If you’re just starting out with a new online business, PPC advertising is hands-down, the fastest way you can drive specifically-targeted traffic to your website at a reasonable cost. Since a new website starts with practically zero traffic, PPC is by far, the best way to launch your online business with a good start. With Google Adwords, your ads become ‘live’ once you post your ads.

Unlike free search engine traffic, PPC advertising gives you total control over your website traffic. With PPC advertising, the quantity of traffic you want to drive to your website depends entirely on your advertising budget. Although the costs of all the clicks can add up to a huge amount, the important thing to note is to bid such that your advertising budget does not exceed your business revenue – you need to make a profit on each click you buy.

Simply keep a watchful eye on your budget and costs, and keep tweaking your ads and website for better conversion rates, to maximize the profits you make.

With natural search engine traffic, or ‘free listings’ on the other hand, the success of your website hinges on how well the search engine ranks your website. If Google, for example, suddenly changes its algorithm, your website can plunge from the first page of the listings to somewhere on page ten. Although free search engine traffic is entirely desirable, you should treat it like a ‘bonus’ source of traffic. What your business needs is a source of traffic that is entirely controllable, and PPC offers just that.

So how much does PPC advertising cost? For each click, the price can range from a few cents per click to fifty cents or even a dollar per click, depending on the competitiveness of the keyword and how much you want to bid on the keyword.

In the arena of PPC, it may be over simplistic to think ‘If I can earn a dollar of profits for every two dollars spent on advertising, then I can earn ten dollars from twenty dollars of advertising.’ The profitability does not increase proportionately with your advertising revenue, because it depends on other factors like saturation of market demand and changes in the customers’ spending habits.

However, once you can ensure that your PPC campaign is profitable (you get X amounts of profits for Y dollars spent on advertising), your online business becomes something like a ‘cash machine’. This is a ‘cash machine’ that generates passive income for you, with the ability to produce more cash with a higher advertising budget. Indeed, automation is one of the most attractive aspects of an internet business.

In conclusion, PPC advertising is definitely one of the best, if not the best option you can use to launch your online business. The most important point to note is that you need to constantly tweak your ads and your website for better conversion rates, and also ensure that you keep your costs way below your revenue, for your business to succeed.