Being a smart traffic buyer...

Pay per click advertising is just another way of buying traffic. For some reason, however, we often to treat it as a completely unique concept.

That's why you'll see people happily recommending arbitrage strategies where the only goal is to flip traffic from clicking cheap ads into clicking more expensive ones to post Adsense earnings. That's why people spend so much time trying to develop workarounds to Google's policy not to allow Adwords ads to link directly to sales pages.

That's also why some other important parts of what makes traffic so darn valuable get overlooked. Too many PPC gurus are spot-on when it comes to campaign building but are clueless when it comes to knowing how to use and treat that traffic.

Remember, all of those visitors voluntary clicked on your specific ad for your specific product or service. To let them walk away in exchange for a 5-cent ad click just doesn't make a lot of sense.

You should be capturing email addresses with a tempting offfer and/or an opt-in form. You should then be nurturing and building that list for the future.

PPC is fast. It's easy (when done right). It's a short-cutter's dream, to be honest. Maybe that's why those in the PPC field often neglect considering the long-term profit potential of list-building and how Adwords and other similar programs can help.

Those pennies can add up...

One of the most common reasons for PPC problems is a failure of the advertiser to stay on top of his or her campaign. Adwords and the other other major PPC players have nice little "set and forget" systems. You build your campaign and can then leave it on "autopilot."

The problem is that many people use that option a little too much. They let their campaigns run and don't check the regularly. It doesn't seem like a big deal when you're buying traffic for a few pennies, a nickel or a dime. It doesn't rate a CODE RED on the to-do list.

Those small expenditures, however, have a way of building up. Too often, one checks a campaign only to find that costs are higher than anticipated or near the pre-set cap while sales are still way too low. Meanwhile, the Google bill has been growing with each useless click.

You don't need a PC dedicated to PPC management and you don't need to check your stats obsessively in five minute increments.

You do, however, need to check your numbers regularly and to be prepared to step in at a moment's notice if it looks like things are going south. If you keep running a faulty campaign in the background, those pennies can add up!

Isolating PPC trouble spots...

Have you ever ran a PPC campaign that just didn't seem to be performing as well as you had expected? Have you ever felt like you could sense that something was wrong, but you just couldn't put your finger on it?

That's a frustrating situation. You just KNOW that a little adjustment here and there could turn a loser into a winner, but you aren't sure where to start and you may not have the time or energy to test a series of individual changes.

It'll make you pull your hair out after awhile.

There is one way around many of these problems. If you start with a strong guide to PPC advertising that contains a good checklist of how to handle every part of the process, you can "test" your work against the recommendations in the reference material.

In many cases, you'll quickly find the area that needs improvement and you may be able to salvage a once seemingly doomed PPC campaign.

It's just another reason to make sure you have the best possible information to make your business a success.