Computing ROI for pay-per-click can be a bit tricky. Since most sites receive “free” traffic resulting from SEO efforts, it’s important to try and ferret out what percentage of sales are resulting from pay-per-click and what percentage are resulting from your other SEO efforts.

Choosing which sites and search terms to allocate advertising dollars to can also be somewhat daunting. Rapid changes in per-click charges can also be challenging to manage well. If your bid is #1 and our competitors lower their bids, you may be left paying a higher price than necessary to maintain top positioning. This is webmaster’s equivalent of throwing money down drain. Unless you plan to sit by your computer watching per-click charges on an hourly basis, some type of pay-per-click management is, in my opinion, an absolute necessity.

In running a successful pay-per-click campaign, there are also questions to be answered about whether to try for top positioning or settle for some lesser spot, and which pay-per-click ads pull best.

While I have learned “never to say never”, I am not presently using pay-per-click for any of my websites. Though I have used it in past and may resort to it again, my website is doing better than ever without it. Pay-per-click is just one more thing to manage, and, if not managed well, can become a financial drain in a hurry. I’m a pretty busy person, and probably a tightwad as well. As a result, pay-per-click isn’t part of my current marketing arsenal.

That doesn’t mean, however, that it might not be right for your site. Do some testing, study it out, and consider “cons” described in this article. In words of an old adage, “if something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well.” This is especially true for things that cost money. My advice is to keep that thought firmly in mind whenever you open your webmaster wallet.