Pay per Click, PPC search engine advertising is considered by many to be one of the most affordable forms of marketing on the Internet. PPC advertising is used to generate leads by directing target traffic to a marketer's website landing page, so the marketer can convert this target traffic into immediate sales; or future sales at a later time. To date, this marketing is a billion pound industry.

There are some pitfalls and disadvantages to using Pay per Click advertising companies. If there were no disadvantages to this advertising, then everyone would be using this method; yet, many Internet marketers do not use it.

In brief, marketers will bid on keywords to use in small ads they create, that the PPC Company will display for search engine users when they use the marketers' chosen keywords they selected to use in the ads. Within these ads is a link to the marketers' unique website, for interested parties to click on.

When the search engine user, uses a particular marketer's keyword in the search engine, that ad shows up alongside the other results for the user to choose from. If the user clicks on the marketer's ad, they are taken to the marketer's website. The marketer then pays the PPC Company for that unique click. If the user sees the ad, but does not click, the marketer does not pay.

Some of the disadvantages to using Pay per Click advertising have to do with the company being chosen for the marketing campaign. Many companies have much bigger advantages over other smaller companies.

A smaller PPC company might not be "connected", in the sense of having the ability to display your ad for good exposure when your keywords are being targeted by people looking for your type product. Also, some PPC companies simply do not have the skills to operate their companies as well as a lot of the larger ones. To date, Google's AdWords is the top runner of PPC companies on the Internet.

Many people have lost thousands of pounds on PPC advertising by simply not having a clear understanding of the complexity involved. It takes a while to learn how to bid properly, create compelling ads that are relevant and using these methods effectively in a marketing campaign. Prudence is the key when new to any marketing method.

One main disadvantage to using this advertising has a lot to do with your market. If you are not trying to appeal to a niche group, this could have you in direct competition with a few hundred other marketers for select keywords.

Nothing is more frustrating than trying to bid for keywords, that many other PPC marketers already have top positions for themselves. At best, you may end up at the bottom of the page's search results; unless you want to spend a lot more money, trying to out-bid your competition.

Although you can generate a lot of target traffic to your landing page, recent studies have shown that the conversion rate of PPC marketing techniques, to be lower than other marketing methods, like article marketing.

If you get 100 hits on your landing page from PPC advertising, but only one sale, then that says something. Especially if you were using article marketing before, and this method was converting 8 hits into sales, per 100 hits for you.

Overall, the main disadvantage to PPC advertising is taking the time to learn all the complexities involved with it. Too many people have jumped right into it with their eyes closed and ended up wiping out their marketing budgets in short time. They tried, they died.

PPC advertising is something everyone should test the water on, before jumping in, head first.