Now I know I’ve been talking about a lot of advanced topics recently. I’ve had a number of readers ask : “Hey Amit, all this is great, but I’m just getting started. What you do recommend that I do?”
Now based on the amazing success that many of the students in my coaching program are having I recommend starting affiliate marketing with direct linking campaigns promoting clickbank products.
Why?
First off direct linking requires no website, that right, all you need to do is sign up for an affiliate id through clickbank and you’re good to go – it takes 2 minutes.
Building a website is probably the biggest hurdle many affiliates face when getting started in this business, that is, unless your a professional web designer! I know it was a HUGE hurdle for me, it took me weeks to learn enough html to make a simple webpage with tables that didn’t look like a 5 year old threw it together!
Needless to say, I don’t make my own sites anymore. I have people who actually know what they’re doing handle that!
Now what’s direct linking? If you don’t already know it’s where you simply put your affiliate link in the destination url of your Google Ad, taking the visitor right to the affiliate site.
How cool is that?
As long as your commission are greater than your click costs you’re making a profit.
This is by no means a long term business strategy, but it’s the FASTEST way to learn Adwords, and direct marketing, for that matter.
Here’s a few basic steps to take to get started :
- First a relatively obscure niche in clickbank, a highly competitive niche will be difficult to break into with direct linking. Obscure little niches work great with direct linking though, as long as they has a decent sales page and a viable market.
- Use a tool like Keycompete.com or Keywordspy.com to dig up a nice broad keyword list
- Clean up junk keywords out of your keyword list
- Use EfficientPPC to setup a ONE keyword per adgroups campaign, with two unique ads per adgroup
- While you’re setting up your campaign with EfficientPPC, Setup clickbank tids for each keyword. There’s a number of ways of doing this, the easier way is to simply assign a number to each keyword and use that number as your tid (since clickbank severely limits of the tid to 8 characters you can’t use the keyword itself). This is critical to your success, you need to be able to track which keywords are actually making sales.
- Launch your campaign on Adwords with a starting bid of 0.20. Closely monitor your campaign. (1) if you’re getting virtually zero traffic, up your bids. (2) If your getting lots of traffic ( > 500 clicks) and zero sales, you’ve probably got a dud, move on (3) If your getting traffic and consistent sales, you’ve got a winner, now you need to optimize and make it profitable!
I don’t have time to go into more detail in this post, but I’m planning a simple direct linking case study where I pick a clickbank niche and show you what I do, step by step, and how to make it profitable.
So stay tuned!
adwords affiliate marketing basics clickbank direct linking efficientppc
For all you skeptic out there, I know lots of people have success with direct linking. I personally don’t recommended it as a long term strategy, however, it’s the best was to learn Adwords and ppc affiliate marketing.
Yes, for some products you will get Google slapped if you direct link, but NOT all. That’s all apart of going through the numbers.
It takes 5 minutes to setup a direct link campaign, you can start 10 in one day and see which one flies.
Also, just to reiterate what Doug said, Google display URL policy change on April 1st will NOT effect direct linking campaigns.
So I tried this last night and lost $20.00 in about an hour haha. the product’s payout was only $20, so I stopped it. Looking forward to watching your case study Amit, id like to see your approach.
hey Amit,
any ideas on my question:
“The only thing I can not understand here is, how would you create an individual TID for each keyword? If you have 10K keywords, this would mean you would have to manually create 10K TID’s in clickbank. Or is there something I am missing here?”
Yeah, I’ve tried this approach and it feels like gambling. I guess it really depends on the niche and offer.
I’m going to try it again tho!
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Can’t wait to see your case study.
Looking forward to read about the case study Amit.
Thanks for share.
Matias
Rec said you can find out more info in Andrew Wee’s and Amit’s package. Amit do you have a course for sale?
I’m also looking forward to that case study.
Not to freak people out, what Amit explained in his post will work but it will not work for absolute beginners. Why? Because to do what Amit explained you need prior experience with affiliate marketing and ppc marketing. If you’re losing money, don’t give up. Stop and read on ppc marketing more. There is lto fo information you need to know before you start your first campaign. You got to KNOW what you’re doing, otherwise you will have tough time making even one sale.
John,
My mistake, that program is closed now. Sorry about that.
I should have checked first.
I don’t see why people think this approach is more dangerous or difficult than sending PPC traffic to your own site.
If you have conversion and/or TID tracking, at that level, it’s really not that different. Yes, things like Google’s one URL per search policy will impact you. But again, Amit is not talking about a long-term strategy here. His point is that this is the easiest way to learn keyword research and PPC optimizing. Pretty important skills to learn, wouldn’t you agree?
As far as needing “prior experience”. Sure, that’s ALWAYS a benefit. But everyone starts at zero and has to learn somewhere.