The PPC Tools Of The Affiliate Elite

The PPC Tools Of The Affiliate Elite

By Matt Falconer

The costs of advertising using pay per click (PPC) are increasing with each new round of what has become known as the Google Slap. At the same time, the sophistication of the competitive intelligence tools available to affiliate marketers continues to grow as each new tool is released. The increasing sophistication comes at a price, and in many cases, the cost involved puts these tools out of reach of all but the affiliate elite.

In the early days of PPC, most clicks cost a matter of a few cents each, regardless of the nature of the keyword that was being targeted. An affiliate marketer could set up a campaign to promote a product, using every keyword that applied to the product being promoted. Because the cost of advertising was relatively inexpensive, he knew that if the product was selling, he would, more likely than not, make a profit.

As the cost of clicks has steadily increased and the competition has grown, the likelihood of initiating a profitable promotional campaign using the scattergun tactics described above, has been reduced significantly.

As this certainty has been eroded, the need for more targeted keyword selection became apparent. This resulted in a rash of keyword tools being launched to meet the demand.

In keeping with their stated aims of improving their users experience, Google launched the first of what became known as the 'Google Slap'. This was a revision of their pricing structure that reflected the quality of the user's experience in the price that they charged advertisers for clicks.

This resulted in some advertisers being asked for $5 and $10 per click, to activate a given keyword.

This was Google's means of 'weeding out' the landing pages for given keywords which didn't provide the user with the information that the keyword or phrase suggested.

Advertising costs were beginning to rise and rise significantly as a result of this policy and in response to increasing competition in almost every sphere of online commerce.

Whilst competitive intelligence gathering was possible without the use of automated means, it was labour intensive to say the least.

There was a very clear need for an automated means of gathering competitive intelligence. And the software developers responded.

Using the Application Programming Interfaces of Google, Ebay and Amazon, software tools began to emerge that identified keywords and phrases which had high search volumes and low levels of competition.

New tools emerged which identified those ads that appeared in the listings consistently and could therefore be assumed to be profitable.

Today there are tools available that can identify which affiliates are promoting a certain product, which ads they are using, which keywords they are using, the volume of traffic they are generating, and the variations on the ads.

In fact, just about every detail of competitive intelligence that an affiliate would need in order to identify a profitable campaign before spending a penny of their own money.

The only downside from the point of view of the average affiliate marketer was the cost. Some of the tools available came with a monthly price tag that would have covered most people's car payment.

Fortunately for the average affiliate marketer, the playing field has just been levelled.

If you are serious about your affiliate marketing campaigns isn't it about time you joined the Affiliate Elite?

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