PPC Question and Rave

[z3t3]

Hello 5 Star Community,

I'm fairly new to the world of affiliate marketing. I am setting up a merchant site and currently educating myself on setting up an in-house affiliate program once we're operational. I've done some research into resources in the field and after some investigation, decided to purchase Geno Prussakov's A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing book, which I've found to be extremely helpful. The Question-Answer format is particularly useful for newbies like myself. I opted to skip Shawn Collin's book only because I've heard it is quite outdated, although I suppose I will get around to reading it. But for anyone else who is looking for good resources in this field, I definately recommend Mr. Prussakov's book.

One thing that I'm a little unclear about is PPC affiliates. The book doesn't explain very clearly (not to my liking, at least) what a PPC affiliate does. My impression of this is someone who participates in say, a PPC campaign (like Adwords), paying per click for people to come to their site where they presumably either offer or link to others products or services, and that doing affiliate work with someone like this may have the benefit of having their (presumably) targeted traffic come to the Merchant's site by various types of affiliate partnership. Can anyone please tell me if I'm close on this?

Thank you!

[Rob_TID]

They can send traffic directly to your site from google. ("Google Cash" method)

Or they can send it to their own landing page, then to your site. (This is what most affiliates do, though some use natural (not paid) traffic).

[Linda Buquet]

Hi z3t3

Welcome to 5 Star. Glad you are invested in learning more and good to hear that Geno's book helped you.

Affiliate marketing has not changed all that much so Shawn's info is still really good. You can get alot of it free in his new video series, based on the book. Each video is a short overview of a chapter that give the highlights and enough info to either help you along or give you enough info to know if the book is something you need.

Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants - FREE Video Series

Hope this helps and best of luck!

[Linda Buquet]

Yes Rob is right. Some affiliates just send the traffic directly to you. They pay per click and hope to at least double their money on the commissions they make from your site. Google has made this type of PPC harder by only allowing one ad per domain.

So that's forced more affiliates to send traffic to a landing page on their own site that pre-sells your product, then sends the traffic to you.

Obviously your payouts and conversions need to be good enough for PPC affiliates to make a good profit or they won't promote your site.

[MrCat]

Have you tried doing other PPC campaigns? PPC is a very effective way given the proper treatment. Identify your niche and select the market you want to cater to and start from there. Research also on the keywords your desired market would most likely be looking for. You should be more focused on getting targetted traffic than just page views. Buying targetted link backs are also effective at getting targetted traffic. It really all boils down to what your site offers to your traffic