I'm a newb to affiliate marketing. I can say that I have a decent understanding of SEO and general webmastering, but I'm totally lost in affiliate marketing. I want to do an experiment to learn, but I have some questions. I plan to market using PPC only (Adwords). 1) What network should I sign up with first? I dislike CJ.com's layout and interface. 2) do I make my own website to promote the product, or link directly to the affiliate's landing page using adwords? If anyone wants to guide me through, I'd gladly sign up using your affiliate link to one of the affiliate networks. I'd consider myself a successful webmaster, as I've made over 40K in 6 months, so Teaching me may end up very profitable for you.
If you're new to Affiliate Marketing I'd suggest you first sign up with Clickbank. They have thousands of products which you can choose from to promote, perhaps something in your field of expertise. Make sure that your affiliate offers good promotional tools and preferably doesn't have a sign up link on their landing page. You want to sell their product not have to go through an opt in process. Initially I'd suggest you use your affiliate landing page and create an Adwords campaign making sure that you select your keywords directly from that landing page to increase the quality score. If you're good at creating your own landing pages then you can probably increase your sales by offering "extra bonuses" (ebooks,software,reports etc.) if they buy the product from you. Hope this helps.
direct affiliate marketing is getting scrutinized nowadays by Y and G. it's also alot harder because you have to learn what keywords are profitable at what bid prices based on your conversions. if you don't know what your doing and just starting out you can lose alot of money this way. i'd start out building your own website and trying to SEO the pages and generate some organic traffic. learn how to design your pages to monetize the traffic with different affiliate banners/links. hope this helps.
try COPEAC it is best for PPL some advertisements pay $28 per lead (just for a filled form not sales) if advertisement matches with your content it is superb. you can find details at themecheap.com
I would agree with missylicious and try out NeverBlue. You might also want to steer clear of PPC promotion until you have done your homework as it can get real expensive, real fast... Best of Luck! nscdn