It’s a simple enough question right? What is PPC.

In it’s simplest explanation, PPC is an acronym for Pay Per Click. It refers to an advertising model where an advertiser pays every time a viewer clicks on their ad.

In general how it works is that you bid on a keyword or several, in an Ad Campaign that has one or more Ads. Typically the Ad is made up like so:

Headline : Generally a catchy headline that includes your Keyword
Line 1 : Primary phrase to give information on the product or service.
Line 2 : Secondary phrase to reinforce the benefit of the product or service.
Target URL : Where the viewer is going to be sent, usually a full domain like www.FooBar.com
Landing URL : The actual landing page which can include affiliate links or tracking information. www.FooBar.com/product_1&?Keyword&?Affiliate_ID

You put in a maximum price you are will to pay every time someone clicks on your ad. They click on your ad, your account is racked up a charge to the amount of the bid and the viewer is sent to the target url you have in your ad.

Your bid goes into a bucket along with everyone elses for that keyword or phrase. When a search is done with that keyword the bids are ranked and if your bid is high enough and your ad is relevant enough your ad will be ranked and displayed.

The actualy algorythms that the various companies use to rank your ads is a bit of black magic, but are usually made up of a percentage being your bid price, a percentage of the quality of your ad and it’s relevance to the product and a percentage of history.

It’s not unusual to get clicks for less than your maximum bid, but you certainly shouldn’t be bidding big unless you know you are going to make money from the conversions.

PPC is a very quick and effective way to testing products, web sites, sales copy and conversions. It doesn’t take long to set up and you can be driving traffic to your site or to an affiliate site same day.

In some circles PPC is interchangeable with Google Adwords, however Google isn’t the only game in town. There are a whole host of providers who offer PPC services along with several other types of advertising models.

The main ones are Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter and Yahoo (Formerly Overture)

There are several good systems that teach you how to come up to speed on Affiliate Marketing in general and PPC in particular.

Some of my favorites are Matt Levenhagen’s Blast Method, Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker’s ShoemoneyX and the one that got me started Chris Carpenters Google Cash.

What are some of your favorite systems?

Ooroo,
Shane

It’s a little like motor racing. The easiest way to make a small fortune in Internet Marketing is to start with a large one.

It doesn’t have to be the case. There are certainly methodologies out there that will help you make a little scratch in Internet Marketing.

I’ll highlight a couple of methods I’ve used successfully to generate sales as an Affiliate Marketer over the last 5 years.

What I really want to discuss today however, is what then? How do you make sure that you are actually making a profit?

The formula is pretty simple Income – Expenses = Profit.

With three main players in the PPC field, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo (Formerly Overture) and 74,000,000 + hits on the search term “Affiliate Site” there can be a lot of data flying around that you need to keep up with.

I always suggest start small; pick one PPC provider, usually Google Adwords and one Affiliate Site, usually ClickBank. ClickBank is a good place to start as it’s accessible and deals mainly with eBooks/ Software products.

Way back in the mists of time I started with Chris Carpenters “Google Cash” method. I’d only just heard of Google Adwords and that was it. A few days of research and digging, turned up some good review and I figured for $30 or so it was worth a shot.

It took me a few days to get things together, but I jumped in and gave it a shot and was lucky enough to make sales quickly. It is certainly easy to get discouraged if you don’t see any sales, but hang in there, it will happen. Well … it can and should happen, but there are things you could be doing better. Better product, better articles, better Ads etc. That’s for another day.

Within a few months, I had cheques and direct deposits coming in from 4 or 5 affiliate sites and money going out to pay Google, Microsoft and Yahoo for my clicks.

I then found a spreadsheet that would tally the incomings and outgoings for me so I could see which campaigns were profitable, and which ones were sucking the life blood out of my new venture.

In a previous life I used to cut code for a living and this spreadsheet nonsense seemed like an awful lot of work. So I did what any self respecting IT guy would do, I wrote a computer program to do the work for me.

I decided against screen scraping as it breaks as soon as the host company changes their website in anyway. I did find however that each site had a report I could run that would give me sales data in a form I could use for the program.

This made things a lot easier as I could see what was happening with each campaign and could spend just a little time each week importing the previous weeks data. Of course if you wanted to you could import data daily, but I find that isn’t usually necessary and creates more work that takes away from making new campaigns.

