Pay per click  (PPC) is now one of the most popular way to advertise in the Internet.

More and more marketers are drawn to PPC because of the following:

Instant Traffic - Note than when you submit your site to engines, it can take weeks to months for your site to show up. With PPC, your ad can be shown as soon as your bid gets approved. This is good for people who have the budget to spend and do not wish to wait for their site to be indexed.

Targetted Traffic - PPC are better targeted than other online marketing medium. The ads served are directly related to the keywords the users are searching for. In this regard, the potential "clickers" have a higher probability of being interested in what you have to offer.

Pay only for Clicks - You only pay the agreed amount when a visitor clicks on your ad, unlike banners where you pay per impression.

Budget Control - You can determine and set how much you are willing to spend for a campaign.

Every visitor costs you money - Every click, even from your competitor who merely wants to check you out can cost money.

Need for a high converting site - Because every visitor is worth at least a few cents, you must have a powerful site that would make your click-thru visitor stay and check out your site, visit you again, or bookmark your site.

Inexperience = Cost -  Unguided, PPC can be an expensive exercise. For example, bidding on too generic keywords.

Time - Getting the hang of pay per click requires some time investment.

For purposes of illustration, let us assume you have a site that sells wine glasses.  To use PPC, you need to select the keywords and search phrases that you would like your ad to appear in. In this case, you choose your keywords: crystal wine glasses, lead-free crystal wine glasses, affordable crystal wine glasses, etc. There is no limit to the number of keywords that you can use. Note that it is much better to use more specific keywords. Generally, the more specific you are, the cheaper the cost per click will be and the better results you will get.

Next, you would then look for a PPC search engine, sign up and open an account, deposit money into the account and choose the keywords that you would like to bid on.

Once you have chosen the search phrases (keywords) that you want to use, you then have to decide how much you would like to spend per click.  If you would like to be in the number 1 position, you have to outbid everybody. Bidding should never be a mindless exercise. You need to calculate how much you can afford to spend for traffic versus the profit you will make when the sale is converted.

As mentioned previously, unguided PPC can turn out to be an expensive campaign than what you originally planned for.  Here are some tips to get you started on the right track:

1. Choose the right keywords.  Selecting the right keywords is a science and an art in itself. As mentioned previously, choose keywords that are specific to your business; otherwise you risk getting too many clicks and too little conversion. 

You must also try to avoid keywords that are just too popular. For the keyword, "Internet Marketing", the bid can go as high as $15.00 per click.  That means, if you get 100 clicks, that's a whopping $1,500 per day. Obviously, not a budget for a stay-at-home marketer.

You can use tools like Wordtracker to aid you in choosing cheaper but profitable keywords. You can download a trial copy here.

2. Try different search engines.  Google and Yahoo Search may be the most popular PPC search but there are smaller PPCs that have its loyal following. You can try the smaller and less popular PPCs to get a handle on how it works.

3. Have a powerful ad. Your objective is for people to click through your ad. if you do not have a catching ad, visitors will bypass you even if you are in the number 1 post.

When crafting an ad, put yourself in the shoes of your potential visitor. Type in a keyword phrase and look at the ads that appear. Which ad attracted you the most? Which one would you click at?

PPC experts suggest that you use the specific keyword phrase for your ad title. This increases the click thrus because you are repeating what the user indicated he needs or is searching for.

There are certain powerful words that definitely attract attention. The most powerful word, of course, is Free. However, this can also attract a lot of visitors who only want the freebies but would not be willing to pay for anything. Unless you have a business model that would support these visitors, this can be very costly in the end.

4. Track you ads. Most PPCs allow you to monitor the effectiveness of your ads. You can see which ads are converting. By constantly monitoring, you can decide whether you need to allocate more budget to your PPC campaign, or spend your resources elsewhere.

Google and Yahoo are fiercely competing for PPCs but as of this time, Google Adwords is ahead of the game. However, there are other PPC engines that you may want to look at:

Find What -  FindWhat, a member of the MIVA network is becoming a popular PPC and its  top 10 results are included in metasearch results for Metacrawler and Dogpile.  While FindWhat generally has much lower bids than Yahoo SM, it also has less traffic.  With FindWaht, you can :

-  You can view the current competing bid prices on your keywords at any time.

-  You can change your bid price at any time.

Enhance - Enhance's paid listings deliver targeted traffic at an affordable price through partnerships with select search engine leaders and a network of over 200,000 vertically-focused Web sites.

Kanoodle -  Kanoodle was founded in 1999 as one of the early pioneers in search-targeted sponsored links and is a subsidiary of  Seevast. Kanoodle is also gaining a lot of popularity. Kanoodle's top listings also appear in Search.com, Webcrawler and Dogpile.

ePilot - From their website:  By advertising with ePilot, your search listings appear on top search engines across the web. The ePilot Search Distribution Network includes over 300 top search partners with over 3 billion searches every month. Minimum bid is 7 cents.

Lycos+Ask - Formerly the InSite AdBuyer Program. It has now partnered with Lycos. New customers are given a $50 credit upon signup.

There are other PPC search engines but these are the more notable ones.

Note: Google Adwords is now the dominant PPC and is of interest to any Internet Marketer. For this reason, there is a separate section on Google Adwords.

For more Internet Marketing techniques, click here.