How Does CJ Work?

and other questions

[zmroberts]

I have created one aff site (reviews of products) but it is very specific to a product and my links are directly to a merchant site. I don't have anything like CJ in between. Here are some question I have.

1. If you sign up with CJ, do they have some sort of Pay Per Click system that you have to use or can you still just do SEO with your sites?

2. Does CJ do any Pay Per Click stuff? If not... what are good PPC sources to join up with?

3. What is the advantage of using CJ over just finding merchants that will work with you directly?

4. Why does CJ make you pay so much for a datafeed?

5. Do you think when you are just starting a site it is a good idea to do PPC to get traffic going as opposed to waiting a couple weeks or months for search engines to start picking your stuff up?

Thanks for any info!

[ska_demon]

1. If you sign up with CJ, do they have some sort of Pay Per Click system that you have to use or can you still just do SEO with your sites?
No but they do have a wide range of creatives that you can use

2. Does CJ do any Pay Per Click stuff? If not... what are good PPC sources to join up with?
They do have one or two small PPC merchants but maybe you are looking for something along the lines of adsense

3. What is the advantage of using CJ over just finding merchants that will work with you directly?
There is no advantage really. It is generally better to work directly with the merchants as long as they prove to be trustworthy and have a decent affiliate tracking system

4. Why does CJ make you pay so much for a datafeed?
Because they are greedy ;oP

5. Do you think when you are just starting a site it is a good idea to do PPC to get traffic going as opposed to waiting a couple weeks or months for search engines to start picking your stuff up?
Sure, a lot of people do this to jump start their campaigns or even to test new campaigns

Ska

[zmroberts]

If you want to generate more traffic to a site by paying per click... you sign up for "adwords", not adsense right? Do websites that run adsense ads also sign up for adwords campaigns? Is adwords the cheapest way to get traffic besides seo?

thanks

[jeep98]

Yes, you would sign up for Adwords to promote your site. You do not have to sign up for both. Adwords can be cheap or expensive, it all depends upon which keywords you go after. If you target the most popular words in your industry, you can blow your budget pretty fast. "Tail" terms will bring in less volume, but will be significantly cheaper.

[zmroberts]

so I guess I just sign up for adwords and how do I find out which keywords are cheap and which are expenseive... I suppose its all just in there somewhere after you sign up. Do the adds for my site get placed only on search engines or are the also placed on other web sites like adsesnse ads?

[zmroberts]

ok I just signed up for adwords for my first aff site. it's pretty cool. I am running a product review site and here is a question... is it better to bid on ads for specific product keywords and direct the clicks to my homepage or bid on specific product keywords and direct the clicks to the specific product pages. I ahve a lot of product pages and that would take forever to do it that way I think.

[jeep98]

Think mktg 101...the more targeted your landing page is, the more likely it is that the user will complete your desired action. For example, let's say you're searching for a specific book in Google. You see an Adwords ad for the exact book at Amazon. You click on the Amazon ad and it drops you on their homepage where you have to search for the book all over again. Do you think more people will buy the book if you drop them on the homepage or send them directly to the specific book page? Put yourself in the shoes of your users.

[zmroberts]

good point