How does PPC work?

For those of you new to PPC, here's an overview on how it works. Basically, PPC uses advertisements to get a reader's attention. Once the reader clicks on the ad, the affiliate marketer earns a commission. A lot of research and money goes into placing ads in strategic positions. The competition is so fierce that organizations scramble to get their products listed in the PPC campaigns. Millions of dollars are spent each day on these campaigns.

Why spend so much when you can avoid it?

Yes, PPC campaigns, for all their hype, do not provide the same results as article marketing does. Why is it that article marketing is better than PPC?

Credibility: Article marketing helps an affiliate marketer to establish credibility on the subject. Writing for an extended period of time on a related subject establishes the person as a ?subject matter expert?. This ensures more customers will turn to you for any information on this subject. PPC does not provide any such platform to establish credibility.

Inexpensive: Article marketing is free. It doesn't cost a dime to start writing and posting articles on directories. PPC, on the other hand, requires plenty of investment to get the company listed among search engine results. With such tough competition around, if you don't have adequate funds, someone else will get listed.

Low risk: Article marketing is less risky when compared to PPC. It's free and therefore, even if you take some time to succeed, it won't have an adverse impact. Whereas in PPC, the initial investment is so high, that not finding success can mean incurring heavy losses.

Displacement: With PPC, there is always the fear of being displaced by competitors. People are willing to shell out top dollar just to get their company listed. In article marketing, there is no such danger involved.

Adherence to search engine rules: PPC demands that advertisers strictly adhere to search engine rules and regulations as well as layout. Therefore, in case of any change in plan of a search engine, even the PPC advertisements need to be in sync with the new format. Article marketing does not carry any such drawbacks with it.

Not enough content: PPC campaigns require to be up and running very quickly. This can mean not having enough time to build content around the keywords provided. This has led to many disappointed visitors clicking on a PPC link and then discovering lack of content to back it up. This also adversely impacts the reputation of the organization. Whereas in article marketing, you have sufficient time to build content around the keywords.

Trial and error: PPC does not provide anyone the luxury of testing out the effectiveness of keywords. With high investments and lack of time, organizations are expected to be bang on target on the very first attempt. Else they lose out in the race. Article marketing provides ample time to try out keywords and analyze their effectiveness. This provides scope for improvement as well.

Only for large scale businesses: PPC campaigns are at best only suited for the large-sized businesses. The high amount of investment needed, coupled with chances of high risks, means that a small sized start up cannot afford such PPC campaigns. Article marketing, on the other hand, provides more leeway to experiment, test effectiveness and try new approaches. The best part about it is that it is free of cost. It also provides a steady way to grow an affiliate marketing campaign. With the right set of keywords, and well thought out articles, one can dramatically enhance traffic to an affiliate site, in a very short time span.