Recap of Running a PPC Affiliate Campaign (Long)

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PSU4Life

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I made a summary of Chrislingle's "Let's learn to run and affiliate campaign" around xmas time and posted it. Figured I should post it again since Chrislingle's input in it has been deleted and it should be a big help to newbies trying PPC for the 1st time.

Finding the right keywords:
You want “Buy Keywords”
chrislingle:
Keywords are very specific, product name and then if practical something more general but at a much lower bid.

So, I would like to "brainstorm" buy keywords, lets do general keywords starting with buy xxxxx. Be specific if you want, buy left handed widgets. I would say targeting the right keywords and pre qualifying the person clicking on your ad is about 60% of a successful aff ppc campaign.


Jdog:
XXXX sale
shop xxxx
xxxx storeGet
Before you buy XXX, try our XXX.
And if the item has a free trial, throw that in there. free trial and risk free have been doing ok for me.

Moon54
Buy Keywords:
buy natural xxxxx
buy xxxxx supplies
buy xxxxx treatment
buy discount xxxxx
buy xxxxx product
buy xxxxx care
buy xxxxx brand
buy xxxxx cheap
buy cheap xxxxx
buy xxxxx secrets
buy xxxxx online
buy xxxxx medication
buy xxxxx drugs
buy xxxxx sale
buy xxxxx today
buy xxxxx wholesale
buy xxxxx direct
buy xxxxx now
buying xxxxx
purchase xxxxx
Mill:
Purchase, Low Cost, Cheap, Discount, Buy, Reduced


You can really rock with model numbers and variations of the brand. say Lexmark HD70

Reduced Lexmark HD70
Purchase Lexmark HD70 Cheap
Buy Discounted Lexmark HD70


you can literally take 1 product and make thousands of variations of that one kw. Which you want to add to 1 adgroup with 2-3 ad copies. The next model number 1 adgroup 2-3 ad variations.


Drusam:
Broad Generic Keywords are bad!
Ok I just looked at my reports for my MSN adcenter keywords and I realized that all of my shit traffic is coming from broad generic keywords. I accumulated a few hundred clicks that were not buyers at all!!!


You have to single out the "just looking" prospects from the "I want it right now!" prospects. Buying keywords...

Adcopy

Chrislingle:
ok, we all understand that keywords can not be general? as targeted as you can. Break keywords up into ad groups and write 2 ads per group, get rid of the low performer and then right another ad until you have your gains are minimal - but what makes a good affiliate ad? for specific products I like putting the product and price in the ad. If you are selling a Sony Vaio xxxx laptop and you say

Sony Vaio XXXX
Fantastic laptop for$xxxx
free shipping or $xx off

or something to that effect you are going to discourage more browsers and lookyloos! Any one want to expand? also your display url should be product related, I have found it to help. There is alot more to writing ads but this is the basic idea...

RobTid:
Another thing that works well with Google adwords is to add some type of proof to the claim.

"As seen on 60 minutes."
"Mike Tyson's recommended boxing gloves"
"US Government's preferred supplier"

Remember, that if you can maintain a good CTR on your ads, your adwords will become cheaper / go up the ranking over time (as the quality score kicks in)

Where to buy traffic and what to avoid
chrislingle:
AVOID the 2nd and 3rd tier engines! my 3 rank as follows, adword x10, adcenter, yahoo as far as ROI goes!

Engaged
You should track every keyword when doing affiliate campaigns.

Landing Page Examples
chrislingle:
Someone posted about the wolf and his observation that having to put up links on an affiliate landing page kill sales. I have to agree and it is a big issue. This should be discussed. My solution that I am testing is to just make pages about 1 product. (look at 2nd to last example below for an example.) Also look at the last 2 sites. They are both for the same product but 1 is a mulit page deal the other 1 page. The 1 page site is for people who are buying, the multi page site is for people who are looking for the type of software.

Here are some links to pages, none mine all info given out by the owners. Not sure how they would do after the quality score so -
New Offers from Telewest - Broadband, Digital TV and Phone
Spyware - how to protect your PC
Dating Site Critic
Christmas Gifts - Gift Baskets - Gifts for all Occasions
Free Budgeting Software - Manage Your Personal Budget
Revolutionary Online Budgeting Program

Don't ask about stats and who owns etc.

big byte:
The landing page can help you to drive a visitor to right product. Actually your ad should already do this. Example: not every ringtone provider supports every phone and carrier. On your landing page you can have links to different programs for different providers and so weed out issues sending a Verizon customer to a ringtone offer that does not support Verizon. But in general - your ad should already take care of that ..

