Are you looking to start a new business, advance your business, sell a product or service online and you don’t know where to start? Or maybe what you have been doing isn’t working?

You are not alone. There are thousands of people every day faced with the same issue or issues. However, you can change your situation, if you are willing to take a moment to follow the number one principle to success and that is to invest in yourself by learning and applying the benefits from taking an online marketing course.

The Reason for an Online Marketing Course

There are at least 1 Billion people worldwide using the internet. All of these individuals are seeking information, products or services. Therefore, knowing who they are, what they want, the best way to provide it and letting them know you have it, is crucial for any business.

If you fail in understanding this, you are most likely to fail in your business. This is why you need to know the benefits to taking an online marketing course.

Nine Benefits to taking an Online Marketing Course

Number One, benefit to taking an online marketing course is realizing online marketing is the life blood of reaching internet users. Every business prospers or grows stagnant by knowing or not knowing this information.

Number two, benefit to taking an online marketing course is it brings clarity in where and how to start your online marketing campaign. There is no need to stay confused and frustrated.

Number three, benefit to taking an online marketing course is good information coupled with understanding saves money. Thousands of people have lost thousands of dollars because of not knowing what or how to apply principles.

Number four, benefit to taking an online marketing course is it covers every area of online marketing. Areas such as, Search Engines Optimization, Goggle Adwords, Blogging, Writing Articles, Classified Ads, Applying to Directories and much more.

Number Five, benefit to taking an online marketing course is it speeds up the learning curve that must be achieved. If you save time, you save money.

Number Six, benefit to taking an online marketing course is that strategies and technology is constantly changing and you need to know what they are and how to apply them.

Number Seven, benefit to taking an online marketing course is learning how to work smarter, not harder. There is no need to burn yourself out.

Number Eight, benefit to taking an online marketing course is learning how to evaluate your business progress and how to make the necessary changes, if needed.

As you can see there are numerous benefits to taking an online marketing course. One of the greatest things I did as an up and coming business professional was to take such a course. This course help me see the whole picture. I was absolutely lost at the beginning as to where to start and what to do.

You can enroll in such a short course with a free evaluation period as I did. I know and truly believe this is a necessity to prospering in business. The course in which I took can be seen by clicking on the the title on my blog page. My blog page will also give you more benefits to taking an online marketing course.

If you would like to read more benefits like those in this article, please click here on my blog page link http://onlinemarketingcourse.blogspot.com

Bobby Johnson is a up an coming online professional.

Author: Bobby D. Johnson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Can you believe that? In other words, he’s saying, I know the pay-per-click companies are stealing my money, but it’s okay, because I’ve considered that fact ahead of time.

Unfortunately, that mentality is pervasive among pay-per-click advertisers. No wonder the pay-per-click companies aren’t making stopping pay-per-click fraud a top priority. Who can blame them? If their advertisers don’t care, why should they? Heck, with all of the money the pay-per-click companies are making, it’s actually more cost effective to issue an occasional refund, than to develop technology to eliminate click fraud.

And if you read between the lines of the following statement, Google even admitted as much:

In a recent filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google acknowledged, “We are exposed to the risk of fraudulent clicks on our ads. We have regularly paid refunds related to fraudulent clicks and expect to do so in the future. If we are unable to stop this fraudulent activity, these refunds may increase. If we find new evidence of past fraudulent clicks, we may have to issue refunds retroactively of amounts previously paid to our Google Network members.”

That statement doesn’t exactly instill any confidence, now does it?

And if Overture is asked about click fraud, they’ll just issue their standard company line:

“Our Click Protection System is sophisticated software that evaluates each of our advertisers’ clicks. This software makes decisions as to the validity of any click. Our Click Protection System uses search and click data to make both rules-based inferences and pattern recognition-based inferences about which clicks are valid clicks. We have two patents pending related to this technology, so we cannot currently disclose too many details about the methods we use.”

Do you honestly think newspaper, magazine, radio or tv advertisers would just sit back and let those media get away with blatantly stealing their money? You know they wouldn’t.

Then why do pay-per-click advertisers allow it? I don’t know the exact answer to that question, but I have my theories: First of all, you’re talking about a whole different level of sophistication with pay-per-click advertisers, compared to media advertisers. Many pay-per-click advertisers don’t even know how to access or even analyze their log files, so they have no idea how much money is actually being stolen from them.

In addition, some pay-per-click advertisers are making more money than they’ve ever made before. And rather than upset the apple cart, they’d rather keep quiet and allow the vicious cycle of click fraud to continue, so that they can keep cashing those big checks.

