Is PPC Stil Viable for Affiliate Marketing

My introduction to Affiliate Marketing was through the Google Cash system that was selling through Clickbank. You could actually make money using only Google Adwords back then. You could easily purchase good keywords for what was then Google’s minimum bid of .05 (five cents). I remember paying $1,000.00 a day for clicks at .05 a piece and doubling my money. Others did much better, I’m sure.

Man have times changed, and not for the better. Perhaps it would take a smarter person than me to understand, but the Google Adwords bidding system has become convoluted, illogical and just plain selfish.

Why is it that I can find a word with NO competitive ads and for which I use the keywords I’m bidding on in the ads title and Google won’t even start displaying the ads until I’ve hit $1.00, $5.00 or more? This makes no sense to me what-so-ever.

Google talks about the bid price being determined by competition, relavency and other factors, but they are so vaguely explained that one can only guess at what Google is doing.

I just don’t see how I can continue using Adwords and making money at the same time. At .05 or .10 per click, I make money. With Adwords bids the way they are today, the margins are so thin, or completely eaten up by click costs, that it’s not possible to make a profit.

Since Google is willing to make it nearly impossible for me to make money, I’ve decided to take my business to other PPC providers

So, back to the title of this article, “Is PPC still a viable Affiliate Marketing strategy?”. I think the answer is yes, but not with the same ease of use that we’ve accustomed to with the OLD Google.

That leaves two big boys to work with and they are showing signs of improvement. Those two alternatives are Yahoo (Overture) and AdCenter (MSN).

First, let me say that you simply can’t get as many clicks with these PPC vendors because they’re just not as big as Google. But I think than through the yen/yang of change, Google is going to loose business and these two PPC engines will gain.

MSN Adcenter: I have been experimenting with this Pay Per Click engine for a little while now and it’s good. The user interface is uncomplicated and it gives very good estimates of where your ad will show (position) and how many times it will be clicked upon based upon different bid prices. We’ve always known that Google’s impression / click estimates have been garbage. This really makes picking bid prices for MSN easy. On my first few ads, it took over 24 hours for them to start playing. I don’t know if this will improve with time, but it’s kind of a pain now. Also, Adcenter only runs within Internet Explorer because of ActiveX code that it runs on your box. This probably makes things faster, but it’s a pain for me because I use Firefox.

Yahoo/Overture: I used Overture a bit about a year ago and just found it too hard to work with. It was slow, adding words was difficult and it took them forever to activate the ads. The good news is that Yahoo is totally revamping Overture and I bet they’ve learned from the success of Google. The new Overture should be much better. I don’t know if a beta is being run or not, but it would be nice to get in on it.

So I’m going to turn off all Google Adwords campaigns and work with Overture and MSN Adcenter for a while to see what happens. I think PPC is still a good strategy. It just makes sense! (cents?) But it will only work for us if we can accurately gauge how much we have to pay for traffic and we can test campaigns quickly. 24 hour delays in testing will make it too difficult to work with.

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You Can Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

Now is a good time to make money with affiliate marketing. With the economy in the tank and jobs getting harder and harder to find lots of people are turning to working for themselves. The Internet has opened the door for many entrepreneurs to start online businesses and affiliate marketing is a good jump in point. More and more people everyday are joining the affiliate marketing bandwagon.

So why does this way of starting an online business look so attractive to so many people? For one thing it can be started with little or no overhead. You can actually start this business without having your own website so you dont have to pay for web hosting or domain registry. You can use FREE web 2.0 properties like Squidoo or Weebly to start building your online presence.

Another thing is you dont have to stock merchandise to make money with affiliate marketing. As an affiliate you merrily showcase products from the company you are an affiliate for and when you sell a product that company will do the shipping. You never have to see or handle the merchandise at all. Isnt that a nice way to earn some money?

For those who are unfamiliar with what affiliate marketing is, let me briefly explain. It is when you join an online merchants affiliate program and receive an affiliate ID. You can then use that ID to sell that merchants products and receive a commission when you make a sell.

Generally this happens when a visitor to your online property clicks a link containing your affiliate ID leading to the merchants site and buys a product.

As you can see this is a fairly easy process, but like with all businesses you have to put in some hard work. You have to choose the right products to sell, you have to create and promote your web properties in order to get people to them and you have to pay attention to what works and what dont work.

However, one of the best things about this business model is if the hard work is put in right at the beginning the less work you will have to do later on because your properties will do the work for you.

All in all you dont have to be a computer genius to make money with affiliate marketing, you just have to put in the work and you will find affiliate marketing success.

Affiliate Marketing On Steroids Make $100+ A Day Without Spending A Dime

Is it really possible to make $100+ a day without spending money on AdWords, advertising or even hosting? The answer is yes, and more people are doing it than you think. If you do affiliate marketing well, you can make over $3,000 a month Without spending a single darned penny of your own money.

Heres how:

Understanding the System

The first step is to understand exactly how the system works. The best way to do that is to learn a proven system from someone whos actually done it in the past.

A lot of people start their internet businesses without having a full game plan. For example, theyll spend weeks designing a great website or building content, without understanding how to market it.

Or theyll start driving traffic, without really understanding how to sell the people who land on their website once they get there.

This is a terrible way to build a business and accounts for many of the online business failures. The way forward is not to blindly start building websites. Instead, start by understanding a full system beginning to end, then commit to finishing what you started, then take the first step.