Landing pages/New Google Algo
pocket rockets:
Google slap video:
Jim and Perry Slap Google

Kentster:
Forum post about Google Quality Score for Adwords
http://forum.keywordsanalyzer.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=203

chrislingle:
If you are using adwords you are going to have a hard time going direct. Page structure is different every time. It depends on who I am targeting. If I am after someone who is comparing products or knows they need to buy product x but not sure witch one, I am looking at making an information site. I also have organic search in mind when creating most sites. The new google algo's should have an affect on the quality of the site you are producing. If I am targeting a buyer I make the product I am selling 1 page but as part of a complete site.
From my personal experience, the more complete site you make the better your ROI.
as to how I determine witch what to do, I try to cover all bases but I don't worry about it. I work on something and put it up, if it works great, if not I change it. If I see alot of traffic in the niche I am willing to spend some money to get it right

chrislingle:
make my sites more seo friendly. I want the free traffic so I might as well build out that way. But think like a big company. If amazon is doing a ppc campaign for product x they send you to product x on there site. product x is 1 page because they are targeting "buyers" now if you are targeting people who are comparing products you might want to make a multiple page site on just 1 product you have in that niche and sell the shit out of it. That should help with the new google algo. the whole point is google says they want "quality" so give it to them.

chrislingle:
according to the information that is currently available yes, linking directly to the offer is bad in the sense that google picks up on it and affects your quality score raising your prices. how that will play out I don't know.

Andrew:
From my own testing and talking to others, the new google algo is doing a lot of things. They are claiming its quality, but as shoemoney posted, they are trying to squeeze out your profit margins. Google is looking very closely at external linking to affilaite networks like azoogle (some are saying to cloak, definately could get you booted from adwords)

Continued in next post:
 
Last edited:


Single page or Complete site
Avalanche:
The gist of it is that unless you are a seriously good copywriter, the user is going to have questions that one page wouldn't answer well. Plus, some people look in the scroll bar and say, "Ugh a long copy page - I'm outta here."

People use the Internet as a research tool first, vehicle for commerce second.

What you do is create a small niche site where each page covers one aspect of the product. They end up pulling some organic searches as well if you do it right.

Yes, it requires more work than arbi... but not really - it's just a different kind of work. For example, I have a site that is pretty darn ugly but still pulls about $500/month on not much traffic. Sure you can't retire on that, but it goes on autopilot. How many of those sites does one need to put together as compared to arbi sites?

Chrislingle:
Recap
Ok so as a recap for what we have done so far. We have discussed the difference in browse, compare and buy keywords. For affiliate marketing browse keywords are no good. A browse word being very general. A compare word can have great results, these words are more specific. (browse word being; laptop, a compare word being dell laptop) How you set up a page for a browse keyword can have a big effect on your success.

There was also discussion on page set up. Some great advice with links to various points of view. I would say that current evidence says if you set your site up more like a major store like amazon etc. but not nearly as big you don't run into the adwords algo mess. The Perry video although boring is good. If you have not read his book you are missing out. There are some good tools out like seobooks that will provide you with many keyword variations if you just input the words.

Page design - does ugly sell? 1 column, 2 or 3? how much does page design help sales? What type of site works best for ppc? If you do a content site and send ppc campaigns to specific offers how well does this work? Do you have the leak problem were people go clicking all over the site?

Choosing a product or service to sell: this is the toughest question and we touched on it alittle before but there are some things that can be done to increase your results.
1. sell stuff you see advertised (cap. pig)
2. sell stuff that has high search volume
(don't ignore the low search volume stuff there is money to be made there, I tend to look for things that have a minimum 100 searches a month at yahoo.)
3. sell free offers, leads and other items that are not dependent on a sale.
this market is big with financial services
4. do you know something about the product?
5. how are other affiliates doing with the product?
Any other ideas?

Finding affiliate programs
Rob TID
Type "affiliate network" into google and see what comes up.

If you want to promote somthing specific, type in into google "+ affiliate" - eg: "travel insurance + affiliate" without the

Its all about Selling
Chrislingle:
mason and anyone else who thinks affiliate marketing is tough to learn. It is not tough to learn it just takes more work than arbitrage. YOu can't just scrape some content, throw up a page and throw 10,000 keywords at the page. Affiliate marketing is SALES! if you are not a sales man you are going to have a hard time. If you can't put yourself in the position of the person viewing your site you will suck at affiliate marketing. If you try and find a short cut and "automate" any part of the process you are not going to be successful. Learn something about sales copy, what do you need to do to get people to buy from you? It is not easy but it is not very hard either. The thing is like arbitrage, do it once and create a formula that works, then just repeat. It takes research and alittle product knowledge. don't iframe anymore, I used to frame some of my 1 page lead gen offers and they worked fine but with the new quality scores it is tough. You should also think about building your pages and sites for organic search since you have to create a site anyway!

