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I keep hearing about people doing this, but I'd think that the "aff" text would reduce CTRs. Any suggestions on effective strategies or how to get started doing this type of thing?
To do PPC affiliate stuff takes a bit of guts. You are looking at investing a significant amount of money and you won't see a pay out for at least 1-2 months.
You also need to devise a system to figure out how much you can pay per click. Too little, and you won't make enough money to make it worth while... Too much, and you just end up loseing money.
And YES, you MUST have the term aff in either G or OV campaigns - if you don't and they find out (and they DO check, believe me) they will disable your campaigns and if the merchant gets wind of it, they may well choose not to pay you.
As as to the earlier comments, with the exception of hannamyluv (hello again :)) you're wrong, sorry guys.
Using the tools they give you figure out how many clicks you will get per day and how much it will cost you. Then figure out what your conversion rate will have to be for you to break even.
Example:
You pay $0.50 per click and you are estimated to get 100 clicks per day ($0.50 x 100 = $50)
A pricepoint is $75 with a 10% payout will give you $7.50 per unit. So you will have to sell 7 units per day to cover expenses. So that's a 7% conversion rate.
Floating the mone can really be a killer. If you spend $50 a day in August your credit card bill will be $1550. You probabaly won't get the commission until October, so make sure you can float the money. Paying intrest will take a bite out of your profits.
Will CJ or other networks come down on me for using their links in PPC engines
With networks like CJ that use tracking images to provide impression statistics, using their links in PPC engines will show x clicks but zero impressions.
This may or may not cause an advertiser inquiry about your methods (depends on the advertiser), but the networks generally don't care.
Does OV allow you to send directly to aff landing pages? My understanding was they do not?
My understanding was they do not?
Technically... No, OV says they don't (last I checked anyway. It's been awhile.). But, I have seen plenty of links slip through the cracks.
Especially for those high cost keywords, you will need to pay for at least $0.80++ for inclusion to get clicks.
I don't pay more than 20cts per click - usually much less. Need to have a huge margin for errors, fraudulent clicks, etc.
With the smaller PPCs, you can get a lot cheaper clicks, although they don't come in large quantities.
On the issue of using PPC direct to merchant site, do you use the merchant's tracking codes? If so, then the merchant will know which are the best converting keywords. Its like giving them gold for free!
Not sure how a 3rd party tracking software works in this case. Anyone care to share? Michael?
I don't pay more than 20cts per click
Then you are missing the boat. As I said, PPC affilate takes a bit of guts. I would NOT suggest that you attempt it on a large scale unless you are very good at PPC. That means you know all about misspellings, ROI, tail keywords and all the fun quirky stuff that goes along with PPC.
If you really want to try this, spend a month or so (at least) with Shak and the gang in the adwords forum or tigger and friends in the OV forum. Then start out small. One merchant, a few products. Think back to high school algebra and figure out a formula for how much you can pay per click. Set up an excel spreadsheet to track everything.
Build it from there.
BTW
Its like giving them gold for free!
You give merchants WAY too much credit.
But I find it hard to bid high for keywords - I know my risk threshold. Actually there are thousands of keywords one can bid (and make money) well below 20cts a click. You just got to dig deeper...
I read about a very successful guy who bid just the minumum allowed in PPC engines and still make tons of money. His method is to bid for thousands of keywords with weird combinations.
Obviously, I'm his fan ;)
Can only afford $150 for the month? Then set your daily limit to $5/day. Depending on how competative the niche is, bid lower than average just to get a feel. Sure, it may take you the whole month to see if a product converts well enough that you make a profit, but so what? You're still learning! If you do make a profit, spend the time to increase the number of keywords you're using to 1000, or even 3000 keywords. And yes, it is possible to come up with that many keywords when you include misspellings, synonyms, words clumped together, locality etcetera.
And no, you are not missing out on the boat when you only bid 20 cents per click...even in the most competative fields...how do I know? Because I do it! Spend your time finding thousands of targetted keywords and you'll be surprised how many clicks you'll get per day on competative terms for a fraction of what others are paying. And we're talking about converting keywords. What is your best friend? Most other people are too lazy to do the groundwork to find those hundreds of keywords that you're bidding on that they don't even know exist!
So yes, it is still possible to kick butt selling aff. stuff using PPC if you're willing to put in the work. Just my thoughts.
Dave.
[edit] Eyeinthesky...you beat me to it! :) [/edit]
Anyway, there is no one correct way to do things. I do it "My Way" because I feel most comfortable with it. Frank Sinatra would have loved this thread ...
tail keywords
What are tail keywords?
What are tail keywords?
KeyWords with tails on them, obviously.
No seriously... I would like to know too.
All the Best,
C.K.
