Tag Archives: adwords

To Direct Link or Not To Direct Link?

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It’s one of the oldest questions in Affiliate Marketing: to direct link or not to direct link? Google made their stance on the issue pretty clear when they all but banned direct linking on AdWords. Now they don’t even like so-called “bridge pages” which lead to affiliate offers with little content on them.

But still, traffic sources such as Facebook and PPV still allow for direct linking. I get asked almost every single day whether you should direct link a campaign or create a landing page for it. Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast answer. The truth is (and has always been) that some campaigns work better direct linked and some work better with landing pages. Neither method works better all of the time. You need to test it out.

That being said, a strategy that I have seen work well for affiliates is to direct link a campaign to quickly evaluate whether or not it has potential before they go to the trouble of building out a landing page. Especially if it is in a brand new niche that you have not promoted before, where you don’t have any creatives or landers sitting around ready to be used.

It’s easy to throw together a direct link campaign on PPV or Facebook. Run some traffic to it, and if you are getting enough conversions to break even, or even just under, it’s a good sign that the offer has some life to it. That’s when you can buckle down and put together a landing page to bring the ROI into the black and start making money.

 

Google Still Hates Affiliates

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This is old news. We’ve all received a slap or two from Google. But does that make it hurt any less? If you prick us, do we not bleed? It had been a little while for me, and this last week I got another middle finger from Google. Must be on the right path with that campaign, just need to try other traffic sources.  But it brings it all back around for me. I’m still aghast at how Google treats Affiliate Marketers.

I don’t think it’s possible to figure out how much money Affiliates spend (or at least would spend if they were allowed) on Google Adwords. It’s definitely in the seven-to-eight-figures-per-month range.  With all of that revenue floating around, why would Google (and Facebook for that matter) just decide to turn it away?

Google, like Facebook, likes to chalk it up to something they call the “User Experience”. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good that Google cares about the results that people are finding on its Search Engine. You don’t want people to be searching for “skateboards” and getting pages selling wedding dresses. But what really burns me is how Google has outlawed “bridge pages”.  They define a bridge page as any page that leads to another website without adding any value.

In its very nature, Affiliate Marketing is taking a user and sending them through your affiliate link and to an advertiser’s page. In almost all cases, your affiliate link is going to be found on a website that you own. It could be a blog, website, or landing page. The problem is that Google won’t allow you to advertise these so-called bridge pages on Adwords. So if your website sends traffic to another website, you are the enemy to Google. Now it’s up to them to decide whether or not your landing page adds any value to the product or sales process.

Shouldn’t it be up to the customer to decide whether or not my landing page added any value? If they bought from me, to me that says I provided a valuable page to them. Too bad Google doesn’t agree.

Google Launches YouTube Video Targeting Ads

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YouTube Video Targeting

Google has just launched a brand new type of ad unit for AdWords that is now in Beta, called the YouTube Video Targeting Tool.  Every time there is a new ad marketplace that opens up, there is a massive displacement that can be taken advantage of by savvy marketers.  The people that jump in early are going to have a definite advantage in this game.

One of the coolest things about the new YouTube Video Targeting Tool is that you can get very specific with your targeting, right down to selecting individual videos.  You can also target by demographics, channels, and some other methods.

You can choose from two different ad units, InVideo Overlay and In-Stream Video.  The InVideo Overlay can be setup as Text Ads or 468×60 image ads.  The In-Stream Videos are a “15/30 second in-stream video + image companion”.  I’m not exactly sure what that boils down to, since I haven’t had the chance to actually put any ads live yet.

People have been marketing via YouTube for quite a while now, especially in the Ringtones space.  The tried-and-true method is to rip the music video of your favorite artist, put a watermark on it with your Domain leading to the Ringtone offer, and try to get as many views as possible through both natural and artificial means.  This method has become less and less effective as YouTube has been getting wise and closing some of the loopholes used to inflate views to videos and game the rankings.  This new Video Targeting marketplace could be a game-changer for people that have been looking for a way to have a sustainable business model on YouTube without worrying about the impending Account Bans and Video Bans that come with the old method.