Chrislingle:
ok, jdog, so were in that do you see the Navigation? are they in any way telling the customer what to do? I don't mean you should say "hey dumbass, buy my hoodia cause you are fat, click this button!" but that is getting closer in setup but the words are not giving you a reason to buy hoodia!
Don't try and hide the fact that you are selling something.
jdog, I don't think I am saying that, but I think you are seeing that to be successful at this, you have to SELL, I think that is what separates the men from the boys! learn to write sales copy and market a product and you will not be able to count your conversions they will come in so fast.

smaxor - this is about affiliate marketing not arbitrage! you can think it is ok to do whatever you want. I don't care. If you are talking about aff sorry but you are 100% wrong! There is a huge conversion increase when you actually think about who you are targeting. There is a huge conversion increase when you take the time to SELL your customer on the product. There are ways to sell that work better than others. we are talking about the better ways to sell and market a product.
If you are talking about arbitrage go to the other sticky thread!

chrislingle:
I am saying you can't sell meat to a vegetarian! just throwing anything up or relying on what the network or offer gives you is not enough for great results. There is good sales copy online but it is not easy to find. The 1 page wonders that are well thought out do very well. There is good reasoning behind doing long sales copy like that. you might think they look cheap, don't like them etc. but if you take the principles used in writing the good 1 page wonders your sales have to go up!

Chrislingle:
Conversion rates/Selling

So, there is alot of talk about cloaking and redirects etc. I do some of that but find that it does not convert as well. Why cloak or redirect at a 5% conversion when I can presell and get 10%+?
Remember we are talking about affiliate MARKETING, it is your job to SELL the product. I have said this many times but it is TRUE - if you are going to do a site you might as well make it for PPC and organic traffic. If you are going to sell something there are sales and marketing rules that you should follow. Do any of you use AIDA (Attention Interest Desire Action)? I read a great book a while ago called "does your marketing sell" it talked about NEW AIDA -
The N stands for Navigation - not link structure, but right away telling your customer what to do and think about! The person looking at your page has other things to do and think about so you have to get them to see the problem and get them excited about the solution in no time flat.
If you are doing any presale what is the first question you ask yourself when thinking about the customer?
The first thing you should think about when getting into your customers head is "what is this about" and "how much time and effort is this going to take" (remember you are playing the customer here) YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE YOUR CUSTOMER KNOWS WHAT IS EXPECTED OF THEM FROM THE SECOND YOUR PAGE


Things to keep in mind:
Chrislingle:
Break even point is 2% conversion max

Don't run anything straight to the aff page anymore

Interesting Idea/When to stop campaign
Morongel:
Clicking on own add and when to end campagian

Does anyone think its worth it to click your own ad when you set up your adword campaign? I have done this a few times to help it get a higher CTR so it gets good position at first, I find that i get a sale cheap in the first hour then the sales/conversions kind of level off.

I am no expert in search, i play around for a better understanding of it.

i would suggest the following:

How much to spend before you turn off the campaign? the value of 2 conversions. So if you get paid $10 for the conversion don't spend more than $20. And at the $10 mark tweak the ad/bid/keywords to weed out the crap and increase the likelihood of hitting a conversion before you blow through the second half of your budget. After that i usually move on to something else if no conversion is had, if i get one i add another conversion to the budget and tweak as needed until i get the desired result.

You can run offers to a monkey page, or directly to the offer. Depends on saturation of the market and competition, i have an offer, that i bid on one keyword, get 1-2 sales a day and make a 30% margin on. I look at it once a week for 5 minutes, its basically on auto. The traffic goes right to the offer page.



Why did I get no ad clicks
chrislingle
maybe you need to work on your ad, if nobody is clicking it is not the offer it is you not selling them on clicking your ad! remember, the field of dreams is only in the movies! just cause you built it they will not come!
 
I copied all that stuff as well and keep it in a Word doc :)
A lot of good info there actually from many members who contributed. Even a lot of chrislingle's info in it is good, although he was later discredited as a fraud and banned.

To add my 2 cents here, see my sig for sales copy and troubleshooting tips.
 
Though I think this can (and has) help a lot of people out, wasn't it said that ChrisLingle never actually made any money doing Arbi and Affiliate marketing himself? That he was just full of shit and lived off a trust fund?

Not that I really care or anything. I just find it hard to swallow advice given from someone that never did it before. That's like asking for flying lessons from a penguin.
 
for affil you do need to track everything, my quote was referring to arbi...
 
geekcognito said:
Though I think this can (and has) help a lot of people out, wasn't it said that ChrisLingle never actually made any money doing Arbi and Affiliate marketing himself? That he was just full of shit and lived off a trust fund?

Not that I really care or anything. I just find it hard to swallow advice given from someone that never did it before. That's like asking for flying lessons from a penguin.
Click to expand...


At the time of his thread it was stickied and was getting lots of props from most everyone for having good info in it. If the info was that bad or was clearly wrong I'm sure some moderators or Jon wouldn't have let it be stickied or would of corrected the errors. So I'm pretty sure the info in the post can help some people.
 
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