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
I signed up for keywordspy (gold version) and never got a password. It’s only been a few hours but you’d think this would be automated. There isn’t even a password recovery feature.
Anyone with experience with keywordspy?
Ditto Doug.
The point here is to stop reading and start doing.
Doing a little keyword research and direct linking to test a product or market accomplishes the most important factor…
You gained some insight into a market AND experience with PPC.
Wow i’m glad i found this blog. I’m currently experimenting with direct linking. Not for long term purposes but i want to weed out the not so profitable campaigns before i create my landing pages. Now i’ll following your experiment closely.
.
As of now i have about 5+ campaigns wich all have a keyword quality score of “Great”
I’m curious about your case study let’s see how it turns out!
Thomas, you are right man! Actions speak louder than words.
What Amit shared is a simple strategy with direct linking for newbies.
Use the direct link, use it with PPC, article marketing, blog comment posting, and forum marketing. That will get you some quick cash but nay, for long term, it is better to build up your empire of Virtual Real Estate (VRE).
PPC is a beast. I made a few dollars with clickbank, nothing major, but have spent more than I made. I’m getting alot of clicks with Pepperjam, but no sales. I’m starting to think that its not so much skill as it is gambling with this stuff. It all depends on what you market and if the consumer is ready to buy. I’m gonna keep plugging at it here and there but there are other strategies that are less “experimental” than PPC, and you target quality consumers.
I’m gonna keep reading blogs like this, zackjohnson, uberaffiliate, and shoemoney…but seems to me like the super affiliates have a tight relationship with the “big wigs”. That’s another aspect of this business, they get first dibbs on something when it comes out…”It’s not always what you know, but who you know”…
I’ve been doing ppc affiliate marketing for about 2 years now. Once I understood what I was doing, I ONLY had 2-3 days where I lost money, I was profitable every other day.
Nowadays I CONSISTENTLY make $1000s a day in profits, not exactly what I call gambling.
Gamble based completely on chance and luck, affiliate marketing is a science.
Amit, I know this is a bit off topic, but do you generally pick products that have an exact commission (like clickbank)? Or do you also promote products that give you a percentage of the sale?
Out of every 100 people reading this post only 2 to 5 will succeed. Most will just read, forget and rest will give up. With every business, you need to connect with the right people , need the right tools and information. There is too much crap on the net and you can easily get lured into doing things the wrong way. Like someone said, keep plugging away…sooner or later you will stumble upon right information through right people. (which also includes reading blog on regular basis…bookmark it if you haven’t)
worst post ever!
Worth reading for affiliate marketing newbies. But very unlucky, Clickbank is selective, they pulled out our country from the list…
Any alternatives to Clickbank Amit?