AdWords Adviser

Archive for July, 2009

Last month I wrote a post “Introducing Bid Simulator From Google AdWords” that revealed the new tool that Google was working on that could take all the guess work out of your AdWords bidding strategy.

Recently, I came across “The Google AdWords Bid Simulator Reference Guide” posted on the SlideShare blog. If you’re still confused as to what this new tool could do for you, then take a look at this slide show and you’ll soon understand what this tool is all about.

If you’re looking for answers to questions like:

• How many more clicks would I get on my ads if I increased my bid from $2 to $3?
• What position would my ad be if I bid $3?
• How much would I have to bid for a top three ad position?
• What can I do to bid more effectively?

then the Bid Simulator is the tool for you.

The tool is currently in beta testing and only available to certain advertisers in the USA. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this tools progress at AdWords Adviser and when we know more, we’ll be posting our findings.

The staff at AdWords Adviser frequently help out at the AdWords Help Forum. It pains me whenever I read a question on that forum that starts with something like:

How exactly do we earn money from Google?

Just reading this in a headline to a question usually tells me that yet another person has fallen victim to an Internet scam promising big riches from Google only to have ended up bitter, disappointed and out of pocket.

Regulars on the AdWords Help Forum have been doing their bit to try and get Google to do something about these sites, here’s one such thread.

The guys at Search Engine Round Table have also been campaigning against Google scams for months now. Here is what they have had to say:

• Scam: Google Money System or Google Kit
• Google Scams Getting Worse
• Google Begins Banning Google AdWords Scams

Others have also been reporting on the issue, see these posts:

• Finally, Google Suspends Accounts Running Adword Scam Programs
• Google Cracking Down on AdWords Scams

I’ve been following progress on this issue with interest and it’s fantastic to see that all the campaigning against AdWords scams is starting to pay off and that Google are now taking this issue more seriously.

Warning: Scammers, be worried, Google is after you!

But, should legitimate advertisers be concerned?

Yes, you should!

Google is making mistakes with the sites that they are selecting for banning.

See this post from an unfortunate victim:
Google Finally Goes After Google Money Tree Scam Advertisers

Has anyone else had any problems with Google’s crack down? Let us know about your experience by posting a comment below.

We get lots of questions at the AdWords Adviser offices on affiliate marketing with AdWords, this is one I read recently:

Dear AdWords Adviser,

I want to use AdWords to promote and sell products that others own. Is this possible and how do I do it?

Sincerely,

Chris

This type of selling is commonly known as Affiliate Marketing. You send potential customers to someone else’s web site in the hope that they will purchase a product. Whenever a purchase is made, you get paid a commission.

What You Need To Know About Affiliate Marketing

In a moment, I’ll tell you the best way of getting sales from your affiliate marketing with AdWords, but first, we need to get two common misconceptions straight.

These are important so pay attention; get this wrong and you’ll end up paying the cost big time!

• You pay Google every time someone clicks on one of your ads. All the effort and financial costs involved in finding potential customers for your chosen affiliate products therefore come from you.
• The product owner or affiliate program pay you a commission whenever they make a sale from a potential customer that you sent them, not Google.

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way of making money online, then this is probably not the right opportunity for you. In  order to succeed, you need to face the harsh reality that affiliate marketing is extremely competitive, challenging and sometimes expensive.

Using AdWords To Promote Affiliate Products

There are many different ways to get sales from affiliate marketing using AdWords. The method which I prefer is not the simplest or easiest, but it does have the advantage of closely resembling what Google looks for from a web site.

We’ve found that when affiliate marketing is done following these guidelines, three important things happen:

• More of the money you spend with Adwords turns into paying customers.
• Your landing pages have a higher quality score resulting in lower cost-per-clicks for your keywords.
• You obtain better positions on the results pages for your ads at less cost.

Content That is Relevant and Origional

If you are new to affiliate marketing, the first thing you need is a domain name. Ideally, the domain name you choose will reflect in some way the product or niche within which you intend to sell. You’ll also need a web site or blog.

The next step is to start writing relevant and origional articles, news and content about your chosen niche and the products you’re going to sell.

Now I can almost hear your mind saying, writing is not for me!

But, writing interesting articles doesn’t have to be difficult. There are books that can help you create riveting sales letters, ads or email easy. And as you study every word you will become amazed at how easy it is for you to start writing your own hypnotic material.

And article writing doesn’t have to be time consuming either. Imagine what you could do if you dedicated as little as one hour every day to writing articles and aimed to finish one article every week. In a month you’d have 4 or 5 articles finished and in a year more than 50 articles.

But, if writing definatley is not for you, then hire someone to do it for you.

Once you have your finished article, include links to one or more of your affiliate products that are relevant to the article you’ve written and download it to your web site or post on your blog.

When you have a few pages written and downloaded onto your web site, create an Adwords campaign and use it to send relevant visitors to your site.

They’ll read the content that you’ve provided for them and if they’re convinced by what you have to say, will click on your affiliate link and purchase the product you’re promoting.

It really is that simple!

Short Cuts Don’t Work

As you read each word in this post, you begin to see how providing your visitors with landing pages that are more relevant to what they are looking for can reward you with cheaper biding costs from Adwords and more potential customers clicking on your affiliate links.

But, the fact of the matter is that there are no short cuts to profitable affiliate marketing with Adwords. Don’t be tempted into making any of these three common mistakes that a  lot of affiliate marketeers make when creating content for their web site or blog:

• Don’t create pages with the only purpose of redirecting traffic to the affiliate web site.
• Don’t make a copy of the affiliate sales page.
• Don’t fill your web pages or blog posts with lots of advertisments.

None of these will work!

Google rewards origional content and your visitors will also thank you for your honest opinion of the product they are considering purchasing. This is particularly important with affiliate marketing as Adwords won’t show multiple ads that send people to the same or similar landing pages.

Beyond Adwords

If you’ve read this far then you’ll realise that affiliate marketing with Adwords, when done properly, takes a lot of time and work. But, if you pick the right products and work hard at selling them, you will get rewards.

Affiliate marketing with Adwords is an excellent way to get your campaign started, but you’ll soon realise that it has limits as a traffic driving tactic and you’ll eventually start to look for other ways of finding even more traffic for your web site.

Another advantage of our approach to affiliate marketing is that when you are ready to move beyond Adwords, you can use as many other web traffic methods as you want and direct all your potential customers from them to the same web site cutting down the amount of work you have to do considerably.