Little Known PPC To CPA
Tactics!
By James Cumner
Copyright
© James Cumner 2008. All Rights Reserved.
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A Note From Me...
Hi there, and thanks a lot for purchasing this report on a few new
tactics that can be used to arbitrage traffic from PPC to CPA offers.
This is a short report but if used effectively can be worth a lot of
money.
Remember to give these methods a chance. Work at them for a few
hours a day and you will find winners, and you will make money.
I am going to outline the basics of choosing an offer before I outline
the tactics and so without further ado, lets begin.
Choosing An Offer...
First and foremost you have to be a member of some CPA networks
to get access to the offers that we are going to be using to make
money from these techniques. I will give you a few good ones
below and will also have a list of resources at the end for most of
the known ones.
CPAEmpire
ClickBooth
PrimaryAds
AzoogLeads
HydraMedia
Just to let you know that some people do have trouble when it
comes to joining these CPA networks. The main problem people
have is that they don't know what to do when it comes to having a
website. This is not a problem if you know what to do.
When it says enter your website, then just place a N/a and in the
comments block explain that you are going to use PPC traffic and
maybe purchase some banners to send traffic. This should get you
in to any network no problem.
OK, so now that you are a member of one or more of these
networks, then it is time to find an offer that is going to work for
us. By far the best way to do this is to get in touch with your
affiliate manager (AM) and simply ask them. Tell them that you are
going to be direct linking, as this is going to be our first method,
and ask them what offers they think would work well.
You should get 2 or 3 offers to test. This will work really well and so
now lets get into our direct linking method.
The Direct Linking Method...
This method is very simple but from everyone I have ever
mentioned it to they have never known about it. It involves using
the Adwords keyword URL feature. This means that we can gain a
great quality score and can directly link to an offer that is relevant.
As we all know QS is now the deciding factor in whether we can
make any money on Adwords, and this tactic means that you no
longer have to worry about it. There are two ways of going about
this.
Firstly, you can setup your own landing page that has a great QS
on a completely seperate domain. This can then become your
display URL and destination URL. This page doesn't need to have
anything geared towards affiliate offers but simply a great
information page. This is because it is only going to be a dummy.
Secondly, the method you can use if you want to get extremely
high QS and are not too lazy to take the extra time is to build very
highly targeted keyword ad groups and then type the keyword into
Google and find the most relevant search result.
For example, if I were to build an ad group around the keyword
“New York Golf lessons” then I would type this into Google and the
most relevant result would be displayed. Then, after checking there
are no Adwords ads for that URL, I would then copy and paste this
into my destination and display URL giving me an almost certain
“great” QS for that keyword.
Then repeat this process with all the other keywords. This is shown
below.
So, we take this URL and add it as our destination and display URL
for this keyword when writing our ads.
Now you may well be asking yourself why we would do that,
because we are just going to be driving traffic to that website right?
Wrong – because Adwords allows each URL to have individual
keywords for tracking purposes. Also, Adwords doesn't check each
individual keyword URL, only the main display and destination ones.
The process of doing this can be shown in the picture below:
Then you will have all of your keywords being directly linked to any
URL that you choose. Obviously this will be your affiliate link that
you can push as much as you like without having to worry about
QS or double serving rules.
Also, as a quick note. If you are planning on using this technique
with a CPA network (it can of course be used for your own site or
on other types of affiliate network) then there is another neat little
trick that a lot of people don't realise they can use.
For example, and Azoogle link will look something like this:
azjmp.com/SDF34
But if we do this to our links:
azjmp.com/SDF34?subid=adwords+{keyword}
By adding +{keyword} to our URL's the keyword that caused the
click will be passed to the affiliate URL and so we can know which
keywords are causing the conversions. This is a great way to weed
out poor keywords and increase ROI.
Now, some people suggest that its bad to use this as your AM will
know all of your best converting keywords and you may
mysteriously notice some extra competition cropping up for your
best keywords.
Personally, I have never noticed that problem, but if you are
worried about it simply append each keyword with a number that
you can keep track of in an excel spreadsheet. This is quite a lot
more work but it is safer.
