Pay Per Click Madness

Writen by Rick Carbone

Having been on the Internet for close to ten years the affiliate market has changed dramatically. It wasn't that long ago that several large online sites held command of the affiliate universe. Even today they still have the largest number of affiliate memberships. What has changed is that just about anyone can have an affiliate program due to the emergence of sites like ClickBank and Azoogle. The affiliate member has the opportunity to share in the profits by as much as 70%! Azoogle's business model is different in that you either display html ads on your web site or you can get html to paste into an opt-in email campaign. With Azoogle you get paid for the amount of information the individual, the person who clicks on the ad, provides. This could be just a zip code or an email address. The pay-off is commensurate with the amount of information.

This of course is just for placing a link on a website or sending an email with a link to a landing page. (If you don't know what a landing page is…read on.) The reason that just about anyone can be an affiliate today is because PPC or Pay Per Click advertising has changed the landscape quite considerably. Google and Overture (These two account for about 90% of all PPC traffic) have changed the affiliate marketplace because if you are smart enough you have figured out that you can buy keyword advertising from Google or Overture and advertise someone else's product, provided you are an affiliate for that product. You don't need a website because when the individual clicks on the PPC ad it is directed to the affiliates web page or landing page. You collect the commission if that person buys the product or service. Sounds easy, it is, but as with all good things there are some catches.

You can get caught up in the bidding that takes place for top keywords. Example: say for instance you find a product on Clickbank that you would like to be an affiliate for. You sign up for a Google account, it's free, and you construct your PPC ad for the Clickbank affiliate you have opted to become. ClickBank's sign up is free as well. Back to Google. Google Adwords now requests that you provide them with a list of keywords for your product. You think of about ten keywords that are associated with your product. You list each of them within your Google ad. Google then asks you what's the maximum price per click you'll pay. Being an astute business person, you decide that you can afford $.10 per click with a maximum of $25.00 per day. This would give you 250 clicks on your ad per day. That doesn't mean that 250 people will buy, it just means that 250 people have looked at the "landing page." How many of the 250 will buy? Good question. I knew you were paying attention. The answer is: your guess is as good as mine. It could be 10% of the 250 clickers or 1% of the clickers or .1%.

Now comes the fun part. Remember that I said you decided to put your maximum per click price at $.10 per click. (See the previous paragraph) and your maximum daily amount at $25.00? Let's say that one of your top, top keywords. the one that you really felt was going to bring in the big clicks, was not available because your maximum per click was only $.10 and the going rate was over $2.00 per click! (Google will not divulge the top price but only indicate if your maximum is too low.) $2.00 per click you say I can't afford that! Well that's how it works. This type of thing happens everyday. Should you quit the PPC game? Absolutely not! Then how does one on a limited budget play in the PPC market? There are a number of ways to break in without depleting your bank account.

You can test your way in by utilizing alternate PPC networks. There are several. You can also find niche markets for keywords that are far less expensive than the more obvious ones. There are alternatives but you must get grounded first and then proceed.

Rick Carbone is owner and publisher of the Home Business Research website. He has over 30 years of marketing and sales experience that he brings to the Internet. HBR has been online since 1998 and has helped countless individuals in starting up home based businesses.

Using Google Adwords

Writen by Bill Boyd

Setting up an account:

To do this you just go here: https://adwords.google.com/select/login Google adwords has provided a very detailed and useful "Sign-up Demo" which is in the form of a video you can use to refer to as you go through the process of signing up.

One of the best things that Google adwords has to offer is the statistical information this can save you lots of money and help you target your prospects in the most cost effective manner imaginable. BUT, if you don't understand or use this service you may be throwing you hard earned money away in effectively. Now we don't want to do that because it defeats the purpose.

Because there are so many variables involved in using adwords it's difficult if not impossible to explain exactly how you should run your campaign. The best way is going to be different for everyone reading this, but I can help you to interpret the statistics that you see and then you can "tweak" your ads to get the most out of them for your particular promotion.

For starters, you should use the "conversion tracking" option. After you click on "conversion tracking" you'll need to choose "get Conversion page code", there you can follow the instructions and choose the one that suits your needs.

The code that Google generates is then pasted into the page described when you chose the option that suits you. To insert this code follow Google's directions or See above.

Having this code in place will enable Google to provide you with statistics that you can use to assess the effectiveness of a Campaign or ad group.

I recommend having your adwords account running for a day or two before trying to understand this next bit.

For example: (Talking about Search totals only) if an ad is being shown 1,000 times (Impr) and only has a CTR of 0.20 (displayed as a percentage) it means that your ad is being shown, but the people that see it aren't clicking on it very often, or they aren't seeing it. So it could be either because the ad is showing in a poor position (Avg. pos) 213.7 this would be on about page 15 or something, there may be a lot of competition for that word, you would need to raise the bid to try and get it to be seen more often. Or it could be well positioned (Avg.pos) 1.1 but not being clicked on because it is poorly written or not targeted to the keyword people are searching on. Or the key word/s could be too general.

So you would need to improve the wording of the ad, or choose more targeted key words. This is an extremely generalized synopsis.

Conversion Rate:

It is necessary to consider the (Conv. rate) 20% this is the percentage of actual sales/sign-ups resulting from the "Clicks", So if you find that your ad is receiving a lot of clicks but the conversion rate is low, it may be an indication that either your ad is misleading! People click on the ad and go to your landing page expecting to see motor cycles and find chickens there! Or it could mean that your landing page is just poorly constructed, and not conducive to getting the sign up or making the sale.

A rule of thumb to get started is this: Use Google's "Keyword tool" to select keywords from your landing page this will help ensure the keywords match the landing page. Let's say you're selling apples. People searching to buy apples will search for a keyword like "apples for sale" you will have "apples" as one of your keywords for the ad, because you would have "apples" on your landing page. Your ad wording might be something like, "we sell Apples". So The customer is looking for apples finds an ad that says "go here to buy apples" they land on a page that sells apples, we have a synchronization happening all the way through, and that is cost effective target market tactics.

A Campaign can contain many different ad groups; an ad group can contain many different ads.

Split Testing:

And ads can be split tested. This means running two ads using the same keywords and settings as though they are one ad, but alternating shows of each ad, Google adwords does this part of it for you. After you make the ad that you wish to test, you then let it run for at least a day or two, and then you can assess which ad is better, using Google's stats such as Clicks – CTR – CPC, and the number of times each ad has been shown, over a given period of time "Served" then discard the looser. Like a competition.

Bill Boyd, is a full time professional Internet Marketer. To learn more about Google, and get the rest of the report that this came from, go here: http://www.googlemarketingschool.com/GG3.html

How to PPC Advertising

How to PPC Advertising