How to Make Money With Google AdWords and Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is probably one of the easiest ways to earn money on the internet; you don't need a product because you simply promote someone else's. But in order for your affiliate marketing to be a success you need to drive targeted traffic to your landing page. Google AdWords is a form of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and is one of the most cost-effective ways to drive targeted visitors on the internet. You can't just jump into PPC though; first you need to understand how it works.

What is PPC?

Search engines display sponsored listings on their results pages and the advertiser's position in the list is based on how much they are willing to pay for each click the ad receives. The more you are willing to bid for the keyword the higher up the list your ad will display. To ensure that the ad being displayed is actually relevant to the search the search engine will also take into account the quality and relevancy of the landing page; this is known as a Quality Score. PPC is one of the most cost-effective ways to drive targeted traffic on the internet.

How Can You Make Money With Google AdWords?

A few years ago it was possible to build AdWords campaigns and drive all of the traffic to the merchant's landing page, unfortunately this is no longer the case. Google will only display one ad per URL for each search query, this means that if you are promoting a popular affiliate product the marketer with the highest bid will have his ad displayed and yours will not be seen at all. This leaves you with two options; be the highest bidder, or set yourself apart from the competition:

Bid high on your chosen keywords. If money is no object, or you know that you have chosen a high converting product you might choose to just bid as much as you can for the keyword. This is an acceptable strategy, but you will need to manage your account very carefully or it could become very expensive very quickly.

Build your own landing page. If you don't want to spend too much on the ad itself then you should consider directing your ad traffic to your own landing page instead of the merchant's. Make the content on your page relevant to the keyword you are bidding on and drive prospects to the merchant's site using text links and banner ads. If you are bidding on a number of different keywords you can ensure your landing page is the most relevant by building a specific one for each keyword. Don't forget that relevancy forms part of the Quality Score and will improve your position in the sponsored ads listing. If you don't want to spend money on webhosting you can build good quality landing pages on social websites like Squidoo.

Give something away for free. The benefit of having your own landing page is that you can offer an incentive for searchers to click on your ad by offering them something for free. This could be in the form of a report or ebook related to the product you are promoting. You can use the free gift to encourage visitors to sign up for your autoresponder series which will give you the chance to build a relationship with them.

Optimise your ad copy. You don't actually need to have the top spot to have the best click through rate, instead concentrate on making your ad copy stand out from the crowd. Look closely at the competition's ad copy and make sure yours is better, use different ad groups to test your copy until it converts at the level you need it to.

Google offers advertisers lots of information on their website to help you make the most of your AdWords campaign. Before you get your credit card out spend some time learning how the system works, building a quality landing page and crafting some eye-catching ad copy. Follow these steps and you will boost your affiliate commissions.
Amelia Johnson is an affiliate marketer and when she is not working on her own internet marketing campaign she likes to share her hints and tips for Google AdWords management at her website. If you don't have time to learn the ins and outs of the AdSense program and would rather copy someone else's proven campaigns visit http://googleadwordsguide.redopoly.com to find out how you can boost your affiliate commissions overnight with minimum effort.

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This post was written by: Franklin Manuel

Franklin Manuel is a professional blogger, web designer and front end web developer. Follow him on Twitter