With PPC competition getting tougher and advertising costs getting higher, you may be wondering if you can still make money online. Here are some ideas that could help you:

Make sure the traffic is targeted
The more targeted the traffic, the more likely someone will buy from you. What is targeted traffic? Imagine you are selling a product to help control overeating.

A targeted search in Google for this product would be “help control overeating” since it is targeted exactly to what you are selling. The search term “overeating” would be less targeted since this could also mean other things. If you bid on keywords like these you are wasting money.

So you want your website to show up in the Google sponsored listings each time someone types in “help control overeating” but not for “overeating”. Since someone searching “help control overeating” would be more likely to buy from you.

These more targeted search phrases are also known as “long tail” keywords. These searches represent someone who is closer to buying rather than someone just searching for say “dog training”.

These types of keywords also tend to cost less which means more profit. They tend to be less competitive. They usually get a low volume of searches but since you will make more sales from them, they are worth bidding on.

It is far easier to build an opt-in list than it would be to get someone to buy from you on the first visit to your site. What is an opt-in list? It is also known as list building. It is when you get a visitors name and email address by offering something for free rather than selling something to them.

If you get the visitor’s name and email address, you can follow up with them at any time. This means you actually know who visited your site rather than them having left your site forever. You can then build a relationship with them. This means less traffic is wasted and you get a better return for the money you spent on your PPC advertising.