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While I have babbled muchly about incorporating Google Adsense ads into your affiliate sites, I haven’t really discussed the other side of the equation at all, which is Google Adwords. In general, affiliate marketers tend to use Adsense to monetize their sites, while retailers and other service providers tend to use Adwords to market their products. In some cases, though, affiliates make quite a lot of coin by using the Adwords system, so today we’re going to look at a quick example of that.

Let me start out with a silly sort of warning, as the example I’m going to use is from one of my sites, and it’s something I threew together last night for an example, and is not well-optimized at all. So do as I say, not as I do, mmkay?

The Adwords system lets you create campaigns where you create ads and target certain keywords and keyword phrases. You set a certain amount that you will pay, per click, for your ads, and based on that amount the ads are shown in various positions on pages that are running Google Adsense ads. If you bid higher than anyone else, your ads show up in the top position; bid lower than anyone else, and your ads are on the bottom (or not displayed at all, if too many other ads are ahead of yours).

So right off the bat we’re talking about a bit of a different beast, as far as using Adwords for our nefarious affiliate marketing purposes. Up until this point, everything I’ve discussed is largely free (other than your web hosting and domain registration). Not so with Adwords. This costs you money, for each and every click, so keep that in mind. Tread lightly here, especially when getting your feet wet.

I’ve been experimenting lately with some CPA pages (cost per acquisition) on various sites, just to try some new things. CPA campaigns are a bit different from Adsense, as they’re basically a set fee that you’re paid when a user completes an action (such as submitting a web form for a car quote) or buys an e-book or subscribes to an online membership site. While CPA deals can pay out very well, they’re a bit riskier for affiliates, as it’s all or nothing; either you refer someone who follows through and makes you cash, or you get zero. With Adsense, you can pretty much bank on some revenue, if you run enough ads in front of people, but CPA campaigns have a lot of peaks and valleys and a lot more variance in general.

Back to my example (I know, finally). I’ve been playing around with some campaigns on Azoogle that pay out when users submit their email address, along with name, address, telephone number, and sex. To be honest, most of these are really annoying for the surfer. as they promise a free KRZR phone, but you have to wade through a kajillion survey pages with offers, only to finally find out that you need to complete six subscriptions with people like Columbia House and Stamps.com just to get the damn phone. On the affiliate side, though, you get paid when the surfer reaches the second or third page, which is usually after they’ve submitted personal details, so for some deals it doesn’t matter if they ever buy anything.

I poked around for a deal involving a product that should get decent search traffic, that also wasn’t too godawfully annoying and didn’t ask for credit card info early in the process, as that’s typically a deal killer. If you dangle a nice enough carrot in front of people, you can get email/address/personal details enough for it to be profitable, but it’s insanely hard to get more than that.

I ended up finding an offer to promote a sweepstakes entry for a free 2007 Mustang Shelby, that paid out upon submission of email/personal details only, and pays $2.55 per lead. That’s not great but decent enough, so I decided to give it a whirl. I had an old domain lying around where I created the following page:

Get a 2007 Mustang Shelby for Free

Now, like I forewarned, that page and site are NOT well-optimized. Successfully using Adwords to make money as an affiliate is tricky, as you’re suddenly very much in the world of marketing. I went with a fairly honest pitch on that page, and did little to pretty it up, and it’s very possible that it’d be more successful if it were more shilly, just upselling the free car, doing anything to get people to click through the links. Do not mimic my approach, as it’s pretty clumsy and un-tested, and I just wanted to get something up and run traffic through it and see what happens.

After I created that page, I went to Adwords and started building my campaigns. First you have to create your ad, that shows up in Adsense ads, and again, this takes much practice, refining, and skill, as far as writing ads that attract clicks. This isn’t something I do much of, and honestly, I ain’t that good at it. So keep that in mind. The biggest single factor with using Adwords is to tweak, refine, and analyze your campaigns, until you find what works. Here’s the ad I created for my keywords:

Free 2007 Mustang Shelby
Too good to be true? Find out for
yourself, if you can handle it!
www.bonusbug.com/freemustangshelby

Once your ad is created, then you need to input your keywords. A book could be written on this subject, so I’m just going to show you how to find a big honking list to start with. Refining your keywords and how they’re displayed is important, so again, success here takes some practice and work. For my initial keyword list, I used the Google Keyword tool and simply input “Mustang Shelby”.  I exported that list to CSV, then copy and pasted it into Adwords.

The next step is to set your daily budget limit and your maximum bid foryour keyword terms. I set my daily budget limit to $20 and maximum bid of 0.26. The estimator tool will give you a rough idea of what you should expect to pay each day, but keep in mind it’s a rough estimate. Again, these settings take refining moving forward.

Okay. I did all of the above and let it run. The campaign has been up for about 24 hours and so far I’ve spent $9.56 at Adwords, as far as what I’ve paid overall for the clicks on my ads. At Azoogle, I’ve made $10.20. So, after a day, I’ve made a whopping $0.64. Not going to retire anytime soon, and given the time I spent on setting it up, I’m still in the hole. Due to the nature of the CPA deal, I could easily have made $0, too, so I’d need a better profit margin than the quick, 24 hour results to justify continuing to run the ads, more than likely.
But that’s not quite the entire picture, as I also made $2.60 from clicks on Adsense ads on the Bonusbug website yesterday, and all of the traffic came from the Adwords campaign. To be completely honest, I hadn’t considered that, as far as the people inclined to click on an ad for a shot at winning a car for free also being inclined to respond to other content on a website devoted to free offers, coupon deals, incentives, etc. So that’s something to keep in mind, as far as the possiblity that a break-even Adwords campaign (where your expenses offset your profits) could actually be worthwhile for you, if the traffic it sends to your website sticks around enough to respond to other things there.

So, in a very cursory nutshell, that’s one way to use Adwords as an affiliate to potentially build traffic and profits. Again, playing with Adwords is very tricky and potentially expensive, so poke around on Google and od more research before you try it out. I’m just trying to explain the basic framework here, and this should in no way be seen as a guide to how to do it right.  Just some fodder to get you started and an example of another way that affiliate marketers ply their trade online.