If you’re presenting an offer and want to make sales straight away, eZine ads are usually way less expensive than other forms of paid advertising – with no surprises (unlike PPC campaigns, which can run you up huge deficits, if you get your keyword wrong.)  If you’re on a tight budget, PPC campaigns such as Google AdWords would be better left till you’re finally turning some significant profit.

Most important, have signup links for affiliates, and an email campaign set up for your autoresponders, so that you can get your list to become customers and promote you with their own lists.

It’s been a long accepted fact that using a fleet of affiliates (including JV partners) is the most powerful source of traffic generation.

PPC Ads

Pay Per Click ads are good for driving traffic to your campaigns, but you need to set daily limits, make sure you’ve chosen the right keyword (one with competition – but not too much) and watch it like a hawk, to ensure you’re not getting thousands of clicks with no conversions (if that happens, you’ve got a bad keyword!  Change it, fast – before you go broke!)

Stick to your PPC budget : After all, what use is your ad, if your PPC costs dwarf your profits?

You don’t need to worry about Search Engine Optimization with PPC – but you do need to focus on capturing your readers and getting them to click. Hit the high spots. Use your best lure.

One  PPC crucial point that is rarely talked about … Make sure you use keywords from your actual PPC ad in your Squeeze page or Sales page.  Google does use algorithms to make sure the site content matches the ad – they want to quickly weed out spurious PPC ads who talk about Healthy and Active Life Styles – and then send you to a sales pitch for Viagra.

Also, Google doesn’t like PPC ads that link to a single landing page or sales page. Its Search Bots (and the occasional human editor) are looking for legitimate, established websites – which they translate as packed with articles and pages.  (You can still do this and not have an actual link on your landing page!  Just as long as the site has those articles or pages full of relevant content physically contained in it, Google’s ability to find an actual navigation link to that content on your landing page will not hurt you.)

This seems like a lot of work, and blows sky-high the idea that you can slap up a minisite with 3 pages and make money. If you’re using PPC ads, you can’t.

What happens if you do?  You are risking a sudden huge, inexplicable increase in your click-through rate for that ad – what people call the “Google slap”.  (They’re penalizing you for having what their Search Bots interpret as a dubious site.)

Besides, if you’re going to pay for every click on your ad, you want to make sure it reaches the right people – those who would find your product perfect for their needs.