Make Money with AdWords - Affiliate Marketing
In my last article I touched on a few different ways to make
money online. One of the simplest ways to do this is to use
Google AdWords to market products for which you are an affiliate.
One of the best affiliate programs available is ClickBank. They have hundreds of
items available for affiliate marketing. They don't allow any
products that aren't digital, available for immediate download.
It takes only a few minutes to get signed up as an affiliate,
and it costs nothing. The signup form is here.
Once you have an affiliate account with ClickBank, you need to
log in, and find a product you want to market. This can be done
at the ClickBank
Marketplace. The products are ranked using a proprietary
system designed by ClickBank. This system attempts to place the
products most likely to make you money at the top of the list.
It takes into consideration several factors, including previous
sales trends, and conversion rates. (A conversion rate is the
percentage of visitors who are referred to a site that actually
purchase the product described).
Go to the marketplace, and pick a product you'd like to market.
Look at the product's home page, and decide whether it's
something you think people will be interested in. Look at the
cost of the product, and the percentage commission you will earn
for sales. Obviously the higher the commission the better, but
picking a product that sells well is more important than picking
a product with a high commission. Once you've found your
product, click the link that says "Earn X%". This will pop up a
window telling you what your affiliate link should be for this
seller. Copy the link down, and save it for the time being.
Next you need to find a way to get people to click this link. As
you may have guessed by now, Google's AdWords program is the
easiest way to get started. The other option is to start your
own web site, but this takes some time and quite a bit more
effort. I'll cover some of these topics in coming articles. For
now we'll focus on AdWords.
First, you'll need to sign up for an AdWords account. Go to the
main AdWords site and
click the button labeled "Click to begin". You'll need to tell
Google a few things about your target market, and then you can
create an ad. I'll go into more detail about how to create the
perfect ad a bit later, but for now I'll focus on a few
important things. First, make sure you read the Editorial
Guidelines for AdWords. There's a link on the page where you're
setting up your ad. One thing to note is that Google requires
you to put the word "Affiliate" or "Aff." in your ad so people
know you're an affiliate. You also can't do things like use a
bunch of exclamation marks or type your ad all in caps. There's
an automated review process which will catch most of these
errors, and a human review process which will catch most things
not caught by the automated review.
Enough of what not to do. Try to make your ad eye-catching,
without violating the guidelines. Use active verbs, and make
sure you use relevant keywords you think potential customers
might be searching for. Google will highlight keywords in your
ad when they're part of the user's search phrase.
Once you've created your ad text and gotten past the automated
review, you're ready to choose keywords. Choose the keywords you
think are most relevant to your product. Even if you can create
an ad with a fantastic click through rating that drives hordes
of people to your affiliate link, you won't make any money
unless those people actually buy the product. Type in some
keywords, and use the "Keyword Tool" on the right hand side of
the page to get suggestions from Google. Also think about common
misspellings for keywords. This can be a good way to get some
cheap clicks that are still relevant.
You'll next have to determine how much you are willing to pay.
The best strategy is to start out small. Spending even $10 per
day can give you an idea of what might work and what might not.
Once you have an ad that's working, and you've made a couple of
sales, you can increase your max cost per day. Keep in mind that
if you have high demand keywords, and a low maximum Cost Per
Click, your ad may never get shown, or it may be shown on page
99 of the Google results. You need to find a balance between
paying $5 for a single click, and not having your ad shown at
all. Usually the "recommendations" made by Google are way too
high, and will cause you to go broke in a hurry.
Almost done now. You'll now need to finish signing up for your
account. You'll need a credit card so Google can charge you when
your ads are clicked. They'll add everything up and charge you
once per month or so for all of your clicks. Do be careful about
spending your entire budget on the first day. You'll need a
couple weeks at least to try to evaluate what works and what
doesn't. Don't be afraid to start small, and work your way up
slowly to making more sales.
Stay tuned to www.workfromhomespot.com
a> for even more details on choosing ClickBank products,
choosing AdWords keywords, and other more advanced topics.