OK, so to summarise this method this is what we need to do. Pick
an offer that converts well with direct linking, and build your
keywords in the normal way that you would.
Then, create your individual ad groups around your base keywords
using either your own landing pages or the most relevant results
from a Google search.
NOTE – In all the time I have been using Adwords I have
never had any problems with this method. Having said that,
I am not sure if there are any legal issues around using
other peoples URL's as a display. Use this at your own risk.
Once you have your ad groups with 4 or 5 keywords in and your
highly relevant URL's as destinations then you go through the
process of editing the individual keyword URL's to direct traffic to
your affiliate link.
Simple!
This method works great using either search or content, but with
content obviously you don't need to be as strict when it comes to
organising your keywords because the QS requirements are far less
strict.
Now we are going to discuss a method that I have recently
discovered as being extremely effective when used on a mass
scale. This is the recent events method.
The Recent Events Method...
This method is one that is going to play on the popularity of recent
events that are occurring. A great event is one that you can predict
that is going to cause a huge surge in searches. An example of one
I used recently was for the Super Bowl.
I am guessing that 90% to 95% of all searches made on the Super
Bowl are done immediately before and after the game. So what we
are going to do then is set up a page that asks a person to vote on
something and then re-direct them to an offer as a reward. In this
example I would have set up a page before the game and put up a
poll that says something like:
Who is going to win the SuperBowl
X or Y
Click To Vote.
Throw in a few pictures and make it look nice and that would be a
great page. Also, as a headline we would put something like this:
Your Vote Counts – Vote And Win A Prize Worth $X
This offer would be one that we would try to find as relevant as
possible. We can find these offers on all of the main CPA networks
and they are usually under a section called Email Submits or Zip
Submit and each one will payout between $1.20 and $2.00
depending on the offer.
What we will do then is hyperlink everything on our voting page
and have it link to the Email Submit offer that will offer a free prize
for entering their email.
So, you have set up your page and found your most relevant email
submit offer that you can link to upon your visitor clicking. This
means that now you can drive traffic to this page and if you can get
a good rate of people voting on your poll and being redirected to
your affiliate URL you can expect to make decent money.
Most people underestimate the volume of traffic that is available
when using this method. But, when you are the only advertiser for
a keyword that is getting hundreds of thousands of views an hour
you can easily see 100's in not 1000's of clicks a day.
The key to this method though is that most of your polls will not be
profitable. Most will not even be able to be made profitable. The
key is the pure volume of offers you put up. Once you get good at
this you should be able to identify a news event, set up a quick
page from a template and set up the Adwords campaign in under
30 minutes. I would recommend trying to get at least 5 of these
campaigns a day going.
This is because I would guess that on average out of 10 campaigns
perhaps 1 or 2 will be profitable. Occasionally you will hit a jackpot
and make a fortune.
Another key to this is that you should put this on the content only
network. It will be virtually impossible to make this work on search
so the best bet is to try and get as many relevant keywords as you
can and create ad groups of around 50 keywords per group.
Once you have you ad groups set up like this I would recommend
starting your bids at around $0.15 as this will get some traffic going
and get your ads displayed quickly. Remember to set a low daily
budget at first.
Once your ads are running drop your Max CPC. Begin taking $0.01
or $0.02 a time off and leaving it for a few hours or even a day.
This is to gage if it has had any effect on your traffic. If you are still
getting good impressions keep dropping it. Most campaigns should
be able to get to $0.05 CPC or even lower.
This will mean that you can huge traffic for cheap and should be
able to make some money if you set up a lot of these types of
campaigns.
Remember the key points for this technique:
1) First, find a news event. The best way to do this is to read the
newspaper, watch the news and check the internet. Also some of
the most searched terms are celebrity events. So check all the
major celebrity gossip blogs to see what people are reading.
2) Set up a content only Adwords campaign sending traffic to your
voting page. This will have minor QS work done on it, for example
putting a relevant article below the fold.
