.png)
Affiliate Marketing Through PPC Campaigns
June 26, 2008
Jeff from BuzzMyBlog asked me some very good questions about affiliate marketing through PPC campaigns on networks such as Google AdWords, when I left a comment on his blog with some tips on this form of affiliate marketing.
Jeff Asked,
“That is a great idea that I haven’t mentioned before - buy PPC ads directly to the affiliate site. I guess the trick there is to either:
1. Spend less on the click than a lead pays
2. Make sure the conversion rate is high enough on a sale to cover the cost of the ad.I guess the real “art” is finding the profitable campaigns along with the affordable PPC campaigns, huh? I tried it a few times and ended up spending more on the PPC campaign than I earned with the affiliate program.”
You nailed it Jeff, that is exactly the art in more general terms. That is exactly what you need to do, but it’s a bit more of technical process.
Here are my tips for pure success with affiliate marketing and PPC campaigns…
When you look for a product to promote, look at the “pitch” or “landing” page. See how well optimized it is. You can do this with a website analyzer tool (with big brand name sites you won’t need to worry about this).
You can use a really good one for free here…
If you’re confused as to how to understand the stats, just scroll down the page till you see the green, yellow, and red highlighted sentences. This tool tells you what’s wrong, how and what you need to do to fix it. All green means the site is perfectly optimized; obviously we are promoting a site that’s not ours, so if it’s not up to par we will move on.
Why Does It Need To Be Well Optimized?
Well if the site you’re entering into your ad in your campaign isn’t a well optimized landing page, then even if you pay top dollar for the keyword, your ad will rank in a lower position because of a bad landing page. If the landing page is excellent, then you actually end up paying less for the very same keyword, and rank in a higher position all at the same time (based on Google AdWords).
When you find the ideal “landing” page you can check on how well the product itself does. There are two ways I do this…
a.) Contacting the affiliate managers directly, and explaining to them that you’re interested in seeing
their reports on the performance of the product and/or website you’re trying to promote. This
would include affiliate sales, conversion rates, bounce rate, and a couple other things.
I suggest asking for a full report.
b.) The only other way I could possibly get these reports to my knowledge is by belonging to
affiliate networks like AzoogleAds. The reason I say this is because you get your own
personal affiliate manager, and the affiliate manager provides you with a monthly report on all
the top programs for the month - including all the detailed stats you need.
You’re Just Getting Started
You’re yet to decide if your going to promote this program. After everything above is good to go 100 percent, now I begin to do a little keyword research. I start to narrow down the keywords that describe the product I’m promoting best.
Using the Google Keyword Tool, I enter my selected keywords to see how often they’re searched for, average etc, and most importantly how much competition the top searched for keywords have.
After I’ve found out whether or not the keywords are worthy of bringing plenty traffic, my next move is to find out what these keywords cost. If you have an AdWords account you can see exactly how much your keywords will cost you from the AdWords platform, they have a keyword estimator that is very helpful.
From the estimator I can find what a typical site will need to pay for a keyword to rank “OK”. You want to try and promote sites with excellent landing pages so you can bid well below what the estimator suggests, and still rank high on the first page of the sponsored listings - but remember it’s not just a great landing page, you must also find a program that has all of the qualities I’m describing in this post.
Now We Do A Little Bit of Simple Math
This is where what Jeff mentioned comes in. Now that we have the basic statistics for the affiliate product, its landing page, how popular the keywords are, their cost, and how much competition, we can now compare campaign cost to affiliate product conversion rates and revenue. If you can diagnose this properly you will be able to determine if you will get a return on your investment.
Here is what to look for…
a.) What % commission does the product being promoted pay out.
b.) What is the conversion rate for the product being promoted.
c.)How much per click will you actually have to pay. (cost of your keywords)
d.)How many clicks in total (cost of entire campaign) do you need so that according to the conversion rate, there is a decent return on investment.
All you should be keeping in mind is overall cost of campaign to overall potential revenue according to the sites statistics and conversion rates. Once you have these two very important numbers in your hand (assuming you did the math correctly), you simply subtract and see if the profit is worth it to you. If there is no profit, or not enough, then you should move on and continue your search for the right affiliate program.
Since Jeff asked me and I happen to like his blog so much, I am going to throw in a bonus that will surely double the current conversion rate of any affiliate program.
Demographics - This gorgeous 4 syllable word is like music to my ears. This is very simple guys and I’m going to make it quick… This site Quantcast is godly. All you do is type in the URL of the site in the search bar and it gives you very detailed stats about the traffic that comes to that site.
These are just a few things Quantcast enlightens you with.
- Gender
- Age
- Household Income
- Ethnicity
- Monthly, daily, traffic
- Geographic
And much more. A lot more.
What’s the point of all of this “demo” stuff?
Well if you’re using AdWords and a few other PPC networks with the demographic feature, you can analyze the product you are promoting, and find out who the majority of people that go there and convert are. Then you can go back to your AdWords account and plug all this in to the demographic section, and only display your ads to the people who are more likely to convert. Saving you a ton of clicks, and boosting your conversion rate even higher then it is because of the demographic variable.
Jeff, I hope this helps answer your question and gets you on your way to making some affiliate money through PPC campaigns.
