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Here’s a quick thought for you :

PPC affiliate marketing is an much art as it is a science .

I talk a lot about :

1. Optimizing your bids
2. Split testing ads
3. Split testing your landing page
4. Setting up your campaign properly
5. And tracking your metrics

This is the scientific, or analytical, aspect of affiliate marketing. And as a former scientist I, no doubt, really like this aspect of the business.

Now here’s what I’ve realized : you can be a quiz at the analytical left brain aspects of this business and still struggle to make it work!

Why?

Because there’s a right brain creative aspect of ppc affiliate marketing that’s just as important as the analytical one.

So what’s the creative right brain element to ppc affiliate marketing?

1. Understanding the USP (unique selling proposition) of the offer you’re promoting
2. Understanding what the emotional hot buttons are in your niche
3. Understanding consumer buying patterns in your niche
4. Writing your copy so it speaks the language of your demographic, whether they’re new moms, single male yuppies, or whatever. Do you even know what your target demographic is?
5. Overall, understanding the psychology of your niche and getting into the frame of mind of the customer

By really doing your homework before hand (5 point above) you’ll be able to write really effective Google ad copy (that will get a high CTR) and landing page copy (that will get a high conversion rate), and even do much more effective keyword research. Just doing this will often spell the difference between success and failure.

Have YOU been doing your homework before you promote a new affiliate offer, or are you like most affiliates who just jump in a niche and throw up a campaign as fast as they can hoping it will convert?

Even now, with all my success as a super affiliate, I feel a sense of anxiety when I launch a new offer in a new niche, especially an offer that my team has been working on for several weeks-developing the site, unique content, etc, etc.

What if I don’t make any sales?

Will this work?

Will Google slap my site?

Am I using the right approach in this market!?!

It all usually works out and the affiliate offer is a success (well at least 90% of the time)!

Anyway this anxiety I was feeling just the other day when I did actually launch a new offer really got me thinking about this whole process.

You see when I started affiliate marketing the success rate of my new affiliate campaigns/offers was about 10% (or less), and now my success rate is about 90%.

What happened? What an I doing differently? And most importantly what can YOU do differently?

Here’s a few tips that will help you out:

1. Talk to Your Affiliate Manager - I always talk to my affiliate manager and make sure that the affiliate offer is HOT (conversions are good) and I always ask what the top affiliates are making with that offer, the bigger the number the better.
2. Does it Work with PPC? - Make sure that whatever your promoting that it’s actually something that will convert well with PPC. For example, if the payout for the offer is $1 and the average CPC in that market is 0.50, then forget PPC. Your merchant or affiliate manager should able to tell you if the affiliate promotions is something that works well with PPC.
3. Market Research - My team carefully researches a niche before we dive in. We look at what other affiliates & merchants are doing. What type of landing pages their using, what type of keywords their bidding on, and what style of ad copy they’re using. Based on this analysis we get a good feel for the market and an idea how to can add value by improving on what other affiliates are doing. We develop our plan of attack from there. (NOTE: We DON’T use a scraping program to do this market research, and we DON’T rip off & copy other people’s hard work, and YOU shouldn’t either.)

The key is to take sometime to really understand what you’re getting into if you decide to promote ringtones, pay day loans, or whatever.

Do your freakin’ homework and your success rate will go WAY up.

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet.

A lot of people have asked me : “Amit, how do you pick a niche?”

Simple.

I go to conferences, such as the Affiliate Summit, and I talk to merchants and affiliate networks. I interview them, I find out which niches are hot and which are not.

Here are some questions I like to ask:

1. Do your top affiliates use ppc to promote your affiliate program?
2. How much do your top affiliates make?

If they say ANYTHING less than a $100,000/month I walk.

Think about it. Are you going to waste your time in a niche where the super affiliates are making a measly $10,000/month in commissions? If you think $10,000/month is a lot, then you need to THINK BIGGER.

Let me tell you a little secret: let’s say you can have 3 affiliate promotions, you can put the same amount of effort launching each promotion, researching the keywords, making landing pages, setting up your Adwords campaigns, etc, etc, etc.

With the SAME EXACT EFFORT you can make $10k/month profit in one promotion, $100k/month profit in another promotion, and $1 million/month profit in yet another promotion. IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE NICHE YOUR IN.

Many affiliate are stuck in the rut of promoting affiliate programs where they are capped at $10k/month.

Find the right niche and you will be blown away how easy this business really is.