3) Then when anyone clicks on any of your links it will redirect
them to their “prize” for voting.
4) Set up at least 5 of these campaigns a day and you should find
that you hit a good ROI campaign at least once every day or two.
5) Rinse and Repeat!
This is the exact system that when used to this extent can be worth
thousands of dollars a month. Even tens of thousands.
Also, another important thing that you will learn from doing this is
to begin with incentive marketing. This will help to get your feet
wet in this area and will give you invaluable experience. This
method of marketing is something that virtually no one is teaching
and is something that can produce ridiculously high ROI's.
You can use these techniques for other CPA offer, regular Clickbank
products or even your own. You just need to find the proper reward
and find a way of getting you prospect to “earn” the reward, by, in
this example, voting in a poll.
If you were using your own product you could set up a feeder site
that does something similar and offers a coupon code for a $1 trial
or something along those lines.
Either way, it can be an excellent way just to build you list.
Finally now I am going to discuss another method that I have come
to use. This is something that is neglected by most people when it
comes to PPC.
The Content Network General Strategies...
This is not a new method as such, but something that most peoples
perceptions are so off about that I think it justifies me outlining it in
a separate section. Everywhere I turn these days I keep hearing
that the content network doesn't convert and the traffic is useless.
This is for all sorts of reasons, because of click fraud and generally
less motivated buyers.
To be honest with you, this is completely untrue.
The content network converts great. Everyone who tells you these
things tend to be in a position where their advice is taken as
gospel. Most people who tell you the content network doesn't work
either hasn't tested it or are only telling you that because it's in
their best interests.
So, I'm going to outline the best way to set up a content network
campaign.
The first thing you need to do (assuming you have your offer
chosen and tested) is to gather your keywords. This is done in the
usual way, using free tools like Wordtracker and Google's own
keyword tools. Also, I would recommend using KeywordElite to
generate 1000's of keywords automatically.
Then divide the keywords up into groups of 50 as this is the best
number of use for a content only ad group in my experience.
After this it is set up like any other Adwords campaign. Go about
creating all of your ad groups and text ads and remember that this
can usually be done a lot quicker if you use Adwords Editor. This is
software that can be downloaded from inside your Adwords tools
page and allows you to edit campaigns on your desktop and upload
the changes.
Then if you want to drive to a CPA offer you can use the direct
linking method and track using the {keyword} addition to your
affiliate URL. Or if you prefer you can just track using a sub-ID for
each ad group.
Other Things To Note...
So thats about all you need to know. You have the potential here
using the Direct Linking method and the Recent Events method to
add a large chunk to your bottom line. These are also great ways
for someone to enter Adwords if they have struggled to master it in
the past.
But also we can roll out these methods on other PPC networks as
well. When you find your profitable Adwords campaigns the process
is perfectly simple now to just copy and paste them into Yahoo
Search Marketing and Microsoft Adcenter.
Also, it is worth taking a look at the following other PPC networks
as they can be used if you are careful with your campaigns.
GoClick
7Search
ABCSearch
Clicksor
Ask Sponsored Listings
MIVA
Also, I would recommend looking at Adbrite as well because they
have an awesome amount of traffic available if you leverage them
properly.
Many people have written them off in terms of traffic quality but in
reality there is a ton of money to be made there. The key I have
always found in Adbrite is to ensure two things are present in your
campaigns.
Firstly, you have to choose the exact sites you want to run on.
Don't let their own keyword targeting do it for you or else you will
end up on all sorts of weird and not so wonderful websites.
Secondly you have to painfully specific with your text ads. What I
mean is say literally what you want someone to do.
“New York Golf Lessons. Sign Up For Golf Lessons Only $30 A
Lesson”
This is a good example because the only people that do click will
know exactly what to expect. I have even tested at times
overpricing in an ad because this gives them a pleasant surprise
when they arrive at the sales page.
So thats about it.
I am confident that what you have just learned is capable of giving
you a great ROI on any Adwords spends you make.
Remember if you have any questions feel free to email me at
james@jamescumner.com
Thanks again,
James Cumner