Using Google AdWords For Affiliate
Selling
By Alvin Poh
While many people may have you believe otherwise, selling online is
not an easy thing to do. Coming up with a great domain name, setting up
your website, integrating the whole lot with a payment processor, getting
inventory, handling shipping, the list goes on.
It is a great thing then, that affiliate selling came about. What this
is is basically you referring customers to merchants. For example, if you
point John to MerchantA.com, and John buys some products there, then you
get a cut of the profits.
This obviously simplifies the whole process a lot, and allows you to
concentrate on marketing. In fact, you might not even need a website to
do this, as I will show you later.
What Do You Sell?
Affiliate networks like Commission
Junction, LinkShare
and Clickbank
are one-stop shops where you can find thousands of products from different
merchants to sell. In this manner, you will only have to sign up once and
you can consolidate payments from different merchants in one cheque!
So sign up with one of these networks and look for products to sell.
Why Isn�t A Website Needed?
While a well-designed and effectively promoted website is always better,
it is optional for this method of affiliate marketing, because you simply
use Google AdWords to generate relevant traffic to your affiliate links.
In other words, you can link your AdWords ads directly to the linking URLs
that networks like Commission Junction, Linkshare or Clickbank provide
you with.
Signing up with Google AdWords takes only a few minutes and costs only
$5 to activate. Don�t bother about any promo codes that the sign-up process
asks you for, because they have to be bought, so it isn�t really worth
it. Once you�re done signing up, you can start creating your ads immediately.
AdWord ads are in this general format:
Ad Title
Description 1
Description 2
URL
A point to note is that AdWords has two parts to the URL portion. One
URL is your display URL, which is the URL people will see appear on your
ad. The other URL is your actual URL, which is where your users will go
to when they click on your ad. So you can actually just put the web address
of the company whose products you are selling as your display URL, and
have your affiliate link as your actual URL!
Choosing Keywords
Great! Now you are ready for the next step, which is choosing the keywords
that will trigger Google to display your ad. Choose keywords that you believe
potential customers will use to search for your product/service. If you
have a larger profit margin, you can bid for the more competitive keywords,
but usually other just as relevant keywords may be less in demand and cost
less. Don�t worry about selecting keywords, because you can have a whole
list of keywords to trigger your ad.
This list is not finalised and you can edit your keywords at any point
of time. Also, Google works great with your advertising budget since it
allows you to determine the maximum cost-per-click you are willing to pay,
as well as the maximum daily amount you want to spend in your campaign.
Good luck!
Alvin Poh has been specialising in web development, content distribution,
advertising and marketing strategies since 1995. His goal is to provide
practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters,
website designers, and self-employed people achieve their goals in today's
competitive Internet. At his site, you can learn how to make
money online.
Next Affiliate Article:
Five
Ways to Increase Your Affiliate Sales
Most home business owners are involved with affiliate marketing. As
an affiliate marketer, a combination of techniques can be used to promote
your affiliate website and/or link. Here are five things you can do.......
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