Affiliate Marketing Business ProjectsProjects And Case Studies In Internet Marketing Using Pay Per Click And SEO Link Building

(Go back to Part 2 of Dog Training Project Study)

Creating A Landing Page

For this case study, I intend to use just 3 articles relevant to “biting puppy” keyword and its derivative. I will also search some cute puppy pictures to include in the website. I’m not very good in designing websites and not proficient in CSS, so my website will be a sucky one for testing purposes. It will also be created using tables.

The live site can be found by visiting http://www.bitingpuppy.net. Below is a checklist of all important things I consider are necessary before making the site live in a campaign:

1) All links are directed to a TRACKING LINK. This is one of the mistakes I did when I started PPC marketing - not tracking the clicks on my campaigns. I probably wasted a lot of money on my initial campaigns because I’ve been running them for months without any idea of how I can make my offers or keywords convert. I was too lazy to setup or learn an accurate tracking software that all I do is check my stats at Clickbank, CJ, eBay and other affiliate networks stats result. Little did I know that if I wanted to make the most of the money invested in affiliate marketing - tracking your conversion as accurately as you could will not only save you money but would also give you an idea which of your keywords are making the sales.

The best tracking software for this project is the one that is available at PPC Coach tool chest - a PPC training and coaching membership club. There’s quite a bit of learning curve in setting it up but once you get to setup 2 campaigns, the next ones are easier. I have written a review of this PPC coaching program here but I plan to write another review in the future.

Other than that tool, I probably have 3 other statistics tracking script in any website I deploy so I can compare my traffic and conversions. It’s a bit of work but at least I’m not running blind on any of my web properties.

2) The tracking link redirects to the right AFFILIATE OFFER (redirecting offer away from landing page). Now, this is an added advantage if you are using a tracking software with a redirection feature for some reasons:

There’s talk in affiliate marketing circles that some affiliate networks and merchants, are “stealing” an affiliate marketers converting keywords.

I think this happened to me, though I cannot prove it. Plenty of times in my past campaigns and promotions, I got lucky to find the keyword/s that convert. The first 3 days mostly, I was ecstatic to find that the keywords are sending in the sales and I get them cheap because my Quality Score is good.

Afterwards though, clicks and conversions start to decline until it totally disappear. Even the position of my ads went from number 3 position to number 8/9/10 and cost per click (CPC) which were initially low (sometimes I only start at $0.20 and at number 3 position) is priced more than 3 times the original!

I kept wondering why this is happening so I researched what other affiliates have to say about this in forums and blogs and found out that it happened not only to me but to others as well. Most of those affected by it says that some network affiliate managers they talk to admit that “stealing” keywords do happen. Specially if you are direct linking to an offer, where merchants can see in their stats what keywords sent the traffic to them - it’s so easy for them to beat an affiliates’ CPC cost.

After reading about it - I also found out what other affiliates are doing to counter it. Their solution - redirecting the clicks from the landing page to the offer. It’s not 100% foolproof but it’s better than not having safe provisions at all.

I also avoided direct linking to merchants after this incident not only because of suspected keyword theft but also because new Google adwords rules about one domain URL in Google ads per offer. But in all my campaigns thereon, redirecting is always a part of my setup.

3) The articles, meta tags and alt tags for images contain the keywords of my campaign. I maybe over doing this project for just a test setup but if you’ve been online for a while like me, on-page Search Engine Optimization will always be a part of setting up a new website. It’s taking me longer to setup my landing page but I don’t want to lose the habit of making sure that all my sites - test or not - are SEO’d properly. But, that’s just me.

After all three criterions are incorporated in my landing page, creating the campaign in Adwords or in any search marketing platform is the next step - which is what the next post will be…..

(Go to Part 4 of Dog Training Project Study)

Last time I talked about 2 coaching subscription programs I am a subscribe to which I chose to stay with after having tried at least 5 of them.

I wanted to share what the advantage and disadvantage are of this two programs, in my opinion, and I’d start with PPC Coach.

If you are like me, who is so “hungry” to find a step-by-step way of getting the right information to start in PPC, the program of PPC Coach is worth checking out.

