So, what's pay-per click fraud?

In an ideal world, you and I will pay a fee to a site that offers PPC program and hosts our ads whenever those ads are being clicked by a visitor. The visitor then examines our site and eventually makes a purchase. We make money.

In click-fraud-world as it is nowadays, those clicks that you and I pay for are not coming from potential customers. But from scam artists, automated scripts known as "hitbots", underhanded competitors, and even affiliates that just click on our ads in order to earn commission offered by PPC providers. We lose money.

Fraudulent clicks or "click spam" can be defined as any kind of click that occurs with zero possibility for a conversion to occur, or a website visit not being originated by a legitimate user. Fraudulent clicks happen on a regular basis - even more than what we could possibly imagine.

Indiatimes published a shocking article about a mother who gets down to work every evening while holding a baby in her lap. She is clicking on PPC advertisements. She doesn't care about ads, but diligently keeps count — it's $0.18 to $0.25 per click.

"The trend is catching up in India," - says Goutam Rakshit, chairman, Advertising Council of India - "It's a numbers game as far as media buying is concerned. And anybody who can manipulate numbers gets edge. This is unethical, and needs to be curbed."

John Squire, vice president for product marketing for Coremetrics, estimated that his company's clients are spending approximately $10 million a year on fraudulent clicks. They are spending about $10 million on consumers that don't exist.

How much are you paying for customers that don't exist?

If you think your PPC campaign funds are depleting due to a fraudulent click activity, affiliate-generated fraudulent activity, or if you are simply suspicious of traffic that occurs without any increase in sales - then perhaps you need to start getting tougher with your PPC analysis.

You can always ask for refund from PPC provider running your campaign if you have suspected a fraudulent click activity. But, you won't get refund unless you have hard core facts to prove it.

And now, let's get down to facts.

1a. On a less technical note, define a unique URL for sales page that will go through PPC program. Clone your sales page and save it under a different URL.

If your page is selling vitamins for an example, and lets say your URL is www.hotvitamins.com, save it as www.hotvitamins.com/power. Or, create a sub-domain, such as http://power.hotvitamins.com.

Then, use this "cloned" sales page for your PPC campaign. That way, only traffic coming to that page is from PPC website. Only, do not link this new URL to any other website. You want to have 100% pure PPC traffic so you can keep an eye on it.

1b. For more technical people, you can assign unique session id to each of your URLs within your PPC campaigns. I'm seeing both techniques being used.

2. Use a basic log analyzer program to begin to investigate data on received clicks, including date, time, referrer, page views, URL, IP, etc. Your webhost should already provide you with a log analyzer program or a "Site Statistics Tool."

If not, maybe it's time for you to change your webhost, or you have to install log analyzer software yourself.

I glanced curiously through 25 new messages displayed on first page. There were only 3 e-mails that pulled my attention and made me open them immediately. Also, I opened 4 additional e-mails because they came from sources that I was expecting e-mails from.

And, what about rest?

There was nothing in subject line that would've been beneficial for me. Therefore, I didn't even bother opening rest of e-mails. Maybe, I'll go through them later when I have more time to spare.

Who knows! Maybe those e-mails that I didn't open had something of a great value to me. But, marketers sending them didn't spend enough time to word subject in a way to grab me by my shirt and make me open them without even thinking about it. Well, at least 3 of them did.

How's your "opening ratio" of e-mails that you're sending to your list?

We live in a "Headline Society." With free time becoming increasingly rare and with a massive amount of information coming at us from infinite number or sources, people use headlines as time-saving devices. They direct their movements and attention to headlines that spark interest.

Analyze yourself and see what grabs your attention first, content or headline?

If your headline doesn't instantly reach out and touch prospect, chances are that rest of your message doesn't stand a chance.

And, remember that subject line of your e-mail is nothing else but a headline. It's first thing that people see before they even look at your entire e-mail. It's your only chance to interest and influence recipients. It will either grab their attention or not.

Your subject line will tell recipients whether they should "read on" or "move on". If your subject line fails to attract a sufficient readership, nothing else matters. The body of your e-mail quickly becomes irrelevant. Your entire effort might be doomed.

Ideally, you want to make your e-mail recipient be "fully alert" and pay attention to your message, same way you would pay attention to a fire truck, an ambulance, or a police car coming down road with sirens on.

You have to burst out with your strongest, most provocative, explosive choice of words. Something that compels recipients of your e-mail to read further and take action.

So, how would you get that accomplished?

A successful subject line consists of carefully selected words that achieve any, or all of following:

1) Deliver a benefit,

2) Present a compelling offer,

3) Reveal attention grabbing news.

But regardless of approach you choose, at end of day you want to accomplish following with subject line of your e-mail:

a) Attract attention and create curiosity;