Is it wise to redirect adwords to an affiliate website directly? Does anyone do it, and if so, is it successful?
Yeah, if you're starting out, its best to Direct Link instead of building your own landing pages, to get a feel if the 'Offer' / 'eBook' will convert. Assuming you did proper keyword research, tight ad groups, and proper tracking.... Pros - You can see how the offer converts. - You won't waste time creating landing pages for a non-converting offer. Cons - There may be more than 1 affiliate using the same Display URL. - Merchant may use it too. - Merchant page may have sucky Quality Score, raising ur min. bids. - Sometimes hard to track (unless you do Individual keyword/ad group tracking) So yeah, pros and cons. People new to the PPC game should direct link first, before thinking of creating landing pages, as that might lower conversions drastically if one does not know what he's doing!
The biggest disadvantage I've found with linking directly is that I can't track the conversion rate of individual keywords. To do it properly you need to be able to add tracking codes to the merchant's "thank you" page. Some merchants do allow you to add an extra code to the end of your affiliate link but I find that even doing that I get a lot of mystery info. I found a service this month that has really helped out a lot. It allows me use a short url in my adwords link that then redirects to the affiliate link. I can track the country, time, IP and have a subcode for each keyword. I still can't track the conversions directly but I can get a good idea of which keywords are working by the clicks/unique clicks ratio for individual IP's. Most of them just show up as 1/1 (basically a bounce) but the ones that check the site out are more like 5/1. The service is the click tracker at websitegear.com There are other short-url tracking services but many of them only track the number of hits. mp :8^)