Affiliate Marketing - How to Scale Up Once You're Earning

(A great article by my friend Sherman Choo. Thanks Sherman.)


Affiliate marketing or Online Brokering as I like to call it can earn one a full time income. Once we have earned our 1st $100, how do we scale up the earnings to $500, $1000, then $5000 a month? There are many ways to do so. Because I like to do Pay Per Click Marketing, I'm gonna share about this, and we're gonna use AdWords as an example.
Tips on how to scale up your Pay Per Click Marketing Earnings, Adwords style!
1. Use Tracking Code
If you don't intend to use tracking code, then PPC is not for you. You will most like spend $100 on AdWords, get burnt and run away screaming that PPC don't work. Top earners on the internet track everything they do. When I get forgetful and do not track, I have no idea what is making me money and what is losing me money. Setting up a tracking code requires a little hands on skill such as learning HTML, Getting Your Tracking Code, Pasting It Into Your Landing Pages, then studying the conversion percentages.
2. Increase Your Bids
Once you're making money, you may increase your bids so that the inactive keywords become active. This may require you to increase your bid price to $0.30. Generally, I don't bid more then $0.08 for my keywords and this is highly profitable for me. If your product is more then a $1000 somewhere in your sales funnel system, then you can bid $.50 to $0.80, which will put you at the top of the search ads for sure. With more exposure, track the earnings vs PPC expenditure. If you don't make more profits, then scale the bids back down again.
2. The Content Network, Fraud...or maybe not?
Some AdWords books and forums advice that we should switch off the content network option, which is Google's AdSense. These are ads placed on sites that have content complementing your Ad. Their reasons are this. No 1, the useless impressions affect the search position of the ads. No 2, You get bad traffic.
Lets look at No 1. The impressions you get from the content network or Google does not affect your Search Engine Ad placements. So if your CTR says 1.19%, it does not mean you lose your position in Search Engine search.
Now No 2. AdSense is well regulated and policed by Google. While you may experience clicks that are false, this is going to be a small percentage that will be negligible and Google will eventually catch up with AdSense publishers trying to fool the system. Google will refund any money you've spent for clicks originating from those sites. You will realise this on the day when tracking codes are installed that the content network is an amazing source of traffic that generates in leads and sales for "PENNIES".
Look at it this way, you will have the lion's share of the deer, while the vultures are taking the scraps in the beginning. The best is yet to come, in this case the Google police will be working to take back the scraps from the vultures and putting it back on your plate. And any good clicks that did originate from those sites are an added bonus!
3. Have Different Ads for different landing pages...
Having a landing pages corresponding to keywords that you're bidding on can help greatly in lowering AdWords cost for search. Because the entire message from Ad to landing page is focused and targeted for a specific keyword. However, if you're a lazy PPC marketer like me, I just have 1 landing page and 1 Ad that I use for 2859 keywords...and it still works well. That's because at the end of the day, I leverage the content network. So even if I don't qualify for the search network, the content network itself is a great asset, especially in certain niches that have a great number of AdSense publishers.
4. Craft a good ad that sets peoples mind frame on the right path the minute they click.
If we promise something, we must always deliver, and preferably over deliver. However, in the beginning we must sell the sizzle...because its the "sizzle that sells and not the cow, although the cow is important" (The cow is what brings back repeat business). In this case, an ad should indirectly infer what the ad is trying to say. For example, a Cow Ad reads,"This medication will cure gout pains". A Sizzle Ad will say,"Gout crippled my life, now I'm free from pain". Don't tell people what to do, let people infer and arrive the conclusions on their own. When people think about something, it stays in their heads, if its told to them, it passes in one ear and out the other...
With that shared, I hope it gives you more ideas to scale up your affiliate marketing earnings with Pay Per Click Marketing...There are probably lots more on this topic, we'll share more soon...
All the best to your internet business,
Sherman Choo
Sherman Choo is the Internet's Top Recurring Internet Income affiliate. Discover his 7 day affiliate marketing secrets at http://www.shermanchoo.com/ezine.php
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