If you are promoting an affiliate product, with already "proven ad copy", why do you need to your own website and hope visitors clicks on your aff link? Why not make it a one step process? Maybe super affiliates are doing this, but I've read alot of articles that say to set up specific landing pages/sites for niche marketing. I understand the concept but feel it's wasting vistors time. Let me know, David D
Google only allows one of the same link on one page of search results. This goes to the person with the highest quality score. This means that 5 people cannot direct link to a merchants page because google will not allow 5 of the same links. This will annoy the searcher is 5 pages go to exactly the same page. I think other PPC sites allow this but again, your not standing out if everythings the same.
Cboyce is exactly right. For PPC advertising, that is. If you're using free advertising (i.e. article marketing), there is no reason why you couldn't just link directly to the sales page. However, sometimes you want to have that review page because it helps to show the potential buyer that there are positive reviews on this product. Sometimes people will click your links not expecting or prepared to buy, and that's where the review page would come in handy.
Hi, It's depend on your keywords. I think that if the buyer look for a specific product you don't need landing page but if he look for something generic so then you have to build landing page \ site.
Besides the problem with only allowing to show one link on Google Adwords, think about it this way: how are you going to collect a potential customer-base without your own website?
Besides the Google rules there are very good marketing reasons why you would want to. But this depends on the market, traffic source, your goals and marketing skills amongst many other things. Simply put, adding an extra step to the sequence in a over-crowded marketplace full of people shouting BUY ME BUY ME, can help differentiate and position yourself more favorably. You can for example write a "unbiased" reviews page, this pre-sells the visitors, as you position yourself being on HIS side, he does not view you anymore as a high-pressure salesman. Or, for example add a landing page to capture an e-mail commonly referred to as the "Squeeze Page". Super-Affiliate use this strategy to build a list of their own, increase their profit per customer. When done correctly, these super-affiliates will make MORE money than people just sending directly to the merchant's page so it is advantageous to do so. There are other very good reasons to do so which I am not going to get but you get the idea
With your own website you could actually create your own unique content on the Affiliate Product. That is what you want to do as well as driving traffic to a site that you could do more with. You would also need to get around the fact that if your promoting a popular product you will be competiting with others that might have the same url in the system and that will hurt your performance. Having your own website as an affiliate is the best way to promote programs! Darin
If it's a straight arbitrage campaign then it's not exactly necessary. But, if you do set up a site with some content, and not much advertising, your quality score goes up bringing your ppc down. Personally, I'd rather pay 20cents for a click than $1.00 for the same click. Also, a good squeeze page can allow you to capture leads, before referring to an affil program, which could be re-used for other purposes.
Are you sure that a higher QS results in a lower CPC? I'm not so sure and my sources tell me that QS only affects your minimum bids. My experience also supports this in that I have one campaign where every single keyword is Great, and my buddy has an almost identical campaign and most of his are NOT great. We pay exactly the same amount per click.
I could be wrong about the QS affecting price, as I haven't studied the results scientifically. I can only say that on the last handful of campaigns done, where there was a site without adverts, and then affil links and other monetisation was put in place, the minimum bid did indeed go up, and the overall campaign cost went up as well. Of course there are many other variables in the equation, your mileage may vary.
just a small correction, google only allows one ad to be displayed per unique url for the same keyword. so do your homework on keywords and you'll be ok. a landing page does have some advantages but also disadvantages, you get the person to click on your ad (1 in 1000 chance) and then he has to click again to go to the merchant. sometimes he won't. just my two bobs worth