If merchants have phone numbers prominently displayed on their sites and no way to tie those sales back to affiliates, ya think twice about it if you're building sites and getting the traffic for "free" and almost never do it if you are paying for every click.
It takes lots of research, testing & creative thinking but if you really work at it, it's possible to drive $500,000 to $1,000,000 in sales over the course of a year and take home a nice chunk of that.
I've doing Adwords for more than 6 months and OV, Findwhat & Goclick for about 1 month
Yeah, well, I've been doing it for close to 2 1/2 years, so I suppose I am just ancient to this. ;)
I know I never said that you had to go big at first, I said the opposite. I started doing adwords and OV for another company (and moved on to my own), but the formula is always the same. When I started out with adwords, the company I worked for was skeptical. It was a relatively new advertising medium. They gave me a budget of $50 and said whatever I made, I could build in as new ads. That company now spends $10K+ a month on adwords alone. Anybody can do that. Indiviual, small business, big company. One merchant, a few products, build from there.
Can you make it with minimum bids? 2 years ago, oh yeah, easy to do. Today... lots harder. If you are not figuring out how much you can afford to spend per click, you are not making as much as you could. That is plain and simple. There are no paying KWs left at minimum, unless you understand the finer points of misspellings and tail KWs. But why waste your time even setting up an ad at minimum when you could be making much more.
Which bring me to tail KWs. I use that term, those others may havea different word for it. Tail KWs are the ones that may only get a dozen searches a month (roughly). They are the "tail end" of the KW spectrum. For example. One word search would be "widgets" for 15000 searches. A phrase KW might be "widgets for kids" for 200 searches. A tail KW might be "widgets for kids with everything" for 10 searches. Most people say, well a broad match on "widget" will catch those, so why bother. Heck even a phrase match of "widgets for kids" will catch that, so why bother. But on the broad match, you may get tossed out of the action b/c you didn't get enough clicks. You won't show up for anything. Same could happen on the phrase. You build a campaign all the way out to the tail KWs so that even if you main KW gets shut down, you are still showing up for as much as possible. Tail and phrase KWs also siphon off some of the searches so your one words don't shut down as fast.
Don't use CJ merchants. Seriously.
With all the ebooks that have been out in the last year or two, everyone in the world is PPCAMing through CJ merchants. Instead, try smaller networks, or sign up DIRECTLY with affiliates. I guarantee you less competition, cheaper KWs, and more profit :)
I think as long as you do proper KeyWord research, you should be fine. I use Word Tracker, google search suggestion, and the overture one. If you think of any that these tools haven't found, then by all means try them out.
I also triple match everyone of my KeyWords.
hannamyluv, I would like to ask a question:
Do you play around with KeyWords that meet a certain impression threshold? Like if a KeyWord has a bunch of impressions and has either a low CTR, low ad position, etc, will you set it up in a seperate AdGroup and play around with it?
Thoughts?
C.K.
I think you could be right that min bids don't work so well now. But I'll stick with my 20cts for now until I can stomach more risk.
I think you hit on the most important of all concepts. How much are your visitors worth? You're right in saying that is vital information if you are to be successful at PPC promoting your affiliate products.
I have a question though. Let's say you determined the value for each and every visitor to be 25 cents. How much would you undercut that when bidding in order to secure a profit? Would you bid 24 cents, 20 cents, 15 cents? It gets a little difficult the lower you bid because you will most certainly not get as much click volume as if you bid higher.
I think another big factor is: How much of your traffic is free and how much is paid for? If one third of your traffic is paid for and the other two thirds is free, then you can afford to bid 3 times the amount you make per visitor and still break even. There are a lot of variables!
We can all agree that if done properly and worked hard on, ppc can still be very profitable when it comes to affiliate programs.
Dave.
will you set it up in a seperate AdGroup and play around with it?
I, personally, don't. Just because I have gotten to the point that I know what works and what doesn't. But, if you are just starting out or if you feel that perhaps you are not as knowledgeable as you should be, it is a useful way to examine your results and learn how the KWs work.
How much would you undercut that when bidding in order to secure a profit?
That's really up to the individual. I come from a direct marketing background so my suggestion would be test, test, test. If I told you anymore than that, I would have to post my own personal PPC formula, and I am not doing that. ;)
How much of your traffic is free and how much is paid for?
Now here, you are talking about something different than we are. We are talking about direct to the merchant, while you are talking clicks via a 3rd party site. You are talking about a concept that is loosely related to a concept called Life Time Value in direct marketing. But I have to say, I don't apply it in PPC. You pay for what your PPC visitors can bring, not what all your visitors can bring.
But at this point, I have to tell you all (again). These are questions that you should be posting in the adwords and OV forums. If nothing else, even if you don't want to do PPC, learning how PPC marketing works (especially with the KWs) can help you develop regular affiliate sites to a razor sharp edge.