The only odd thing I noticed when playing with the interface is that when I searched for some of the YouTube mega-hit videos like the “JK Wedding Dance” and the infamous “Leroy Jenkins” video, they didn’t appear in the list.  Also, most of the videos that were in the list seemed to have relatively low view counts.  I’m assuming that this is because the program is in Beta still, and hopefully the big videos will be fair game once the program has the kinks worked out.

So what are you waiting for?  Head over to http://google.com/videotargeting and check it out!

Day Parting & Campaign Caps with Zango

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Have you ever been testing out a new PPV campaign with a budget of $25 a day and found that it’s all used up before 5pm?  This is one area that PPC withGoogle AdWords has spoiled us: you can choose whether you want Standard or Accelerated ad spend, and with Standard it will evenly price out your clicks through out the day.  Most PPV networks do not do this.

Today I noticed that with Zango you can actually do day parting, which is choosing which hours of the day you want your ads to be displayed.  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend turning this on right away if you are testing a new campaign, but it certainly is handy if you are blowing through your daily budget without getting any conversions.  In many verticals, it is not until the evening hours that they really start converting.  People are home from work, kids are home from school, people are surfing the net without worrying about the boss looking over their shoulder.  Besides, it’s more likely that the home computer is where the AdWare client is installed anyway.

To do this in Zango, just login to your account, click on the campaign name you want to add day parting to and click Edit Campaign.  Right above the Save Changes button you will see a new link called Advanced Options.  Click this and it will pop up a window with all the different days of the week and hours of the day.  You can also turn specific days of the week off, like if you only wanted to run your ads during the weekend.

Along with day parting, there are also Campaign Caps on this menu.  This will let you set a daily budget for specific days which overrides the Campaign-level daily budget.  This is great if you are finding that certain days provide a large amount of conversions, and you want to crank up the ad spend to take advantage.

It may not seem like much, but little tools like this can really help you optimize your campaigns and squeeze every last bit of ROI out of your PPV traffic.

Google AdWords Bidding Explained – Finally!

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There has always been an element of mystery to bidding for keywords on Google AdWords.  Finally, Hal Varian from the mighty Google speaks out on our behalf with this clear and concise video to explain exactly what happens when you bid on a keyword and how the ads are ranked.  If you haven’t seen this video yet, you need to take the 9 minutes and 12 seconds it takes to watch it.  If you spend any money on Google AdWords at all, it will be worth it.

See, I told you so!  Now go make some money.

Can Ringtones Still Make Money On Google?

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If you are promoting ringtones offers, then you no doubt have been affected by the recent changes to Google’s AdWords policy regarding mobile offers.  The question is, how big of a hit is this to the Ringtones vertical?  Is it still possible to market Ringtones on Google?

One thing that can be said about affiliate marketers is that they are a creative bunch.  Anytime something like this happens in the industry, there is a few days of moaning and gnashing of teeth, but after that everyone gets back to work and decides that it’s just another obstacle to overcome.  Some of the big guys might even be glad for changes like this because it knocks the newbies out of the running for a while.  It will take some time for the effects to be fully felt, but perhaps the change could even result in lower click costs, due to less competition.

Google AdWords Machine

Grants? Nope. Acai? Nope. Ringtones? Hmm...

When you are thrown a curveball from the big G, it’s time to take a look at the variables and see what can be changed to increase conversions.  The glory days of 2002 are long gone, there will be no more promotion of ringtones on Google AdWords by telling people that it’s free, when it in fact costs money.  Now that you’ve got that ugly “$9.95/month” telling people not to click on your ads, you need to give them some other reason to.  Luckily you still have control over some of the most important aspects of your ads, the Headline and the Display URL.

SendMe Mobile recently sent out an alert to their partners pointing out the effect of changing the position of the carrier name in the Display URL has.  Most of the ads that you see will put the carrier after the slash, as in “URL.com/Verizon”.  SendMe suggests that they have seen an increase in CTR from putting the carrier as a sub-domain at the start of the Display URL as in “verizon.URL.com”.

This makes sense because it appeals to the people looking for a trustworthy source for their ringtones.  Now that the pricing is on all the ads, people are going to want to give their money to someone that seems legit, as opposed to “TonsOfFreeTones.com” ($9.95/month).

