AdWords Tips From a $5,000/mo Affiliate

[Derek Pankaew]

Hey Guys,

So I just hit the $5,000 a month mark as an AdWords affiliate. Figured I'm come by and share some of what I learned =)

Tip #0 - Don't Be Afraid to Pay for Traffic

Most beginners are so focused on bum market, SEO and other free traffic sources that they put almost no attention on paid traffic.

Yet paid traffic is just so much easier to scale than free traffic. If you find an offer that converts at $0.40 a click, then as many clicks as you can get for $0.20 you're doubling your money. It's that simple.

Tip #1 - Know Your Earnings Per Click

The most important number is not conversion. It's not your payout either.

It's your earnings per click.

Let's say your product sells for $40 and your conversion rate is 1%. Then your EPC is $0.40.

You know that for every click under $0.40, you're making money.

This is crucially important for affiliates. You should not be looking at payouts or conversion rates like it's the golden egg. What really matters is your EPC.

Tip #2 - Quality Score

Quality Score is one of the most misunderstood aspects of AdWords marketing. There are two phases to quality score:

Phase One, the Pre-Run scan. Before you get any traffic, the AdWords bot scans your site and decides how relevant your landing page is. It gives you a score that is generally between 6 and 8.

Phase Two, this is your on the run score. Your QS is calculated in real time on a per click basis.

Phase One quality score is only important for getting your ad to run. Often times if your QS is too low, you ad won't even show. The key here is keyword relevance. Have your KW in your title tag, H1 tags and body text. It's all about your landing page.

Once you get a 7 or 8 in phase 1, then phase 2 is all about CTR. Your landing page becomes just 20%-30% of the equation. Most people put way too much emphasis on it at this point.

You now want to optimize for Google's eCPM. What Google effectively earns per 1000 impressions they give you. For example:

Advertiser 1: 1% CTR, 0.50 Per click. For every 1,000 impressions Google gives him Google makes $5.
Advertiser 2: 3% CTR, 0.25 Per Click. For every 1,000 impressions Google gives him, Google makes $7.5.

What's amazing is that Advertiser #2 will actually rank higher than advertiser #1, get more volume and pay half of what Advertiser #1 is paying. That's because Google's eCPM is higher for them and it's in their best interest to rank your ad higher. They make more money charging you less.

So the most important thing to optimize for in the later part of the game is your CTR. If you can write great ads and beat out your competition in CTR, then you're well ahead of the game.

Tip #3 - One Keyword Per AdGroup

Each Ad Group allows you to write a unique ad. Most people lump together somewhat related keywords and write one ad for all those keywords. For example:

How to Get a Girlfriend
Where to Meet a Nice Girl
Meet a Girlfriend
Tips for Getting a Girlfriend
(Plus 10 more)

They put them all in one Ad Group and write one ad for it.

This is a great way to both kill your quality score and your CTR. Instead, it's crucial to write just one ad per keyword so that your ads are laser targeted, your QS is high and your CTR is off the charts.

(By the way, I've gotten 25% CTRs before, which is insane.)

Here's how to do it.

Tip #4 Edit in Excel, Upload in AdWords Editor

Most people trying out AdWords try to do it in the web interface. This is an insanely slow way to do things. It'd be impossible to do most of the advanced techniques, and one keyword per adgroup would be suicide.

I often launch with as many as 5,000 keywords; doing that in the web interface would take months.

Instead, you can edit everything in excel and then just copy and past it into AdWords editor.

You can do all your keyword research, group them into Ad Groups and then just copy and paste. You can write all your ads in excel and just copy and paste it into AdWords editor.

Doing this, creating 1 keyword per adgroup takes about 10 minutes once I have my keyword list. I can write ads for 200 keywords in about an hour.

It's much faster, more streamlined and you'll make far more money.

