This document was written to help newcomers understand how to advertise
with pay-per-click (ppc) search engines. The concepts in this guide
are easy to follow and can be used for any ppc site.
Step 1: Think about your business!
What type of business do you have? What category does it fall under?
Who is your target customer? These are all questions you should be
asking yourself when setting up a ppc account.
Let's make believe you own a bicycle shop called "Mary's Bicycle Shop".
Your target customer is someone who want's to buy a bicycle... the
first thing you need to do is figure out what "keyword phrases"
someone is likely to search on when they are interested in your
product. Keyword phrases can be anything related to your product,
from a particular "bicycle part" to an actual brand of bicycles. Take
a look at this list:
bicycle
bicycles
bicycle tire
bicycle tires
Schwinn
These are all phrases that someone might type into a search engine
if they were looking for a bicycle or bicycle parts... (Schwinn is
a top brand of bicycle.) These are all perfect keyword phrases that
we would want to add our site under. On eClickZ, singular and
plural searches are considered separate, so if you were adding your
site under "bicycle" you should also add your site under "bicycles".
You should take a few minutes to write down a list of keyword phrases
related to your business. If you need help, when you log into your
account at eClickZ you can use a special option call "Keyword Tool"
to see what popular searches are.
Step 2: Create an Account
If you have not done so yet, you should create an account on eClickZ.
This is easy and will take only a few minutes. To create an account,
click on "List your Site" at the top or bottom of any eClickZ page. You will
be asked a few questions and then your password will be sent to you
via email within a few minutes.
Step 3: Login to your Account
Now that you have created an account, you should log in. Go to:
http://www.eclickz.com/accounts/
and click on "Account Login". Enter your email address and password
that you were sent. Remember that the password is case-sensitive
meaning that lowercase and uppercase are different. If you have
forgotten your password you can click on "Forgot/Lost Password" to
have it sent to you.
Step 4: Add Keywords
Now that you have logged in you need to add your site under the list
of keyword phrases that you created earlier. To do this, just click
on "Add Keywords". This will bring up a simple form you need to fill
in. The first box is called "Keyword Phrases". In this box you should
enter the list of keyword phrases you created, hitting the enter key
after each one (so that you enter one per line).
Next you need to enter your "Site URL". The Site URL is the web
address that someone would type in to reach your website... for
example, our URL is http://www.eClickZ.com. Make sure to enter the
FULL url, including the "http://" before the website address.
The next box is for the "Title". The Title is a short 50 character
label for your search engine listing. In our earlier example for
Mary's Bike Shop, a title may be "Mary's Bike Shop - Top Brand Bikes!".
The title usually includes your websites name and maybe a short
slogan or generic description of what you have. Remember, it must
be at most 50 characters long (a character is any letter, number,
symbol or space.)
Now you need to enter a longer "Description" of your site. The
description can be up to 180 characters long and should give the
visitor a simple idea of what your site sells. For our example, a
description may be: "We have been providing the top name brand
bicycles and parts to our customers for over 30 years. Items can
be shipped within 3 days anywhere in the country and make great
gifts!". This is where you should sell yourself to the customer
and make them want to visit you. An important thing to remember
is "don't lie"! Don't say anything that is not true and don't tell
them you sell anything you don't sell. While writing a false
description may get you more traffic, it will not be "qualified
traffic" and the visitor will leave immediately.
Lastly you should see a box called "Initial Bid". This is how much
you are willing to pay to be listed under the keyword. The more
you will pay, the higher you will be listed and typically, the more
traffic you will receive. For now you should leave this set to the
default which is ".01" (one cent per click). You will change this
later.
When you are done filling in the boxes on this page, press the button
labled "Continue" and submit your changes.
Step 5: Fund Your Account
eClickZ works on a debit account system meaning you must pre-fund your
account to receive traffic. When your funds run out, we stop the
advertising until you fund your account again. This works out well
for many advertisers because they can set a spending limit -- you will
never receive a bill from eClickZ.
To fund your account, click on "Add Funds". There are many choices --
the simplest and quickest is to pay using your Credit Card which is
immediate. Other options are to use the free service "PayPal.com" or
to mail us a check or money order. The minimum payment is $25 for
first time customers and no monthly minimum for return customers.
As soon as your payment is posted to your account, your advertising
will be live and your site can begin to receive traffic.
Step 6: Adjust your Bids
Now that your account is active, you should adjust your bids to make
sure you are getting the optimum position. The first thing you need
to do is decide how much you should be willing to pay. The more
you are willing to pay, the higher you will be listed in a search
and typically the more traffic you will receive. It is NOT always
best to be number one however, you should only bid as much as you
are willing to spend to get a customer to your site.
How should you decide how much to bid? Let's look at an example:
Let's say that Mary (from Mary's Bike Shop) get's 100 visitors to
her site, and that for every 100 visitors, 5 of those visitors buy
something. Mary also knows that on average when a customer buys
something she makes $10 profit. That means that:
5 paying customers x $10 profit per customer = $50 profit
$50 total profit / 100 visitors = 50 cents per visitor profit
So from some simple math, we see that even though every visitor does
not buy something, on average a visitor is worth 50 cents profit for
Mary's store. That means that Mary can afford to pay up to 50 cents
per click to "break even". If she pays any more than 50 cents per
click she will lose money, if she pays less than 50 cents per click,
she will make money. Mary may decide that she wants to spend at most
half of her profits on advertising... this means Mary wants to be
listed as high as possible in the listings and pay at most 25 cents
per customer.
If you wish to change your bids manually, you can use the "Change Bids"
option. This will show you all of your keywords along with the top
5 bid amounts currently being paid by other eClickZ customers. You
can manually adjust your bids so that you gain the position you want.
When you are done, make sure to submit your changes.
Step 7: You're all done!
That's it, your account should now be live and you will begin
receiving traffic. You should occasionally log in to review your
account activity, adjust your bids and make sure your account is
funded. How much traffic you receive will depend on many things:
* How popular the keyword phrases you chose are
* What position you are listed in under each keyword phrase
* How interesting your site description is to a searcher
Don't forget though that the most important part is the price you
are paying per visitor, not how many visitors you receive. We suggest
you start slowly and test out different site descriptions, keyword
choices and bid amounts to see what works best for you.
Good luck!
eClickZ Team
support@eClickZ.com
