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April 8, 2005

Pay Per Click Adv: Don't Get Burned

Pay Per Click advertising is one of the best ways a small business can advertise online.

1. Cost & barrier of entry is low - a few dollars at most
2. You only pay for ads that work
3. You can experiement and tweak your advertising to get the best results

However, it's important to ensure that you are not getting ripped off, and pay for clicks that you shouldn't be paying for.

StartupJournal writes Mr. McKelvey, turning detective, combed through lists of "IP" addresses, the identifying codes supplied by computers when they access Web sites. He found several suspicious clicks from one address and about 100 more from one that was similar. They belonged to a New York-based rival, Blue Star Jets LLC, Mr. McKelvey says.

While PPC advertising has its benefits, you MUST be vigilant and make sure the 500 clicks you are paying for today, are coming from at least potential customers and not your competition just trying to waste your money or other malicious persons trying to get paid by the PPC provider at your expense.

The Journal writes further During his sleuthing, Mr. McKelvey discovered that his industry was rife with click manipulation. He and others in the jet-charter brokerage field say Yahoo and Google have been slow to help and vague on how they're tackling the problem. Other critics say search companies aren't forthcoming enough about click fraud's scope. Meanwhile, Mr. McKelvey has cut his search-ad spending to $1,000 a month from $20,000. "I'm skeptical of the whole thing now," he says.

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