Pay per click has been around for a long time. And yet there are still those who don’t understand what it is, or how it works. Let me give you the short version. Let’s say you have a site on the web, and you wonder how to get people to find your site (among the bazillion others out there.) I mean, wouldn’t it be great if when they searched on “homes for sale [your town here]” your site was listed first?
There is a way, of course. It’s called pay per click. You make a list of the words you want to point to your site, then you bid to have your name appear first (or second, or in the top ten, or whatever.) Obviously there are other people who want their site to come before yours, so an auction of sorts ensues. You say, “When people search homes for sale [my town], I’ll pay $0.20 every time to have my name come up first.” Then someone goes in tonight and sees that you’ve bid $0.20 and they bid $0.21 Now you’re second, not first. You could be happy with second, or bid more to be first. You decide.
The beauty of this program is it drives traffic to your site. The downside is it costs money. Depending on your market, it could cost lots of money. I’m aware of a company in a non-real estate industry that pays upwards of $20,000 per month to be in the top three or four.
Is pay per click a good deal? It depends on what’s happening in your area. If there are many tech-savvy brokers, probably not that well. If you’re in a market where people aren’t using the internet much (or are just getting into using it more), it still may be a good deal.
Another way to advertise is google adwords. Have you noticed when you search the web for books, that down the left side of the screen are the links, but down the right side are boxes that show “featured” sites? Those featured sites are available to those who would like to drive business to their site. Is this a good deal? Again, like pay per click, it depends on your area. If you’re having trouble driving traffic to your site, it’s worth taking a look at.
If you want to drive business to your site, consider the fact that pay per click and google adwords may be a good way to go. Of course there are other ways, but there are two that will get you off and running.
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