Adwords & Affiliates its a Love Hate Relationship

2 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on November 9, 2006 in Affiliate Tips  

Anyone that has been in the Affiliate market long enough and uses Google Adwords has had a day or two of frustration. If you haven’t experienced any major increases in bids count your blessings.

What is going on with Adwords within the past few days? Google Adwords is trying to improve their system, and by doing so it makes it harder on publishers, by requiring them to provide more content and information on their site.

Why is it harder on Publishers? We have to abide by their rules and their quality score. If they don’t like the site they charge us more to list it.

What determines your bid amount? Several factors, but most important is CTR and Quality score and of course other people bidding on those keyword terms. If you can nail CTR and QS most likely you can get your site advertising for cheap bids.

The good news is that Google tells us what they expect.  (https://adwords.google.com/select/siteguidelines.html)
Then why is there an issue?
Some of the CPA affiliates out there like to crank out as many cookie cutter sites with strictly a landing page. Google is putting its foot down and making it harder for you to do that and get cheap bids. So now a little more effort and time needs to be put into the sites.

This is why there is a love hate relationship as Google makes changes, sometimes it will benefit your site, and sometimes it will benefit your competitors. The main key is read their guidelines and build sites according to them IF you plan to promote thru Google. If not design it how you like!

If you have any suggestions or feedback feel free to leave us a comment.

The Key to CPA conversions on your Existing Websites

2 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on November 6, 2006 in Affiliate Tips  

Many people that get into affiliate marketing already have a site with traffic. This is a great place to start some trial and error with the various CPA offers. Here are some tips to make your current traffic convert. ( A Little disclaimer: every site and the traffic it receives is different. I am not going to lie some sites just do better with Adsense but most will benefit from CPA offers or see a drastic increase with revenue by using CPA offers)

So you have a site that gets traffic already and want to monetize it with more than .05 clicks. Here are a few questions I ask myself when selecting the CPA offers:

1. What is my demographic? (Male Female Age Income etc)
2. What is my target country? (90% of CPA’s are US only)
3. What are their interests? (is the site generic or niche targeted, What is the niche)
4. Do I have enough traffic or should I work on getting more traffic first?

Now you have answered those questions this gives you an idea of what to target. Below are a few examples of what offers I would choose dependant on some of the answers above.

Site 1:
US women, Age 18 to 40, targeted at mothers.
A Great offer for this site would be a CPA offer from Maxbounty. It is an easy signup offer for Club mom. Another offer I would try is 3 Year Free of Women’s Magazines (Allure, Cosmopolitan, & Glamour). While these don’t pay out high dollar the do have EPC’s of around .45.

Site 2:
US Teens, Age 12 to 25, targeted at social networking
A great offer for Teens is ANY easy signup offer for cool gadgets, like laptops, ipods, cell phones etc. If you have a teen site you have to TRY promoting ringtones. Maxbounty and Azoogle have many ringtone offers to choose from. You will need to try different ones to see which one converts best with your site.

Site 3:
US Men, Age 18-35, targeted at professionals
This audience at times is very tough to convert as they aren’t dumb and will not signup for just any offer. BUT most professionals don’t have time for dating so they turn to online dating services Maxbounty and Azoogle both have great dating offers that convert well. Depending on the site it could do well with some of the investor or start your own business kits.

The 3 sites above are just examples, but the main key is you know your traffic better than anyone. Target them and give them what they want and it will convert. The last question #4 is a tough one… but usually if I am only getting 10 to 100 unique visitors a day I try increasing that traffic before I try pushing to many CPA offers.

My last advice is don’t just your banners!!! Be creative, use text and images. If you want to change the text and the ways you promote the offer just ask your account manager and they will let you know if you change the text or not. I wish you the best of luck!

If you have any suggestions or feedback feel free to leave us a comment.

A Meeting of the Web Minds that you can Learn from!

2 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on November 1, 2006 in Affiliate Information, Elite Retreat  

Many of us in the CPA world have heard of Shoemoney (Jeremy Schoemaker) but now is your chance to sit face to face with him & many other internet “Guru’s” and get your questions answered. They are Calling it the Elite Retreat.

It is a great oppoprtunity to sit with many of the best in the internet business (Leaders: Jeremy Schoemaker, Lee Dodd, Dave Taylor, Aaron Wall ) and pick their brain and help them push you and your sites to the next level. I am even considering going but I have will have to check with the real boss (My wife) as the only thing holding me back from signing up is that it is right before Christmas.

Some may say this is expensive, but think the knowledge that will be gleamed from them and the contacts you will have when you walk away from the retreat. The contacts you will have are worth the entry fee alone.

But if you want to find out more infomation about the Elite Retreat and all the Speakers,details etc. Check out this post Elite Retreat December 18-19 San Antonio

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