You can advertise your site with Google Adwords. The process is simple:

1. Find out what keywords people use to find your brand.
2. Bid on these keywords via Google Adwords
3. When people type in the search phrases that you are targeting, your site comes at the top of the sponsored search results.

You say 'bid'.. so I am assuming costs, so what sort of costs are involved in getting this service from google? Is it a flat fee of some sort or a scale?

What does Google Adwords cost?

The way Google Adwords works is that you bid to be listed when someone searches for your chosen keyphrase. You only pay when they click on your listing.

The higher up you are in the sponsored listing, the higher the chance that somebody will click on your listing. So bidding more for a first place listing then your competitor tends to give you a higher amount of visitors to your site compared to your competitor (in theory, quality of your ad will affect this just as much. For this example, we assume that your ads are equally as strong).

The amount you will have to bid varies enormously from industry to industry. It all depends on the profits that there are to be had. Nobody will consistently bid a lot of money on a keyword if they weren't profiting from it.

The price doesn't matter, only the eventual profit:

Imagine that when your listing ranks between position 1 and 3 in the sponsored listings, you get 100 visitors each day. Only 2 of these visitors end up buying one of your products (that is a conversion rate of 2%).

The average purchase value per visitor is $60, of which you make $20 profit. So for every 100 visits, you make $40 profit.

If your Adwords cost for top ranking costs you $0.50 per click, then you are paying $50 for every 100 visitors, resulting in $40 profit.

The bad news is, you spent $50 to get these 100 pre-qualified visitors to your site, but you only made $40. You lost $10.

In that case, the campaign isn't really working for you. You could revise your price (if you can remain competitive), enhance your sales process or try bidding lower and see what results this brings.

The bottom line is that you need to find a happy balance between what you pay for a bid and the profits you can reasonably make.

ok then so bidding varies...the cost you have to pay for the adword depends on what the profit you make..is that correct...

Somewhat. The cost of what you have to bid on Google Adwords depends on what others are willing to bid. To get a prominent position in the sponsored links, you need to outbid everyone else.

The real art of the game is figuring out if you can still make money with your bid. So you keep bidding against your competitors until you feel it isn't profitable anymore. Then, you stop bidding and simply wait for your competitor to bankrupt himself.

so it's not a 'make an offer then wait to see if it is accepted type thing. This is more like bidding on ebay by the sounds of it.