If you’re just starting out in business, you need to set aside 10 percent of total expenses for advertising.

How many times have you heard this? Does anyone really do it? Do small entrepreneurs and those trying to convert their at-home avocation into a firm that will let them “quit their day job” really take one tenth of their biweekly pay check to put towards advertising? Probably not. It’s a gamble few business owners are prepared to take.

However, you must advertise or your firm won’t succeed. So, what’s the answer? How do you tout your firm, get your company and its great products and services before the public eye without gambling money you can’t afford to lose?

Pay per click. That’s the way.

Pay per click lets you advertise your product or service online and only pay for what brings consumers to your business site. If you put a pay per click ad on the Web and no one clicks on that hyperlink to come to your site and buy your products, you don’t pay for that ad. If they do, you do. Or rather, the sales profit the ad generates does. What could be better?

It’s not a magic potion however. You must do some preparation work before committing to pay per click advertising. While some pay per click arrangements only require that you pay for those ads that bring you a sale, most require that you pay for those ads that bring a visitor to your site. It’s like that old saying about the horse and the drink. The pay per click vendor can bring the consumers to your business trough but it’s your responsibility to make them drink.

First, create your dynamite product or service. Then design an attractive, professional-looking interactive Web site, fill it full of free, informative, industry-related content, making sure it’s easy to navigate, and – this is very important – that it easily identifies who and where you are. Now, you’re ready for pay per click advertising.

Google AdWords is probably the best known and largest volume pay per click advertising program. It’s also extremely easy to start and it gives you total control of your advertising campaign’s budget. All you do for its Starter Edition is decide what you are going to say in your AdWords ad (it’s all text), go to the Google site and sign up, write what you want to say in your ad and note the ceiling you will spend each month. Your ad will appear next to the search results of relevant keywords (that you note) when someone searches on Google. You only pay for those who see the ad and click on to your site. And you stop paying when you’ve reached your stated budget for the month.

While pay per click cannot guarantee results – no advertising can do that – what it can do is guarantee that you won’t spend more than you can afford. What other advertising resource can make that claim?