Pay-Per-Click programs for online sellers

[mandy]

3 part article:

PPC advertising has a number of advantages:

    * It's very quick. You can start getting results from the search engines in a day or two (in theory, a few hours, but in most cases it takes a little longer to get everything sorted out).
    * It's reliable. Using PPC to get traffic to your site is very reliable. You can generate a lot of traffic, and always appear for appropriate searches in the major search engines . . . if you're willing to pay enough.
    * It's easy to measure. You can see just how much traffic you're getting, and even figure out how much of the traffic turns into business ...

full article: http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m07/abu0171/s03

Understanding Conversion Ratio, Click Value, and ROI
There's one huge disadvantage to PPC ads, though . . . they cost money. Sometimes a lot of money. Often, in fact, so much money that you will lose money if you buy PPC ads! In order to use PPC, you really must understand Conversion Ratio, Breakeven Click Value, and Return on Investment (ROI):

    * Conversion Ratio The proportion of visitors to your site who buy from you. This is the foundation of any click-value or ROI calculation.
    * Breakeven Click Value The "breakeven" value of a click is the maximum sum you can pay for a click and not lose money. Of course, you want to pay as little as possible, but there's a point at which a click doesn't make you money and doesn't lose you money. If you go over the price, however, you start losing.
    * Return on Investment The amount of money you make after investing in advertising, typically expressed in terms of the sum returned for every dollar invested. If you pay $1,000 for ads, and make a profit of $10,000, your ROI is $10 per $1 invested.
...

full article: http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m07/abu0171/s04

[mandy]

Part 3 of the Auctionbytes article on Google AdWords and other pay per click programs:

Doing a Keyword Analysis
If keywords are important, how do you know which keywords to use?

  1. Guess.
  2. Take your guesses and run them through a keyword-analysis tool.

Do not stop at Step 1! If you guess, you'll guess wrong!

TIP: Wordtracker is almost certainly the best keyword-analysis tool around (http://www.Wordtracker.com). It's the system used by most search-engine professionals because you can do more with it, more quickly. We don't have room to describe this tool, but it's worth spending a few hours and doing a really good analysis with this tool.

full article: http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m08/abu0172/s04

Not mentioned in the article is my favorite tool, the TulipDomains Keyword Suggestion tool