Making Money with PPC

Old Seo guy needs help for ppc affiliate marketing

[mallinger]

I have built successful affiliate sites in very competitive industries for a couple of years and made a good living with it. Recently I decided to explore other ways to make money on the net. I realised that times had changed and I needed to learn more about ppc marketing. I am a bit ashamed to admit it but I have completly ingnored ppc marketing because I was doing well with SEO. When I started I thought it wouldn't too complicated because already knew a lot about traffic and I knew that making money on the net was possible. After a lot of (unsuccessful)test campaigns and advertising dollars spent. I feel that It is very difficult to get a positive ROI and if i got it wouldn't get enough volume to make any real money. I am not sure If I could make $100 a month, even if I would be working very very hard. I know "how to think about traffic" when I build SEO affiliate sites but it seems that my mental model doesn't work for PPC marketing. I wondering if it is much harder or impossible(in competitive industries) to make a positive ROI because all merchants can outbid affiliates easily? I know that there many big affiliates in competitive areas that do well, but I am not even getting a ROI in less competitive areas.

It would be interesting if you could share your mental models that you use when you do ppc affiliate marketing. I am not asking for your secrets but I am searching for a basic mental model for starting and getting a positive ROI in order to continue with my work in his area.

So what do you think? Is it just harder to make money with ppc as an affiliate than traditional seo? Are there any successful ppc affiliates out there? Where is money to be made? How do you get the ROI and the volume to make 1k a month? My ads get almost no impressions when they have a positive ROI because the CPC is so low, and the ads that get clicks are just too expensive to get a ROI. I have tried different industries(probably not the right ones) and had no success. I know where the money is in SEO but I am not sure how to choose the right industries for PPC. My experience with miva and kanoodle was really awful and will stay away from the small ppc's forever but I am still not able to make money with overture and google. I am staying away from ebook advice because a long time ago I realised that most of them are just hype and no real help. I think that webmasterworld is still the best webmaster resource on the web and it's free :)

[awardmasters]

"Buy low - Sell High"

This is both the blessing and the curse. Learn how to do it in your niche and you can make money. If you cannot do it, you need to find a different market.

For the sake of those that don't follow what I mean. Simply stated - if you pay much for traffic, you are going to need a very, very high conversion ratio, and/or a very high percentage of the affiliate product sales to be successful.

[skibum]

Buy cheap traffic & send it to merchants with high average order values. Pick keywords that indicate people are ready to buy and link to specific product pages if you are going direct to the merchant.

If you are building your own sites, map the keyword match types to where you put send people to you site.

If you have an affiliate site showcasing furniture and you buy the keyword furniture, put it on exact match and link to the broadest page you have that has category links to all kinds of furniture. If you put it on broad match, you'll have people clicking on the ad who know more specifically what they want and may not find it on a general page.

Let say you have a page with all kind of Herman Miller chairs, don't buy the keyword Herman Miller (to general), buy Herman Miller Chairs, Herman Miller Office Chairs and link to the main page, buy the specific models and send that traffic to the individual model pages.

Buy thousands of keywords that don't show any seach volume on Overture and those that Google shows insuffient search volume to make projections for and put those on exact match.

[mallinger]

Thanks for the tips. After reading your reply I changed my strategy. I am still not making any money but I am doing a bit better now. I guess it's very difficult in these days to make money with adwords. It seems that you have to find a completly untapped market to have a chance as an affiliate. For me it's currently impossible to suceed in a competitive market as an small affiliate. What do you think? Would be nice to hear if there are successful affiliates out there and in which industries they are...

[skibum]

It can be done. Most of the time, an idea just hits me in the middle of the night, most don't work but some go for years without anyone else discovering them.

Personals have done well for years, though that is declining due to competition lately, flowers/gardening campaigns have been running small but profitably for years.

There are some others too but don't want to give those away.

Some high ticket items sell really well online and if you can find the right services (like a personals subscription) that will in some cases pay out 75% of the initial signup with come volume there is money to be made.