the Pay Per Click Guide

In this guide:
What is PPC Advertising?
Why is it a smart way to promote yourself on the web?
What do advertisers need to be careful of?
What PPC search engines and programs are on offer?

What is Pay Per Click Advertising?
Pay Per Click (also known as Pay Per Ranking, Pay Per Placement, Pay Per Position or Cost Per Click) enables you to list your site at the top of search engine results by advertising on keywords that best describe your product or service. It's a dynamic marketplace - the higher you bid, the higher your advertisement will be displayed in the list.

You pay only when a searcher clicks on your listing and connects to your site. You don't pay to list, you only pay for clicks or click throughs. This way you only pay for the traffic to your site, there are no other hidden costs.

Pay Per Click is not only available on search engines. Publishers can also include PPC advertisements on their sites. For example, we use Google's PPC Adsense product as you can see in the left-hand column.

It's a smart idea...
An account with a PPC search engine is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your site because you only pay for actual clicks to your site. It allows you to get maximum exposure, while you control the amount you want to spend on your marketing campaign. You can clearly track the effectiveness of your ad campaign.

But be careful...
Advertisers need to be wary of PPC search engines that offer clickers money or incentives to click through their results. Our advice is to steer clear of these search engines or programs as the clicks you pay for may not be the best quality.

So what's on offer?
Below is a list of Search Engine reviewss. Click here to read the reviews back in "2002".

Whilst there has been considerable consolidation within the industry, there are many PPC programs available to advertisers.

The world of Pay Per Click advertising has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. PPC providers have become more sophisticated, providing enhanced account features. Such features enable you to select which countries you want your ads displayed in and in what language. There are also more companies providing bid management services such as Atlas One Point, to help you manage your PPC campaigns across multiple engines.

The Pay Per Click Guide provides an overview of several pay per click programs on offer. Each program is reviewed using the following four criteria:

Price: How much do you need to spend to open an account?
What is the minimum bid amount?
Traffic: You want visitors to your website. Find out what traffic volumes you can expect.
Interface: Find out where your listings will be published.
Extras: Allows us to share any extra tidbits about the service with you
.