Glend Article

My First Try At PPC to CPA Affiliate Marketing

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Introduction
I have recently been trying to figure out PPC to CPA affiliate marketing. My first attempt was through an offer on NeverBlue Ads promoting a $250 grocery coupon. This CPA offer required a zip code submission to be counted as a conversion. The offer had a low $1.20 CPA, which means for every sign-up (acquisition) I would make $1.20.

This was the first offer I had with NeverBlue, and PPC -> CPA marketing in general. This means I had no history with Neverblue and they would be less willing to accommodate any special requests I had. Also, since this was my first time trying this I did not want to take a huge risk with my money. After reading countless forum posts I realized that you have to take a risk to make a profit. That being said, choosing a low paying CPA deal often means that the CPC’s will also be proportionately lower, reducing my risk.

Some Quick Math
With a CPA of $1.20 I did not have much room squeez.... Read More

Posted in CPA Networks, Google Adwords, PPC Search Engine | 1 Comment »

The 13 Pay Per Click Network Challenge

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

About the test:

In January of this year, I posted my extensive test results of 12 PPC networks. Since 8 months is an eternity in affiliate marketing, I decided to revisit this test with a brand new niche and see who performed best and worst. I also added 1 more network, Ask.com, into the mix. The test ran for most of the month of August, and it took me the last 10 days to really analyze the data. Please don’t ask what the offer or niche was, I still need to make a living guys! The keyword list and ads were kept as close as possible on all the different networks. Some minor changes had to be made based on ad copy length restrictions. All landing pages were identical. Bid prices were adjusted to try to keep ad positions as close as possible throughout the duration of the test.

Scoring system:

I rated each network on 3 criteria. Traffic,.... Read More

Posted in PPC Search Engine | No Comments »

12 Pay Per Click Networks Tested and Rated

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

This is an update to the first Pay Per Click Network challenge of a few weeks ago. There is new data, new PPC networks included, and a new scoring system based on everyone’s input from the last one. Hopefully it will be even more helpful now.

To review:

These networks were all tested running the same PPC campaign (meaning the keywords and the ad texts were the same) to an affiliate offer with the exact same landing page.

Scoring system:

I threw out the interface rating as many people thought it skewed the results of bad performing networks that had a good interface. I agree that performance is king and if something converts well I can live with a bad interface (MSN, cough, cough). Now the scoring is based on 3 factors with 2 being double weighted. This should more accurately show the tota.... Read More

Posted in PPC Search Engine | 1 Comment »

The 10 PPC Network Smackdown

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

I have found it really hard to find objective information about different Pay Per Click (PPC) networks, especially second tier networks. If you pose the question in a forum, the response will usually be something like “XYZ sucks”, which isn’t too helpful as far as hard data is concerned. So I decided to run my own, somewhat scientific test of PPC networks. Here is what happened.

About the test

I chose a set of ads and keywords that were proven to do well on Google Adwords for these tests. I won’t say the niche (competition is tough enough already), but it’s about a mid-range set of keywords as far as monthly impressions and click pricing. The minimum spent at each PPC network was $50, with most of the test running in the $100-$300 range. If it was clear the traffic was not going to convert, I cut the test short, but if it showed some promise I let it run for a while.

After examining the results, I assi.... Read More

Posted in PPC Search Engine | 1 Comment »

Powerful Open Source ( FREE ) Click tracking tools to improve your Pay Per Click Conversions

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Couple of great open source resources for Heat Mapping and click path tracking. Find out where people are clicking and how long they’re staying.

http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html

Also if you have a complex site and are looking to track paths of your visitors to find out where they’re leaving you can check out.

http://www.phpopentracker.de

It has the capability of adding plug-in’s to it that will allow you to track conversion. It’s written in PHP and easily extendable to suit your needs. A great place to start if you want to create a full fledged tracking system for and E-commerce site or a large scale site with paths to a sale..... Read More

Posted in Google Adwords, PPC Search Engine | No Comments »