Comments on: How I Blew $157.97 On PPC Affiliate Marketing With Google AdWords

By: Penny Pincher

Penny Pincher — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:32:09 +0000

Awesome post Paul. I think you should do some sort of case study or something in affiliate marketing, I know it would help me learn!

By: Paul Piotrowski

Paul Piotrowski — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:58:21 +0000

@Elijah: Yeah, keep us posted. It’s definitely an intriguing subject.

By: Elijah

Elijah — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:44:38 +0000

The great thing about your post Paul (among the obvious supreme writing skills!) is that my fiance and I have just decided that we are going to get our feet wet in PPC very, very, soon. I have made a few hundred dollars since I started affiliate marketing in April, mainly with article marketing, niche sites, and online classified ads, but I know for a fact that the big wig gurus make the big wig cash with PPC campaigns.

When you hear claims of making $10,000 a week from our favorite gurus, a gigantic chunk of that income is PPC – unless you own a thousand websites making $10 a week.

PPC is vital.

Paul I wish you the best of luck, and I will be following closely. Here is my plan:

1) Find a handful of info products that we feel are useful with great sales pages (click bank)
2) Research the markets relating to the info products with Wordtracker (paid version) to build a list of 30-50 low competition/high search keywords and phrases.
3) Purchase a domain for redirecting to the Affiliate URL.
4) Get my campaign fired up and track, track, track!

I’m hesitant on using Adwords for my first test campaign as it can be more expensive and competitive compared to Yahoo, MSN, or even Facebook Ads.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

By: Paul Piotrowski

Paul Piotrowski — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:26:48 +0000

@Hunter Nuttall: It’s all good. It’s all part of the learning process. I just thought I’d write about it so that someone else can learn from my “doh!” moment and save themselves some $$$.

By: Paul Piotrowski

Paul Piotrowski — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:25:35 +0000

@Simon Stapleton: Or for AdSense you can pickup Joel Comm’s eBook for $9.99 and let him tell you what the patterns are.

As far as your Blog is concerned, one thing you should definitely look at is diversifying your income streams past AdSense. AdSense is a nice little passive income stream, but you are leaving a lot at the table by relying on it 100%. Create some banner spots on your site, and setup an Advertise page so that you can sell advertising directly.

I’ll tell you a secret. Nobody said you can’t go to another tech-related website/blog, find a 125×125 banner spot someone bought from them (look for non-affiliate links) and solicit them to purchase one on your site if their product/service is tech related. Heck, you could throw in a week for free or something. Oh yeah… it’s also not illegal to approach more than one of these people. Heck, you might even be surprised when they like you for it.

By: Hunter Nuttall

Hunter Nuttall — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:14:00 +0000

Sorry to hear about this experience Paul, but I’m glad you managed to cap your losses at a relatively small amount. I’ve heard of people losing thousands before they noticed! And Perry Marshall is very insightful about Google AdWords, no question there.

By: Simon Stapleton

Simon Stapleton — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:27:07 +0000

Thanks for the tipPaul. This might help turn what seems an artform into a science! I’ve not had success with AdSense myself. I think it takes discipline and as you say, time to learn the patterns.