-----------------------------

I'll leave it at that for now =)

Best wishes,

- Derek

[neslo1963]

That is amasing, that this is possible. It depends on what language and subjects I think. But it is great that it is working so well for you

[Derek Pankaew]

I'll also add for affiliates: Stop promoting Clickbank and start promoting CPA.

Let's say you're promoting a really good Clickbank product getting a 2% conversion. The payout is $25. Your EPC is $0.50.

Well, EPCs on CPA programs can range anywhere from $1 to $5. *Earnings per click.*

I send traffic, 25% of it converts on a lead that pays $5. My EPC is $1.25. They never have to pull out their credit card. It's sooo much easier to make money.

[Andy Hart]

Great stuff there derek, you can tell you are actually walking the walk and not just spouting rubbish, thanks

Andy

[Fox30]

Nice write up. I highly recommend SpeedPPC. It is really an incredible tool.

[Derek S]

Derek (nice name)

I can create an adwords campaign in my sleep at this point and don't understand why people are so afraid to use this tool. I'm lazy and want auto pilot so writing articles always seemed trivial to me lol.

Plus once you master AdWords it will never cost you a thing! I made over $200,000.00 last year with with just one of my campaigns and I only invested in around $60,000 in AdWords. My products where found and even featured on the news a few times because of an advertisement I had on AdWords.

Derek man you have some very powerful results in front you you:
i) What keywords convert
ii) What Sales Copy Converts

I agree with everything but one part of your method...

If I where you at this point I would drop promoting other peoples products, take what works and run with it on your own. Letting others do the affiliate work for you in addition to personal sales.

[Derek Pankaew]

Hey Derek,

Yeah, I can totally see that. At the moment I'm still focused on mastering traffic generation. I feel like I'm only at 20% with AdWords. I know guys doing 10K a day on AdWords, so in a way I still feel like a beginner.

I also want to learn media buys, co registration and a slew of other traffic techniques before promoting my own product. But at some point, yes =)

Cheers,

- Derek

[jeswarrior]

I haven't used Adwords for awhile but I might start using it. So, 1 keyword per adgroup. Does that also mean that I have to create landing pages tailored to each keyword or just point the ads to the same landing page?

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by jeswarrior

I haven't used Adwords for awhile but I might start using it. So, 1 keyword per adgroup. Does that also mean that I have to create landing pages tailored to each keyword or just point the ads to the same landing page?

Hey Jes,

No, you don't. I mean, ideally you do, and I've done it a couple times by hand, but with any significant number of keywords doing that is nearly impossible.

There are a couple tools I've heard of that can automate it. SpeedPPC from my understanding does it, but it uses PHP variables to insert the keyword (not as good.) LPGen hard codes the keyword in, but my friend's been having nightmares trying to get it to work.

Short answer is: In an ideal world yes, one LP per KW, but in reality no, just 1 KW per ad group and 1 landing page per theme. (ie. One landing page for each major different arena you're targeting.)

[mmickey]

very good post

you may want to try out some other networks like Yahoo or MSN
and PPV for much cheaper traffic source

[Sean Donahoe]

I tip my hat to you Derek, I have been preaching this for years to other marketers. Bum marketing, SEO and other forms of free traffic are great and should not be ignored but the plain and simple truth is that PPC, PPV and other paid forms of marketing are the easiest ways to get traffic as long as you watch that all important EPC!

Nice work and thanks for sharing.

All the best,

Sean Donahoe
The Manic Marketer

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by mmickey

very good post

you may want to try out some other networks like Yahoo or MSN
and PPV for much cheaper traffic source

Yeah, Yahoo and MSN have been a pain in the --- to work with. I'll upload a spreadsheet, they'll send me back 20% of my keywords with errors, I'll fix it, they'll send it back with more errors ... ...

Haven't really spent much time trying to get it to work. I probably will at some point =)

I'm trying out PPV. Haven't had much success yet.

- Derek

[jbsmith]

All great tips - what is missing is the secret sauce of how to write compelling Adwords ads, most people get this wrong, get poor CTR and lower quality score as a result.