Of course there is the other alternative, which I’m sure many of you have thought about, which is to get your traffic from somewhere else.  I’ve heard more than once that Ringtones have been dead on Google for a long time, and while I disagree, this proves that people are not just relying on Google for 100% of their traffic.  It’s time to look at the alternatives, even outside the big 3 search engines.  There is lots of 2nd and 3rd tier search engines to be found, and there’s also PPV, not to mention doing specific Media Buys or direct ad placements on websites.

To answer the original question, yes, I think that Ringtones can still make money on Google, but it might be less and less a part of your overall marketing strategy for these offers.  It’s time to put on the thinking cap, go back to the drawing board, and get creative.

Now go make some money!

How To Direct Link On Google – Part 2

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My last post has generated a lot of response and questions from people, so I wanted to discuss a couple of other points about the method that I outlined in Part 1.

First of all, there is the question of whether this method could get you banned from Google AdWords.  I would consider this a gray-area technique.  It’s not something that is an instant ban, but if you exploit it to a huge degree, then yes, it could lead to your account being terminated.

The reason that I posted this method is that it can be a great way to test out a campaign, but I can’t stress enough that you should be building landing pages for offers that have proven successful with the direct link method. It is very hard to build a long-term, sustainable business on the internet without creating a website.

Second, some people have questioned the ethics of using another site that doesn’t belong to you as the display URL.  The easiest response there is, if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, then don’t do it.  An alternative to using someone’s website is that you can use a domain that you own as the Display and Destination URL to get your ad approved, then switch the link to your affiliate link with Edit Keyword Settings like I suggested.  This way you don’t have to spend the time to build out a full dedicated landing page, but you are still using your own domain so you won’t get any complaints from other webmasters or feel bad about doing it.

I would also like to stress that the tutorials that I publish on this blog are not meant to be the absolute blueprint to success with affiliate marketing.  There is no such blueprint.  The goal with this blog is to give you, the reader, some good tips & advice to get going with some campaigns and marketing methods, and then you can tweak them and customize them to find what works the best for you.

There is a lot of money to be made in this industry, and it’s not always going to be easy.  It’s a lot easier than working 60 hours a week in a job that you hate to bring home just enough to keep the bill collectors at bay though…  Anything with the kind of potential that you have as an affiliate marketer is going to take some time to become successful at, but the rewards are definitely worth the effort that you put in.

That being said, I will continue to offer more strategies and tutorials, and I will do my best to answer your questions & comments to steer you in the right direction.  So keep reading, and keep the feedback coming!

New changes to Google AdWords Quality Score

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Google is doing it again.  Although they are sure to be controversial (they always are), these changes could benefit Affiliate Marketers a lot more than the last few rounds of changes.

Here are the changes:

  • Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
  • Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’
  • ‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account

The first point on the list is huge.  Instead of using a broad Quality Score to determine the placement of your ads, Google will be calculating the Quality Score on the fly based on a number of factors.  These factors include Keywords and Geographical Location.  In my opinion, it’s about time Google implemented an automatic Geo-Targeting method for ads, and it’s finally here.  How nice would it be to never have to worry about paying for clicks that get sent to a “country-specific redirect”.  There have been controls to specify what countries your ad gets placed in for years, but nevertheless it still happens.

The second change involves keywords no longer being labeled ‘Inactive for Search’.  This won’t necessarily be a huge boon to search marketers, but it does increase the overall pool of terms & keywords that can be targeted, even if they are extremely longtail.  More keywords equals more clicks and revenue for affiliate marketers.

Possibly the biggest change is the new ‘First Page Bid’ listing.  It has long been a guessing game to figure out the sweet spot between paying too much for clicks, and having your ads show up on the 2nd, 3rd or 4th page of results.  Some might say that this will cause an upward trend in keyword bid prices, because inexperienced marketers will now know how much they need to bid to get on the first page.  I don’t see this being a long term issue, because they will either run out of money or decide it’s not worth it to bid with the big boys because they can’t get the traffic to back out for them.

My feeling is, the more transparency that Google has, the better.  It’s no fun trying to guess what you need to do to be successful as a search marketer.  The more information we have about how the system works, the better that we will be able to use it and optimize our campaigns to be as profitable as possible.  It doesn’t matter how complicated the system is, the cream will rise to the top.  If you are a full time affiliate marketer, you should take these changes and run with them to gain a lead on the competition as quickly as possible.

If you want to read the changes for yourself, checkout the official post on the AdWords Blog.