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Make Money with AdWords - Affiliate Marketing

In my last article I touched on a few different ways to make

money online. One of the simplest ways to do this is to use

Google AdWords to market products for which you are an affiliate.

One of the best affiliate programs available is ClickBank. They have hundreds of

items available for affiliate marketing. They don't allow any

products that aren't digital, available for immediate download.

It takes only a few minutes to get signed up as an affiliate,

and it costs nothing. The signup form is here.

Once you have an affiliate account with ClickBank, you need to

log in, and find a product you want to market. This can be done

at the ClickBank

Marketplace. The products are ranked using a proprietary

system designed by ClickBank. This system attempts to place the

products most likely to make you money at the top of the list.

It takes into consideration several factors, including previous

sales trends, and conversion rates. (A conversion rate is the

percentage of visitors who are referred to a site that actually

purchase the product described).

Go to the marketplace, and pick a product you'd like to market.

Look at the product's home page, and decide whether it's

something you think people will be interested in. Look at the

cost of the product, and the percentage commission you will earn

for sales. Obviously the higher the commission the better, but

picking a product that sells well is more important than picking

a product with a high commission. Once you've found your

product, click the link that says "Earn X%". This will pop up a

window telling you what your affiliate link should be for this

seller. Copy the link down, and save it for the time being.

Next you need to find a way to get people to click this link. As

you may have guessed by now, Google's AdWords program is the

easiest way to get started. The other option is to start your

own web site, but this takes some time and quite a bit more

effort. I'll cover some of these topics in coming articles. For

now we'll focus on AdWords.

First, you'll need to sign up for an AdWords account. Go to the

main AdWords site and

click the button labeled "Click to begin". You'll need to tell

Google a few things about your target market, and then you can

create an ad. I'll go into more detail about how to create the

perfect ad a bit later, but for now I'll focus on a few

important things. First, make sure you read the Editorial

Guidelines for AdWords. There's a link on the page where you're

setting up your ad. One thing to note is that Google requires

you to put the word "Affiliate" or "Aff." in your ad so people

know you're an affiliate. You also can't do things like use a

bunch of exclamation marks or type your ad all in caps. There's

an automated review process which will catch most of these

errors, and a human review process which will catch most things

not caught by the automated review.

Enough of what not to do. Try to make your ad eye-catching,

without violating the guidelines. Use active verbs, and make

sure you use relevant keywords you think potential customers

might be searching for. Google will highlight keywords in your

ad when they're part of the user's search phrase.

Once you've created your ad text and gotten past the automated

review, you're ready to choose keywords. Choose the keywords you

think are most relevant to your product. Even if you can create

an ad with a fantastic click through rating that drives hordes

of people to your affiliate link, you won't make any money

unless those people actually buy the product. Type in some

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keywords, and use the "Keyword Tool" on the right hand side of

the page to get suggestions from Google. Also think about common

misspellings for keywords. This can be a good way to get some

cheap clicks that are still relevant.

You'll next have to determine how much you are willing to pay.

The best strategy is to start out small. Spending even $10 per

day can give you an idea of what might work and what might not.

Once you have an ad that's working, and you've made a couple of

sales, you can increase your max cost per day. Keep in mind that

if you have high demand keywords, and a low maximum Cost Per

Click, your ad may never get shown, or it may be shown on page

99 of the Google results. You need to find a balance between

paying $5 for a single click, and not having your ad shown at

all. Usually the "recommendations" made by Google are way too

high, and will cause you to go broke in a hurry.

Almost done now. You'll now need to finish signing up for your

account. You'll need a credit card so Google can charge you when

your ads are clicked. They'll add everything up and charge you

once per month or so for all of your clicks. Do be careful about

spending your entire budget on the first day. You'll need a

couple weeks at least to try to evaluate what works and what

doesn't. Don't be afraid to start small, and work your way up

slowly to making more sales.

Stay tuned to www.workfromhomespot.com for even more details on choosing ClickBank products,

choosing AdWords keywords, and other more advanced topics.

About the author:

Gary LaRock runs www.workfromhomespot.com, your source for information and ideas about working from

home. He lives in Thornton, CO, with his wife and son, where he

has worked exclusively out of his home since 2003. Work From Home.