What would you recommend as the best resources (paid or otherwise) for writing Google Ads out there today?

Cheers,

J

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by jbsmith

All great tips - what is missing is the secret sauce of how to write compelling Adwords ads, most people get this wrong, get poor CTR and lower quality score as a result.

What would you recommend as the best resources (paid or otherwise) for writing Google Ads out there today?

Cheers,

J

Yeah - My secret sauce is stealing other people's ads.

Go into your market, do 10 searches on related keywords and steal all the ads that look good. Reword, mix and match until you have two ads that you think will perform. Run those ads.

Come up with as little as you possibly can yourself

That said, "exposed" and "scam" ads have the highest CTRs for me.

Example:

Is Resveratrol a Scam?
Warning: Read This Review Before
You Buy Resveratrol! Visit Now...

Resveratrol Scam "Exposed"
Warning: Read This Review Before
You Buy Resveratrol! Visit Now...

Also, I use the registered and trademarked symbols in my ads liberally. They stand out.

[jeswarrior]

That's sweet stuff Derek. Thank you for your tips. Now, when are you coming up with your own Adwords Tips Unleashed WSO so we can buy it?

[Saidar]

Hello Derek

I've payed a lot of money for the information that you just now gave away freely! Everyone appreciate this guy for the information is worth thousands...

I've one question, which CPA network or whatever you call it do you prefer? I have absolutely no experience except with clickbank

Thanks

[Saidar]

I don't know of any CPA network that you can directly send the traffic to the CPA site, without having your own site, so if you know of any such CPA network I would appreciate it if you could give me their name

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by Saidar

Hello Derek

I've payed a lot of money for the information that you just now gave away freely! Everyone appreciate this guy for the information is worth thousands...

I've one question, which CPA network or whatever you call it do you prefer? I have absolutely no experience except with clickbank

Thanks

Hey Saidar,

Neverblue is probably the easiest network to get accepted into if you're just getting started. I like a variety of networks for different factors.

Neverblue: Easy to get into, okay payouts and doesn't scrub. AMs take a while to respond though.

Azoogle: Very responsive AMs, but restrictive in terms of traffic. (No PPV, etc.)

Ads4Dough: Extremely personal AMs, the manager is an active super affiliate himself and really understands how to take care of affiliates. You can also get on weekly payments much faster than most networks.

I've worked mostly with Neverblue and Azoogle. If you're starting out, getting into smaller networks can help a lot with cashflow if they'll do weekly payments faster. Most starting affiliates can't really float advertising money for 30 days before getting paid and having weekly wires can make a big difference.

Believe it or not, payouts aren't really as high a factor for me. Good support is perhaps the #1 most important thing for me. I'm running a $4 offer that I'm making $70 a day ish with Neverblue, knowing full well Hydra Media pays out $5 right now simply because their support is better and ... Well, I'm too lazy to switch over to hydra ;P

Anyway, post if you have any questions I'll be happy to help =)

- Derek

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by Saidar

I don't know of any CPA network that you can directly send the traffic to the CPA site, without having your own site, so if you know of any such CPA network I would appreciate it if you could give me their name

You can do that with any CPA network.

The issue isn't the CPA network, it's how you're sending traffic. Google AdWords won't allow you to direct link to an affiliate page. You can get away with iframing the offer for a few days, but usually your campaign will get slapped at that point.

Some CPA networks allow you to do what's called "White Labeling" which is creating your own website and passing the data. Instead of having to direct them to the advertiser's site to fill out the info, you just have them fill it out on your site and then pass on the lead and get paid.

Neverblue is a great network for white labeling. Smaller networks will often do it too. Large networks like Azoogle are harder to work with for that.

That said, they probably won't give you white labeling access until you get to at least $100 a day.

[Saidar]

Originally Posted by Derek Pankaew

You can do that with any CPA network.

