It’s no secret. The top earning ClickBank affiliates – the guys who pull 5- figure affiliate commission checks every month – use PPC to drive traffic.
Why? Because it works. Because the volume and quality of traffic can be outstanding. And because PPC is a marketer’s dream – it allows you to test, track and optimize your campaign until it becomes a profit - pumping powerhouse – then scale it up until you’re making more money than you know what to do with.
New affiliates tend to shy away from PPC for the simple reason that it costs money to start. And while it’s certainly not free, if you’re smart about it, you can start small and work your way up very quickly.
So let’s get right to it – here are my top 4 tips for becoming a PPC super affiliate.
Why? Because it works. Because the volume and quality of traffic can be outstanding. And because PPC is a marketer’s dream – it allows you to test, track and optimize your campaign until it becomes a profit - pumping powerhouse – then scale it up until you’re making more money than you know what to do with.
New affiliates tend to shy away from PPC for the simple reason that it costs money to start. And while it’s certainly not free, if you’re smart about it, you can start small and work your way up very quickly.
So let’s get right to it – here are my top 4 tips for becoming a PPC super affiliate.
NOTE: if you’re brand new to pay -per -click advertising and Google AdWords, there’s a lot to take in ... it can be a little overwhelming at first. But it’s well worth learning the ropes. I highly recommend Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide to Google AdWords as a thorough primer. Make sure you get the most recent version.
#1. Beware the recent changes Google’s policy
If you’ve been a PPC affiliate in the health and fitness niche for a while, you remember the good old days –
back when you could place your ClickBank hoplink directly into an AdWords Ad. As long as you could write a decent text ad, and you were promoting a product that converted reasonably well, you could make good money.
Then came some changes to Google’s policy on advertising in the health and fitness (and several other) niches. Basically, they decided they would no longer allow affiliate links in ads. In one fell swoop, the guys at Google rendered thousands of profitable campaigns obsolete.
For those of us making our living off those campaigns, it was a tough pill to swallow.
The good news is it’s still possible to make tons of Money with AdWords – you just have to send clicks to a landing page that you host on your own domain.
The best way to do this is to make your landing page a compelling “pre-sell” page – that is, a page that sells the reader on clicking through to the 1-2-3 Shrink sales page. This is a great strategy because a pre-sell page need not be overly “salesy,” just informative and compelling, with the goal of getting the click.
There are many ways to do this... “product review” type pages, articles, blog posts... the idea is to pique the reader’s curiosity and excitement, and warm him or her up to the idea of clicking through to the sales page.
One trick is to Google keywords related to weight loss–“lose belly flab,” “how to lose weight without dieting,” “how to get rid of muffin top,” “lose 20 pounds without exercise,” etc. – click on some AdWords Ads, and check out what your competitors are doing. Reading through a bunch of these pre-sell pages will give you a solid grasp of how to effectively send a nice “warm” prospect to the 1-2-3 Shrink sales page.
#2. Become a keyword research guru
It doesn’t take long to figure out that these health, fitness and weight loss keywords are very competitive. But with all the great keyword research tools out there, all it takes is a little digging into the “long tail” to find those hidden gems you can build insanely profitable campaigns around.
And since the market for 1-2-3 Shrink is so enormous (anyone who wants to lose weight) there will always be profitable keywords.
Here are some of our favorite keyword research tools:
Google’s keyword tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Keyword Discovery by Trellian
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.htm
Using these tools and starting with a list of basic keywords, you can quickly build a list of hundreds of potentially profitable keywords.
Google will give you an average cost per click for each keyword. Your target should be keywords that you can afford to send at least 10 clicks per day (the more the better), with the lowest competition you can find, but sticking to buyer keywords. “Free weight loss video” is not a buyer keyword. “Lose weight without dieting ebook” is more of a buyer keyword. “Weight loss tips” might be a buyer keyword. See the difference?
From there, it’s just a matter of testing and tracking to find those hidden gems. The most important thing to remember when you’re testing is to keep your ad groups in AdWords tightly focused and keyword-relevant. This will improve your click through rate, boost your quality score, and keep your costs down.
As an example, if your keyword is “get rid of muffin top,” you want your ad to be tightly focused on that keyword: “How to get rid of your muffin top in 21 days” not “Lose belly flab fast.”
#3. Become a student of copywriting
The better you are at writing ads, the more money you will make as an affiliate. Plain and simple. And that goes for PPC, SEO, email marketing, and any other method.
I know a lot of Internet marketers would rather focus on other aspects of the game, but the fact is – copywriting is the core skill you should be developing. Being able to write an interesting, attention -getting AdWords ad can mean the difference between a blockbuster campaign and a total dud – with the exact same keyword and product!
And like a lot of skills, although it can take years (if not decades) to truly master the art and science of copywriting, it doesn’t take long at all to learn enough to see a difference in your bottom line.
So that said, here are a few of my favorite resources:
The Copywriter's Handbook– a great all-around resource for beginners
- Copy Blogger’s Copywriting Tutorials – an interesting and informative blog on all things copywriting and Internet marketing
- Makepeace Total Package – a collected series of blog posts by one of the highest paid direct response copywriters in the world
- Bencivenga Bullets – a series of articles by Gary Bencivenga, widely considered the greatest living copywriter
This is a very short list, so I encourage you to do your own research. There is a TON of great free copywriting material on the Internet.
Just spend a few minutes a day reading some of these books, websites and blogs, and you’ll soon know a lot more about copywriting – and make a lot more money – than 99% of affiliate marketers out there.
Also, I should point out that Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide to Google AdWords, in addition to being a
terrific all - around reference, also contains some great advice on writing stellar AdWords ads.
#4. Don’t ignore display advertising
As profitable and powerful as Google’s AdWords can be, it’s worth looking into their display network. As AdWords click prices continue to go up for health and fitness keywords, display advertising can be a great alternative.
In a nutshell, here is how display advertising works:
1. You create an ad in one of several formats/sizes – a text ad, banner ad, GIF animation ad, video ad, etc.
2. You negotiate a price with a display network or website owner based on one of three metrics: CPC, CPM, or CPA.
CPC stands for cost per click, so it’s similar to AdWords in that you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. CPM stands for cost per thousand “impressions” (you pay a fixed amount for every thousand times your ad is presented to a viewer.)
CPA stands for cost per acquisition or cost per action. This is my preferred cost structure, because you pay only when the person who clicked on your ad completes a certain action, like submitting their email address, or purchasing a product.
3. You test, track, and optimize to find the most profitable combinations of ad and network/website. Google’s display network gives you a lot of control over where your ad appears, and how much you spend, so you can get really scientific about testing.
This is a whole other world of advertising, and there’s a lot to learn. Start by checking out Marketing Sherpa’s Display Advertising Tutorial. It gives a more detailed overview, along with a bunch of helpful links. When you’re ready to dive into display advertising, head over to Google’s display network homepage.
The traffic is substantially cheaper than AdWords, and if you place ads on the right websites, the volume can be staggering. So keep it in mind if you can’t afford the keywords on AdWords.
And keep in mind also that when it comes to display ads, Google is not the only game in town. There are many other great display networks – Value Click and AOL Advertising for example. And lots of websites sell ad space on their own, independent of any network. The sky is the limit with this technique.
