subject: Online Contextual Advertising: Is Google Adwords The Right Choice For Your Online Business Model? [print this page] Nearly all online marketers should be familiar with Google's advertising system at least to a basic extent, and many people make use of this paid advertising system to drive people to their websites that may sign up to be future customers. There are a number of distinct advantages and disadvantages associated with using Google's proprietary advertising network in order to try and broadcast your message to a larger audience, and it can be possible for many different online business models to see profits when utilizing this advertising network the proper way.
One of the pitfalls of advertising on Google for small business owners is that they may not know how to make the best use of their advertising dollars, since writing highly profitable text ad campaigns requires some knowledge about writing sales copy that motivates people to take action. Because of this fact, all the money that gets paid into your advertising budget does not acheive the maximum return on investment possible (despite the fact that the Google Adwords user interface allows you to monitor your costs in great detail).
If you decide to do independent advertising on Google to promote your business, there can be a steep learning curve for simply figuring out how to navigate your way around the advertising platform, not to mention how to get your first profitable ad campaign running. Your Google Adwords account will provide you with a massive amount of data about how your ads are performing, and the trick is figure out exactly what makes money on your website and track how it is performing down to the penny.
Depending on what sort of a web page that you would like to send visitors to, there are other tools that are included as part of your Google account that you may want to take advantage of. If you are simply trying to promote a product or service that you are affiliated with and earn commissions from then there is no need for you to monitor what happens when the reader arrives on the page, other than monitoring basic conversions in your affiliate account. But if you also own the website that you are trying to build traffic to then you may consider taking advantage of a feature called Analytics which can give you even more detail about how your advertising dollars are being spent and exactly what a reader does once they are redirected to your website or landing page.
