I’ve been promoting affiliate programs, local businesses and personal products and services with Adwords for a few years now. If there is a recurring phrase that those who are interested in leveraging Adwords should know, it is the phrase “Adwords is a numbers game”.

People in public and private forums all over cyberspace are asking “Is there really money to be made using Google Adwords Advertising?”

In case you are really want to know, the answer to that question is straightforward and simple. “Yes.”

Unfortunately like all things in business and advertising, it takes time, effort, persistence and testing to find that money.

Google Adwords is not an easy game to play. It is complex.

There are a lot of variables involved and a lot of different features and options that Google gives you to find your profit or to help you improve your Return on Investment.

I’m not saying this to scare you away. Actually if you find yourself the right coach and learning material, you can easily step by step learn everything. There is a learning curve as in any business; it’s not a get rich quick scenerio.

Here are 2 keys you need to grasp:

1. Adwords is for people who are building businesses.

2. If you test enough products and do enough research, you will find clicks and make money.

Generally there are two roads that an individual or company will take with Adwords.

I’ll explain more about these two paths and how choosing the right one will dramatically increase your chances of success using Adwords. To request the rest of this article (it’s actually a short report broken into a 3-day ecourse), enter your details below.

If you really want to leverage Adwords and want to find what I truly believe is the best way to do it safely and effectively you’ll want to read the rest of this article.

After analyzing my business goals a few months ago I came to the realization that I had to choose where I would build my online business’ foundation and not just do a little of everything.

There are several ways to build a business and for optimum success we’ve got to think through the process - what is my market, where are the people who are in my market and how can I reach them?

Or how will they find me?

What will the main pillar of my business be?

The online community is definitely a large market place that you cannot ignore, especially if you have an internet business. There are thousands if not millions of consumers that you can tap in the internet.

At the same time, the internet also poses a quite different challenge. The easy access that internet provides also gives us much more competition than we would like. It is too crowded and congested.

Having a website is not enough to make our businesses profitable.

You have to expose your website. Make it known. It has to be visible. It has to be frequently targeted by consumers and surfers.

The biggest blunder I made when I first started marketing online was not grasping the sheer number of vistors I needed to be interested in my site and the amount of effort that was required to build that traffic to my website.

I had to ramp up my marketing efforts significantly.

There are two fundamental options available to us for online marketing, SEO and PPC. (There are others but these are the big ones.)

These two are probably the most desirable alternatives you can get for your internet business as strategy for search engine marketing.

1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some researches indicate that 60% - 70% of internet surfers and users actually resort to using the Google search engine to find and locate web sites and pages, for any topic they desire. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet uses will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from the rest.

For effective search engine optimization, you will have to incorporate a well-thought out linking structure on your own internet site. You want to have pages on your site with links to other pages on your site (internal linking), and you need other sites on the internet to have links back to several pages on your own site (off page seo / backlinks).

In SEO, there is no need for you to pay for the clicks although it will require you to spend time doing research to get a favorable combination of ads and target audience. The SEO process is a long term one. It usually requires several months before you see the type of prominence and traffic you want, but once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely get a steady source of profit.

2. PPC

PPC means Pay Per Click. This is ‘pay for’ advertising on a search engine… the sponsored listings that you see whenever you make a search. If your ad is one of these sponsored listings you will be charged whenever a visitor or web surfer clicks on it.

The system is set up so there is a bidding process. Whoever is willing to pay the highest price per click will ne favored for the top listings in the search engine.

This kind of advertising is very closely correlated to traditional direct marketing - you can closely control your campaign - the target audience, the ad that audience sees and the cost of reaching that market.

Most of the providers of PPC advertising will allow you to specify the target market, either by topic, industry or geographical location. It is easy to check if your ad gets to be shown at all and if it is competitive with the others being shown.

Some final thoughts -

PPC lets you advertise to the whole of the online community. It is also relatively easy to set up.

At first glance, PPC advertising may seem very expensive. You could worry about someone (maybe an unscrupulous competitor) clicking on your ad multiple times in order to drive up your costs. The search engines expend considerable effort to identify fraudulent clicks. I have been re-imbursed before when fraud did occur.

You can also set a budget for a certain period. The moment your budget has been used up by the target number of clicks, your ads will no longer be displayed until the next period it is scheduled for display.

A big bonus of PPC is that you can adjust quickly to changes in market demands and trends.

In deciding which of the two strategies will work right for you, think of your goals and of your resources.

Evaluate according to your short term and long term plans. PPC is a great option for your short term market testing as well as building longterm.

Each method requires a different way of approaching business and one may be a better fit for you than the other. Do what will be the best match for your strengths and…

May you have much success.

Recommendations: I started my PPC journey and achieved early success using the training provided by Perry Marshall. Recently I have been learning and applying the Campaign Blasting method to test several markets. I recommend both resources for those inclined to PPC.

Well - it’s already been a few months since I’ve written on this blog.

Life certainly has a way of turning on its heel. In particular I’m thinking of a dear friend of mine who was tragically killed a couple of months ago - left us all reeling from the impact of sudden loss.

Still wondering what that was all about. Why.
Anyway,  I’m going to get back into the swing of things bit by bit.

For now, I want to leave with you a fabulous resource I discovered recently for those of you who are seeking ways to increase the number of visitors to your website.

The technique I read about was a detailed method - methods really - for building backlinks to your website. The premise is that of all the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics that are being touted, gaining backlinks is by far the most important.

So I’ve decided to move that  higher in my own marketing strategy. (I have been spending more time recently on pay per click - it will still be my focus actually.)

You can decide for yourself when you meet Michael Campbell. He’s giving away several of his ebooks that he was previously selling (and no, they’re not outdated. In fact Clickin’ It Rich was recently updated.)

Enjoy.