Click fraud is a potentially serious problem faced by any affiliate marketer who uses pay-per-click (PPC) search engine advertising to market their sites.

One study estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of a PPC advertiser’s budget is lost to fraud. That estimate increased to 50 percent for high-priced, highly competitive keywords.

Unfortunately, there is no guaranteed way to prevent unscrupulous competitors from going click-happy and rapidly depleting an advertiser’s PPC budget.

Solving the problem is tedious and time-consuming. Getting your account reimbursed requires proof of the fraudulent activity. However, detecting click fraud demands effort and resources that most marketers would rather devote to increasing their income – not ferreting out thieves.

No wonder the fear of click fraud has some affiliate marketers running scared. Understandably, dealing with the whole ugly scenario might leave an advertiser feeling frustrated and thoroughly disenchanted with pay-per-click advertising.

Indeed many new and aspiring affiliate marketers are using potential click fraud as an excuse not to try pay-per-click advertising, or to abandon their Internet marketing business plans altogether.

Giving up due to problems that may never arise? What sort of response is that? Any activity, business or otherwise, has its potential problems.

Take something as commonplace as fueling a vehicle, for example. Under certain conditions you may risk starting a spark-induced fire at the pump. Does such a horrible prospect persuade you to sell the car, ride the bus to work and add two more miserable hours to your daily commute? I should hope not. Rational people learn and apply safe fueling techniques to keep from being fried.

Likewise, dropping pay-per-click as an advertising option from your marketing arsenal because you’re afraid of click fraud, or want to avoid the cost of advertising, isn’t the smartest approach to Internet business.

Rather than use PPC, some affiliate marketers rely exclusively on using search engine optimization techniques, an option fraught with its own perils.

First of all, you may wait several months to get your site ranked high enough in the engines to attract visitors, only to discover that your copywriting or the product itself doesn’t convert to sales. So the process begins anew with copywriting, site submissions and another long wait to see the results.

Second, income derived from search engine traffic tends to be inconsistent from month to month, varying with a site’s rank. Imagine having your earnings plummet from $30,000 per month to a paltry $2,000 per month, simply because Google changed its algorithm or de-listed your sites.

I often consult with affiliates who’ve taken the SEO-only route but then need a way to rebuild their shattered businesses. So yes, such catastrophes do occur.

So what’s the answer? It’s simple: use pay-per-click advertising to market your sites. By the way, that’s the same solution many “you don’t have to pay for traffic” marketing gurus use to promote their own products and affiliate programs. Why? Because no other traffic- generation method is as easy to implement or immediately effective as PPC advertising.

I LOVE pay-per-click advertising, and yes, it loves me back. When Yahoo Search Marketing’s (Overture) predecessor, GoTo.com, launched its pay-for-performance search engine in June 1998, I recognized the service as a complete godsend to online marketers and have been using it to successfully market my affiliate sites ever since.

You simply write an ad, input your keywords, set your budget and within minutes a Google AdWords campaign can be sending highly targeted traffic to your site. Yes, minutes, not months!

Clickthrough and conversion rates can be rapidly assessed, most often within hours of starting a campaign. Is the impression- to-clickthrough ratio poor? Simply tweak the ad and test again. If conversion to sales is underwhelming, rework the product review and then resume the flow of traffic to your site with just a click of your mouse.

Don’t know whether you should promote Product A, Product B or both on your site? Pay-per-click advertising quickly helps you find the right answer. Simply create two listings to send traffic to their respective product review pages. Five hundred sets of eyeballs to each page will give you a good reading on which is the most lucrative choice.

You can test conversion rates for various products without having to write an endorsement. Scores of affiliate marketers who don’t have their own websites are making scads of money promoting products as affiliates using PPC. Instead of bringing visitors to a product endorsement page, they send traffic directly to the merchant from Google through their affiliate links.

Perhaps you shun PPC because of horror stories about campaigns run amok and credit cards drawn to the limit? Forget them. There’s absolutely no reason that should ever happen. Most pay-per-click search engines permit advertisers to set maximum daily or monthly budgets. Or you can deposit a set amount into your PPC account, and the campaign will automatically suspend itself when the funds have been depleted. Once you are confident that your campaign is producing satisfactory returns on a consistent basis, automatic funding options are available. Eventually you’ll get to a stage where you can set it, forget it and collect your commission checks – month after month and year after year. Some PPC users complain that increased competition in certain markets is driving them out of business as bid prices skyrocket.

Here’s a simple solution. Don’t raise your bids to compete on the most popular keywords in your niche. Instead, lower your bids or drop those keywords completely. Concentrate on building bigger lists of highly targeted keyword phrases on which your competitors are not bidding. This strategy lowers your average cost per click and increases your returns by driving laser-targeted traffic to your sites.

Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of your affiliate marketing business. Don’t let fear of click fraud or any other potential problem keep you from trying pay-per-click advertising, the easiest and fastest way to get traffic to your sites. Spend a buck and make two, three, four or more. Those benefits greatly exceed any associated risks.

ROSALIND GARDNER is author of the best-selling guide to affiliate marketing, The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People’s Stuff Online. Her book is available on Amazon and www.SuperAffiliateHandbook.com.