A lot of people jump into pay per click campaigns head first with out realizing that many people take months to make money from it. Some marketing methods cost you time and effort but PPC costs you cold, hard cash so it’s in your best interests to get very familiar with how it works and how to maximize every pay per click dollar you spend for maximum ROI.  How do you do that?

Don’t jump in head first. You might consider dipping your toe in first by trying a campaign based on a free gift certificate. You’ll find plenty of coupon codes around for $50 Adwords credits, for example.  But $50 isn’t going to assure you of the best results possible. Some people spend hundreds before making their first sale.  What else can you do to maximize your campaign without cleaning out your pockets to find out what works and what doesn’t?

Here are some PPC tips:

1. Read the sites. Google, Yahoo, and MSN Ad Center provide a lot of detailed information for new PPC advertisers. A lot of people glaze over this but read up and you’ll find dozens of articles that teach strategies surrounding PPC that can save you time and money.

2. Cruise the IM blogs and forums. You’ll find loads of forums filled with tips, tools, and advice

3. Invest in a tool like SpeedPPC (reviewed recently by Matt Bredel) which can help you with advanced pay per click campaign tools

4. Track and manage your quality score. Learn more about this on the hub: 4 Tips to Maximize ROI on Pay Per Click Advertising
5. Split test. The best way to save money is to carefully watch your results. That way, you can mimic campaigns that are working and tweak or delete ones that are not—before they cost you more money and drive your Google quality score down