The issue isn't the CPA network, it's how you're sending traffic. Google AdWords won't allow you to direct link to an affiliate page. You can get away with iframing the offer for a few days, but usually your campaign will get slapped at that point.

Some CPA networks allow you to do what's called "White Labeling" which is creating your own website and passing the data. Instead of having to direct them to the advertiser's site to fill out the info, you just have them fill it out on your site and then pass on the lead and get paid.

Neverblue is a great network for white labeling. Smaller networks will often do it too. Large networks like Azoogle are harder to work with for that.

That said, they probably won't give you white labeling access until you get to at least $100 a day.

Thanks for the info!

Okay, here is the deal. I'm a student, capital is a MAJOR problem, I don't have thousands of dollars to get started.

What are my options? I've been digging into SEO for the past two months because I felt that you need a lot of money to make any money with adwords. But if they pay weekly maybe it can work.

Do I need a website about a certain nich, then the CPA network will give me ads relevant to the niche to display on my website?

If I try to get into neverblue, what niche site do you reccomend I build and show them?

[Saidar]

By the way I would love a way other than clickbank, personally I hate selling all those bull$%^ products to honest people.

I was one of those people, when I first started I bought a lot of products with my freakn food money that didn't help me a bit. So would love a way out of the whole clickbank "train"

[Saidar]

Originally Posted by jeswarrior

I haven't used Adwords for awhile but I might start using it. So, 1 keyword per adgroup. Does that also mean that I have to create landing pages tailored to each keyword or just point the ads to the same landing page?

Have a look at what I have done on my insurance website...

My normal domain... http://www.autoinsurancequotes.co.za

Now, at the end of the domain, enter "?kw=x" , where x is the keyword that you are using to send the visitors to your website.

Example: BMW Insurance

By using this technique your CTR will dramatically increase

[Heuristic]

Hi Derek,

Excellent info. Thanks for that. I think one of the problems I have is stepping out of my comfort zone and trying PPC and CPA. Like a lot of individuals, I am still doing bum marketing and Clickbank.

Do most CPA networks require that you have a well established site with a certain level of traffic? That is the impression I get from looking at a few applications.

Steve

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by steve39

Hi Derek,

Excellent info. Thanks for that. I think one of the problems I have is stepping out of my comfort zone and trying PPC and CPA. Like a lot of individuals, I am still doing bum marketing and Clickbank.

Do most CPA networks require that you have a well established site with a certain level of traffic? That is the impression I get from looking at a few applications.

Steve

Hey Steve,

Yes and no. What they really want to know is that you're not some fraudster in China who plans to fake IP addresses and fill out fake leads.

The most surefire way to do that is to only accept established affiliates. That's why most networks are so selective. If there weren't fraud concerns, most networks would just accept anyone who could send traffic. Money's money =)

If you're just starting out, you can get accepted to just about any network if you attend a convention somewhere. Once a rep meets you in person and knows you're a real person, they'll give on an account instantly.

I also highly recommend Meetup202.com (no www) for meeting affiliate marketers nearby. If an established marketer would vouch for you, you can get accepted as well.

Or you could just apply for 20 different CPA networks and you'll get in to at least 5.

Good luck =)

[AllThingsArePossible]

what daily budget you recommend for starters Derek?

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by AllThingsArePossible

what daily budget you recommend for starters Derek?

No budget. If it's not profitable, spend no money. If it's profitable, spend as much money as you can.

I'm usually willing to lose up to $200 to get a campaign to break even. Let's say I run a campaign and it's 80% return to start. So I spend $100, I make back $80.

That means that with increased CTR, increase clickthrus and increased conversion rates, that campaign could easily be a campaign that doubles my money down the road.

So I might spend something like $50 a day to begin testing and getting data. Once I have data, when it's profitable I jack up my limits and spend as much as I possibly can.

If it's not profitable, but is only losing a little bit of money, then I tweak until it's profitable.

If the ROI is ridiculously bad - For example, I spent $30 and made $1.75 - Then I just ditch the campaign.

