Category Archives: Pay-Per-Click

Do Not Go Past Google, Do Not Collect $200

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by Daniel Moro

Are you relying too heavily on one Pay-Per-Click advertising network for your affiliate marketing? Some affiliates rely on Google AdWords only, and they are losing out on a great deal of revenue.

Many affiliates get into affiliate marketing after reading one of the popular ebooks on the topic that are sold online. But most of these ebooks concentrate on training people to use Google AdWords. I figure that is because Google has higher traffic volumes and because it is very easy to quickly set up your first affiliate campaigns. Many affiliates never get past AdWords, though, and that is where they are losing out.

You should already know that it’s never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. Particularly when that one basket has seen better days. I can assure you that relying heavily on one advertising network, particularly Google AdWords, is not a smart strategy for growing your affiliate marketing business.

For some affiliate products advertising at the other networks will be even more profitable. In fact you should be using all of the three major pay-per-click networks. They are Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft Adcenter, and Google Adwords.

Here are five reasons why you should consider using a different Pay-Per-Click advertising network.

Reason One – You Receive No Traffic

Sometimes when you set up a campaign at one of the advertising networks, you don’t receive any traffic. This can happen for a number of reasons. Sometimes you can change something in your campaign to get your ads running, but other times nothing seems to help. So switch advertising network. You could be up and running in no time.

Reason Two – Because of Editorial Policy

Sometimes you cannot get certain ad campaigns to be accepted due to the particular network’s editorial and content policies.

For example, Google has recently been rejecting campaigns that promote sites for music and movie file-sharing. I’ve been trying to run a legitimate campaign for one of the major legal music downloading services, and it’s just taking too much effort to get Google to look closer and recognize that my campaign is legitimate. I have more or less given up and the campaign is now running at Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter instead.

Reason Three – For Price of Traffic

Sometimes the price at which you can get traffic on a given keyword phrase will vary widely from one network to another. So if you are not getting traffic at a price you are willing to pay, try switching to another advertising network.

Reason Four – To Replicate Your Campaigns

What do you usually do after you find a successful affiliate product? Do you improve your ads, add more keywords, add more countries, and increase your investment? Well, don’t forget to add more advertising networks.

For every successful affiliate campaign you identify, you should be trying to get it running profitably at all three major Pay-Per-Click networks, if at all possible.

Reason Five – To Test New Products and Retest Old Ones

Too many affiliate marketers are only testing out new affiliate marketing campaigns at Google AdWords. The, if the affiliate product is successful at Google AdWords they might roll out the campaign on the other networks. This strategy is seriously flawed.

The problem with this is that there are so many affiliate marketers using Google AdWords compared with a few years ago. They have pushed up the price of traffic on many of the popular keywords and it is much harder to get low-priced clicks now in many topic areas. An affiliate product that was once very good may no longer be profitable using AdWords because of the rising price of traffic.

And that right there is why many affiliates give up. I recommend that affiliates break out of the habit of only using Google Adwords to test new affiliate products. Try some products first at Yahoo Search Marketing or MSN Adcenter. Remember that traffic may or may not be cheaper than AdWords. That is not critical either way, because you will quickly discover that conversion ratios are different too.

I have given you five reasons to take your advertising dollars and spend them somewhere else. Your affiliate marketing business will be better off if you do.

Perhaps you should go back to some of the affiliate products you tested and threw away at AdWords. You just might identify some affiliate products that are actually profitable using another pay-per-click network.

10 Remarkably Effective Traffic Building Techniques (Part 1 of 3)

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by Daniel Moro

In the world of online business, traffic is like gold. It is something you work hard for, and once you have it, you can turn it into cash, or even barter and trade with it. Above all you must remember how valuable it really is, and invest wisely with it, or your online business will fail.

If you want to grow your online customer base then you must build a good stream of incoming traffic to your web site. Traffic leads to revenue. Depending upon your online business model it probably does that in one of two ways.

For many online businesses, building traffic leads to growth in an opt-in mailing list which leads to establishing relationship or rapport. This in turn leads to strong prospects and an increase in sales volume.

For online businesses consisting of web sites without their own products and services, building a good stream of incoming traffic leads to increased visitor numbers which leads to higher quantities of clicks on affiliate links or advertisements such as AdSense. This in turn leads to an increase in the site revenue.

Let’s look at ten traffic building techniques that have proven to be remarkably effective for growing an online business.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of designing and fine-tuning a web page and the links to that web page to improve the web page’s relevance and ranking in the organic, crawler-based listings of a search engine, for particular keyword phrase searches.

Search engine optimization does require some study of the techniques involved. That can be time consuming and the results might take weeks or even months to see but, in the long term, investing your efforts in obtaining natural – also known as organic – high-ranking placement in the top search engines will pay huge dividends.
While it is possible to optimize pages for many search engines, most webmasters working on SEO concentrate on Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Read more on Search Engine Optimization…


2. Pay Per Click Advertising

In addition to their organic search results the major search engines publish additional sponsored listings on a pay-per-click basis. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is one of the quickest ways to drive traffic to a web site. This is certainly not the cheapest traffic building technique, but it is probably the most effective technique to guarantee a large quantity of traffic, fast.

The web sites shown in sponsored listings are usually determined through a bidding system. You bid the maximum price that you are willing to pay for each visitor that clicks on your listing and comes through to your site. The more you bid, the more likely your listing will show.

How much you need to bid to get traffic really depends upon the niche in which your web site operates. Although you could easily pay anywhere from $0.01 to $1.00 for each visitor that clicks through your listing, many webmasters obtain traffic for $0.05 to $0.15 per click.

Read more on Pay Per Click Advertising…


3. Article Marketing

Article marketing involves writing articles and making them available for webmasters and editors to publish. The greatest exposure usually comes from listing the articles at article directories such as EzineArticles and IdeaMarketers. This allows anyone to publish the article without any fee to you, the author, provided they include your ‘Author Resource Box’ at the end of the article. Your author’s resource box should be a small paragraph or two about you including a direct link to your web site.

Article marketing is a great traffic building technique for several reasons.

First, there is an increase in name exposure and brand awareness as people read your articles all over the Internet. They will begin to recognize you as an expert in your topic.
Second, there is direct traffic to your web site from readers clicking through the link in your author’s resource box.

Third, there is the indirect benefit of backlinks increasing your search engine ranking. Backlinks are links on other web sites that point to your web page. Backlinks are important for search engine optimization because some search engines, especially Google, give more credit to web sites that have a good number of quality backlinks.

Read more on Article Marketing…

(Part 2 of this article continues here…)