Is it worth to spend much time in PTC Websites for earning money without spending much money?
By pjdscott
Since this hub discusses an issue with a certain amount of jargon, a brief explanation of such terms might be useful:
- PTC: Pay to click
- PPC: Pay per click
- Advertiser: Business or company seeking exposure, sale of products and/or promotion of company image
- Agent: Owner of PPC business, the market leader being Google's AdSense
- Webmaster/Third party: Person in charge of content on a website, typically the owner
- User: Anyone browsing the web, finding sites via search engines, bookmarks, social bookmarking websites, e mail links etc
This request poses an interesting question and might concern the possibility of clicking affiliate advertisements on one's own website.. Without exception, all PTC/PPC campaigns have a clause in their contract that specifically states a webmaster must never click an advertisement in his or her own website, since it generates false profit. While I am perfectly happy to discuss PTC and PPC campaigns, I am not condoning the practice of clicking on advertisements found on one's own websites with the sole intention of raising revenue. Apart from being in breach of contract, it is extremely easy for the agent to trace such clicks and Google are particularly adept at tracking fraudulent activity. An occasional accidental click by the webmaster is usually excused and not recorded as fraud.
Google AdSense Formats
PTC or PPC websites: explanations and issues
PTC or PPC campaigns rely on an agreement, contact or trust between an advertiser, agent (such as Google's AdSense) and a third party website. It allows advertisers to spread their product, image or brand name over a far wider internet presence than his own website. Usually, they pay an agreement fee to the agents of the PPC campaign - the market leader is Google's AdSense - who then posts the requested advertisement on a selection of websites already under contract or agreement. Every time the advertisement is clicked on the website by a user, it triggers a sequence and forwards the user to a particular page on the advertiser's website. There is a mistaken belief that every click results in a commission to the second party by the agent; this is not necessarily the case and they might only be paid when the user continues beyond a certain level in the advertiser's website, buys a product, signs up to a newsletter or downloads a file containing more information supplied by the advertiser. Irrespective of any of these actions, the agent always takes a fee from the advertiser for every user click.
This business is worth billions of dollars to agents such as Google, Yahoo's Search Marketing and Microsoft's adCentre. The crux to their business is their effectiveness as a search engine - despite competition from Yahoo and Microsoft, Google remains the market leader. Virtually all Google searches result in an appropriate (inappropriate, some might suggest) selection of sponsored advertisements, encouraging the user towards the AdSense advertiser.
Google AdSense and AdWords details
PTC and PPC effectiveness
The usefulness of these practices are apparent, particularly to agents and advertisers. Webmasters get revenue that they might not otherwise generate, although a website packed with advertisements is (ironically) given a lower rating or page rank by the search engine giants such as Google. Many webmasters think that AdSense will make a lot of money - unless your site is taking tens of thousands of hits per day, you are unlikely to give up your day job. However, it can provide a useful revenue and assist towards the cost of your domain name and server costs.
Comments
Hi Peter very informative hub i didnt realise there was such a thing as PPC.I just rely on people visitng my hubpages and hopefully getting a click that way. Maybe a good honest site of interest would create its own revenue anyway.Cheers!!
dilipchandra12 - many thanks and apologiees for my very late response to your message!
informative hub, its useful... thanks you....
I think I will die of boredom if you ask me to work 12 hours a day on PTC
Those are good definitions. There's been a PTC site I've been tried so far and I've done pretty good. At http://www.fineptc.com/index.php?ref=10550 I've been able to make a few thousand so far.
great article...
I am spending making money online at ptc sites for now...
earnmoneyonliness.blogspot.com/
Thanks Anamika - I also think the PTC balloon has burst or moderated! At least it's a bit more moderated now, and if you have a genuine site, you're more likely to get paid.
In my beginning days I use to spend too much time on PTC sites. Some of the sites even closed before i reached payout. Nowadays many sites require the member to click some minimum ads to qualify for payout even with referrals which makes it more difficult.
Thank you both for your comments - APD, I agree that the "rules" are annoyingly transient and you need to keep checking at regular intervals.
very good info . thanks
Both Adsense and Adwords are very frustrating until you get inside and really understand what big G wants. And, as Google changes the "rules" with monotonous regularity I think it is folly to base a business purely on these models. Yes, they should be in your portfolio of traffic and monestisation tools, but don't rely on them solely.
You have to have a variety of ways of bringing traffic and monestising it without having to rely totally on Google...I'd better add IMHO :>)
That's what I thought before I wrote this Brian - thanks for your astute observation. It is very clear since I wrote the hub some months ago that PPC is here to stay, even in the recession. Anything web owners can do to keep users' interest has to be worthwhile, and some owners simply need the traffic.
Good reference hub, it is sometimes difficult remembering all the acronyms and what they mean.
Thanks Milla - and I think you're far from being silly....
Wow! That was a wealth of information for a silly girl like me. Thank you Peter :)
Good Hub very informative, Thamks
Thanks - very informative.
jedgrey, I worked in this industry a bit. It's not going anywhere, in fact, it's booming. And the younger and tech savvy are more and more receptive to clicking ads. Advertisers go where the viewers go.
Hi Peter: I find this hub very informative...and also a cautionary tale. We all have to get savvy about our opportunities in this new techno-econo world. It's great that you point out what is cosidered fraud, because none of us want or need to get caught up in that...it's bad ethics and makes for a bad reputation. Thanx, too, for the definitions of the technical stuff. (I have so much trouble with engineering lingo...I wish to stick to poetic licenses and creative travels, and such.) Best regards, talk to you soon.
I believe that over use of ads and graphics can eventually backfire as we reach a saturation point in our abilty to receive and process data. For instance I no longer peruse 20 pages of hype in a reputible news letter, I go straight to where I think the price will be and forget all that expensive copy. THere ia such a sameness about all the peddling procedures and the way they are written. To me, simple is better. Jim Sheridan, the man who made 187,00 in one day as an affiliate really promotes simplicity. He says to look at Google home page, all text, no banners, yet Google is the leader. There is a lesson somewhere in all this. Great hub
You wrote this well, it's very clear. Thanks.
Well done and highly informative. I am glad you took the time to remind everyone of the ethical practices we should all follow.
Thanks for that, there are so many initials used in here and on the web and it is hard to know what they all stand for. So this is a good explanation for that.
Many thanks for your advice SunSeven and John - I have removed most and modified one by stripping away any indicators.
I agree, those screenshots will give you grief. I've seen that more than once.
Hi Peter,
I think dispaying screenshots of your CTR and eCPM is against the TOS. So please check and tread carefully. I remember Paul mentioning it on the forums a few months back.
Ok here is the link https://www.google.com/adsense/static/en_US/Terms.
I'd rather remove those screenshots as well.
Warm Regards
PPC related videos
danfresnourban 10 months ago
Great hub, when I was in law school the writing professor noted that lawyers are famous for being verbose. However she pointed out that great writing is succinct and coneys ideas accurately with the least amount of words. This article does a great job of doing that. There is a lot of information here and it is delivered without unnecessary words. Thanks