Cheers,

- Derek

[FredJones]

Originally Posted by Derek Pankaew

No budget. If it's not profitable, spend no money. If it's profitable, spend as much money as you can.

- Derek

Derek, from your description is appears that you still have to spend say $100-$200 to even identify whether the niche is profitable. And you may have to spend a couple of thousand for even identifying one profitable niche if you are not experienced enough to spot much of it from intuition.

Added follow up email services to that and so on (or do you actually make profit-per-click even without follow-up?) - everything together makes it tough. Surely it means a rather high expenditure even at start up?

Would not mind doing that after I have my first 4-5K, since I can probably afford to experiment a little then. But before that?

Of course, I realize that investing $4-5K for online business is also way cheaper than a physical business.

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by FredJones

Derek, from your description is appears that you still have to spend say $100-$200 to even identify whether the niche is profitable. And you may have to spend a couple of thousand for even identifying one profitable niche if you are not experienced enough to spot much of it from intuition.

Added follow up email services to that and so on (or do you actually make profit-per-click even without follow-up?) - everything together makes it tough. Surely it means a rather high expenditure even at start up?

Would not mind doing that after I have my first 4-5K, since I can probably afford to experiment a little then. But before that?

Of course, I realize that investing $4-5K for online business is also way cheaper than a physical business.

Hey Fred,

Well, if you're careful you can succeed without blowing that much money. I was fortunate enough that my first campaign was successful right off the bat. My next 5 of so were flops, but I only lost maybe $30-50 on each. Then I figured out how to make a certain campaign work in a broad market and started to make good money off that.

So my "schedule" looked something like:

Campaign 1: Successful, $50-$75/day
Campaign 2: Flop, Lost $30
Campaign 3: Flop, Lost $50
Campaign 4: Flop, Lost $60
Campaign 5: Flop, Lost $30
Campaign 6: Flop, Lost $40
Campaign 7: Success, $20 a day profit
Campaign 8: Success, $30 a day profit
Campaign 9: Success, $120 a day profit

Something like that. I've never blown 1K on testing before. I'm sure if you tried to break into insane markets like Acai you'd probably need a 5K testing budget, but if you're not doing anything off the charts you can get a sense for whether something's working or not pretty quickly.

More often than not the main issue isn't that your traffic isn't converting, it's that you're not getting enough traffic. In those cases you just scrap the campaign entirely without spending much money.

If you're getting traffic and it doesn't convert at all, then you can scrap it as well. Spend $50, toss it away.

But if you're getting traffic and you're making some money, then it's your call on whether to tweak or not. Really though, 70% of the time you can figure out whether or not a campaign is profitable pretty much right off the bat.

That said, I definitely don't recommend starting without at least $2,000 in the bank. Most networks will pay you at Net 30 terms until you get to $1,000 a week in gross revenue. That means you actually get paid 30-45 days after you generate your income.

If you only have $200 to start with and you double that every month, you're only going to make $200 your first month, $400 the next month, etc. It'll take you forever to get to anywhere significant.

With $2,000 - $5,000 to start, you should have enough startup capital to get you to at least Net 15 Bi-Monthly, if not weekly payments. Once you can start cycling your income back into your ad spend, then budget becomes a complete non-issue because your earnings cover all your expenses.

I started out writing articles on the Warrior Forum by the way. $7 an article, write 4-5 articles an hour, making $30 an hour or so. Saved up enough money to start playing with PPC. That's one way to build up a bit of cash to start.

Cheers,

- Derek

[Tensor]

Hey Derek, great thread.

What format of LP have you had the most success with in converting these <$5 CPA offers? Do you do a standard presell/review type page that you would use for a $50+ product?

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by Tensor

Hey Derek, great thread.

What format of LP have you had the most success with in converting these <$5 CPA offers? Do you do a standard presell/review type page that you would use for a $50+ product?

Hey Tensor,

I've used both full page review sites as well as extremely simple "everything above the fold" landing page.

