, but the only control I seemed to have was to adjust either my daily budget, or my maximum bid.  Since Google uses both the CTR and the maximum bid to determine ranking of the AdWords, I reasoned that my only recourse was to reduce my maximum bid.  

I cut my maximum bid by 20%, and within 24 hours my ad had moved back down to the top listing in the AdWords ads.  Only time will tell for sure if this brings my CTR back up, but whatever happens I will learn from it and become that much more proficient at Google AdWords campaigns.