A big question that is frequenting internet marketing forums at the moment is the benefits or drawbacks of using PPC (Pay Per Click) as a companion to any mainstream SEO you may be practicing. The main drawback for most people is the costs involved with PPC, but, if one takes a closer look at some of the better value PPC solutions, there does not have to be a four figure budget attached to this kind of marketing.

One consideration (that a lot of people are jumping on) is Stumbleupon ads. Stumble is a fantastic way of marketing your site if it has some viral ‘punch’, meaning if it has the capabilities to go viral – Stumble will make it happen. With a static charge per view of your site ($0.05), the cost can be easily calculated and monitored for results. It does require some special attention to your copy and the type of images you should use, because the Stumble upon visitors are a different kind of visitor. They are mostly relaxed web surfers that are not looking for any commercial interaction with a company – so if you are selling something, then it had better be a very clever way that you are selling it! Stumbleupon is very good for getting and retaining visitors to your site. If this is indeed what you are looking to achieve, then a quick test on Stumble ads would not be too costly.

Whilst Stumble traffic is not necessarily commercially viable 90% of the time, you can of course retain these visitors for a later sale. For example, a T Shirt site which produces and retails T Shirts would be able to take out a PPC account with Stumble and start sending people to their pages which rate the best T Shirts. The Stumbler would more often than not bookmark the site if they liked the shirts. Compare this with a car insurance website, the retention would drop significantly.

The best thing to do is join Stumbleupon, browse for an hour – and you will have a great idea about what will and will not sell over there.