Google Adwords - The Affiliate Marketers New Best Friend.
Gerald David Greene
Google Adwords - There are many thousands of web site promotion products that are on the Internet that make all sorts of claims about the "flood" of traffic that they will bring to your web site. There is no doubt that to make a decent income as an affiliate you will need traffic and a lot of it.
However, be careful. Unfortunately many of the products are not effective and will not live up to their promoters claims. Google Adwords is a breath of fresh air blowing in fresh and untainted from all of the Internet hype. You really can get a flood of traffic fast with a good Google Adwords ad. Starting about 15 minutes from now if you already know your product and market well and write a good ad.
However, getting the traffic flow is only part of the story. Since Google Adwords can start bringing traffic to your site in 15 minutes or less after setting up an ad campaign you had best be ready to receive that traffic before starting a campaign. This may seem like an obvious statement but it is amazing that many promoters spend good money sending traffic to a truly horrible web site that is offering equally horrible products.
My advice is to take your time to find a quality affiliate program that has outstanding in demand products and a high converting web site before turning loose a Google Adwords campaign. The products reviewed and recommended at Affiliate-Programs-Promotion.Com are those that have worked for us and that should work for you but do your own homework and analysis. If you are sending traffic to your own web site make sure that the site is fast loading, is well designed, has a clear call to action, is easy to navigate, and has a simple, easy to follow check out procedure.
Forget, all the fancy stuff. Flash presentations and the like. On your selling pages on the net simple really is better.
Google Adwords - What is It?- Google Adwords are the tiny little ads that you see in the far right hand column of most Google search results pages. The ads are written by ad publishers (advertisers), who pay on a pay for performance basis for their ads to appear on the Google pages.
The advertisers (publishers) pay starting from a minimum bid of $0.05 a click but only pay if someone comes along and actually clicks through on the ad. Since Google serves many millions of search results daily a Google Adwords ad gets a lot of exposure quickly. If it is a good ad about something that folks have a real interest in you (as the advertiser) will get a lot of traffic and visitors in a New York minute.
Fortunately, Google lets you set up a daily budget so that even the "litte guy" can use the service without fear of going broke. Google sets up a line of credit for you to get started and only charges a $5.00 processing fee to set up your account. Initially, you will be billed when your account balance is about minus $200. That is, when you own Google about $200 for your ad click throughs. My advice is to set your budget at a level that you are comfortable with rather than by following the Google suggestion.
That said, to get the best results don't be too tight with your ad budget. Google is high powered and needs some fuel (money) to show you what it can do.
So What's the Big Deal about Google Adwords? - Google Adwords is, in my opinion, the most significant new way of advertising since our friend Al Gore invented the Internet.-)
Why do I say that? Where else can you open an account, write an ad, choose a few keywords, select your area of distribution, and have visitors visiting your web site within 15 minutes? Not only that but Google lets you change your key words, ad copy, headlines, area of distribution (you can advertise globally, to the US only, or to many market area combinations), and URL's whenever and as often as you like.
However, as good as Google Adwords is be forewarned. It is NOT as easy to make money with Google as some so called Internet gurus would have you believe. Writing a good small ad is actually more difficult that writing a big one. With a small ad every word counts. You must have an attention getting headline or you are wasting your time. However, you only have 25 characters for that headline.
You have room for two lines of body, each with a maximum of 35 characters, then a line for a display URL and a line for the actual web site URL that you are sending traffic too. That's it. Your small ad must be very well written. It is amazing what a difference in click through rates the changing of even one word can bring.
In order to write a good small ad you must have a very good understanding of the product and of your target buyers. You have to zoom right in and show the benefits of buying your product or service in just a few words. That's not easy to do but is a fun and rewarding goal to work towards.
The point is, there is a learning curve with Google and at first your results may be disappointing. Especially since the hypesters tell you how easy it is. However, the potential for profit is so great that IMHO it would be foolish to ignore Google Adwords. Some foks are already making a darn good income from just running Google ads. Those who work hard to master Google and actually become Google Adwords experts will have the key to Internet riches firmly in their grasp.
