In the endless pursuit of making money online, every website owner wants to drive traffic to their website fast.

The main problem they face: finding traffic that converts into buyers without breaking the bank.

In their rush to get the traffic they need, many website operators start wasting money on the problem of buying ads and depleting their ad budget for no significant benefit (unless you count the person they paid for the ad). advertising).

The following three rules should help any business, large or small, make money from their online advertising.

** Set an online advertising budget **

Most businesses, especially smaller ones with just a few people (or even one person), don’t operate on an advertising budget.

Ad money is spent when everything else is paid for, or worse, they spend ad money without a plan, so they are basically gambling with your money.

By setting an advertising budget, you can factor it into your overall business image and give you a yardstick by which to measure results.

If you budget $500 a month for advertising and look for ways to spend that money wisely, then your business will grow more predictably than if you advertise sporadically and then wonder why you don’t operate on a predictable revenue stream.

**Follow the numbers**

Unlike offline advertising in billboards, magazines, or direct mail, you can track virtually every aspect of an online ad, including: how many people saw the ad; how many people clicked on the ad; how many sales and how much revenue the ad generated.

Since you can track everything, you can test various phases of the advertising process.

Whether you operate a real estate agent website, sell an ebook, or sell your plumbing services online, you can and should measure every phase of the advertising process.

If your ad clicks fall below expectations, work on your ad until it generates a healthy click-through rate that converts viewers to website visitors.

If you don’t convert many of your website visitors into buyers, then your site needs work to do a better job of selling people.

By following the numbers, you can see where you need to focus in the online sales process.

Rule number one of online advertising: Use a unique tracking link for each and every one of your ads, preferably one that tracks not only unique visitors, but also sales.

This can add an extra 5-10 minutes of work to place each ad, but it will allow you to see which ads are making money (so you can run them again) and which aren’t (so you can change or cancel them). ).

**Go beyond pay per click**

Google AdWords and Overture, the Web’s leading sources of pay-per-click advertising, have made people lazy.

Many website owners never go beyond buying advertising from these two. However, there is a whole world of advertising out there buying ads on websites that are targeted to specific niche audiences.

For more information, visit http://www.adbrite.com, a leading broker of online text links and banner ads.

Copyright 2005 Jim Edwards