PPC or Pay-Per-Click actually refers to getting paid for clicks. This advertising model is quite widespread in the Internet. The main idea of PPC is that the payment is only made for user click-throughs to the advertiser’s website i.e. the advertiser is only paying to the owner of advertising platform for the actual clicks on his adds (usually graphical or text banner). This way, the advertiser is only paying for the actual customers coming to their website instead of just paying for advertising space.

Pay-Per-Click model is one of the most profitable Internet businesses, as the actual cost of a click could be up to several dollars, meaning that substantial income could be achieved by facilitating a dozen clicks per day. The major requirement for a person willing to engage in PPC advertising is Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) knowledge, which is rarely possessed by broad audience. Success of PPC is highly dependent on search engines, hence it is the duty of each successful webmaster to track changes of search algorithms and other search-related updates.

Let’s figure out what PPC business is about.

For instance, let’s assume that an Internet drugstore, which specializes in popular pharmacy, wants to sell Viagra. Where should it be looking for clients?

Major Internet traffic sources are large search engines like Google and Yahoo! But in order to get some traffic from a search engine, it is necessary for your website to appear in the initial list of ten search results, because users rarely reach further search output pages when looking for something online.  That is why there is fierce competition to get into Top-10 of search results for the most popular search keywords. This is quite expensive to achieve, and even after reaching Top-10, even further investment is required to retain the position there, that is why projects with inferior budgets very rarely reach the top of search returns list.

The above is the reason why many website owners are using PPC services to attract more customers; with PPC acting as middlemen between advertisers and webmasters, who are actually responsible for providing traffic for advertisers by redirecting their visitors via advertiser links. So what is the outcome of such cooperation? Advertisers get potential clients for their websites whilst webmasters make money for helping them. As per PPC model, only actual click-through’s to advertiser’s site are paid for (being clicks on advertiser’s banners on the webmaster’s resource), which is quite convenient for advertisers.

Hence advertisers who need more customers for their websites refer to PPC and order the required visitor quantity (traffic volume) based on key words and phrases, which are created specifically for the resource to be promoted; also setting the reward they are willing to pay for each customer. PPC service in fact acts as a search engine, but unlike public search engines like Rambler for instance, there are no random sites here, only their customer websites being returned. The output position of each website depends on its overall campaign budget. Webmasters task is then to attract as much traffic as possible, so as to get the most profile, this is pay-per-click, remember?

PPC strategy is widely used by online shops, along with other websites offering paid online services: Forex dealers, design studios, real estate sites, etc. The cost of a click (click-through), which is also called ‘bid’ – is a parameter depending on many factors, for instance the kind of service/product being offered, target audience geography, etc. We can say for certain that bid cost for Russian-speaking market is significantly lower than that for English-speaking Internet, mostly aimed at US customers.

Good luck with your business