When I started with them about 3 months ago, I knew very little about what an affiliate network is or how I can make money out of them. Sure, I knew Clickbank and Commission Junction, but that’s about it. The only products that I was able to put on my site/s is either a CJ or CB product. Ebooks or CJ offers are all that I tried selling. Without much success.

But with PPC Coach, I was introduced to a wide variety of networks having various offers which an affiliate could market in different ways - also taught inside the membership. Here are the steps to take after completing subscription with PPC Coach:

When I first went in to check the contents of this membership site, it required me to register accounts with Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter. It is probably an assumption that everyone who subscribed with them have zero knowledge of search advertising or marketing. I already have done that prior, so I just skipped that part and proceeded to the next one.

The second step is to register as an affiliate with a bunch of affiliate networks. PPC Coach have provided links to affiliate networks whom they trust and are using. When I started with them, PPC Coach doesn’t have any affiliate network yet, but today as I write this, they already own a network of their own which is offering a better percentage offers to members of the subscription site plus an assurance of easier approval of application.

The third recommended step is to watch the videos and checking out of the forum where the “meat” of the membership can be found. Watching the videos further established the fact how little I know about affiliate marketing. Specially the part where searching for the right keywords/keyphrases this super affiliates are doing for their campaigns.

It is also at the forum where you will be able to access the first technique that you will have to follow step-by-step as your first PPC campaign. It is sort of a detailed lesson of the simplest technique in affiliate marketing which the coach have tried and tested. I will not go into details about this first lesson but I will give you a hint about it - Zip submits. There…

Oh, by the way, the way the system works is such that: every month that you will stay with them as a member, they will show and teach different techniques of making money with PPC. That means, every month a different technique and a different offer is what a member will learn. You will not have access yet to month 2 or 3, etc. if you have just been a there the first month.

When I registered with them, there is only 1 technique that was presented for the first month, 1 for the second and also 1 for the third. Now, there are 2 techniques each month and most of the second technique were added only recently.

I tried the first technique for month 1, made money off of it (about $20 in one network and $15 in another) but I don’t think I’m cut-out for that project because it requires constant update on events and landing pages. It’s an easy task, in my opinion, the landing page design is so simple, but I don’t have time to create different landing pages for different kinds of offer. I have other things I look after besides affiliate marketing so I just stopped creating campaigns after only creating 4 which are still live up to now.

The second method taught for month 1 is a much better setup for my style and it is an affiliate marketing technique that I’m eager to test - review sites. I have started a layout for a review site but have to revise the landing page using Wordpress so I can use the plugin that coach have provided.

I don’t know if the coach/es will add more techniques for each month, but for me, the methods presented each month are already overwhelming and might not be able to use all of it in a years time!

I will not write about what month 2 and 3 lessons are because I might already be in trouble with coach for giving away info on month 1. But I will try and email him if it’s ok to just mention the niches in my future post about the membership.

Besides the detailed campaign lessons, another privilege a member enjoys is the unlimited use of tools. The most important of them are:

1. Keyword Tracking System - enables members to track details of each of his/her campaign without exposing your keywords to the networks. You can also upload revenue and cost data.

2. Landing Site Generator - this is a self-hosted, set of script which allows a user to easily put up a landing site.

3. Offer Database - allows members to search through the affiliate networks so you can compare their offers all in one place.

4. Poll Bot 2000 - a newly added tool in the coaching site, allows a member to quickly and easily build hundreds of polling sites.

Plus many other tools that a would-be affiliate marketer would surely benefit from in his/her PPC business.

The only disadvantage I can think about this service is the part where you cannot access all of the monthly techniques immediately. I don’t know why it was set-up like that but that’s part of the deal when I signed-up.

The cost for joining the membership is $50 per month and there is no trial period for the service. If you seriously want to learn PPC inside out with step-by-step lessons of actual campaigns that you can duplicate or improve upon, then check-out PPC Coach.

You can always cancel your subscription with them anytime. How much do you think you’ll lose by researching everything about PPC marketing yourself when you can have all the information plus tools in one place?