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Three Cheap and Effective Ways to Drive Tons
of Highly By Corey Rudl It’s been a long
time since I talked about a couple of my favorite Internet marketing
strategies: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines and Affiliate Programs. These
are two of the best tools you can use to bring hordes of people who are
interested in buying your product or service to your web site -- with little
or no risk to your pocketbook. PPC search
engines are great because once you’ve done your homework and chosen the
keywords people will use to find you in the search engines (I’m going to show
you how to do this), it’s easy to attract visitors who are interested in what
you have to offer, often for just a few pennies. And Affiliate
Programs are one of the best ways to get tons of interested visitors to your
site by having other people do the legwork, promoting your web site for you.
And the best part is that there’s absolutely no risk to you because you don’t
pay a dime unless visitors referred by your affiliates buy your product or
service -- so you don’t pay out commissions unless you already have cash in
hand! And last but
not least, after we take a closer look at these strategies, I want to show
you a really cool way to combine these two techniques that I’d bet my left
shoe you’ve never thought of... ;-)
As many of
you may know, I’ve been a strong advocate of PPC search engines for years.
They remain one of the most effective tools you can use to bring quick,
cheap, targeted traffic to your site. True to their
name, with pay-per-click search engines you pay a premium every time a
visitor clicks on your link -- anything from a few cents to a few dollars. For example,
let’s say you have a web site that sells woolen mittens. And you want to rank
#1 in the search engines for the term "woolen mittens." To get a
top-ten position in the free search engines, you’d probably be looking at a
few months (at least) of arduous effort. But in the
pay-per-clicks, you can grab the #1 spot in just minutes! That’s because all
you have to do is see how much the person who has the #1 position is paying
per click, and simply outbid them by paying one penny more! Then, when
your potential customer searches for the term "woolen mittens,"
your link will show up as the first listing on the search results page. And each
time searchers click on your link, you’ll pay however much you have bid for
that #1 position. Determine
your keyword bidding strategy There are
three advantages to bidding on keywords in the pay-per-clicks:
Done right, pay-per-click advertising can be
very profitable; however, you can lose a lot of money with your PPC
advertising if you're not careful. Here are some tips to help you ensure your
campaigns are profitable:
To determine how much you can afford to bid on
your keywords, you will need to understand the value of each visitor to your
site. You can do this by determining the number of sales you will get, the
profit you will earn per sale, and the number of unique visitors your site
will receive during a set period of time. It’s generally easiest to calculate
these numbers on a monthly basis. Here are three easy steps that will help you
determine the value of each individual visitor to your site:
Once you understand the value of your
visitors, you will be able to set your maximum bid for keywords. For example,
you may determine that each individual visitor to your site is worth 50 cents
in pure profit. This means you can afford to bid a maximum of 49 cents per
click to guarantee that you will generate profits. The value of your visitors may also help you
determine which PPC search engines you will use, as the minimum bid on
keywords in some search engines may be higher than in others. Choose a pay-per-click search engine to
use Overture.com is the largest and most
far-reaching PPC search engine, but its popularity has driven up the cost of
advertising with the company. The beauty of bidding on keywords in Overture
is that your web site will be listed not only on Overture, but also at
Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, CNN.com, and InfoSpace, provided your bid is in the top
three for a particular keyword. Other good, cheap PPC search engines worth
exploring include Findwhat, 7Search, and Kanoodle. Get listed on the first page of Google Google Adwords is also an excellent option,
though technically it's not really a pay-per-click search engine. Instead,
it's a "pay-per-position" advertising model that is the only way to
get listed on the first page of Google without fighting your way through the
free listings. Google Adwords listings show up in colored
boxes on the right-hand side of Google's free search results, giving you tons
of great exposure. With Google Adwords, you bid on keywords for
placement; however, Google Adwords also lists ads by popularity (how many
clicks they get). You may be paying for placement, but unless your link
receives more click-throughs than your competition's links, your listing may
not appear in the top spots of the search results. Find the keywords that your market is
searching for Start by checking your web logs to see what
keywords your visitors searched for to arrive at your site (check with your
web host if you don’t have access to these statistics). These will provide a
good indication of what kinds of terms your potential customers think of when
they’re looking for a product or service like yours. You may also want to consider using a service
such as WordTracker, which allows you to easily see which keywords are
frequently searched by your target market in the major search engines -- but
are not being used by your competition. All you have to do is enter your keyword, and
WordTracker will check its massive database to see how often people are
looking for that term, how many competing sites are using that particular
keyword, and how much they are bidding in the PPC search engines. A tool like this will help you choose
excellent keywords to bid on. It will also allow you to view the bid price of
each keyword in separate PPC search engines, which will help you decide
whether the cost of bidding on the keyword is in your ballpark or not. For example, WordTracker might display the
following results for the keywords "Atkins Diet" in Overture.com:
As you can see, if you wanted to be ranked #1
in the search engine results for the keyword "Atkins Diet" in
Overture, you’d need to bid 49 cents. You would also need a great sales
process -- because at over 24,000 clicks in the last 30 days alone, this term
would cost you almost $12,000 a month to keep a top listing at 49 cents a
click! A free trial version of WordTracker is
available at: www.marketingtips.com/wordtracker. There is also a much more
robust paid version as well. Now let’s shift our focus to an even more
powerful tool that I’ve used to grow my own business, and that I strongly
recommend as one of the key strategies you can use to direct massive amounts
of qualified traffic to your site... without spending a dime up front! 2. Using Affiliate Programs to Get Loads of Qualified
Traffic An Affiliate Program (also referred to as a
"Reseller" or "Associate" Program) is a way to get other
people to promote your product or service. For every customer (not visitor)
that your "affiliates" send to your web site, you pay them a
commission. Your affiliates send visitors to your web site
using banner ads, text links, letters of referral, etc... and you track these
visitors using special software. For every visitor who decides to buy, you
pay your affiliate a commission -- a percentage of the profits you make. It’s an extremely powerful, profitable way to
grow your business because:
Since you know your product or service better than
anyone else, you’ll probably have an idea of how you want to promote it.
