What’s your attitude towards scaling? So you have a landing page which converts, you have a great relationship with the network/merchant and a traffic source. Great! There’s just one problem: most people limit themselves to milking that one traffic source for all it’s worth and then that’s it, end of story.

Why would you do something like that? Don’t you like money? Would you have liked money more if the bills were blue instead of green? Why just that one traffic source? There’s a lot of money on the table, why are you limiting yourself to just that one piece of the pie?

What Scaling REALLY Means

Ok, so you’ve milked traffic source A for all it’s worth? Alright, then move on to traffic source B and then to traffic source C. That’s scaling. Keep the engines running and don’t take your foot off the pedal when it comes to the traffic sources you’re already on top of but on the other hand, always be on the lookout for more traffic.

It’s a never-ending process, expression such as “ok, I’ve scaled, now what?” don’t exist unless you trick yourself into thinking that they do. New traffic sources emerge on a daily basis, why not be there with your wallet open?

Polish Your Negotiation Skills

One word: Facebook! If that’s not a love-hate relationship, nothing is. This is what happens when people depend on just one traffic source: you’re in no position to negotiate. Lots of people were/are earning a living exclusively on Facebook and given their track record, those folks are definitely skating on thin ice.

Once you realize that there’s not just one website which controls everything in terms of traffic, you’ll start being in a far better position to negotiate. This is extremely important when it comes to media buys. Get ready to negotiate everything, absolutely everything. Think everything through carefully before spending your first buck: if they want your money, they need to make the deal worthwhile for you as well. If not, you’ll simply move on and never look back. End of story.

This much is certain: we’re marketers and as a result, hunting down traffic sources is what we do. Depending on just one traffic source is a sign of weakness, plain and simple. If you don’t up your game and start demanding the most bang for your buck as an advertiser, traffic networks can and will take advantage of you.

It’s no secret that as an affiliate marketer, you need to risk money to make money. There’s just no other way. Test and see what sticks, that’s pretty much all there is to it concept-wise.

In theory, you could even sell used toothpicks if you spend lots of time and money in order to find people who would actually be willing to buy something like that. And since we’re looking at 10 figures when it comes to the number of Internet users, you’re bound to find at least one demographic that converts.

But Is Every Campaign Worth It?

Of course not! Yes, you could even sell used toothpicks if you were to test and test until you find people who are willing to buy them but we’re talking about so few potential customers and so much hassle that it just wouldn’t be worth it.

The time required to turn such a campaign into something profitable is always better spent working on campaigns with potential which can actually be scaled. But if you’re interested in becoming a professional time waster sure, go for it.

What If I’m Not Bill Gates?

Leaving campaigns which don’t have any potential whatsoever aside, there are lots which do have potential but are extremely “tricky”. In other words, campaigns which are definitely scalable but which practically devour a small budget just like that.

Just how much can you afford to pay for data? If you get carried away, there’s always the risk of being stuck with an “almost there” campaign and a depleted budget. You need to be realistic, painfully realistic. Your financial situation is what it is, end of story. Once you have more money to work with, you can afford to play the game on a different level but for now, focus on making the most out of your current situation.

Where Do You Draw the Line?

As an affiliate marketer, you need to know when to say no and move on. Analyze the data you have at your disposal and rationally determine if tweaking the campaign is worth it or not.

Let the numbers do all of the talking and based on your financial situation, decide what the best approach is. Don’t let your ego get the best of you and don’t take the “test, test and test some more ‘till something sticks” concept too far. Seriously, don’t!

When selecting keywords for your search campaign, many of the concepts of SEO keyword selection apply. The biggest difference is that, since we are paying for each click, we need keywords that are very specific and have a high probability of converting.

Develop a Preliminary List

The first step in developing your list is to find a large number of potential keywords that we can peel down through research and testing. Using the Google Keyword Tool as described in the SEO article, enter a few generic terms which would apply to the demographic you want to target with your offer. The Google Keyword Tool will give you a number of keyword ideas to work with.

Scout the Competition
There are two main pieces of information you need to gather during your competition research stage. The first piece is which keywords are currently being used for the offer you are promoting. If the offer is not currently widespread, this may not be important. If, however, you are promoting an offer which many others are promoting, you will want to know which keywords they use.