I also suspect many advertisers are afraid that if they complain too loudly, they may be penalized in the search engines, in regard to their free listings.

If my theories are accurate, silence is one heck of a trade off, if you ask me. Why? Because according to a report on MediaPost, an online study done by Clicklab revealed that fraudulent clicks can account for more than 50 percent of your total clicks.

So, if the goal of pay-per-click search engines is to bring lucrative, targeted traffic to your web site, what are the pay-per-click search engines doing about the click fraud epidemic, to prevent abuse that needlessly drive up your costs and reduce your ROI?

Unfortunately, since so many pay-per-click advertisers are willing to play the role of “lambs going to slaughter,” the pay-per-click companies really don’t have to do anything.

In the meantime, your ROI is going to continue to plummet, and the pay-per-click companies are going to continue to milk those cash cows (AKA) pay-per-click advertisers, for all they’re worth!

About The Author

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net.

Visit his website at: http://www.lets-make-money.net

Author: Dean Phillips
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Is Pay Per Click Advertising a Valuable Tool?

From a personal point of view, the answer to that is a simple “yes”. Quite simply, I have used pay per click advertising since 2003, and have got some excellent results. Those results have been mixed, of course, with some very bad results too. But that’s advertising for you, online or offline. You try, you test, you monitor, you experiment, all the time aiming to get better and better results.

The basic advantage of pay per click is built into its name. Your ad will cost you nothing, except when somebody clicks on it to go to your website. Imagine being able to do that in the offline world: place an ad in a glossy magazine, and only pay each time somebody sends for a brochure or calls your sales hotline. I used to sell advertising in glossy magazines. Advertisers can spend $3000 on an ad and get no response. A small business can spend $500 on an ad and get no response, really hurting their business cash flow in the process.

In principle, pay per click is a wonderful idea, but the real problem is in the quality, and the quality can be watered down so easily by fraud. Remember, you are paying for a click. That click could be automated, it could be a genuine person looking for a product like yours, or it could be someone clicking because they are being paid to click.

Pay per click advertising is a valuable tool, but you need to monitor with care.

Is 9 Cents Per Click Cheaper Than 1 Cent Per Click?

My first use of pay per click advertising was with Google Adwords, followed a month or two later by Overture. I have always liked Google Adwords, and it is still my favourite today. It combines high quality clicks, with ease of use and a comprehensive amount of useful management information to help your campaigns. To me, it is way above the others, including Overture.

Once I had campaigns set up at Overture and Adwords I let them run, and it was quite a few months before I started to research the smaller PPC companies. Many of the newer entrants in the field offer tempting starting credits and bids as low as 1 cent per click. I must admit, a year ago I was quite excited about getting loads of clicks at a cent a time.

The old saying “you get what you pay for” did not enter my head at the beginning, but it soon came to mind as I saw those 1 cent payments rocket. I tried several of the newer PPC search engines, but two in particular just zipped through my funds, and unlike Google Adwords, you could not set a daily budget.

I decided to take a closer look at my website stats to see what was happening to those 1 cent clicks. What I did was compare one of the new PPC search engines I was using, with Google Adwords. The comparison was based on whether a visitor to the landing page immediately exited again, or whether they browsed other pages on the site. The landing pages were identical.

I already knew Google Adwords provided genuine visitors, as I first used them for a real estate website, and the ads led to sales; big money for small outlay. In effect, I was using Adwords as my proven control.

The results of the comparison were very convincing. Over a one month period the following happened:

1. From small PPC X, 1187 entered the landing page and 1165 of those exited the site from the same page. That’s 98 % were a quick in and out.

2. From Google Adwords, 161 entered the landing page, of whom only 44 exited from the same page. That’s 27% were a quick in and out.

As you can see, only 2% of the “X” visitors bothered looking around the website. If I had got the same result from Google, then I could just say it was because it was a lousy landing page. But I did not. 73% of the Google visitors went on to have a good look around the website, that’s 36 times better.

So, what do we make of these figures? I used the same keywords for “X” and Google, so I should have had similar results. I have to conclude that “X” was sending very poor quality traffic, Google it’s usual high standard.

I then worked out the more realistic cost per browser ie the cost of each visitor who stayed at the website and looked around. With “X” I was paying 1 cent per click, and with Google an average 9 cents per click. You will see from the following table the cost per browser for Google worked out much cheaper than “X”, less than 1 quarter the price in fact:

1. The 22 people who stayed on the website to browse from “X” cost $11.87, or $0.54 per browser.

1. The 117 people who stayed on the website to browse from Google cost $14.49, or $0.12 per browser.

On the surface, it might always seem the smaller search engines are cheaper. However, it is wise to monitor the reality. If you want real visitors to your website, ensure that is what you are getting. Would you rather pay 12 cents for a genuine visitor or 54 cents?