Again, the best way is to see what other affiliates in your niche are doing and just copy it. In fact, if you can take the same style and do it better than other affiliates that's even better.

- Derek

[Tensor]

Can you please give us an example of a LP click-through rate and and affiliate conversion rate you need to achieve positive ROI. I assume both would need to be >30%.

Thanks.

[Derek Pankaew]

Hey Tensor,

30-40%% CTR, 30% CR on a $4 offer (EPC is $1.20 ish.)

Really though; earnings, CTRs and CRs depend entirely on the market.

- Derek

[Kezz]

Thanks for this info Derek, this is really great. It's those little nitty gritty elements that really make or break you, so it's so valuable to get some insight on those elements.

Someone told me that even if you don't use a website during your actual promotion, that most networks want to see a high quality site as part of their decision whether to take you on or not.Is this the case when applying to join networks?

If so, does the website you show to a network need to be IM related, or does a non-IM website do the job also provided that it shows you are legitimate and professional?

[wm00]

How do you deal with the low QS for CPA offers? Most of the have just one page with an image on it and almost no text at all. I generally get very low QS when I use direct linking for CPA offers.

Originally Posted by Derek Pankaew

I'll also add for affiliates: Stop promoting Clickbank and start promoting CPA.

Let's say you're promoting a really good Clickbank product getting a 2% conversion. The payout is $25. Your EPC is $0.50.

Well, EPCs on CPA programs can range anywhere from $1 to $5. *Earnings per click.*

I send traffic, 25% of it converts on a lead that pays $5. My EPC is $1.25. They never have to pull out their credit card. It's sooo much easier to make money.

[Bruce NewMedia]

Thanks Derek, this is awesome information!

I'm just curious about a broader issue:
Did you have any kind of PLAN when you entered CPA marketing and using Adwords?

Or did you just keep trying different things until something started to click?

If you were starting again from scratch, would you completely skip Clickbank offers or just try a few that seemed to have potential? I'm noticing more and more IMer's regarding Clickbank offers as either not reliable payouts or not converting as well as before? Thanks.

also, when you say you 'hit $5K a month mark as adwords affiliate' does that mean how much you spend or is it related to your earnings?
_____
Bruce

[Derek Pankaew]

Someone told me that even if you don't use a website during your actual promotion, that most networks want to see a high quality site as part of their decision whether to take you on or not.Is this the case when applying to join networks?

Maybe if you're new. Networks know that established affiliates would never reveal an active landing page.

Here's the site I submit: Derek Pankaew - Performance Marketer - As you can tell, the design is extremely impressive

When I apply for a network, I always call them right after I apply. Drastically increases your chances of getting in.

How do you deal with the low QS for CPA offers? Most of the have just one page with an image on it and almost no text at all. I generally get very low QS when I use direct linking for CPA offers.

You can't direct link for long in Google. Yes, your QS will get slapped or your entire campaign will get shut down period.

One alternative is to iFrame to offer page on your own domain. Generally you can get away with iframing for a few days to a week, max before you get slapped.

Direct linking and iframing are for testing only to see if an offer converts before you spend time building a real landing page.

You can iframe for an unlimited period of time on the content network. You can also direct link if you get Whitelabel access once you hit $150+ a day.

(Whitelabel = host your own CPA page and pass the data along and get paid. No landing page needed, but it's your site the forms are hosted on.)

Did you have any kind of PLAN when you entered CPA marketing and using Adwords?

Or did you just keep trying different things until something started to click?

If you were starting again from scratch, would you completely skip Clickbank offers or just try a few that seemed to have potential? I'm noticing more and more IMer's regarding Clickbank offers as either not reliable payouts or not converting as well as before? Thanks.

also, when you say you 'hit $5K a month mark as adwords affiliate' does that mean how much you spend or is it related to your earnings?

