Pay Per Click

I knew it was only a matter of time until I looked into the marketing strategy of "pay per click". In a nutshell, it's where you pay advertisers like Google, Facebook, etc to display your ads to targeted users and you pay them per click.

This is a fantastic way to drive targeted traffic to your website. The only problem is it can be quite expensive. So far I've only tried to advertise via Facebook and I've only started with a small budget of $5 per day to see if it helps drive potential customers to my site.

The great thing about Facebook is they have so much personal data on millions of people. You can modify your target audience based on things like demographics (age, sex, location), likes, dislikes, education, and more.

Once you select your target audience and build your ad, Facebook will then recommend a bid price to get your ad featured. If your market is more narrow, the price will generally be higher. For me, it was between $0.89-$1.31 per click.

Facebook also gives you the option to pay per impressions. This means that you pay them a fixed amount and they will show your ad to 1000 users on Facebook in your target audience. The price is generally lower for this service, but may not be as effective.

Last night they targeted about 14,000 users before I got 5 clicks on my advertisement. It's pretty amazing how fast $5 has come and gone. The average price per click for me was $0.99. I know it's a tiny budget, but I figure if sales are generated from this targeted marketing, then it should pay off.


The average price per 1000 impressions for me was around $0.50. So I would have easily maxed out my $5 daily budget before getting 5 clicks. I will have to investigate this further, but for now I'll be doing Pay Per Click.

I'm also looking into Google AdSense advertising. With Google I would imagine it would be better because the targeting is even better. For example, someone Googles "Levi's silvertab jeans". There's a good chance that they're a serious buyer. So your ad can be displayed on that page and if clicked, you may get a sale.

(After I posted this, I looked on my blog and saw an advertisement for Google Adwords for a free $75, so I signed up to see if I qualify, woo hoo free money!)

Food for thought. I'm staying at it. I heard from Ezine Articles about my submission and I need to make a few modifications i.e. self-promote less =). I hope it doesn't take another week for review, but we'll see.