The Blog For Entrepreneurs

In part one of ‘Make Money With Adwords‘ we talked about the simple math behind the idea of PPC (PAY Per Click) advertising in term of how mail shot marketing was done in the ‘old days’. I can testify that there was plenty of money in being able to identify a product that provided a return over the cost of marketing it which could be easily calculated. That, in affect, is all PPC advertising is and the chosen method of delivery is Google Adwords not the Royal Mail or the US mail. If you can get youR head around that, you understand the concept.

So who are the big dogs? Well certainly the most famous of the PPC gurus is Jeremy Schoemaker. The self named ‘Shoemoney’ is a legend among Internet Marketers after posting a picture of an Adsense check he got for $140,000. Since then he has been coining it in and has cashed in on his success by offering courses and tools etc to further boost his bulging bank account.

There are others, I am sure a quick search of the web will reveal many, but to be frank, Shoemoney is one of the ones I believe. I am not saying the rest are full of it but if everyone who says they are ‘Internet Millionaires’ were actually millionaires the economy would be in a lot better shape!

So what have we learned? We understand the basic concept and we know that there are people making real money from it, all we need to know now is how it is done.

Much like any skill worth acquiring, especially in the money making arena, one or two blog posts are not going to make you an expert. To be successful you need to study the situation and invest time in getting it right. But here is a little starter…

Firstly, you need to find some product to sell. The options for this are broad and depend on the scope of your site. But you there are a number of offers at Commission Junction, ClickBank, NeverBlueAds and Affiliate Fuel. You will find something that suits you from one of these sites.

Secondly you will an Adwords account to promote your selected offer. Go to Adwords.com and set up an account, you could also use MSN and Yahoo. The more the merrier, I say..

There are some excellent explanations of how to set up a campaign online, however, I quite like this YouTube video from Jean D Laurin. This will give you a walk through of how to set up a campaign.




Setting up your campaign is just the first step in the process, what you need to do now, as with all businesses, is fine tune it. How successful you are at this kind of marketing will not be determined by the offer you are making, of course a great offer will sell, but HOW you sell it will be the determining factor.

So here are a few tips:

1. Varying your advert

When you set up your ad you need to test which combination of wording is selling the best. For example, if you are promoting a fitness campaign you may find that ‘Get Fit Fast’ converts better than ‘Fitness Fast’. The advert lines may convert better with ‘start to get fit now’ than ‘click here for fitness regime’…

The more work you put into this, the better results you will get and the better you will become at knowing what sells and how to sell it.

2. Beware the Google Slap

Google’s search and systems, including Adwords, is one big math machine. No one could police the amount of business they do any differently. Consequently parameters are put in for what is a good advert on Adwords. If it is a good advert you get cheaper ads.. that is the simpler explanation.. or shoud ai say.. irrelevant ads et penalized.

Let me share a mistake I made as a newbie to illustrate. I was doing a campaign for an online trading business. I figured people who trade (I was and.. occasionally… still am one) liked Formula One. I figured if I advertised when someone searched ‘Formula One’ and saw my ad for ‘Online Trading’ it would stand out and some people may be interested. My reasoning was that is how it works offline…..

Forget it… A huge Google Slap came my way and the ads went from $2 to about $30.. something I was obviously not willing to pay. So when you are advertising.. stay on topic. The keyword advice tool is a great help for your campaign and, essentially, Google saying ‘if your page has these kinds of words on it.. you will be OK’.

3. Make sure you keep up with your math and calculate your ROI (return on investment). For example. If you offer a product that pays you $10 and 1 in 100 people who click the ad buy that product, your basic cost of a click (assuming the minimum of a 10% profit for you) can be no more that $0.09 (100 X $0.09 = $9.00). Anything bid over $0.10 is costing you money. This is obvious, I know, but a LOT of people make this mistake for a LONG time.

4. If you are using landing pages for your offer and you have been analysing your CTR, you may conclude that one set of keywords is performing better than another and accept that this will happen.. you are making a profit right? Try this though… the keyword that is not so successful, if it’s profitable it may just need building on, how about having a separate landing page for that keyword? You may find you can make a profitable keyword more so.

5. Use your keywords in your ad.

If you are offering Dog Biscuits and you have ‘Dog Buscuits’ as a keyword an ad that says:

Cheap Dog Biscuits
Delicious dog biscuits
your dog Will love

http://example.com

The words ‘Dog’ and Buscuits’ will be bold-ed by Google.. they love that kind of thing and see ads like this as highly relevant, it won’t hurt to have your ads standing out a little either.

6. Search or Content?

This divides many a marketer. For search results you need your own site in other words you can’t direct the url straight to an affiliate offer. Google want searches to be accurate and require a page. People will tell you, however, that the CTR is a lot better than that on the content network, i.e when your ad appears on someone else’s site.

Bottom line is that it is swings and roundabouts. Personally, finding a good offer that is working on the content networks is then worth the time putting together a good landing page and doing the search network too.

Conclusion

I have given these tips here as broad idea of the things you need to take into account in your campaign. The good news is that there are literally thousands of pages of information for free on the web, so before you go and purchase an ebook that promises to give you special Adwords powers, do some research yourself.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Regards
David
@TheMarketMaker