When checking out others promoting the same offer, you will want to take note of which position your competition is paying for. This will of course affect bid price and should play a part in your total analysis of which keywords you bid on and at what price. The second major type of reconnaissance is the competition for keywords you are interested in using. If the competition is not promoting your offer for a given keyword, this could be an opportunity for you if you think the keyword could be successful. You also want to know the types of offers being promoted for a given keyword. If the offers are similar, this is a good sign as it shows you may be targeting the correct audience. You need to be careful of keywords with heavy competition as the bid price may be
too high for you to bid on that keyword.

Keyword Elite and Google Keyword Tool

As with evaluating keywords in the SEO article, you should perform an analysis of competition vs.
searches. Using the Google Keyword Tool, green bars will show you the number of searches on a
keyword in a given month, as well as the competition for that keyword. Always compare searches to competition level – a word with high searches and low competition offers an opportunity to get your ad shown for a low bid price. Of course, you must always mind how well the keyword is targeted to your audience as I will explore later in this article.

Keyword Elite is a paid tool which offers more detailed research on keywords. I would suggest using a paid tool such as Keyword Elite if you are serious about putting together professional keyword lists. Keyword Elite will show you exact search numbers and competition levels, providing you with much more detailed research. Of course, Google’s free tool still provides enough information to develop a strong keyword list.

Less is More

You DO NOT need an enormous keyword list to be profitable with search marketing. Instead, you need a list of quality words targeted to your audience. It all breaks down to a science – you need keywords that have a higher conversion rate (producing more revenue) than what you spend bidding on the keywords.

A good strategy is to develop a number of small keyword lists with separate sub IDs so that you can track the success. Pay attention to each keyword click‐through ratio, as this shows attractive keywords, but you also need to use sub IDs to know how well your keywords are converting. By creating a number of small lists with separate sub IDs, you can easily track how well your keywords are doing, and delete those which are not profitable.

Targeted Keywords

When selecting keywords, always think about the audience you want to target. Think about the
demographic of the users clicking on an ad displayed from each keyword you bid on. Are there multiple reasons why a user would search for that keyword? Would users searching for that keyword be interested in the offer you are promoting?

Focus on keywords that are very specific, as opposed to generic, broad keywords. Broad keywords may show your ad, but will probably not target your audience well. If the broad keywords don’t convert on your offer, you will end up spending a lot of money and making very little. Pick specific keywords and track their conversion rates. Delete keywords which aren’t producing.

Keyword List Mistakes
1. Broad or popular keywords which are not targeted to the audience you know will convert
2. Not researching the competition
3. Targeting keywords with very few searches
4. Failing to test your keyword list and update as necessary

Test, Monitor, Re­Test

Using sub IDs, you should always be monitoring the click through ratios and conversion rates. By
breaking down your keyword lists into small groups with sub IDs, you can track performance and make modifications just as you should with your landing page. After you test and monitor, you can delete keywords that are not paying off, and re‐test to check performance. Competition and audience taste is always evolving, so testing and modifying is essential to keeping your keyword list profitable.

Numerous studies have shown that NO, Google infact has the lowest conversion rate out of the Big 3. This is large inpart that Google has the youngest audience. As we all know, the younger audience are less likely to have the money (or even a credit card) to buy things online.

So what search engine converts the best then? The answer is MSN/Bing hands down. The ROI I’ve traditionally received from MSN is actually surreal. The traffic isnt even 1/3rd of the traffic that exists with Google, but the audience is substantially older. My assumption is that this is large in part because most of the older generation are less tech savvy than the Google crowd. Because of this, they are more likely to use Internet Explorer as their main browser, and the default home page for IE happens to be MSN.com.

To further backup my argument, one of the best case studies I found out there was a series of posts wrote by a WickedFire member:

Case 1:

http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/44358-case-study-quality-between-adwords-yahoo-adcenter.html

Case 2:

http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/45411-case-study-2-quality-between-adwords-yahoo-adcenter.html

The smaller traffic makes it harder to get burned and newbies have their best chance at converting with MSN. Once you have developed a solid campaign and provided it could succeed on MSN, then you can scale up with Google.

-RB