One often overlooked aspect of pay per click advertising is that it allows you to make money without a website. All you have to do is join an affiliate program and write ads that sell those products that you are affiliated with. With Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN AdCenter, you have the ability to enter two URLs into every pay per click ad.
The first URL is the URL that is visible to persons viewing the page that the ad is on. The second URL is the destination URL of the website that you are sending people to. This URL allows many more characters than the visible URL. In fact, it allows so many characters that there is room for your affiliate ID code.
The key to making money off of the pay per click and affiliate marketing combination is to research your product well. You need to know the benefits of using the product backward and forward. It helps to have used the product so that you are familiar with it and able to sell the benefits. You’ll also need to know a target market. The target market could be the market that the product owners themselves target or it could be a target market that you yourself are more familiar with. Either way, you need to identify a market. Thirdly, study the keywords that the product owners use in their marketing. In fact, if possible, contact them and ask them for recommended keywords. If you can generate a good list of keywords based on the the company’s own website then by all means, go that route. Whatever the case, you need to identify the right keywords.
In summary, here are the three things you need to identify before starting your pay per click campaign to promote an affiliate program:
- Product benefits
- Target market
- Keywords
The rest is a piece of cake.
