I know there are people who do this, but is it a good plan? Instead of having a website to try to get people to buy affiliate stuff, why not just buy AdWords ads that link directly to the affiliated companies?
The downside is that you have to pay for every sale you make, but the upside is that you're appealing to people who are ready to buy, and funneling them directly to the product, instead of to your site's content.
Ebay lists this as one of the successful business models for their aff program, but I don't see how you can make money with ebay, at .10 per sale. The only real money from ebay is when a user opens a new account, but heck, who doesn't already have an ebay account?
So if I buy ads directing surfers straight to widgets.com, will I be wasting my money?
I have been playing with this for a few months now with some success and a number of break evens or failures. I work on the principle of maybe 1 person making a purchase per hundred clicks. This is the worst case scenario for me. So you need to find a program that will make most profit from minimal click cost. It is quite hard to find those £0.04 keywords these days.
Yes you pay for every sale you make but you also pay for the other 99% of clicks that don't convert to a sale. I have seen a few posts recently where people have cried " help! i just spent a squilllion squid on clicks and only made a tenner back! where did i go wrong?" Don't assume every click will be a sale else you will be skint in 10 minutes flat.
Ska
After the direct-to-merchant changes you no doubt just read about, I created about 100 websites.
The ones I worked the hardest on turned out to be the least profitable in AdWords.
The sites that had the least content and did their best to send the customer on the merchant post haste do the best. Despite their sparse content, I tried to optimize them as much as possible for future consideration in the SERPs.
"Simplicity, carried to an extreme, becomes elegance." -- Jon Franklin
patient2all
Fun stuff.
Yes, it's tricky!
The first two months on AdWords, I lost a little money each month. Slowly, but surely, you start figuring things out. How much to bid, never bid on keywords that are too general, etc.
I looked back at a couple of early paused campaigns of mine and I was a fool! Bidding over a buck on nonsense.
Now, I've got the knack and this is the best decision that I ever made. Said goodbye to ugly Mr. Bossman and do this all day!
I say this despite the fact that it is still a constant battle and I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with Google.
Keep at it, but don't do in full blast at first. Go slow, back off quickly from losing propositions. If an ad doesn't make a profit in a week, it never will.
Hint: Independent programs are often better than the large affiliate networks.
Good luck to all, I see myself in these posts as I was last August.
patient2all
