Pay per Click Affiliate Marketing
One very successful way of making money from Affiliate Marketing is to use Pay Per Click search engines such as Microsoft Adcenter, Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. This method can attract a very high number of highly targeted traffic levels, but more and more, the margins are getting squeezed so that bid prices and advertiser competitiveness goes up, making it more expensive to advertise.
Additionally, many merchants are imposing restrictions on advertising their programs via the PPC Search Engines, including restrictions on what terms you can and can't bid on, what URL you use in your ads, what landing page you use and even what text you use in your ads. Some even decree that you can't use PPC full stop! Check out the main UK networks such as
Affiliate Window,
Affiliate Future and
Paid on Results to see what restrictions are in place, if any.
PPC can still be a very profitable way of making money from Affiliate Marketing, but it's not the gravy train it was a few years ago.
August 13th, 2008
The main goal for any individual running an internet marketing campaign is, of course, to achieve good positions within the search engines results for a number of relevant keywords that are known to convert into sales. This means that when an internet user searches using your specified keywords, they should find your website towards the top of the list. In an ideal world, everyone would be able to achieve this through natural / organic search using good search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques. However, as a result of the degree of competition inherent in many sectors and the many months required to attain strong rankings — even when you do everything perfectly — many are driven to use pay-per-click (PPC) marketing either as an interim solution or indeed as a strategic…
Continue Reading How to use PPC Search Engines
May 14th, 2008
It was great to see Jamie Harwood from UK Web Media on the Sunday Times Rich List (Joint 29th on the Young Person Rich List with Katie Melua, Keira Knightly and Ricky Hatton, a little behind Harry Potter but way ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lewis Hamilton). I remember chatting on messenger with Jamie at 3am not long after he’d just started out with Affiliate Marketing, and his passion and work-rate was second to none. He was also not adverse to taking calculated risks, and I remember being concerned as he was ramping up the balance on his personal credit cards to do PPC, although looking back now, it’s certainly a risk that paid off for…
Continue Reading Jamie and the Magic Touch
March 03rd, 2008
Can you hear me now? - First of all, my apologies for the silence over the last two weeks. Things have been so manically busy as we approached the end of some major projects that it’s been very difficult to find even 5 minutes to post to the blog. Normal service will be resumed from here on.
Proud to be Fat More and More - No, I’m not talking about my ever-expanding “affiliate belly”, although I do believe there’s a link between the size of your stomach and the size of your commission cheques - All that time sat at your computer writing content and blog posts means both get a little bigger each…
Continue Reading Maintaining a sensible weight is the key to a healthy affiliate lifestyle
January 14th, 2008
Affiliate Marketing Muppets - I’ve long considered a “Muppet of the week” award for this blog, but always refrained from doing so as I was worried I was turning into Affiliate Marketing’s version of Victor Meldrew as it was. But there’s no harm in highlighting some truly incompetent people every now and then, so it’s time to meet the muppets…
My first set of Affiliate Marketing Muppets are the team at online bookmaker Stan James. As a brief overview of how not to run an affiliate program, they have managed to:
- Ignore every email I’ve ever sent them
- Take over two perfectly run programs (Bet Direct and Better Bet) and lose the tracking.
- E-mail all affiliates over the Christmas
October 17th, 2007
As promised, I’m keeping my eyes peeled for rubbish landing pages, and highlighting the offenders on this blog.
Today’s example of a merchant having no thought whatsoever for their affiliates is Desperate Seller on Affiliate Window.
On first impressions, this isn’t too bad - If you ignore the PPC ads for phrases such as “Cheap Car Loan” and “Car Insurance” on the Right Hand Side. Are affiliates paid their fair share of this revenue? I doubt it. Their EPC on AWIN index is currently showing as £0.11 - These keywords can command CPC’s of £1.00+ on most Search Engines, never mind the bingo and dating keywords they also have there (Relevance, Zero. CPC’s, High.)
Anyway, what you can’t…
Continue Reading Crap Landing Pages: Desperate Seller
September 28th, 2007
Kieron Donoghue, the North-East’s most famous Peroni-drinker (excluding Gazza obviously!) has launched a fantastic new tool, which I think will prove to be invaluable to anyone doing PPC.
PreviewMyPPC allows you to see a preview of your ad, in real time for each of the main UK PPCSEs - Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing (formally Overture). It’s similar to the tool provided within Google Adwords, but shows you not only the standard preview, but allows you to see what your ad would look like in one of the top positions too:
One thing missing at the moment (It is still in beta stage, so open to feedback) is the ability…
Continue Reading Kieron launches new PPC Preview tool
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