PaulNorwine.com

“I got a hundred dolla bill, y’all!” -Ice Cube

I have “officially” been playing this online business game for a little under two months now. I know what you are thinking – “two months is almost an eternity, Paul. By now, you should have made enough money online to purchase your own island!” Alas, I am here to confess I have yet to make my millions. Actually, I have yet to even make my thousands. Truth be told, I have yet to even make my FIRST thousand.

I’ve heard it said there are a million ways to make a million dollars online. While there may be some truth to this statement, the vast majority of us are just starting out and are primarily concerned with finding ways to make our FIRST dollar online. And though it may seem virtually impossible to jump over that initial hurdle, I’m telling you it’s not only possible, but it’s easier than you think. That’s because I have actually made my first $100 online…

Most of you have at least a vague idea about what Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is all about. At it’s most basic level, PPC advertising involves an individual or company creating a sponsored ad that will appear on the results page of a search engine query. The advertiser hopes that the ad is sufficiently attractive (and targeted) enough for a user to click on the ad in order to be re-directed to a website of the advertiser’s choosing. Every time a user clicks on the ad, the advertiser is charged a certain amount of money. Hence, pay per click.

I made my first $100 online promoting a clickbank product via direct linking and a PPC campaign. Before I delve further into the discussion, however, I want to add a mini-disclaimer. I am not an expert regarding PPC advertising – in fact, I would say I am only slightly more knowledgeable about PPC than my 18-month old puppy, Chloe (she is a pretty smart dog, though). Nor do I believe PPC will be prominent during my path to financial freedom. As a result, I am NOT recommending anyone stop what they are doing to jump on the PPC boat (which may be sinking if you listen to some “gurus” out there). I am merely presenting one tactical method that HAS pulled in a little cash to show that there’s hope – it IS possible to make money online, even if you don’t really know what you are doing.

With that being said, here’s a quick list of the pros and cons of affiliate marketing via direct linking PPC campaigns.

Pros:

(1) Quick Money Making Opportunity –

Once you have identified an affiliate product you want to promote, you can sign up for a Google Adwords account for $5 and, in a matter of minutes, you can design and place your first ads. You now have a legitimate opportunity to bring in affiliate commissions.

(2) No Landing / Squeeze Page -

Normally, you have to send prospects who click on your PPC ad to a “soft-sell” landing page that you developed yourself. Creating your own landing / squeeze pages obviously take precious time and effort, not to mention money for your domain name and hosting. But, with direct linking, you can cut out the middleman (aka, your landing page) and send prospects directly to your affiliate’s sales page. This can be very beneficial, especially when you are promoting a product that has a high-converting squeeze page.

(3) Automate the Process –

Once you have tweaked and tested your PPC campaign, you can let it go virtually untouched while it continues to convert commissions for you. In other words, it becomes a source of passive income!

Cons:

But though I’ve made it sound easy above, direct linking PPC campaigns have a “dirty underbelly” so here are the flip-sides of that coin.

(1) Keyword Competition Can Be Fierce -

Affiliate marketing via PPC has been around a long time. As such, there are a large number of competitors who not only have the experience and expertise, but the budget to outbid unsuspecting rookies. For you to become a profitable direct linker, you need to do your homework and low bid on high-volume and high-converting keywords. Finding these “gems” can be very tough, especially when you are first starting out.

(2) Issues Directly Linking to an Affiliate Site -

There are actually three glaring reasons off the top of my head why direct linking to an affiliate site may NOT be ideal. Firstly, some affiliates and / or affiliate networks do not allow direct linking. I won’t go into all the reasons why – suffice it to say you must check with your merchant and affiliate network before you promote a product via direct linking. Secondly, Google rotates ads that point to the same destination URL. This means that if there are other competitors promoting the same product, their ads may show more often, especially if they have higher quality scores and / or higher bids. Lastly, there have been some tests that have shown higher conversions if you send prospects to a pre-qualifying, soft-sell landing page BEFORE sending them on to the affiliate’s site. This means you may actually miss out on quite a few conversions.

(3) Automation Doesn’t Mean “Set and Forget” -

Just because you have a high-converting commission campaign doesn’t mean you can set it and forget it. I have learned this the hard way – I had originally identified a set of keywords that had almost no competition. I set my daily budget and click bids way higher than they should have been but monitored it every day for two weeks. I converted a few sales and was making a nice little profit. I figured it was cash on auto-pilot and I stopped checking the account for two weeks. I figured wrong. Not only did I stop converting sales, competitors had flooded the particular keyword market I was in and bids went through the roof. Instead of paying $0.10 a bid, I was paying over $1 per click. That quickly added up and almost erased all the profit I had previously generated. Needless to say, I have since lowered my daily budget and bids…and I check the campaign every day or two to make sure there aren’t any crazy things happening.

My foray into PPC direct linking has been a learning process – and what I have learned won’t fit into one blog post. Which is probably a good thing because I do not see myself wasting too much more time and energy on them. Again, the purpose of this post was not to give you a “how-to” but to show those of you who haven’t made a penny online yet that it’s not as hard as we are all making it. Sure, it’s kind of like a treasure hunt…but hopefully this post shows you there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe there really ARE a million ways to make a million dollars online.

Paul

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