Hi gang, I'm new to CB, Adwords and affiliate marketing in general. I have been twiddling with some free adwords credit last week but didn't make a sale from 25 clicks (promoting 1 CB product with 250 "somewhat" targeted keywords). I expect another 100-200 clicks before I get one or two sales as a minimum forecasted conversion rate. I do own 11 domains and just bought my own deluxe hosting account from my own reseller site. I plan on creating individual pages for each product I advertise on every domain/site I own. I will create blogs and articles and link them to the product page where the hop-link will be, but that's where I'm confused. When we are given a hoplink for a selected product, to be placed on a page we create; 1. Do I need to have the hoplink on just one page only and point/link all other articles/blogs to this page, or is it ok to just point the customer directly to the product from the articles/blogs pages? Do I need to create a product page at all? 2. When I advertise on Google Adwords, I noticed that the ads I wrote pointed straight to the product page without a problem. I just entered the hoplink into the URL section, changed the URL description to match as closely to the hoplink and it worked fine, but the BIG question is... if the customer clicks on my ad on Google, then goes directly to the product's original site (via hoplink URL), will it still register with CB as a sale for me (if the cust makes a purchase of course)? 3. Do I need to create a "Thank You" page if I'm an affiliate? If so, do I need one for every hoplink/product? This is all exciting, but I feel the products on offer aren't very... well... you know... "polished" let's say? hehe. But hey, I'll work with whatever I can get. If anyone knows any other site offering similar services as CB, then please point me in the right direction. Any other help, improvements, suggestions would be so greatly appreciated. Good health and happiness! Cheers to you all! Bizza.
1. Direct customers straight to the merchant's page is known as direct linking. It's not a bad affiliate marketing strategy, but affiliates usually get better conversions with a landing page. So yeah, you should create a review page for the product. 2. Yeah, you will get the commission. 3. No, "thank you" pages are needed for publishers.
Awesome! Thank you very much bl4ckmaN. So in effect, I can create hundreds of Adwords campaigns for 100's of CB products and not a single site needed to be built? All I'm relying on is my ad to be good enough to be clicked and let the publisher page do the rest. I have to get to work straight away... I have around $30 in credit so I may give it a go accross a massive product/ad range at the lowest price range (maybe around $0.10 - $0.30 per keyword?). If this works and I can make a few sales, then Awesome! Cheers!
The problem with direct linking is that if someone else is promoting the same product via DL too, that means only one ad will be displayed in the results - either yours or your competitors. The advertisers with better quality score and account history + other factors wins... So instead of getting in trouble with display url competition, just build a landing page for each product, which will help you to increase conversions (if done the right way) and lower the costs. By the way, don't jump on 100's of products hoping to make a sale with one....FOCUS. Make 2-3 campaigns and track/test them.
Bizza before you go dabbling with adwords you need to get a few figures worked out ) e.g. normal sales experience is around 1% to 3% and some people class this as both good and average. Therefore if you make 2 sales out of every 100 clicks you will need to work out if the ad campaign is going to be cost effective? So two sales at $0.10 per click will cost you $10.00 However two sales at $0.30 per click will cost you $30.00. 3 times as much! Therefore a budget of $30.00 even if it is Free will not get you far but at least it is a start! So make sure that your ad campaign is for a viable product! Especially as you can get a very large adwords bill at the end of the month if you do not plan both the products profitability against the cost of the campaign! Just a word of warning for you as many many people have been burned by Big G and adwords! Also make sure that you do as bl4ckmaN say's Stay Focused! i.e. Not too many products at once, start one get it working for you and if it is profitable do another if not find another product but stick to a budget, Daily or Weekly on your ad campaigns. Make sure that you visit Big G's Adwords Tutorial videos as well to get a little insight into what they want you to do. Google is vague at best so you may have to either go through the tutorials a few times or buy a good adwords book.
Hello, ok, let me word this without sounding like i am "just" promoting by product. Direct Linking/Affiliate Links and hoplinks in PPC/Adwords are very bad. In adwords, it all comes down to Quality Score - and you can only reach a good quality score (low CPC!) with a landing page. This page needs to be YOUR Url. Now, direct linking to a VENDOR page is even against TOS, the URLs should be your own site. The other problem, even if you're "lucky" to somehow get away with direct linkining, its impossible that two Ads use the SAME url. This is again a reason why you need your own site. I have a product which i sell for some years already, http://www.affiliatesitequick.com (formerly affiliate hijacker). What it does, it "clones" a vendor site and makes it appear and accessible under your own URL. This is usually the method i use (yes, of course i use my own tool for this The other solution is that you write a review, eg. on a wordpress blog or squidoo lens, your OWN text - and then you use affiliate URLs and point to the reviewed product via your aff link. Here also i recommend to use shorturl service since hoplinks and affilate links in general look BAD and do more bad than good. For adwords, landing pages must meet a certain criteria to get good/great quality score. This is basicalyl relevancy of your site to your ad-text - as well as formal things like working "contact us", "privacy" and "terms of service" links. G.