Make $100+ a Day the Easy Way

When you first get started, its best to stick with simple sales letters and simple ways to drive traffic. There are many complex ways to do things like negotiating JVs or doing PPC, but to start its best to just start out the easy way.

Whats the easy way?

Getting targeted traffic, people who are ready to buy, to a simple sales letter and selling them.

You might be thinking What?! Thats too easy! The reality is that it is that easy Most people just dont stick to a system long enough to get their results.

Before you get started, you need to understand how to write a review that sells. The goal isnt to be a pushy sales person, but to guide the user to the decision to buy.

Then, you have to understand how to get traffic. This involves well known techniques like blog and ping, article marketing, etc, as well as little known techniques like multi-user blogs and other ninja tactics.

Once you have a system that works, then you can replicate it. Making your first few hundred dollars online is the hardest part. Once you get that part down, then all you need to do is copy the system over and over and over again.

Affiliate Marketing Tips – Are You Making Any Commissions

One of the most frustrating things as an affiliate marketer is to go through a drought where sales seem to taper off. It is even more frustrating to never see any commissions at all! If this is your experience, chances are other affiliates are stepping up, applying one or more of the following affiliate marketing tips, and receiving all of the commissions as a result.

Affiliate Marketing Tip 1 – Develop Unique Pages For Each Product

It may sound like a lot of work but it really is not. This affiliate marketing tip is actually all encompassing and everything else that comes after this is simply included within this overall idea.

It is tempting to want to purchase an “All-In-One Internet Marketing Website Package” that showcases a wide range of products. At first this seems like the best option because the more products you have available the more chances someone will buy right? WRONG. Where this may work for a common storefront, it is suicide for affiliate marketers.

By employing this affiliate marketing tip as a basis for everything else, you open alot of doors that you did not have available to you before. Lets look at 2 of these new doorways.

Affiliate Marketing Tip 2 – Developing Targeted Traffic To Your Offers

By having a website or landing page dedicated to each individual product, you can more effectively apply this affiliate marketing tip and maximize upon its potential for your business. You will be able to target specific keywords that you were unable to before, such as the product name itself, the product developer and many other product specific keywords.

You could provide product specific articles and reviews and submit them to article and review sites with a link back to your main review page. On your review site you could also offer up your own affiliate marketing tips for getting maximum use out of the product upon purchase, as well as include a lead capture element to secure subscribers to your newsletter, securing future purchases. The possibilities are endless because you focused your traffic and made it much more highly targeted for your specific offer.

Affiliate Marketing Tip 3 – Developing Supplemental Products

This affiliate marketing tip takes a bit of work but it will set you apart from every other affiliate who already does the above two well. This is also known as perfecting your offers, and it cannot be done without unique product offerings and more highly targeted websites. You could offer free reports to those who purchase from your affiliate link that supplement the product in some way. You could produce a short video or audio course that expands upon concepts and ideas within the product you wish to sell. You will need to get creative here but most affiliates are not utilizing this affiliate marketing tip at all.

As you read over these affiliate marketing tips a second time, they will not seem that hard to accomplish. They require you to think outside of the box and employ your creative potential. If you put in a little more time and effort you will be seeing a substantial increase in your profits. Try using these affiliate marketing tips for several of your affiliate programs. If you do, you will never see your sales drop off.

Adam Bauthues is a successful entrepreneur both in the online and offline arenas. To learn more about why affiliate marketing is considered the easiest and most efficient way to earn money online, and how you can dominate any affiliate marketing niche no matter your current level of knowledge, please visit: http://www.affiliatemonthly.com

PTC And Affiliate Marketing Two-In-One Way To Make Money From Home

PTC or Pay-To-Click is a business model wherein site owners pay a PTC site (well refer to this as SITE from now on) to advertise for them. The SITE then gets people to sign up and pays them a fixed amount to said ads. This is a very profitable situation because the advertisers get their traffic, the SITES get paid to advertise, and the SITEs members (lets refer to them as CLICKERS) get paid as well just to view those ads. In other words, its profitable for all the groups involved. PTC vs PPC What is the difference between PTC and PPC? Just to be clear, PTC refers to the act of clicking on ads to earn money. PPC (or Pay Per Click) refers to paying sites a certain amount when someone clicks on an ad. PPC is what a webpage owner does to bring traffic to his site. Lets use an example for better understanding: Arnold has a web site about electronics and he wants to drive traffic so he can profit. He will then start up a PPC campaign with Google. When somebody clicks on the ad, he then gets charged for that click. I hope that made sense.

So How Is Affiliate Marketing Tied Up With PTC? When doing this, you have the option of going at it on your lonesome. Of course, you shouldnt expect to make much money quickly. Sincerely, it will take upwards of two(2) months before you can even ask for a payout from SITES that you are a member of. The wise thing to do is to recruit people to sign up under you as your downline. This is where affiliate marketing (lets refer to this as AM) comes in. When you join in a SITE, you will be given your very own affiliate link. Advertise this link however you can. You may decide to use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. You may e-mail your friends, relatives, etc. and include the link. Be imaginative, you can use all the downlines you can get.

Why Do I Need Downlines? Simple, once you have downlines, you make money from their clicks too! Some SITES may offer up to the third (3rd) level. Make sure you read the terms of agreement. Whats certain is, you will benefit greatly from having as many downlines as you can. Another choice is to rent referrals, which means that you allot some of your earnings to pay for them.

So there you have it, how to earn money at home just clicking on ads. And it teaches you AM as well. Its a great way to begin in internet marketing, and you dont even have to really spend money at all to get started.