Any Suggestions for Direct Linking to an Affiliate Product with PCC?

[Trivum]

I'd like to test out some affiliate products to see how well they sells before I go to the trouble of building a business around my own similar products.

It used to be easy to do this -- just find an affiliate product, get some PPC ads, and then see if it sells. Google hasn't allowed this for a while, of course. Yahoo used to, but it seems that Bing does their advertising now, and from what I understand, they won't allow it either. (Is that right?)

Facebook doesn't seem to allow it either.

Does anyone have suggestions on how I might do this relatively quickly/easily? I'm not even looking to make a profit. I just want to do some quick tests.

(Btw, the few second tier PPC companies I've tried seemed like complete rip-offs. I know some people can get these companies to work for them with a lot of patience and testing, but for my quick testing purposes, I can't imagine they would be much good.)

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Trivum

Any Suggestions for Direct Linking to an Affiliate Product with PCC?

Yes.

My suggestion is: don't do it. Don't even think about it.

Testing how well they convert that way is a complete fallacy, because some sales pages that won't convert direct-linked traffic at all can convert pre-sold/opted-in traffic very well indeed. So testing this doesn't actually tell you what you need to know, in order to make the decision you want to make. You can easily miss out on all the best and most profitable ones, this way. It's really a form of testing one thing and then using the "results" to make a decision about something different.

The problem here isn't the difficulty of doing it: it's the fact that the "results" may not signify anything useful.

(I thought Bing did actually allow it, though I could be mistaken/out-of-date there, but I still wouldn't do it, anyway).

[Trivum]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

some sales pages that won't convert direct-linked traffic at all can convert pre-sold/opted-in traffic very well indeed.

Good point.