Free Pay Per Click Credit

One of the tools that we all need as webmasters is web hosting, and like any product that is in high demand, suppliers are falling over themselves to get our business. That's fine, competition among companies benefits consumers by keeping prices in balance, but as consumers we must be vigilant, because not all promotional offers are as effective as they sound.

As you shop around you will see ads from web hosting companies that offer "Free PPC Credit" included in their marketing campaign. Pay per click has existed for sometime now and most major search engines offer some form of PPC advertising.

The promotional offer usually goes that should you pre purchase hosting for an extended period of time, usually 12 to 24 months, you'll receive $25 to $50 (depending on the plan you select) in Free PPC credit for a certain search engine. "Hey, Free stuff!" The offer sounds great, anything free, especially money, is definitely enticing. But before you to remain the dotted line, let's have a little closer look.

Who this really benefit? You will need web hosting so you've decided to register with X company and make the most of the free PPC which they offer. You've taken care of at the least 12 months, probably more, (which benefits the hosting company) of web hosting service and now you're ready to claim your free PPC credit.

• The very first thing we discover is that it's for "New Accounts only" and is valid for X# of days. So, in the event that you already have a PPC account and planned to use the free credits there, sorrry! This benefits the search engine. They've accomplished the hardest part of marketing, they got you to sign up.
• Next we discover it's going to set you back $5 of your free credits to generate an account. Funny, they didn't mention that in the brochure. So, we're out $5 more bucks and we haven't even got the account open. Let's push on.
• Next we discover that "Advertisers will undoubtedly be charged for advertising that exceeds the promotional credit".Hmm, what does that mean? It means that when you're not familiar with PPC advertising that your remaining $20 bucks will undoubtedly be gone in no time and all additional charges will undoubtedly be put on your credit card. You know, usually the one you had to put on file to open an account. Advantage, search engine.

Probably, once you've opened a PPC account you're going to keep to use it, at the least for a while, even after your credits have already been used. Advertisers know this and although they've done nothing wrong, in my opinion, it's border-line deceptive and at the very least low down.

Is anything ever really free? The scenario: You're new to PPC advertising, you've $20 worth of PPC credit and you've opened an account.

The very first thing you will do is set up your keyword list. Because you're new to all this you select several "competitive keywords" with a minimum bid of $1. You activate the account and log out. The very next day you join to see how it's going and discover you're in the hole $30 to $40.

What happened? It may take less than an hour or so, maybe less for a favorite keyword for 20 clicks. From then on, it's costing you.

The point to all that is, if that you don't know anything about PPC advertising and your shopping for web hosting, don't be swayed by the offer of "Free SYNCB/PPC Credit Card ".It ain't all it's cracked around be and chances are it's just going to get rid of up costing you a lot more than you bargained for!

Daryl Putnam could be the creator of the popular site Web Essentials and other web based educational Internet sites. He's also the author of several authoritative articles on web design and development topics.