PPC Traffic
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Ben Moskel is a true super affiliate minus the ego that usually goes along with that title. Ben has recently done a number of appearances at large affiliate conferences in addition to occasionally taking the stage to lecture at seminars and workshops. The above interview covers managing affiliates, keeping them motivated, and touches on pay per click marketing so you may have seen it in the “Pay Per Click” section of the training grounds and other appropriate sections as well.
Pay-per click or PPC is a way for you to advertise your website without having to pay upfront. Think about it this way. In the brick and mortar world, you have to pay for your advertising just so people will know you exist. Before they have even walked in the door of your establishment, you have paid big bucks!
PPC is a way for you to let people know you are there without having to pay until they “walk through” your virtual door. In other words, you only pay when people click on your advertisement. By then, you already have them partially hooked and as long as you have a killer sales page (see the section on sales letters), you will see conversions.
The top two PPC services are Yahoo! are Google AdWords. Yahoo! connects to many of the most popular search engines such as Lycos, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL. AdWords is a highly popular service that allows you to display your ad on the search engine and on individual websites.
So, how does PPC work? You will write targeted ads that consist of:
A headline
Two lines of descriptive text
A URL
There are limits are put on the amount of text in the ads that are very specific and very strict. Your headline can be no longer than 25 characters and it can contain no unnecessary capitalization (such as every letter of a word being capitalized). There are other very stringent guidelines to follow when writing a PPC headline.
Each line of descriptive text allows up to 35 characters. This means that you have to be very concise with your words because every one of them counts. No waste! You can’t afford it. Your creativity and word savvy are very important here.
The URL can be set in a very crafty way. You can display one URL, the one you want browsers to see, and this can be linked to the destination URL, which is where you want the browser to end up.
Once you have written your ad and submitted it, it will be displayed on pages that match the keywords you have chosen. The cost per click will vary depending on the keywords you choose and your keywords depend on your niche.
This brings us to one of the drawbacks of PPC advertising. Depending on the keywords you use, you might have to pay more per click. This means that, unless you have the advertising budget to work with, you might not find that PPC is right for your niche.
It is very important to research your keywords. It is not enough to simply guess or just use the ones you would try. After all, not everyone thinks they way you do ?. There are some really great keyword searches that will tell you what keywords are the most popular in your niche. Some of the best include:
WordTracker: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
KeyCompete: http://www.keycompete.com/
Overture Suggestion Tool: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Google Keyword Suggestions: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
SEOMoz: http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty
With Yahoo!, you will pay a set price per click depending on the keywords or keyword phrases you choose and the position you are buying. If you want to be in the top three positions (which will land you on the first page), you will be in this position on all the search engines Yahoo! reaches. Very good. However, you will also pay dearly for this placement, but if you have the budget for it, then go for it.
Google AdWords has a different setup and there are several advantages to it. Google determines placement in much the same way as Yahoo!, but performance is also taken into consideration. This means that you can pay less than another advertiser and still have a higher position simply because you have received more clicks. Nice! Google will also automatically adjust the amount you pay per click to ensure that you are still ahead of your competition, but remain at the lowest possible price.
Another great advantage of is that you can run multiple versions of the same ad simultaneously. Each version of the ad will be rotated and you can track the performance of each to find out which ones serve you better. This is a great way to enhance your ad and ensure it is giving you the best performance possible.
With PPC, you can easily keep track of your stats. You can track the number of impressions (when the search page your ad is on is viewed) your ad receives and the number of click-throughs that occur.
This means that using a PPC service, especially AdWords, takes skill and that it isn’t only the big budgets that get the traffic. If you don’t have a lot of expertise in writing advertising copy, you can always hire a writer to write the ad text for you (see the resources listed in “Outsourcing”).
With PPC, you can set the price you want to pay per click and you can also set your budget, meaning what you want to spend per day on PPC. This will determine the number of potential clicks you can receive in a day and it gives you the flexibility to say, “I don’t want to spend more than $10 per day!”
When you are starting out with PPC, take your time and make sure you understand all the nuances of the system. Start with lower-cost keywords so that you can test the waters without losing your whole budget in a day. Sometimes the lower-cost keywords are more targeted too, so your clicks might result in more conversions.
PPC can be a gold mine if you take the time to develop the skills needed to succeed and do the appropriate keyword analysis.
How else can you get traffic to your site…
