How Much is a Click Worth?

In the world of relative questions, the above question would take the cake. But really: Are you paying too much for clicks? Is your online marketing campaign misguided? In order to answer these questions, you need to ask yourself what kind of click you're paying for. Obviously natural search Google clicks are free. Paid Google searches range from $0.01/click to $40 or more (with the average sitting around $0.65/click). In relative terms, paid clicks each carry their own value, depending on the category you're targeting.

Break down paid clicks into both contextual (displayed on affiliate websites) and search (displayed on Google's search results page), and you'll find that clients are paying twice as much for search ads. Why? Contextual ads just don't perform as well as search ads. Marketers are getting wise to this, and the value of contextual ads has fallen in relation to search ads.

Writing Google AdWords Copy that Works image by cambodia4kidsorg [cc, 2.0]