Providing your affiliates with banners, product images, text links, etc. will
allow them to get started promoting your product or service faster and more
effectively. One of the best strategies for motivating your
affiliates to promote your product or service is to pay them well for their
efforts. If the commissions you offer aren’t attractive enough, your
affiliates just won’t be motivated. Additional incentives, such as bonuses for a
certain number of sales, will motivate your best affiliates to actively
promote your site, putting in as much effort as possible to refer sales on
your behalf. Set up and manage your affiliate
program In order to run a successful affiliate program,
you need to be able to:
A few years ago, there was no special software
to do all this. It was a complicated and time-consuming process to track
affiliate sales. But today, you can use software to
automatically keep track of which affiliate made which sale and exactly how
much you owe each affiliate. Tracking 10,000 affiliates is just as easy as
tracking one! A number of software programs are available to
manage your affiliate program, but you’ll want to check out a few to see how
easy they are to set up and use. All-in-one affiliate tracking software like AssocTRAC
(www.assoctrac.com) will cost a few hundred dollars and will give you an easy
and functional way to automate your affiliate program. Remember that cheaper
programs may be appealing at first, but may lack the functionality of tried
and tested software. 3.
How You Can Combine These Two Strategies for Even BIGGER Profits! Now that you’ve had a "refresher
course" on the power of PPC search engines and affiliate programs, I
want to show you an extremely effective way to combine the two strategies and
boost the flow of targeted visitors to your site! Here’s all you do: Encourage your affiliates
to try bidding on your keywords to market your product or service in the PPC
search engines. You might think that this would drive up
bidding costs, and that you’ll wind up actually competing for pay-per-click
placement against people who are supposed to be working for you. But the fact
is, encouraging your affiliates to bid on your keywords can help to get you a
LOT more exposure in the search results! Think about this: Typically, when searchers
enter their search term and your site appears in the results, your link will
be listed alongside links to other web sites... your competitors' web
sites. Now imagine you have a handful of affiliates
using the same keywords as you. People enter their search term and your site
appears in the results. But instead of being surrounded by links to your
competitors’ sites, you are surrounded by more links to your OWN web site! By using this strategy, you are taking up valuable
search engine "real estate." Picture the search engines as a strip
mall, and the web site links as the storefronts in the mall (also known as
real estate). The more of these storefronts you occupy with your product, the
less space there will be left for your competitors’ product -- and the more
likely it is that a shopper is going to see your product and buy it. You may feel that some keywords should be
yours and yours alone -- like your company name -- and wish to include a
clause in the contract between you and your affiliate, restricting them from
using those keywords. It’s up to you if you want to do this, but note that
your affiliate does not need your permission to bid on your company name
unless you’ve specifically asked them not to. That said, it really doesn't hurt to let your
affiliates bid on your company name in the pay-per-click search engines.
Whatever your affiliates are doing to get qualified traffic to your site can
only benefit you. So there’s no need to worry that your affiliates
could outbid you, or drive up the costs of your PPC advertising... Because the most important thing to remember
about your affiliates is that they are your teammates or business partners,
working with you to market your product or service. Competing with them for
the top spot is counterproductive, especially since the goal is to occupy as
much of the search engine results page as you can with links to your site. If your affiliates are taking the initiative
to advertise on your behalf in the pay-per-clicks, don’t waste your money
outbidding them. Instead, check to see how much your competitors are bidding
on keywords and spend your time and money keeping ahead of them. Your
campaign should be aimed at outbidding your competition, not your affiliates,
for top placement in the PPC search engine results. You may want to consider actively encouraging
your affiliates to try PPC advertising! If you decide to do this, you might
want to provide them with a few tips and strategies on how they can use the PPCs
to their advantage -- because, in the end, this will be to your advantage,
too. 4.
Final Thoughts By themselves, both PPC search engines and
affiliate programs are hugely effective ways to draw a paying crowd to your
site. They are two of the most powerful traffic-generation techniques on the
Internet today, and the real beauty of them both is that they will cost you
next to nothing. Once your affiliate program is up and running
-- and automated with software like AssocTRAC -- you won’t have to spend any
time or money at all. As your affiliates promote your products for you, your
software tracks their sales for you, and it makes sure they are only
scheduled to be paid after a sale is made. It’s one of the smartest marketing strategies
you can use. And I feel just as strongly about using
pay-per-click search engines -- particularly if you are a small business
owner going after a niche market on the ‘Net. Pay-per-clicks are the fastest
way to get your product in front of your exact target audience so you can see
immediate results. And, by keeping a close eye on your return on investment
for each keyword you bid on, you can ensure that your pay-per-click campaigns
are always enormously profitable. By combining these two powerful strategies to
maximize your coverage in the pay-per-click listings, you can dominate your
market space swiftly and effectively. Having your affiliates join you in the
pay-per-clicks is really only a natural extension of both affiliate programs
and PPC advertising, but it’s a technique that doesn’t get taken advantage of
often enough. There
are lots of online resources to help you get started with your affiliate
program or PPC campaign. One of the best is the "Insider Secrets to
Marketing Your Business on the Internet -- Version 2004" course, where
you’ll find detailed descriptions of how you can profit with these proven
strategies. ============================================= *****************************************************
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