The cost of internet advertising keeps increasing: A survey reports advertisers felt prices for keywords in search engines rose "20 percent or more" in 2005. The internet is the most compelling and influential medium today, competition is fierce, and you've always had to pay to play; now you have to pay more to keep playing.

In the good old days of the internet, you could pop out a website, and just because you were there, people would come.

Now everybody is in on the act, and it's getting crowded. Crowds breed competition, and competition means higher costs. As companies pour money online, it's inevitable costs will rise. That's what we've been seeing, and that's what we'll keep on seeing, until the return on investment from internet advertising normalizes with other mediums.

But I think we're a ways away from that. Print, direct mail and even broadcast is still looking tepid compared to the internet. How many dramatic statistics do you need to hear about people starting their home search online? Look for internet advertising costs to keep rising. If you want to continue to harvest buyers and sellers from the internet, prepare to move even more marketing dollars into web.

How should you allocate your budget on the Internet? While successful organic search has a good return on investment, success is hard to come by, and too many have been burned by the inevitable ups and downs of search results: "What happened to my site in Google/Yahoo/MSN?" Not surprisingly, the survey (by SEMPO, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) also reports most allocate 90 percent of their budget to reliable, controllable advertising, primarily 'pay per click' and banner ads, and only 10 percent to organic optimization.

Published: February 1, 2006

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Lawrence Schoeffler is Vice President of Dominion Homes Web Services and founder of NUMBER1EXPERT. Dominion Homes Web Services includes Advanced Access, Agent Advantage by Homes.com, and Best Image Marketing, and is a division of Dominion Enterprises. Advanced Access is the industry leader in agent websites. More agents invest in an Advanced Access website than any other. Agent Advantage is the official agent website service of Homes.com, one of the most popular real estate portals in America. NUMBER1EXPERT by Best Image offers America's Top Performing Web Sites, with traffic and leads unequalled in the industry, sold exclusively to Top Selling Agents. Email Lawrence at .