Hi rstein9207, welcome to SBOC!
Pay per click works great for a lot of types of businesses; product sellers and service providers. Product sellers get immediate results if their website offers ecommerce (credit processing for orders, a shopping cart, etc.) Service providers are searching for leads, and pay per click is a means for those to help make the telephone ring.
These two divisions make a big difference in what you are offering, either a product or a service, in the ad copy, the keywords you are targeting, the customer/target market, and the landing page where your ads are pointing towards.
The old adage "build it and they will come" doesn't work that way on the internet. Since this is a new website, your top priority would be to create
profitable revenue. Many new sites, even if they are highly optimized, may take months to get recognition in the search engines. Pay per click can be the bridge between your site coming up in the rankings.
What I mean by profitable revenue is building a pay per click campaign that will allow you income while you are waiting on your search engine optimization to work for your site. Pay per click advertising is completely measurable and manageable, and you have the ability to turn it on/off, set daily budgets, and spend what you want to spend.
I posted the Three Most Common Mistakes in Pay Per Click in the Internet/eCommerce Forum, so take a look at that before you make the leap.
Also, PPC is not the only way to drive traffic. Once your site is up, spend four hours of your time posting on different blogs related to your target market. You'll receive traffic, and then analyze that traffic to find out why they didn't buy. This four hour test will give you an idea on the power you have creating your own message, without pay per click.
Hope this helps!
Cliff