Yes - I had a mentor who was making 10K a day. Working to hit that level in a few months

Yes, absolutely skip Clickbank. Wouldn't even touch it. Bad tracking, bad conversion model. Most of all, the Earnings Per Click are far far lower than on CPA offers.

5K is my net profit.

Best wishes,

- Derek

[pegasuspress]

Originally Posted by Derek Pankaew

You can do all your keyword research, group them into Ad Groups and then just copy and paste. You can write all your ads in excel and just copy and paste it into AdWords editor.

Doing this, creating 1 keyword per adgroup takes about 10 minutes once I have my keyword list. I can write ads for 200 keywords in about an hour.

derek, that's pretty impressive if you can really write that many keyword ads that quick and efficiently! There's no way I could churn out that many ads. For one thing, it would probably drive me nuts after about an hour of that kind of writing.

It sounds like you've really got the whole process down flat and nailed at this point. Why not just hire yourself out doing custom KW ad campaigns for clients? At the speed you work at you could probably make close to $1K a day even if you charged just $.50 for each keyword/ad, which I don't think would be unreasonable.

I'd be happy to pay you $5 per keyword/keyword ad for a batch of 10 as soon as you want to do them, just to see how it works out. If the results are promising we can always discuss lower rates for higher volumes of ads later. (I'd go broke real quick paying $5/ad on volume.)

When I think about it, churning out keyword ads is one of my least favorite ways to spend my time. So, it's one of those things I'd just as soon pay somebody else to do anyhow - as long as they know what they're doing. And it sounds like you know exactly what you're doing!

Get back to me on my offer, as I'm serious about it. I can just send your payment via PayPal if you have an account with them.

Rich Cowen

[maco]

Thanks for the info. Very good.
My experience with adwords promoting clickbank and Amazon products is it goes extremely well for a month, I get very good conversion, than it dies. I still get good clicks but no conversion. To date I am not able to work out why. Shall I have the adds running for 2 week, turn off for two weeks and turn on again?

[Derek Pankaew]

Originally Posted by pegasuspress

derek, that's pretty impressive if you can really write that many keyword ads that quick and efficiently! There's no way I could churn out that many ads. For one thing, it would probably drive me nuts after about an hour of that kind of writing.

It sounds like you've really got the whole process down flat and nailed at this point. Why not just hire yourself out doing custom KW ad campaigns for clients? At the speed you work at you could probably make close to $1K a day even if you charged just $.50 for each keyword/ad, which I don't think would be unreasonable.

I'd be happy to pay you $5 per keyword/keyword ad for a batch of 10 as soon as you want to do them, just to see how it works out. If the results are promising we can always discuss lower rates for higher volumes of ads later. (I'd go broke real quick paying $5/ad on volume.)

When I think about it, churning out keyword ads is one of my least favorite ways to spend my time. So, it's one of those things I'd just as soon pay somebody else to do anyhow - as long as they know what they're doing. And it sounds like you know exactly what you're doing!

Get back to me on my offer, as I'm serious about it. I can just send your payment via PayPal if you have an account with them.

Rich Cowen

Hey Rich,

I decided not to do client work anymore a while back. I'm currently working on several campaigns that I believe I can get to 1K+ a day passive. Thanks for the offer though =)

Maco:

So you're still getting impressions and clicks but your conversion just dies? Is this on the search network or content network?

On search that's very strange. It's happened to me once, but I knew exactly why that happened (the product went on TV.) It would be very strange for a keyword that's converting to suddenly stop converting if you didn't change anything and the traffic is the same. Unless it's a seasonal item.

Are there competitors? See what they're doing. If in doubt, yes, pause it for a little while then run it again. That said, don't get too hung up over one campaign. Hammer out 3 campaigns a week and you'll have at least one keeper every other week or so.

[Hudu]

Great tips! I just payd to Adwords and it was a little succes. I got my money back from adsense and some new actice members, which was nice

[sree94]

Originally Posted by Derek Pankaew

Yeah - My secret sauce is stealing other people's ads.