Google Adwords Features. - Google Adwords has many top notch account management and ad campaign management and ad evaluation features. For example, you can set up separate ad campaigns for each grouping of key words and track the results. You will know rather quickly your "money" key words and then can easily make adjustments in your campaign.
Rather than outline all of the features here I believe it will be better for you to get that information directly from Google. For additional information go to Google Adwords
Google Adwords Tips -
1.-> Start your campaign by using the minimum bid of $.05. Since Google rewards an ad that is getting a high CTR by moving it higher in the search page results listings a great ad may get more traffic at the $.05 rate that a poor ad at $.50. Try the lower amount first and see what you can do. It is easy to increase your bid if need be.
2.-> Always write at least two ads for each campaign. Google will show you the CTR rate for each ad. Review your ads results frequently. Delete or revise the poorer performing ad, write fresh copy, headline, etc. and again measure results. Always try to keep improving using the better performing ad as the control. The goal is to beat the performance of your best ad and to start the process all over again. You should always be trying to improve performance. A great ad promoting a great product is a real money maker.
3.-> Google rewards relevance. Your keywords, ad copy, and web page that you are sending traffic to must be highly correlated. Example: You are selling blue leather shoes. Your headline should be "blue leather shoes", your ad copy should have "blue leather shoes" in it, and when the folks who are looking for "blue leather shoes" reach your web page thay had better quickly have "blue leather shoes" right in their face.
4.-> If your own web page is sub par send folks directly to your affiliate page. That is if it is a page that converts visitors to buyers at a decent rate. You don't even have to have your own web page with Google Adwords. If your affiliate site is a real winner send your traffic directly to the site. If the order page is great send your visitors directly to the affiliate order page.
5.-> Test, Test, Test. With Google Adwords you will get very fast feedback on your ad headlines, copy, keywords, and sign-ups. You can test new ideas fast. If they work, fantastic. If they fall flat you can quickly revise your campaign. Compare a 24 to 48 hour time period to know if an ad is working well or not to say a print media ad in a magazine where 30 to 60 days may go by before the ad even runs. Google Adwords is a dream of an advertising tool for those who move up the learning curve.
6.-> Be ruthless in deleting or revising poor performing ads and key words. Google pays big rewards for excellence. A great ad can move right to the top of the list and get a ton of traffic for you at $.05 a visitor. You can improve your ads performance by deleting the keywords that are poorly ranked and for deleting ads and replacing ads that are getting a poor CTR.
7.-> Pay attention to how your display URL looks. Try capitializing a word or two and the "c" in com. For example, if your URL is http://mygooglead.com try http://MyGoogleAd.Com .Believe it or not it can make a big difference in your CTR for that ad.
8.-> Set your budget at a level that you are comfortable with but be realistic. I wouldn't go under $5.00 a day or you will severely limit your traffic. If your budget is too low Google will not fully serve your ad. Less exposures will likely mean less traffic than your ad should be generating.
9.-> Use a good key word tool, like Wordtracker, to help you make good key word selections. It doesn't matter how good your headline and ad copy are if you are targeting key words that no one is searching for. It is equally disastrous to target keywords that are too general in nature.
For example, if you are in the fish business and target "fish" you may get a lot of traffic but no sales. If you are in the tropical fish business and target "tropical fish" you would be getting closer to the mark. If you sell exotic tropical fish and target "exotic tropical fish" you will likely get the right type of traffic visiting your web site AND assuming that you have a decent site your visitors would be placing orders.
For help in selecting keywords go to Wordtracker.com
Google Adwords Deserves Your Attention. - There is a lot more to Google Adwords than I have covered here. I only hope that I have your attention and that you will do further research. If it seems like it is for you give it a good go.
For additional Google Adwords information and links go to http://affiliate-programs-promotion.com
About the author:
David lives in Thailand about eleven months of the year while maintaining an office presence in Honolulu, Hi.
All of his income comes from Internet ventures. His latest projects are at:
http://affiliate-programs-promotion.comhttp://university-college-search.comhttp://azaam.comhttp://newsexyme.com
