Direct Linking with PPC vs. presell site/blog

Hi,

To answer your questions:

1. A lot do and a lot don't. Read the Affiliate Agreement before you start promoting.

2. If you use the correct destination URL, yes (in most cases)

3. Yes, to test a market. On the long run, no. Don't expect to make money by direct linking (Not if you are new to the game)

There are advantages and disadvantages of Direct Linking:

Advantages
Quick way to test a market
Easy and quick setup (no landing pages to create)
Less room to mess things up (the more variables, the bigger the changes of getting it wrong)
Display URL is merchants URL (if they have been pushing the product hard, you are riding their coat-tails and leveraging their promo efforts as a lot of searchers will recognize the URL)

Disadvantages
Google's Unique Impression URL Rule (Only one unique URL will be displayed so you are competing and sharing impressions with any other affiliates who are bidding on the keywords - this can drive prices up)
You have no way of controlling the exit traffic that did not buy (unless merchant is doing it with your aff id)

and a couple more

Regards,

AffiliatePPC

Direct linking can be heavily saturated, only 1 link is shown on google if 20 affs direct link to the same page, the one that pays the most wins, unless on advertiser has such a great quality score that they can pay a little less and still win that rat race. Dircect linking really doesn't help all that much with your quality score because you have no power when it comes to the landing page.

Create your own landing pages and you shall see more benefits from it.

Thanks for the quick responses

Hmmmm..got me thinking...would article marketing via article directories and/or squidoo lenses be a better choice for trying out a niche/product/merchant before committing further or is that me just being lazy?

Using a review site is the way to go with PPC. You can check out The Super Affliate Handbook also.

I'm not convinced that starting with PPC is the best approach... unless you have money to burn, that is.

PPC has the advantage of getting results quickly and it's a good way to test a niche. But there's definitely a learning curve and it's going to cost you. You can lose money real fast on Adwords. Sure, you can control your spend but you're not going to get a very good test with a low limit.

The other problem is that it takes time and effort to learn. You might come to the wrong conclusion about a niche or product when the real problem is your ads or keywords.

It doesn't take long to get results with article marketing and at least it's free. But just like a well-written Adword, your articles need to be good to get attention and to pre-sell.

I would suggest learning PPC tactics with a bit of restraint (unless you've got a big budget) while also using free methods such as articles, classified ads, Yahoo Answers and all the rest. Don't just go one or the other.

Sorry Steve,

What I am trying to say is this :

When 'direct linking' - direct your traffic via your own domain and hosting and then back to the merchant.

You still put the domain name of the merchant in the ad display line but put your own domain with a re-direct in the destination line.

Doing this will allow you to track your traffic and hide your source

Unless you are coached or have read through the google adwords tutorials, do not venture into PPC. You'll be just throwing away money.

Direct linking to a popular product/merchant will be expensive.You can instead redirect via a free blogspot blog to the merchant's LP.