When you visit a website from a Google Search or other search engine, what do you think showed you that link or ad to that Website? Was it luck? No. It was money and Search Engine Optimization! When you see the word Ad in bold text next to the URL, you are getting a paid advertisement.

There are a few ways to get to the top of the web search like Google Adwords, Taboola.com, and others. Depending on what day and between what other ads you are fighting to get to the top, You can get a paid ad click for around $0.31 and up. Maybe some of you are wondering why pay for ad clicks and traffic. The answer is more interaction and profit for your website.

I recently ran ads on Google Adwords and Taboola.com for my Photography sales website Pictures With Passion. Why? Because the website, Pictures With Passion is new to the web and it needs traffic to generate sales for the photographers selling pictures on the website. That is what pays the bills of having a website up, running, and live.

I started with Taboola.com because the ad came up after I had run an ad with Google Adwords for my Web Hosting website, In the Cloud Company Hosting. If you don’t know, there is Artificial Intelligence (AI) that uses tracking cookies to target you with ads from recent searches. So when you search for something a few times and then go on other sites using the AI technology, you get ads on things you are looking for automatically.

As some of you know, that follows my blog, I am in a group home that uses NetNanny firewall that keeps me from seeing things served up from Proxy servers and social media. It is a pain in the neck most of the time. But if you have a need for high security on computers and a network, I recommend NetNanny Firewall.

I was unable to see most of the screens on Taboola.com so I asked them through the support email to end my membership. They did it happily and I must admit I was impressed with their kindness and pricing. You have to agree to spend at least $50 for your first run of ads. I didn’t look any further into it because I couldn’t use the platform.

I ran an ad on Google Adwords and it worked pretty good even though I didn’t make any sales, I have some new vendors to upload and sell their photos. I spent about $25 to hone in my ad and will spend more next month. Next month, I will already have my ad fine tuned and will hopefully be able to land some customers.

While marketing my websites I must admit there is a learning curve and you have to spend money to get your ads honed in or fine tuned. As with anything you have to spend money to make money! You might think that spending $25 to get your ad fine tuned isn’t bad, but I spent $55 on my last ad for In the Cloud Company Hosting and only landed one person that is still in a trial period and hasn’t paid anything. Like I said, it takes money to learn how to make money.

My advice when you start a website or blog is to look at how you are going to pay for it, How you are going to advertise it, and what your Niche is before you start the website or blog. You will most likely not have Corporation money to handle more than on Niche. If you are wondering what a niche is, It is like your speciality. What you know most about or can deliver the best service doing.

To start, run an ad with Google Adwords, but first take their free courses and learn the Google platform. I will let you know that the certificates here on my blog for Google Analytics is only a start. DO NOT try to run ads for someone before mastering the course material and actually running an ad on a website you are creating for yourself.

You may be thinking, ‘What kind of website can I practice on?’ but that is simple. Your Portfolio website! You don’t have one? You should, and for many reasons. You need a portfolio website to prove you are a professional these days. Whether you are a website designer and developer, or a marketing specialist, you need a website portfolio.

Reasons being, first and foremost is to show yourself that you have the skills to run a website, Search Engine Optimization on that website, and how to make that customer find the website. When you can do that and the customer sees that, you are 89% more likely to make the sell! That is my advice to you to understand and see a less stressful way to get started in website design, development, and marketing. That alone will not make you a master, but you will be on your way then.