I would love to hear everyone else’s experience with affiliate marketing through PPC campaigns, enlighten me in the comment section 
Hey Luis! Thanks for the excellent post and the great advice! I am sure this will help many people who are just getting started!
Anytime Jeff, I am glad I can be of some help.
Hey Luis…I just stumbled across this in the AdWords help.
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47166&ctx=sibling
Looks like Google does not allow you to use this technique!
Hey Jeff, I checked out the AdWords support page above…
This is what I found
“Redirect URLs: Ads that contain URLs that automatically redirect to the parent company.
Bridge Pages: Ads for web pages that act as an intermediary, whose sole purpose is to link or redirect traffic to the parent company.
Framing: Ads for web pages that replicate the look and feel of a parent site. Your site should not mirror (be similar or nearly identical in appearance to) your parent company’s or any other advertiser’s site.”
Redirect URL - is simply getting a domain, going to the forwarder in your cpanel, entering you affiliate link, and then promoting the forwarded domain in the ad and not the actual affiliate link.
Bridge pages - Also known as “mirror” sites, are sites with an obvious link for you to click on and be taken to the real site. If a site is badly optimized, people will make a landing page that is optimized. They then enter the optimized site as the URL in the ad, and when people click-through to the site, they stumble upon a link or banner, something that will make them click and be taken to the real site that wasn’t optimized enough to be used in the ad, because it would rank low in the sponsored listings. This is “cheating” for ranks in the sponsored listings.
Frame or “mirror” sites are when you build a site that mimics the look of the real site you are trying to promote, almost identical if you will, then enter it’s URL into the ad as opposed to the affiliate link.
I don’t describe any of this in this post.
So I must ask…
Are you simply pointing out these issues* because they are useful, or because you believe it was described in the post?
Your entire posts talks about picking an optimized landing page. The paragraph in your comment about Bridge Pages practically describes your entire post.
Bridge pages and landing pages are the same thing. Google doesn’t allow you to buy AdWords for them.
I can see where the confusion comes in.
Actually “Bridge Pages” and landing pages are not the same thing. A landing page is simply where the ad takes you. Your website BuzzMyBlog is a landing page. When you click on a URL and it takes you to a website, the page you “land” on is a landing page. A “Bridge Page” is created for the sole purpose of redirecting traffic to the actual site you want consumers to purchase from.
Where in my post do I state this Jeff?
http://www.buzzmyblog.com
Click on that link above, and where you land is a landing page.
Jeff, in my post it clearly states that you want to look for programs whose landing pages are already optimized. I never ever stated anything about CREATING landing pages WHATSOEVER, which is what the affiliate policy in Google AdWords is saying.
You also said that my comment about “Bridge Pages” is exactly what my post describes. This is incorrect, if you read correctly it states “Bridge” or “mirror” pages play a middle man to the actual site with your affiliate link, which is what the Google policy actually says. And this is described no where in my post.
Ad—>”Bridge page”–> actual site with affiliate link.
I simply state to look for affiliate programs whose landing pages are already optimized.
Ad—>actual site with affiliate link.
Never did I say to create one or anything that violates the AdWords policy. I even gave you a website analyzer to check landing pages to see how well optimized they are. How does this have anything to do with CREATING a landing page for sponsored list ranking? - Which is what “Bridge Pages” actually are.
Are you sure you’re reading the policy correctly?
I never state anything about creating “Bridge Pages”, and I ask you to please read carefully or consult an expert for a second opinion. I can assure you that what’s in my post is completely acceptable by Google AdWords.
You also state…”Bridge pages and landing pages are the same thing. Google doesn’t allow you to buy AdWords for them.”
How can the part of “landing pages” and them not being allowed by Google make any sense when there is a Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines support page? Which you can find here…
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46675&ctx=sibling
Hey Luis. I apologize for any misunderstanding.
I guess I thought your post was about buying PPC ads from AdWords that go directly to affiliate links. I thought this from the original comment you left on my blog that inspired this post. You said:
“Running your affiliate links through PPC campaigns with networks like Google AdWords and BidVertiser works best in my opinion…unaware consumers think they clicked directly to the site. They have no knowledge of an “affiliate re-direct”.
The way I interpret Google’s policy, this is a direct violation.
Again, if this is not what your post is about, I apologize for the misunderstanding.
Jeff,
No need to apologize, looking at the quote you just put up I realized I need to apologize. That quote is correct and it was my mistake on the “re-direct” part of that comment. I mistakenly said re-direct and that a consumer can be unaware because of the display URL, not an actual URL that re-directs, which I didn’t mention.
However I wasn’t referring to the violation in Google AdWords policy in the comment nor the post.
I sincerely apologize for the confusion caused by my poorly thought out comment Jeff.
Kind Regards, Luis Gross
Research and experimenting the different strategies for online marketing is important and could help a lot. There are lots of references that are available online for free and you don’t have to spend a lot just to get those useful strategies.
I read similar article also named te Marketing Through PPC Campaigns | Make Money Online, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me
I came across your site while I did a search on Google for affiliate marketing scams and your article on te Marketing Through PPC Campaigns | Make Money Online was informative.
@Market - Yes. Research and experimenting is what ultimately pays off and can make you very successful. The Internet is full of information and it’s true: you can find what you need for free if you look hard enough.
@Daniel - Thank you. I’m glad it was of some use to you.
@Tony - Thanks. I hope you and Daniel stop by again!