One of the most important decisions when you are starting out with PPC is not how much you pay, but how you pay. The key is to pick a credit card that offers cash back on your advertising purchases. These rewards are getting better and better with some cards offering a solid 1%-2% or more. That way even if your campaign only breaks even, you are still making a 1%-2% profit. How much could this decision about how to pay affect the average search marketer? Say you spend $50k/mo on PPC, at the end of the year the credit card will pay you $12,000 just for using their card. You are spending the money anyways, so you might as well get something back.

So what’s my card of choice? I have always used the American Express Platinum rewards card.

You can’t beat the cash back, and the flexible credit limit, which is important for those big PPC spends. Also with AmEx you have have the Open savings which does cool things like automatically refunds your first $500 of spend at Yahoo every year. That benefit alone is worth it. Another benefit, if you want to incorporate or form an LLC, they have 20% off Bizfilings.com. One thing I have found with Amex is that terms are always negotiable so you can usually get better benefits than those listed on the site if you ask. Kind of like bumping your payouts with your affiliate managers.

If you are just starting out and worried about fees, a great choice would be the Blue cash reward card, with annual fee.

Recently, they just upgraded my old Platinum rewards card to a new Plum card. I had not even heard of it, but I was talking to a customer service rep and they sold me on it. It has some cool features like 2% cash back and no limit at all. I’m sure it will work out as great as my old card did.

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