An Affiliate Marketer from the Ground Up

A Beginner's Action Guide To PPC Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be an exciting, tumultuous and incredibly-profitable strategy of promoting affiliate products. But, the landscape is filled with potential landmines. For every affiliate

marketer who is making thousands of dollars in profit each month, there are several affiliates who are hemorrhaging cash flow while desperately trying to figure out how to make PPC advertising work. Below, you'll discover the step-by-step process to creating and launching a profitable PPC campaign.

Everything Starts With Keyword Research

Every PPC platform (i.e. Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, etc.) uses keywords as the foundation. That is, you select keywords upon which to bid. When someone types those keywords into a search engine, your ad is displayed. That's why every PPC campaign begins with keyword research. There are plenty of keyword tools available. Some are free (for example, Google's keyword tool) and some require a fee (such as WordTracker). Use these tools to create a list of keywords that your potential customers are using to find the solution to their problems.

Writing Ads That Grab Attention

Creating ads that grab attention and persuade people to click is critical to the success of your PPC campaigns. The quickest way to get started is to watch the ads of your competitors. Type your keywords into Google. Study the ads. If certain ads remain for several days, it's likely that they're working well for your competitor. Model their ads. Once your ads begin to draw clicks, start testing to make them more effective.

Creating Landing Pages

While some affiliates send those who click on their ads directly to the merchants they're promoting, you should create landing pages to promote affiliate products. It's a longer-term strategy. But, remember... nobody creates a perfect landing page on the first try. You'll need to test various elements. Change the headline. Use different graphics. Modify the font. Try different calls to action. The more you test, the more effective (and profitable) you can make your landing pages.

Keyword Tracking

The days of slamming tens of thousands of keywords into a PPC campaign are long gone. Today, you have to track the profitability of each keyword. Most affiliate programs give you a "subid" for tracking. The top affiliates routinely track their keywords so they can get rid of those that aren't driving conversions. It's not uncommon to increase the ROI of a PPC campaign by 500% or more by simply eliminating keywords that are attracting clicks (and costing money) but are failing to convert.

Taking Action Slowly

A lot of affiliate marketers jump into PPC advertising without knowing what they're doing. They end up maxing out their credit cards without earning enough commissions to offset the click charges. Be methodical when you're starting out. Focus on keyword research. Become proficient at writing attention-grabbing ads. Create and test your landing pages to identify what works for your market. Finally, track your keywords so you can eliminate the ones that aren't driving conversions. PPC advertising is one of the best strategies for promoting affiliate products. Approach it properly and you can slowly dominate your space.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Pay Per Click Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.