I'm still a beginner, but I guess two of the most important things for PPC are having a high-profit margin and a high conversion rate (b/c obviously that'll increase the probability of being profitable if you pay for traffic).
If you sell affiliate products however you only get a certain percentage of the profit margin. But maybe there are still opportunities for that kind of business model as so many people aren't educated on adwords & co?
How about selling an e-book using adwords/PPC? Are e-books great products to sell using PPC as they have a profit margin of almost 100%?
Affiliate marketing still works but it is a lot more difficult then it used to be.
Basically you know you need to make more profit than what you spend to get the traffic.
You need to choose the right keywords... long tail are the best as they will cost less.
You need a good conversion page etc. Since you cannot just send them to the sponsor's site if they are already advertising.
It is all about getting a good analytics package and measuring everything. Also work SEO at the same time so you can get some free traffic as well.... but don't use that to lower costs of PPC.
There are only so may subjects that you can cover. SEO, Keywords, List building,
content/copy writing etc,etc,etc,
All these areas of expertise have been covered many times over. Most gurus have
been at it for 4 to 6 years and have well establisher followings.
Unless you can bring something dynamic, new and exciting to the field you are
probably doomed to failure. Affiliate marketing and Adsense is probably the best way to go for some one relatively new to the game. Any way thats my take! KF
[edited by: King_Fisher at 5:49 am (utc) on July 25, 2007]
generally speaking, ebooks are horrid products that under deliver on content, depth, expertise, actionable education, authority, style, tangibility and more.
as an affiliate, the world is yours to sell. why ebooks are prominently on any affs table is beyond me.
profit margin isn't the whole story, the equation includes conversion rate as well.
[edited by: RhinoFish at 2:09 pm (utc) on July 25, 2007]
But yes you can still make money.
heyday
@all:
I wasnt thinking of doing an e-book on SEO, or marketing but on other topics..I can imagine those are extremely hypersaturated.
Also I didnt plan to sell affiliate e-books, but make one myself. Theres actually a topic Im extremely interested in and I really believe that I could put together a great e-book that would overdeliver not underdeliver. I think one shouldnt generalize just because there are many crappy e-books out there doesnt mean that every e-book is crap. If there are great books there can be great e-books too..?
Actually, I think the topic Im so interested in (and would be great to make an e-book for) is a niche: I remember seeing one PPC ad the other day where they sold the e-book for 15$. CPC on adwords to get to the 1-3 position were 20cents last time I checked (I didnt look much into PPC, yet just into how competitive that market is SEO-wise and it seems mildly competitive: most of the homepages that rank in the top10 rank on 700-800 or so links for the main 2 word keyphrase..which gets around 60,000 searches according to wordtracker (according to overture, the adwords tool and kw discovery the traffic volumes look similarly high and it would also make sense that many people search for this).
I think it would be a good idea to check how the competition is doing and look if their PPC ads are designed clever..and how long they've owned that domain for (maybe take a look at this archives website where on can see how websites looked back in the day) in order to see if they're profitable and if I can become better than them...but those are only guesses - are there other ways to check how good my competitors are and especially if theyre profitable in this niche?
Could some of you suggest me what types of products can be marketed successfully as an affiliate using adwords? I know pretty much everything can be marketed profitably doing SEO, but when it comes to PPC Ive always thought it would be a great way to sell an own product if you have one, but probably a not so clever move to try to market affiliate stuff as the ROI would have to be pretty high for you to make a profit and not lose money as you pay all the advertising cost, but only get to keep a fraction of the profit margin....but obviously there are products for which it can be done?
Are those usually very expensive products or can it be done with "normal" products, too if you find a good niche?
THANKS!
[edited by: Makaveli2007 at 12:42 am (utc) on July 26, 2007]
