You sign up for an affiliate program. Is it ok to do adwords campaigns and have the destination link be your affiliate link (going directly to the sites sign up page) or do you have to have your own site as the destination link? If it is ok to do direct linking, is there any pointers/advice for doing so? Thanks!
It works for sure... but it's not recommeded since you are essentially building another persons business for free and it's usually hard to get any significant returns on such a marketing strategy... What you do is place a Squeeze page in the middle, offer a free report that describes something, (may be you story about your experience with the product in question) or just give away 10-15 "surefire tips" or whatever.. then have e-mails sent out from an autoresponder and make sure they're personal... Now, after sign-up redirect them to a thank you page or the affiliate link depending on what you like. It's really, really easy to do and then you just drive traffic with AdWords like you suggested...So for a one time payment of about $80 for hosting+domain name you're all set to make $5000/month instead of breaking even with adwords and the next month it'll be $10000/month etc... it'll just grow exponentially over-time. It's really cool once you start to get subscribers etc =) - Chris
Thanks for the reply Chris. I'm confused why you say I would be promoting the business for free though? If i use my affiliate link (with my referral code in it) as the destination URL, why wouldn't I get credit for the referral? I don't see the need to have to set up your own page and everything if you can just have the adwords ads go directly to the site's sign up page via your affiliate link
he says you are promoting his business because you dont have your own business model in place. You are getting traffic and then sending it away immediately. An affiliates idea is not only to make money on immediate traffic but to also attempt to monetize the paid for traffic for a longer period of time. Thus making affiliate marketers more money, than a quick sale. His claim with the break even analysis is accurate, where you drive traffic and possibly break even, then over time optimize for a possible profitable campaign. Instead with his model you offer a small value in exchange for an email subscription so you have offer a more longer drawn out sales cycle to convert more traffic on either the one offer or multiple upsells for the life of the sign up. His model is more business minded and modeled, and in line with what many affiliate marketers do to make a guaranteed profit over time.
I would do the following with the sampleaffiliate.com/youraffiliateaccount Make a page website mywebsite.com/affiliate.html on my website mywebsite.com Add a 302 Temporary Redirect to the webpage sampleaffiliate.com/youraffiliateaccount Suppose you spend a month marketing for this affiliate of yours and then you find a better option? Are you going to do the entire exercise again? You just need to do the following:- Join New Affiliate Program Change the a 302 Temporary Redirect to the webpage newsampleaffiliate.com/youraffiliateaccount from sampleaffiliate.com/youraffiliateaccount at mywebsite.com/affiliate.html and you are done Your entire marketing exercise is always there with you. Just a small change in the URL, will get you in action with the new affiliate program from day 1.
Thanks for the info guys. I'm startin to get a better idea of this but I'm wonderin if you guys can point to any resources that give some thorough examples of the whole affiliate process. I would really like to see a specific example of setting up the campaign, building the site, using adwords, etc. Even if i have to buy a book/program or whatever, rather than having to try to piece together all the different aspects having never really seen a good example of how it's done. Thanks again!
Hi dear guys, this is a part of the google's policy: What do I need to know about the updated display URL policy? Based on feedback from both our advertisers and users, and consistent with our efforts to present relevant results, we'll no longer allow certain exceptions to our display URL policy. These include, but aren't limited to, redirects and vanity URLs. In line with our existing policy, we'll continue to require that your ad's display URL matches its destination URL (the URL of your landing page). This policy will be strictly enforced for new ads, regardless of previous exceptions. For more details about the current display URL policy, please visit https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47173. And this URL has contain blow: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=91451&topic=10614
Again I failed to mention... mywebsite.com/affiliate.html would be the out going links from my website's product page e.g. mywebsite.com/affiliate.html would be linked from the page mywebsite.com/affiliateproduct.html And inturn I would post the following at Adwords Weight Loss Products Weight Loss 1 Weight Loss 2 mywebsite.com/WeightLossProduct mywebsite.com/affiliateproduct.html When visitors will click these ads, they will reach the product page. Let's suppose it's a weight loss website, the visitors will reach my website with a short review about all the weight loss product/s that I would want to sell. After reading the review if the visitor wishes he will click the affiliate product/s and buy it.
Robert do you mean, initially the ROI will be around even as you'll be paying for clicks, making a few sales, but you'll have the added bonus of an email list, to use to target them again for related affiliated similar themed products? Which in turn gets you sales without the need of more investment?
correct... Initial ROI is usually break even or at a loss, but as you monetize the email subscription the ROI turns to a positive long term effect as you upsell on the initial offer and other complimentary offers. For example Since you are all in love with perry marshall, if you signed up for his original offer, to get the offer you have to sign up to his email subscription before he exposes how to buy the product. This in effect creates 2 things, immediate monetization of his product, and long term upsell potential for additional ROI over the life of your subscription. Now, I bet if you have signed up for his email list and purchased his product you are probably still receiving his newsletters which show up from time to time, and since many of you are big advocates of his, I also predict that some of you have probably signed up and/or purchased some of the other products and services he talks about. Since you did this, he has immediately monetized you and created a long term monetization value.
Some affiliates can run adwords campaigns with huge bids for top spots knowing they will lose money initially, but overtime they will recoup that because they know the lifetime value of their customer. By sending that person more then one offer, they can market to them repeatedly for basically free, (after the initial cost from adwords) and their roi will only go up as the customer buys more and more. This works very well with big ticket items, but especially with repeat items, (baby diapers, perfume...etc)