I'm not new to Adwords, but haven't used it for some time. I know, that having a landing page is better for conversions, but I'm just wondering whether direct linking is still working for someone here? Is that really true that bids are higher? Apart from lower conversions, what else I should expect from using DL?
u def. would be competing with other affiliates for the same spot if DLing. i guess it mite be ok to test a niche, but by no means suggested to do this for a long time. at least get a new domain, or use a page on one of ure domains and frame the DL or redirect it. there are many other small baby steps u can take to get around DLing, just really comes down to if that effort is worth it or not. if your niche isnt that competitive direct linking mite work great, but im sure if its a great niche, affiliates will eventually come and drive up the price to play.
The reason, why I started thinking about direct linking is because I thought it would be really good to use for products, which have really low gravity. Usually those are not advertised via Adwords, so no display url competition. Obviously for popular products, direct linking is seriously waste of time...
My experiences with Direct linking was disastorous. But like you said, you might be onto something, if you plan to promote low gravity products.
I've had pretty good success with direct linking using Adwords. You just need to make sure that your keywords, ad copy, and merchant's landing page are relevant so that you will not be slapped with a high cost per click.
How's your CPC? I remember I was pushing some low-gravity product via Adwords, and the keywords and ads were 100% relevant to the landing page, but I had poor quality score and cpc was like $0.40 That wasn't a competitive niche....
I throw out some advice here from a guy that never did adwords before. I remember reading this somewhere and I really don't know how applicable it is anymore. I read if you were direct linking to a cb link, you should take the sites url, put it in at google adwords keyword tool, and use the keywords it finds. Those are supposed to be the relevant ones. Don't know if that works anymore (for quality scores). Make sure the low gravity product converts before you try it. I should do a small campaign for one of my small micro niches that sell. No one is doing any adwords.
The final url that customer lands on. donnagrace Wow, that's great for direct linking. I should try it some day...
Supper, I think I've seen a video teaching that method in Frank Kern's Mass Control site. bl4ckmaN^, yes you should give it a try some day... it seems that now is not a good time to try due to Clickbank problems http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1032238
If you do direct link for few days or few times, the minimum bid will not change If you do it for many times or many days, the minimum bid for each keyword will be very high. Dunno why~
I tried it a while back with no luck. Useless with Adbrite PPC too. Its not hard to throw a 1 line landing page together though. A nice .com, image of the product and a large call to action. That'll simply do it.
$0.05 on Adwords search network. I don't turn "on" the content network anymore. Based from experience, the clicks that I get on the content network don't convert to sales.
I thik its totally wast of money to turn on the content network ads. They don't bring any sales. Just clicks that's it.
Its everything off the google sponsored listings inside a results page. So for example the ads DP has at the top are the content network.