Nowadays, starting a business is not only common but becoming a necessity as extra income is required just to make ends meet. The best way to go about starting a business is to launch your own website. Starting an online business is so popular that almost everyone has at least tried to run a website based business or startup at least once. Unfortunately, many online business ventures fail before they reach their full potential. But if we all have the same resources, why are the results so different?

There is no easy answer to that question, but the solution can be found by understating one simple concept. When it comes to PPC vs SEO, what’s best for your business? Choosing between PPC or SEO can make or break your fledgling online career. So understating the difference between the two procedures is essential.

PPC or Pay Per Click is a model used to generate referral traffic to your website. The idea is that ads are placed by Google, Yahoo or who ever you choose in relevant places. Each time someone clicks on the ad that leads back to your site, you have to pay. Obviously this can get pricey, so you want to set limitations early on or risk losing money before you get the chance to make any. The more people visiting your site to see what you are selling, making, or doing – the better. However, just because you are paying for ads, doesn’t mean that all the work is being done for you. Making sure your keywords and website are up to date is crucial. But you will have more free time to spend on managing other aspects of your business so that you can stand out when that traffic starts coming in. If used correctly, you can make good profit online and at a faster pace than you would with just SEO.

SEO is also known as Search Engine Optimization, and focuses on the same concept as PPC. The trade-off is the amount of work that you have to put in. Rather than just paying to make sure your website pops up in all the right places, you have to do all the grunt work. With SEO, there are volumes of books, sites, articles and tutorials out there for you to use as resources. But the general idea is that staying up to date with the best SEO practices will help your website to show up on the 1st page of search engines. At times it may feel like a lot of work, but the ROI is usually a lot higher from SEO then PPC.

So how do you decide which is better? Well that all depends on the type of business you are running. Be honest about your needs, time available and overall budget. PPC is great if you have the money to invest into it. SEO is better suited for those with less cash but who are willing to invest more time and effort. Making a choice now doesn’t necessarily mean that your stuck with that decision forever. Ideally it is better to use both methods on your website to maximize profits. Set a small PPC budget and at the same time utilize the latest SEO techniques. Once that traffic and leads start rolling in you can compare the ROI between two traffic sources.

Starting a business can be difficult, but it is the best way to escape the endless 9 to 5 grind and actually enjoy the work you do. The sad truth is that just having one dead end job isn’t enough to keep you afloat anymore. So whether you want to become the next internet mogul or just make enough to save for a few extra vacations a year, start your own website, and become your own boss.