The CPC Trade-Off

Unless you've been under a rock somewhere for the last five years, chances are that you might already know what cost-per-click advertising is. It is an innovation that was invented (or at the very least popularized) by the Google Corporation in the form of their Adword program. This program almost single-handedly resurrected the online marketing game and once again made it possible for people to earn gigantic incomes simply from maintaining a popular website. Of course, that particular angle of things is through the Adword compliment program; Google AdSense. If you are interested in cost-per-click advertising, then you are going to be buying ad space, not selling it.

While Adword is certainly a worthwhile program and in general CPC advertising is a great way to gain business and leads really quickly, there is definitely a trade-off with CPC that you need to be aware of. Understanding this trade-off is important before you make a decision to use the program or decide against it. When you do free advertising in the sense that you are getting your web address out there for people to see, obviously you are going to end up paying a lot less money (hence the term free being thrown in there). The trade-off with that type of advertising however is that it is going to take you a long time to do; you are going to likely have to do it for months before you see your page views creep up into the five digit range.


However, with Adwords, all you need to do is get a few hundred clicks each day and you could be at that level in a matter of weeks if not months. The problem with Adwords however is that you are going to have to pay for it and indeed you are probably going to have to pay for it pretty largely; especially at the start. Are you able and willing to spend this kind of money in the beginning? Adwords and for that matter any other CPC program tends to award people that have been with them for a long time and that have a well established website. This means that the time when you are least likely to be able to afford to pay for advertising is also the time when you have to pay the most for it; a rather interesting way of doing business, but also one that has been accepted to be the conventional wisdom in the world today.

So, in the simplest terms, this is the trade-off that you are going to face when you have to make the decision as to whether or not you want to have CPC advertising as part of your marketing campaign. There are certainly a lot of great things that come from CPC advertising and there are a lot of advantages inherent to its use, but you need to discover ultimately whether the trade-off you make (namely having to invest a lot of money in it to make it work) is going to be worth it for your business in the long run.
About the Author

Mark Stewart frequently writes on topics in the home business and Internet marketing industry.