Go into your market, do 10 searches on related keywords and steal all the ads that look good. Reword, mix and match until you have two ads that you think will perform. Run those ads.

Come up with as little as you possibly can yourself

That said, "exposed" and "scam" ads have the highest CTRs for me.

Example:

Is Resveratrol a Scam?
Warning: Read This Review Before
You Buy Resveratrol! Visit Now...

Resveratrol Scam "Exposed"
Warning: Read This Review Before
You Buy Resveratrol! Visit Now...

Also, I use the registered and trademarked symbols in my ads liberally. They stand out.

This is BY FAR the best way to get clicks, at least in my tests

Problem is, some vendors won't allow their affiliates to market by using these type of ads. They think it waters down their brand

It's their sandbox, you have to play by their rules unfortunately

[Derek Pankaew]

Yeah. Offers are a dime in a dozen though. If one advertiser won't let you trademark bid, find another offer. You're the one with the traffic. You call the shots. In every market, there are hundreds of offers for you to choose from, especially in mainstream markets.

[Learnanew]

Awesome tips Derek, thank you for this again.

I'm curious about the remark you said about Acai though, will it be hard to promote even if you use broad weight loss keywords?

Thank you for your time, it's a pity you don't do coaching.

[FredFarnes]

Originally Posted by Derek Pankaew

Yeah. Offers are a dime in a dozen though. If one advertiser won't let you trademark bid, find another offer. You're the one with the traffic. You call the shots. In every market, there are hundreds of offers for you to choose from, especially in mainstream markets.

I'm really not finding many offers in the Forex/Trading/Stocks arena.

Is that not main-stream enough? NeverBlue has an Etoro offer, nothing else. That one does not allow brand-name marketing, and there would probably not be much benefit to using it. Actually, if a reader saw the brand name, they could just go to the vendor website.

I'm starved for good opportunities. Lots of ClickBank tr*sh, but not much CPA. Do you see many offers in my niche with the other CPA networks that you are on?

Thanks for any input.

[Derek Pankaew]

I'm curious about the remark you said about Acai though, will it be hard to promote even if you use broad weight loss keywords?

Yes. Very, very hard.

If you're willing to pay $10 a click to start for 2 weeks while you get your CTR up to higher than *anyone* else's ad so you can reduce your bids to $1 eventually, then *maybe* you can play in general weight loss.

I said in Acai you'd a 5K testing budget. That's just to get the campaign to profitable. Once you did that, you'd probably want another 10K-100K to spend as quickly as you can once it IS profitable. ie. Once you're making money, you want to be able to take the cap off and let the traffic roll in.

In other words, Acai/weight loss is a giant market where most of the players are the "big boys." Not saying don't do it, but you need a very strong plan.

Fred: Hmm, haven't seen many Forex offers around. Not many stock trading ones either. There's a $90 Robert Allen offer that's floating around that seems to be doing pretty well though.

With Forex stuff, you're probably better off going direct with private affiliate programs.

[oohah]

Hi Derek,

Thanks for this informative post. I have a question about CPA (Cost Per Action, correct?) offers.

Can you give me an example of what you consider to be a good CPA offer to promote , not one that you are using of course!

I guess what I want to know is: What is the action that you like to promote? Zip submit, email submit, etc.

The reason I ask is that it seems to me that a lot of these offers, if I am finding what you are talking about, are zip submits etc., but they actually are asking for more than that. The person has to complete more information, etc. and it seems to get shady.

Is what I am asking clear?

Thanks,

Ken

[lburrell]

great thread derek!

[TrevorB]

I'm just getting into CPA so this thread is fantastic for me.

[JRG]

Great post man, thanks!

[Johnny12345]

Derek,

Great info. Thank you.

1) Do you ever use the AdWords content network? I've heard that you can direct link without getting slapped (but I haven't tried it, so I don't know).

2) It would be great to see what one of your landing pages looks like. (Maybe one that the offer is ending on or that you are going to kill?)

Johnny