Pay Per Performance Advertising : What is it?

Pay Per Performance Advertising is when the advertiser pays a fee based on an action which a visitor to his website takes.

Pay Per Performance Advertising could cover several things, such as pay per click advertising,

This type of Pay Per Performance Advertising means that, you list your website in a pay per click search engine, and when someone types in your term and clicks on your website listing, you are charged a fee for that click.

Another type of Pay Per Performance Advertising could be pay per subscriber. What this means is that you will pay a fee for every subscriber that is sent to you through a subscription form.

There are many types of Pay Per Performance Advertising but the ones above are the most common, especially pay per click.

Pay per search is another one. This was done by askjeeves.com a few years ago, I'm not sure if they still do it though. What basically happened was you would put an askjeeves search box on your website, and whenever someone searched askjeeves through your website, you were paid a small amount each time.

Not recommended for small websites with little traffic. The return just wont be worth it.

Pay per impression is another one. This is quite rare though, or at least it should be. I don't think many, if any websites do pay per impression any more, it's so expensive and easy to make fraudulent impressions. However, in some places CPM is quite popular. This means cost per thousand impressions. So say the CPM was $5, this would mean that for every thousand people that saw your advertisement you would pay $5.

Out of all of the above, I would much prefer paying for every action taken. This way I get what I want, and there is less chance of fraud happening, which is just a waste of my time and money. Sure it costs more, but I think the results are well worth it.

If you are looking for a PPC search engine, then I would definitely recommend overture. They will display your website in several different search engines, making sure you get maximum exposure.

If you want to do a subscriber deal by paying for each subscriber that is sent to you. This is best set up yourself and joint venture with another website. This means you can customize it yourself. Or you could leave it open to everyone and have many people sending you subscribers. I don't know of any websites that provide software for this, so you may have to get a programmer to do it for you.

Please be careful though. You CAN have anyone and everyone promote your newsletter and generate you subscribers, however if you allow this, it will be easier and easier to lose track of genuine and fraudulent subscriptions, making it hard to distinguish between them.

Make sure you have a good email handling solution.

I would recommend that you don't automate this process unless you are feeling brave.

Verify each request personally and manually.

Or you could go out looking yourself.

This is probably the best way to go, it gives you total control and allows you to pick and choose exactly who you want and who you don't want.

However, if you are feeling brave, or you have a good email handling solution then go ahead and spread the word about your newsletter subscription box. Let everyone promote it. This means more subscribers for you, which means more people to sell to.

In conclusion, if you want to advertise in this way, make sure you keep a tight grip on your budget. Put some restrictions on how much you can spend so you don't go overboard.

Overture allows you to deposit as much or as little as you like (Though a minimum deposit of $20 does apply). This way you can't overspend unless you manually choose to.

But, this brings on the issue of self control. Set yourself a personal limit and don't exceed it.

By Stephen Warren, the creator of http://www.marketershandbook.com, the completely FREE guide to marketing online, with useful articles and links.