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Around 1995, business on the Internet became a hope and interest for many. That was just 14 short years ago, and today, Internet businesses are booming.

The concept behind pay-per-click marketing is pretty straightforward. You select keywords, write your ad, bid on the keywords, and pay for the number of clicks that you receive, with the amount owed based on what you bid and the number of clicks that were received.

The more you bid, the higher your ad is placed on the web page. There are many ways you can use PPC to your advantage.

Here is a look at the top five:

#1 – Using PPC for Direct Sales of Products
Selling a product with PPC is really quite easy. As always, the first objective is to ensure that you bid enough on your selected keywords to ensure that your ad is placed high enough to be seen – preferably on the first page of the search results for your keywords. You select keywords directly related to how people search for your product.

#2 – Using PPC to Build an Opt-In List
Since you will be paying for the clicks, you definitely want to build an opt-in list, regardless of what the bigger purpose of running the ad is. Otherwise you will be wasting a great deal money paying for one-time traffic.

If you can persuade a certain portion of that traffic to give you their email address, in effect you get more mileage for your PPC dollar. In fact, some people run PPC ad campaigns for the sole purpose of building an opt-in list.

#3 – Using PPC as a Lead Generator
Many people confuse lead generation with building an opt-in list. They are not quite the same thing, although they are similar. When you collect opt-ins, it’s inevitable that you will end up with some freebie seekers on your list — and these are not necessarily leads.

To generate true leads, you will need to select different variations of your keywords and write your ad in a way that pre-qualifies searchers as true leads. You aren’t just looking for people who are interested. You are looking for people who fall somewhere between “interested” and “ready to buy.”

#4 – Using PPC as a Viral Generator
Viral marketing is a big deal on the Internet. What you must remember is that the Internet has no borders – no limits. It reaches far and wide, and it is impossible to reach your entire market all by yourself. You need help, and this is where viral marketing comes in.

PPC ads can send searchers to your branded viral marketing collateral, which can take many forms.  The simplest viral tool can be a free PDF report that includes affiliate links or links to your money site.  But you can also give searchers access to an online report populated with affiliate links, a free branded software download, or even a quiz or poll that inculdes a “tell-a-friend” script.
#5 – Using PPC with Landing Pages
Landing pages are great for really targeting your audience. You can have various landing pages for different products, but with the use of PPC, you can also create dynamic landing pages, with different sales copy, based on the ad that was clicked on.

The above are just five ways marketers can harness the power of PPC. PPC continues to grow and so do the possibilities for PPC and affiliate marketers.

If you understand the PPC concepts that level the playing field, even the “little guy” can compete with big corporations who have the deep pockets to pay for placement on the most trafficked keywords.

You just need to be sure that you have a firm grasp on what the purpose of your PPC campaign is.  That allows you to write effective ads that target the people who will bring in the revenue, as well as determine a workable budget.

Most failure with PPC does not come from not choosing the right keywords. The fastest way to fail with PPC is to not know and convey your purpose in the ad, regardless of whether or not you are in the top position on the page. It’s not just in what you say and where you say it – it’s in how you say it and in how it is understood that counts.