Thanks again mate. Just wondering though, how does creating a page for a product decrease costs? I know it's a much better idea to have a review site with the right keywords etc, but directing a browsing customer to the product itself would be much better, surely wouldn't it? I understand that people would like a review of the product first before buying, but what % of these people are actually 'passers by' (like a link on Adsense), compared to people actually looking for the product itself via keyword searches? I'm only assuming here (very blindly, I might add), that the ratio would be something like 10/90 ratio in favour of the latter. But I'm not an expert on this kind of research, although, I am a pretty good estimator. I used to be one! hehe.
I know. That's the problem; I don't have the capital to do a research test run on 'how it all works with googledigook!', let alone which product is the best to go "niche" with either. Hehe, but I'll get there I think. I have some great support and advice from wonderful people like yourselves. And I thank you all very much for this. Damn Goooglegumpiefrooks (aka "ZioGoogle" - as I like to call them!). Thanks for the heads-up there matey. I WILL look out for that too now. Jeeeeez they're dodgy aren't they? That's just it though. I agree wholeheartedly with what you and bl4ckmaN. Although, I believe that having many campaigns in a "test-run" like this (with targeted keywords for each, just as focused as 2 or 3), would enable me to find those niche markets, to then concentrate on and, enhance. The only problem with me at the moment is I am cash-strapped, but not competely. I'm not working and I have dabbled in eweb developments for years trying to learn as much as I can. It's been 3 years now and I think I'm starting to understand the basic fundamentals. Still a long way to go though! Wish me luck! I get google bumps everytime I try to look for specifics with them. I don't like ZioGoogle very much, as you may have noticed? hehe ...UP THE REVOLUTION!!! ... Paule, thank you very much, as well bl4ckmaN, for both your much valued help and support. Good health and happiness to both of you and your families (and to all really!). Selaam, Shalom, and Cheers!
>> Just wondering though, how does creating a page for a product decrease costs? >> Bizza, you didn't really read what was written Quality Score decides how much you need to pay for a click to your site. With a bad site or a simple affiliate link you usually cannot achieve a good quality score. The more relevant your site to the ad (read again what was written above)...the better your quality score, the lower your cost per click.
sure, it would be the easiest solution if you could just paste your hoplink into Google. Years ago this was possible, but google changed this. Only ONE ad can be up for ONE url, and the destination has to be YOUR site. Aside, a review site is a GOOD thing. I am testing this right now. You will get way higher conversions with a "pre-sell" review site raving a about a product as opposed to sending people directly to the site. This could be the differnce between 100 clicks --> sale....and 20 clicks --> sale. People love reviews - besides, MANY clickbank vendor sites ARE bad and really good converting ones are rare. People are RARELY having their credit cards ready and will buy the FIRST best site they land on. They will click on your site, and then click on others, and browse...AND THEN they buy. So...send them to your site and talk about the product and convince the hell out of them how good this or that product is. Thats what people are looking for. INFORMATION. Give them the information. Make it look legit. You are an authority, you TESTED this and compared this...its the BEST thing since sliced bread. And then have your link ready and direct them to the super product. STOP them from browsing and turn them into buyers!
Thanks GeorgR. That is good to know and iteresting because all the keywords I used has a quality of 7 or more /10. And that's using DL's. It worked, but ZioGoogle hasn't picked up on it yet. I guess, from what you guys have told me, they eventually will hey? I was going to create my own pages anyway. Just though DL's would be more viable, but now it's back to basics! hmmmm... but if it's impossible, how did I get 25 clicks? Must be lucky like you said, but I fear not for too long. Pitty I didn't have the cash to take advantage of this momentary luck. Awwww maaaan... you know how much I need one of those right now? I could kill for one. Are you offering one btw? Seriously, I can buy one off you. I have a hosting site (WWD of course!) where it's a template and I wanted to create a landing page for my domain with a clone of the 1st page of my template... as well as many other ideas that spring to mind. Let me know if you can help buddy? Cheers! Can you elaborate on the bolded parts please GeorgR? Never heard of this one actually. Got it. If I cloned a page, would the keywords also come up the same? How does cloning actually work? ... Thank you for taking time in helping me matey. It's so appreciated, I wish I could give you all some cash or something. Reps definately are starters and if you want me to put any site links you have on my up-and-coming sites, it will be done. Just PM me with the details. PS, I started a link exchange campaign with LinkExchange.com and I already have over 100 pending links to be placed staright away, as soon as I launch it. I plan on working on this and blogs/articles for at least 3 hrs per day. Sumfn's gotta give sooner or later! Good health and happiness to you and your family my friend.
You are right actually. I had the ratio the complete other way around it seems? Awesome info and advice matey! Thanks. Good luck with your review site too.
Hey Georg, I checked your site out. Did you design this product yourself? Great work man! I will buy it, but it's a bit too much for me at the moment Give me a month perhaps and then I will. I need something like this soooo much though. Can't wait! Thanks a million mate.
oops! I get it now. I thought that CPC costs had nothing to do with site quality. I thought quality was for keyword acceptance as each keyword had a different score. I learnt something new again! And how much cheaper per click will it get if I had a very high ranking? What's the scale? Thanks for your patience and clarity once again Georg.