These results are, of course, from one test. You may get different results. I think the lesson here is to monitor very closely what is happening with your paid for clicks. Cheap may mean expensive; expensive may mean cheap but good value.

All is not what it seems when you compare prices of Pay Per Click search engines.

Roy Thomsitt is the owner, webmaster and author of [http://www.change-direction.com], a new website in late 2004, about working online in a home based business. He has a background in offline advertising, with practical experience of working from home in marketing since 1995, plus 2 years of experience with online marketing. He has a substantial background in financial and project management, implementing new office, accounting, computer and management systems. He is an English expat, now resident in the Philippines.

Author: Roy Thomsitt
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Planning for Pay Per Click Engine Advertising

The process of planning for pay per click engine advertising
begins with getting to know your target audience. Considering
their mindset you brainstorm to identify keywords and keyword
terms that they might use in the search engines when searching
for the products, services or information that is featured on
your website. Using the list of keywords that you come up with,
you can begin to conduct keyword research to determine the
popularity of the keywords, to get recommendations for alternate
keywords, and to see what the bids are for the keywords using the
pay per click engine’s keyword suggestion and bidding tools.

Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture)
both have tools you can use for keyword research relating to the
pay per click engines that they serve. WordTracker is also an
excellent keyword research tool that enables you to research more
than one pay per click engine at a time.

Keyword Bidding for Pay Per Click Engine Advertising

Once you have completed your keyword research, you will have a
good idea regarding which keywords you should bid on to get your
website advertised in the search engine or search engines.
However, before you ever place a bid for a keyword, you need to
determine what the value per click is to your company.

This requires some data analysis. The crux of the issue that you
do not want to bid more for a keyword than what your value per
click is. If you do, you’ll lose money because your pay per click
engine advertising will be too costly to be valuable.

You need two figures in order to determine the value of each
visitor to your website – 1) Your net profit per sale; and 2)
Your conversion rate. If you are just launching your website, you
won’t have the historical figures to calculate this, so you will
have to estimate and then closely monitor your pay per click
engine campaign and make adjustments as needed.

To determine your net profit per sale, you use your gross
revenue, subtract your total expenses and divide the difference
by you total number of sales. To determine your conversion rate,
you use your total number of unique visitors and divide that
number by your total number of sales.

By dividing your net profit per sale by your conversion rate you
will come up with a number which is the value of each visitor to
your website – i.e. the value of each click. This is the amount
that you do not want to exceed when bidding on keywords for your
pay per click engine advertising.

Campaign Management for Pay Per Click Engine Advertising

Campaign management for pay per click engine advertising is
pretty important because there is a lot of competition, even in
the pay per click engine advertising programs. Without effective
campaign management of your pay per click engine campaign, your
advertising can lose its kick and can become ineffective.

Monitoring your pay per click engine campaign will help you to
determine which keyword bids are producing results and which ones
are not. You can make adjustments overtime to ensure that your
pay per click engine campaign remains effective. You should also
recalculate your value per click frequently to ensure that your
pay per click engine advertising campaign is not costing you more
than it is worth.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

Author: Christopher J Enders
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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There are several steps involved in creating a winning PPC campaign. Among them, detailed keyword research and well thought-out PPC ad design. But even if those 2 things are done exceptionally well, your chances of success still hinge entirely on your landing page, or what I prefer to call your Lead Conversion Page. A Lead Conversion Page is the web page that shows up when a potential client clicks on your ppc ad. For most new advertisers that page is the home page of your website. Unfortunately, most home pages don’t make suitable Lead Conversion Pages.

A good Lead Conversion Page is one that fulfills the specific promise of the PPC ad. When a client clicks on your ad, they need to immediately find–in obvious fashion–whatever it is they wanted when they clicked on your ad. What that means is that if you create an ad for $20 off carpet cleaning, you need to send them to a page that’s all about having their carpet cleaned for $20 off. Not the home page of your site that has information about carpet cleaning, upholstery cleaning, pet odor removal, water extraction or anything else. The key is you want to eliminate distractions, and make it easy for your visitor to respond to the offer you made in your PPC ad.

Creating a new and improved Lead Conversion Page doesn’t require a major overhaul of your website, or special programming (in most cases). Usually you can just add a page or redo the one you’re already using. Don’t make the mistake of sending your visitors to your cluttered, distracting home page. Simple is good.