Small Business Answers

The key to deciding if you want to use AdWords is determining your intended business model. If you’re selling a product or service that is offered by you, you probably won’t want to put up ads – the customer is at your site ready to make a buying decision; no need to invite them to go elsewhere.

However, there are many profit models in the world of online business. There is the content model, where you put up your thrilling content which attracts viewers, then advertise at them with ads related to your content. In this case, ads are essential. Then there is the “soft-focus” model. You can mix both the profit model of selling your own product and service, while also offering ads which advertise a related product or service.

For the “soft-focus” model, imagine if you sold wedding cakes. You have a custom cake design store, and as far as you’re concerned customers should come to you for the cake. But people looking for wedding cakes might also be interested in tuxedo rental, bridal gowns, event planners, florists, and so on. You could allow ads for these services. That way, you make money when a customer buys a cake, and also make money when they click the ad for the florist to go get a bridal bouquet.

As for advertising your site through Google AdWords, that’s another matter. Of course, all advertising is a good thing to draw business to your site, and Google’s AdWords system has been hugely successful because it has a very high return for minimal investment.

To advertise through Google, you bid on keywords which you want to trigger your ad. When either a prospective customer does a Google search, or lands on a page with a Google ad on it, the page may display your ad either along with the search results as “sponsored links”, or in the ad on the page itself. You pay a per-click fee for every customer who visits the site through your ad.

It should be warned that abuse is rampant in the online advertising world. And Google, like any search engine business, is keenly aware of that, and discovers abusers regularly; they police their system thoroughly. Do not make the mistake of thinking you can outsmart the system by using tricky page code. Hundreds of people try this every day, and no matter how sneaky a plan you’ve come up with, Google has seen it before. In the example of the criminal Ron Paul campaign, when they targeted keywords including the names of every candidate on the ballot, Google caught on and simply banned the Ron Paul campaign from advertising through them. As if Ron Paul’s campaign wasn’t notorious for criminal practices already!

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