At the time I was writing Internet Marketers Companion, I met Matt Levenhagen who had taken and refined a few systems into his own, called the Blast Method. There was a lot to like about it, especially the way he had of ordering Campaigns so they were easy to track. I used that myself and then leveraged IMC to use it also. Of course IMC will work without using the Blast Method numbering, but I like and endorse anything that makes my life easier.

While Google Cash is now a little long in the tooth, the Blast Method is about to be updated to Version 7 and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read it yet. Whether you are new to Affiliate Marketing or a seasoned veteran. Coupled with the great community Matt has pulled together there is a wealth of knowledge to get you up and running.

What you need when starting out is a simple method to follow and a way to check that it’s working for you.

Try the Blast Method combined with the free IMC Lite for tracking and you’ll be well on your way to building a business that will virtually run itself.

Next up I’ll break down how to become a Super Affiliate.

Ooroo,

Shane

Hi Folks,

If you don’t know who Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker is, you should. He’s been in the Internet Marketing and Adsense game for over a decade.

Feel free to take a gander at the free course he’s giving away. I’ve added a few bits and pieces from his page below so you have an idea of what’s in store.

I signed myself up to take a peek at what he’s offering these days and I suggest you do also.

At the very least study the course he gives and see how it’s paced, the content and how he’s put it together.

Sign up here ShoemoneyX

I’m Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker and for 13 years I’ve been building successful online businesses. For the past five years I’ve been working hard writing a book to help others get started online. I recently decided that there is just too much great information in my book to exclude people from reading it. I have now backed out of my major book deal and turned it into a completely FREE 12 week guide to Internet marketing. No strings attached. Enter your email and start receiving the weekly guides directly in your inbox!

1. Week 1 - The Beginner’s Guide To Internet Marketing
2. Week 2 - Affiliate Marketing 101: Everything You Need To Know To Start Promoting Products
3. Week 3 - Market Research: How To Crush Your Competitors And Discover Hot Niches
4. Week 4 - Introduction to Pay Per Click
5. Week 5 - Advanced Pay Per Click
6. Week 6 - SEO Tips, Tricks, and Tactics
7. Week 7 - Content Creation: How To Create Articles That Attract Users And Increase Sales
8. Week 8 - Marketing: How To Use Social Media To Spread Your Brand
9. Week 9 - Make That Cash: 10 Ways To Monetize Your Site And Increase Profitability
10. Week 10 - Testing & Tracking: How To Optimize Your Site & Make Sense Of The Figures
11. Week 11 - Building Your Team: How To Network With Others And Find Long Term Partners
12. Week 12 - Launch Day: How To Kick Start Your Business And Manage Your Projects

Grab it HERE

There have been a flurry of email and twitter questions about why I took IMC off the market.

The short answer is that, there were a few things I wasn’t totally happy with, not just with the program, but with the site also.

I’ve been working diligently with Matt Levenhagen on testing the latest build to make sure it’s rock solid. We have come up with some great ideas on how to make IMC even better but first things first we wanted the current version to be the best it can be.

One of the big changes has been in the back end. I’ve always ran my own back end software, first it was jvmanager then I upgraded to Fantasos. Both excellent programs, however I have been looking for an integrated solution that will allow things to look and feel the same, no matter if you are an affiliate, member, or buying a product from us.

So far it’s starting to look really good and I’ll be opening the doors again, once I have it all tested and working.

Everything is WordPress based. The forum, the eStore, the Affiliate manager and the Membership manager.

It all works seemlessly together and I’m looking forward to re-opening the doors and letting you see what we have in store for you.

If you have any questions, swing by the forum or drop me a line from the contact form

Cheers,

Shane

Hi Folks,

I’ve decided to take Internet Marketers Companion off the market for a spell.

There are several reasons for this but nothing that is worth discussing at length.

If you are an existing customer feel free to ping me on any questions that you have.

I have some plans for things to do with the site and source code from a few products kicking around and the forum is there to talk about IMC, IMC Lite and things you’d like to see in a bigger, better Affiliate Marketing Business Tracking Tool.

Kind Regards,

Shane Lowry