Here's a simple way you can generate lots of sales leads ...or traffic to your web site. Use postcards. They're highly effective and very low-cost. Plus, postcards provide following 6 unique advantages over most other types of advertising.

1. Maximum Exposure for Your Sales Message

Postcards are delivered "ready to read". Even people who usually ignore other advertising will find it hard to avoid looking at your message when it's on a postcard ...especially if you keep it brief.

With other types of advertising you often lose prospects who would have been interested in your offer ...but they never saw it.

2. Simple and Low-Cost

Postcards are simple to produce - and very low-cost. You can print 4 x 6 inch postcards on your own computer for less than 2 cents each. Or you can reduce cost down to about 1 cent each if you print 4 at a time on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of card stock and cut sheets into quarters.

Even postcards printed by a commercial printer are not expensive ...usually about 4 cents to 8 cents each.

The postage for mailing postcards is low too. In US you can send postcards by First Class Mail for only 23 cents. This reduced postage rate applies to postcards that are at least 3 1/2 x 5 inches but not over 4 1/4 x 6 inches.

3. Get Immediate Results

Because postcards are simple and easy to use - they produce results quickly. Often your postcards can be mailed within a week from time you decide to use them. You will start getting replies 2 or 3 days later.

4. Gain Control of Your Sales Activity

Postcards put you in control your sales activity. You can avoid getting too many or too few responses during any time period by regulating how many postcards you mail and how often you mail them.

So are days of 5 cents a click now just a distant memory? Not at all, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of keyword phrases out there for minimum cost, all it takes is a little more effort to use them. To understand how this can be done, with Google AdWords in particular, it is first necessary to understand how ad positions are determined.

Google's PPC program, like their core search engine, places a great deal of emphasis on advertisment relevance. When a web surfer types keywords into search box, Google wants ad that most closely matches that phrase to be shown nearest top of list - not just ad bidding highest amount of money. It mutiplies bid price by keyword relevance, and that means that by careful selection of your keywords, it is possible to be placed above competitors and pay only 1 cent more than they are (Google doesn't necessarily charge maxium amount you bid, only enough to put you ahead).

There are three simple ways you can trump your competitors with your keyword selection: