Overview
Welcome to the lucrative world of Affiliate Marketing. In Affiliate Marketing a company pays an affiliate (you) to generate sales from a button, banner, or link placed on your website, newsletter, e-mail or pay per click ad. There are thousands of companies in hundreds of industries that will pay commissions to you for leads, registrations or sales. It is extremely easy to become an affiliate. There are several large Affiliate Program Providers (APPs). APPs serve as go-betweens for companies and affiliates. For you as an affiliate, these APPs provide a valuable service. They collect payment from the merchants and consolidate affiliate reporting and payments. An APP brings companies and affiliates together to form partnerships. A partnership works like this: the affiliate places links to the merchant on their website, newsletter, emails, or Pay per Click ads such as Google AdWords. When a potential customer clicks through the link they are sent to a specified page of the merchant's site. When they complete the action desired by the merchant (fill out a form, buy something, etc.) the affiliate is compensated. The APP facilitates all aspects of the partnership and tracks all elements of the transaction. Joining an APP is totally free and there are no personal purchase requirements. You just fill out a form. In some cases, applying affiliates must wait a few days for approval, but usually acceptance is automatic.
The top five APPs are: Commission Junction (CJ), Clickbank, Linkshare, BeFree, and Performics. CJ is the largest of these Providers and manages the network, tracking and reporting on activity in real time, as well as handling monthly commission payments. CJ tracks billions of affiliate link impressions each month. CJ's clients include leading online marketers: eBay, Capital One, NextCard, and The New York Times Home Delivery. Every month Commission Junction either sends you a check or deposits your commission directly into your bank account according to your preference. Because affiliates are so beneficial to merchants many new merchants join CJ and other Affiliate Program Providers every week. Affiliate Programs are the ideal way to make money quickly and easily online. (No need to come up with your own product or concern yourself with any of the hassles or headaches involved in actually stocking, selling or distributing a product). Just figure out a clever way to promote the product or service effectively and then sit back and collect your monthly commission checks. Or, better yet, have them deposited directly into your bank account.
Here is the clever and easy way to promote products and services:
More than 200 million times a day people use Google and its partner sites to find what they are looking for. Google AdWords Select is a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising system maintained by Google. If you use Google you have probably seen the AdWords. They appear as little text ads next to search results on Google.
They also appear on AOL, Ask Jeeves, Earthlink, Teoma, Sympatico, and many other search engines. Content-Targeted Advertising service is Google's latest addition to AdWords. It displays AdWords ads on web content pages related to your chosen keywords. This provides broader exposure and greater reach for your AdWords campaign. Not only will the AdWords show on Google searches and on the search results of their partners, but also on other websites such as HowStuffWorks, Weather Underground, and Blogger. With Google AdWords you create your own ads. You choose keywords which tell Google where to show your ads. You only pay when someone clicks on them. You have total control over every aspect of your campaign. Real-time online reporting tells you what's working. You can put limits on daily spending. Changes are free and instant. The Google AdWord system works differently than a traditional Pay Per Click service. AdWords ads are ranked based on a formula of the Cost Per Click and the Click Through Rate (CTR), which enables an ads rank to improve without increasing the cost. The better your CTR, the higher up on the screen your ad will be placed. This is advantageous to you, because your ads are more visible to the customer. Therefore, you get more clicks.
Initially this system may be a little confusing, but once you master it, it is very effective. As your ad's CTR improves, its ranking in the search results also improves at no additional cost. Here is an overview of the process: You write small Google AdWords promoting companies, products and services. In your AdWords is a link that, when clicked, takes the user to the product or service that you are promoting. Your Affiliate ID is passed along with it. When the customer that clicked through your ad buys something on the site, or fills out a registration form, then you receive a commission. If the customer did not buy at that time, no need to fret, many merchant sites place a "cookie" on the customer's computer for a certain period (such as 180 days). That means that, within the next 6 months, anytime the customer goes back to the site and buys or registers, you get a commission. In the past, to be successful in Affiliate Marketing it took considerable time and money. Typically, it took 6 months from concept before you received any commissions. Once you had an idea the next steps were to register a URL, build your website, and pay to have your website hosted. Then you had to spend a lot of time and money to get listed in the Search Engines and on other marketing efforts (not to mention the time spent maintaining your website). Now, with my concepts you can start earning money immediately without having to build a website. Once you've found a very successful program you may want to build a quick webpage to get even more profits, but it's not necessary to begin receiving commissions (You'll read more about this later on).
Here is how the process works:
1. Find a product that you want to promote (Step #2 on p. 38).
For example, I found an Online Casino affiliate program that pays $40 per registration.
2. Join the Affiliate Program and get the link with your Affiliate ID embedded in it (Step #3, p. 48).
3. Next, make a list of keywords that people would likely consider when searching for that product or service. (See the techniques discussed in Step #4, p. 50).
4. Write some effective ads for Google AdWords (More on this in Step #5, p. 59).
5. Log in to your Google AdWords account and submit some ads with their corresponding keywords. Put the link with your affiliate ID in it into the destination URL field, and put a bid in for the keywords on your list at 5 cents each (Plenty more on this in Step#6, p. 65).

The above casino example generates about 600 clicks (visitors) each week from the Google AdWords at a cost of $50 and generates at least 3 Casino registrations each week. That typically brings in $280 of profit a month for something that took 10 minutes to setup. And some months are much better.

Sounds pretty easy right?

Being an affiliate is an easy way to make money. You guide customers to the product or service they want, the merchant provides the product or service, and you simply collect the commissions!

Step by Step Examples of Profitable Campaigns
In this Section, I would like to familiarize you with some of my profitable campaigns to illustrate what the process looks like from conception to profitability.

I will give you step by step examples of some of my successful campaigns. You can follow along here and simultaneously review them online.

Don't worry if you don't understand all of the concepts right away. I cover everything in greater detail later on.

The first example is an extremely simple program that I created. It consistently made around $350 a month in profit. This is a quick program that only took a few minutes to setup. It is a very small program with relatively small profits compared to my other campaigns. Things get much better! I am showing you a simple example to introduce you to the concepts.
Example 1 ­ www.ebay.com
I often buy and sell items on eBay. While on their site, I noticed that eBay.com offers $5 per registration to their affiliates, and $.05 for any bid coming from your affiliate link.

In other words, an affiliate earns a $5 commission when someone fills out a free registration form. That sounded great!
I next conducted a search with the free Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool.

This tool tells you how many times a keyword or phrase was searched for on Overture's Search Engines during the previous month. This is useful in determining the popularity of particular keywords and particular markets.

Google does not have this tool. Therefore Overture's estimates can be applied to searches, for the same keyword, on Google's Search Engines fairly accurately.

I searched for the keyword: ebay. See the partial results below: According to Overture, the keyword: ebay was searched for: 8,080,961 times during March 2003 on Overture's and their partner's search engines.

There are rumors on the Net that Overture slightly inflates its numbers because Overture wants advertisers to bid on their search terms. Even if that number is not 100 percent accurate, it is probably a good estimate as to the number of times a particular keyword is searched for on all search engines.
Next I used Overture's Maxbid Tool to see how much money advertisers are willing to pay, per click, through their ad for the keyword: ebay. There were many ads, with the top three putting in a bid of 37, 37 and 36 cents per click. See the screen shot on the following

With prices as high as 37 cents a click, I concluded that the keyword ebay had too much competition to be profitable. The next step confirmed this.

I went to www.google.com and typed in the keyword: ebay ­ see below:

There were several AdWords for the keyword ebay (A total of six ads at the time). As you can see from these ads, all are from affiliates. This is indicated by "Affiliate" or "Affil" or "aff." after the ad text and is underlined in red in my example above.

None of these Affiliates have their own website. They simply place AdWord Ads and put their Affiliate ID in the URL. When someone clicks on the ad, it sends them straight to eBay, where the affiliate's ID is recorded on the server.
When the user registers with eBay, the Affiliate receives $5 in commissions. As indicated, the market is already saturated for the keyword ebay, thus the Cost Per Click (CPC) rate would be high. Therefore, I did not consider it profitable to create an ad for the keyword: ebay.

Note:

With Google AdWords, you place small text ads for specific keywords. You determine how much you are willing to pay per click through. The more you pay, the higher up on the screen of results your ad is displayed. With all things equal, if several competitors are willing to pay 35 cents a click and you are only willing to pay 5 cents a click, then you will be at the bottom.

Fortunately, few advertisers do thorough keyword research. This means, that you can usually find many keywords that still have few or no bids. The CPC is not the only factor that determines your ad's rank. The rank is also based on a proprietary formula that weighs Cost Per Click against Click Through Rate. So a lower bidder could potentially get a higher position, if they had a better ad that received a higher CTR.
Google uses this system so that the most relevant results are the most prominently displayed. I next asked myself, "What are other keywords that people would search for relating to eBay, besides just the keyword ebay?"

This led me to words related to cars. I have sold several cars on eBay and have really liked how well it worked. The first time I tried to sell a car; I didn't think I could do it, but it was easy, fast and inexpensive. I was hooked. I figured that other people would like it too. I had previously used the magazine Autotrader and its website to sell vehicles. So I did a search for the keyword: autotrader on Overtures Suggestion Tool as indicated below:

There were 650,115 searches for the keyword autotrader for Mar 2003.

Next, I checked the Overture Maxbid Tool for the keyword autotrader:

Wow, no bidded listings.

That looked like good news! Then, I went to Google and searched for autotrader. There were no AdWords for the keyword autotrader.
That was even better news! I was able to determine that there were 650,115 searches for the keyword autotrader during the previous month; and no Overture Ads or Google AdWords for the keyword autotrader.

I concluded that this could be a profitable market. My next step was to become an affiliate of eBay. This was free and easy and took only 5 minutes. I went to eBay's site and looked for information about their affiliate program. I found it easily. At the bottom of eBay's home page I found their "Affiliate Program" link. Upon following that link, I learned that eBay uses two different Affiliate Program Providers for their affiliate program ­ BeFree and Commission Junction.

At this point I was already a member of CJ. (You'll see in Step #1, p.32 how easy it is to become a member without cost).
I next logged into my CJ account and clicked on "Get Links". There, I found eBay.com from the list of advertisers. Before I could get the links I was prompted to join eBay's affiliate program. I clicked on "Join Program". A pop up window automatically told me that I was accepted for the program. Ebay automatically accepts all publishers (CJ calls their affiliates, Publishers and their merchants, Advertisers). I also got an email from eBay welcoming me to their Affiliate Program.

I was now an eBay affiliate. Still in CJ, I then clicked again on "Get Links". Now that I was a member of eBay's Affiliate Program, a window popped up that provided me the URL to use with my Affiliate ID embedded in it.
http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234548-5463217?loc=http%3A//pages.ebay.com/ebaymotors/

I copied and pasted that URL link into Notepad and saved it as a text document called ebaylinkcode.txt. This link, when clicked on, opens:
www.ebaymotors.com.

Note:
Behind the scenes this URL passes through Commission Junction and inserts my affiliate ID into eBay's system.

That means that when a customer clicks on my link and registers, I receive the commission. This happens without the user even knowing. As far as the web surfer is concerned, he or she went straight to eBay Motors.

I was now an eBay Affiliate through Commission Junction and I had the URL with my Affiliate ID in it. In about 5minutes I set up a Google AdWords Ad.

(I'll show you how to setup these ads later in Step #6 on p. 65) For the Headline I wrote: Better than auto trader


For Description Line 1: Ebay Motors ­ register now for free

For Description Line 2: Buying or selling a car? It works.

In the Display URL field, I put: pages.ebay.com/ebaymotors (use the URL of the site the customer is directed to when he or she clicks on the link).

In the Destination URL field I put: http://www.qksrv.net/click-1234548-5463217?loc=http%3A//pages.ebay.com/ebaymotors/

Again, this is the link that Commission Junction provided me for eBay. Remember, this link takes the customer "directly" to the eBay website (http://pages.ebay.com/ebaymotors and provides CJ with my unique Affiliate ID.

This ensures that I receive the commission.

Because there were no other Google ads, I bid the least amount which is 5 cents per click. As the only ad, I was placed in the number one Ad position for only 5 cents per click. In the beginning, I set my daily budget limit at $5. This allowed me to test the results for a couple of days without risking more than $10. If it turned out to be profitable, I would increase the daily budget limit to get as much traffic as possible.

Note:
The "daily budget limit" allows you to have tight control of your ad campaigns and to avoid being surprised by a large bill. You set your own "daily budget limit". Once you reach this limit your ad is no longer displayed. The following day, your ad will re-appear and remain until your "daily budget limit" is reached.


The next day I checked my statistics on Google AdWords and at Commission Junction. See the following screen shots:
This Ad received 72 clicks at 5 cents each for a total cost of $3.60.

I then logged into CJ to see how much I had earned in commissions from eBay.

Three people had registered and three people bid on items.

So for that day my total commissions from Ebay were: $15.15.
$15.15 in Commissions minus $3.60 in ad buys = $11.55 in profit.

OK - $11.55 Profit does not seem impressive at first glance. But multiply it by 30 days which equals $346.50 in profits for a month. That's not bad for about 20 minutes of work.

Obviously, the profits will fluctuate from day to day (ideally getting better as you refine your ads and as you add more keywords). So that's exactly what I did. I rewrote my ad in the hopes of getting a better Click Through Rate (CTR). I researched additional keywords relating to items sold on eBay. I used this research to add more keywords to my campaign. Note: As of July, 2003 eBay.com (US) has asked Google not to allow advertisers to bid on their trademarked term, `ebay" in their AdWords. This is uncommon, most companies do not mind if you use their trademarked term. It is a benefit to them that you advertise their site for them. 21
Again, don't worry if you do not understand perfectly. Everything will be explained in greater detail later. Example 2 ­ www.ebay.de ­ German eBay This next example earned a much greater rate of monthly profit. In January eBay.de deposited $3750 into my bank account and in February it was over $6,000 and in March, 2003 it was over $6,500. Initially, this program took me about 1 hour to setup. I set it up while visiting a friend in Mexico over his internet connection. I read online that www.ebay.de (eBay in Germany) was paying $4 Euros = more than US$4 per registration. Useful Tip: Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool provides results for several countries. This allows you to research the number of times a search is performed in the US, Germany, France, UK, Japan and elsewhere. (See the Resource Website for links to these Tools). In this case, I searched Overture's Germany Keyword Suggestion Tool for the keyword: ebay. There were 693,999 searches for the month of January, 2003 from people in Germany. I then used Overture's Germany Maxbid Tool and typed in: ebay. 22
There were no bids ­ which means that I could buy an ad in Germany for the keyword ebay for only .10 Euros (about 10 cents). This told me there was no competition. Next, I went to Germany's Google: www.Google.de and searched for ebay. There were no Google Adwords "WOW! I think I found a good one", I said out loud. I went to the German eBay site; www.ebay.de and read about their affiliate program. It is through a German Affiliate Program Provider affili.net which is similar to Commission Junction. I signed up with affili.net in about 15 minutes. I speak some German so that helped as affili.net is in German. But, I could have asked a German friend to help me for a few minutes. Anybody can sign up as an affiliate with affili.net, regardless of country of residence. You enter your bank routing information so affili.net can directly deposit any commissions you make into your bank account. They pay in Euros, but it shows up in your account as dollars. Since the Euro is currently stronger than the dollar, this works out very well for Americans participating in European affiliate programs. After I signed up, I was sent an automatic approval email with my ebay.de URL link (a link with my affiliate id in it). I then logged in to Google Adwords and setup an Ad for Germany only. This is very easy to do. You just choose the country in which you want your ad to show (more on this in Step #6 pg65). I set it up so that the ad displayed for the keywords: ebay, ebay.de, ebay Deutschland, cds, dvds, etc. (keywords I found from my keyword research). My ad will only show up on German Google which is www.Google.de. Here is the Ad: 23
eBay - Deutschland Der Weltweite Online-Marktplatzdie Auktion eBay (affiliate) www.eBay.de Interesse: In the display URL field for the Ad I entered: www.eBay.de In the destination URL field I entered the link that Affili.net emailed to me which included my affiliate ID: http://partners.webmasterplan.com/click.asp?ref=150607&site=1382&type=b62&bnb=62 Note: After the description in my ad, I entered the word Affiliate. Google's Guidelines for AdWords states that, if you are an Affiliate, you have to mention it somewhere in your Ad. All of the steps I described above took me about one hour. After that we drove to our next Mexican surf spot. Two days later, while at an Internet Café, I logged on to affili.net to check the real-time statistics. See the screen shot below: 24
I was right! I had found a good one! The first day 43 people registered equaling 172 Euros in commissions. The second day 130 people had registered equaling 520 Euros in commissions. To calculate my profit, I logged in to Google AdWords. There, I checked my campaign to see how much my Ads Cost. On the first day I had 385 clicks at $.05 = $19.25 And the second day I had 689 clicks * $.05 = $34.45 25
So, 692 Euros in commissions minus $53.95 In Google Adwords = approximately $638.05 in Profits. Not bad for the first two days of this campaign. This was a winner because many Germans were looking for eBay, and many of them had not registered yet. So my conversion rates were very high. In this example, the conversion rate is the number of registrations divided by the number of visitors. Conversion Rate = Registrations / Visitors My conversion rate averaged around 20 percent. That meant that for every 100 visitors, roughly 20 registered. Useful Tip: Many people type web addresses into Google and other Search Engines, instead of into the Address Bar. For Example: they type ebay or ebay.com into Google, or Yahoo instead of typing www.ebay.com into the address bar at the top of their browser. I know this to be true because my research showed that some of the top searched for keywords on the internet are websites such as: Google, Yahoo, eBay, etc. You can take advantage of this by looking for highly searched for website names and URLs that have few or no competing affiliates for their keywords. Such as my eBay examples above. When I saw that my eBay.de Campaign was working well, I took it one step further to maximize my profits. 26
I had my wife, Heidi, build a quick webpage giving some tips about eBay.de, how to use it, how to register for free, etc. She provided links to eBay.de (with our affiliate id in it of course) throughout the page. I used free online translation tools and my English German dictionary to translate the page into German. I then bought Overture.de Ads for the same keywords that I bought ads for with Google AdWords: ebay, ebay.de, etc. This greatly expanded my reach. Overture Ads show on their partner sites including MSN, Yahoo and CNN. Buying ads with Overture is the same procedure as buying ads with Google with one important distinction. Overture does not let you link directly to the Merchants site from your Ad with an affiliate link. The Overture ad has to link to a webpage that you own. For example, since you are not the owner of eBay.de you are not allowed to link directly to eBay.de from your ad. Overture requires you to link to your own page. The person then has to click on the affiliate link to eBay.de from your webpage. In short, Overture requires the user to follow a two-step process. They click on your ad which directs them to your website. On your website you provide the merchant link. Upon clicking the link, the user is directed to the merchant site. Contrastly, Google AdWords is a one step process. One click takes the user directly to the Merchant's site (with your affiliate ID in it). When setting up Google AdWords you will find a display URL field (the URL that is displayed in the Ad) and a destination field (the URL to which, Google directs the user). 27
To summarize: instead of two URL fields like Google, Overture only has one URL field. It is both the display and destination URL. Overture does not allow you to put your affiliate link here. It has to be the URL of the website, e.g. www.ebay.de. So, in order to use Overture's Pay Per Click Ads you have to build a webpage that has your affiliate links. While it is an extra step for you, you can use it to your advantage by "pre-selling" to your customers on your site and preparing them to purchase a product, or fill out a registration form once they have clicked through to the merchant's site (eBay.de in this example). Useful Tip: Pre-selling with a simple webpage is so effective, that when we find a profitable market, Heidi builds a simple content page in the form of a product or company review. I buy ads in Overture and Google pointing to this site. (On Google I only point to this page if I think that it will get a higher conversion rate than if the user went to the merchant's site directly from my ad). This is not the place to "Sell-Sell". That is, don't design a page selling the product only to have them click and get another page selling the product again. Instead pre-sell by providing a recommendation or review of the product or service, to entice the reader to make a purchase. Checkout: www.onestopgearshop.com to see the page that Heidi put together in less than an hour for my ebay.de link for my Overture Ads. I highly recommend you download the free eBook, "Affiliate Masters Course" from my Resource Website. This is an excellent course that teaches you how to "pre-sell" and build simple, effective affiliate web pages. 28
On the 15th of every month eBay.de's Affiliate Management Program (affili.net) directly deposits my commissions into my US Bank Account in US Dollars. As previously stated, this is especially advantageous at the moment, because the Euro is stronger than the US$. This eBay.de Campaign, which only took a few hours to develop, has been very successful. During January, 2003 eBay.de deposited 3,536 Euros into my bank account (=$3,712.90 USD). See the screen shot below: There was only a slight obstacle for the eBay.de program. Much of the text, but not all, was in German. Most German websites have German and English options. Overture.de has both. Setting up my Overture and Google Ads was easy. AdWords that display on Google.de, come from the same US 29
Google AdWords Interface. Everything is in English. All you need to do is choose Germany as the country in which you want the ads to run. Note: As of June, 2003 I have paused this campaign as its profitability dwindled. That is probably due to the fact that so many Germans have now signed up for eBay.de. Therefore, my conversion rates dropped significantly. Luckily I had many other campaigns and I focused my efforts on them. Below I will share with you one of my favorites. Example 3 ­ Promoting Mortgage Sites This example earns me around $200+ a day in profits. Interest rates are at all time lows. People are scrambling to refinance their mortgages. The mortgage industry is a very competitive one. Luckily I was able to find many keywords that are searched for, and have few to no AdWords. I signed up with several different affiliate programs that pay $10 to $20 per lead. I primarily used CJ.com to find these affiliates. Two of the companies that I promote are: MyLoanQuote.com and LowCostLending.com. LowCostLending.com pays $20 per lead (a successfully completed and qualified form) and MyLoanQuote.com pays $10 per lead. Even though MyLoanQuote.com pays less it is still very profitable for me because their conversion rate is very good (The percentage of people who click through my link and fill out the form is high). 30
The trick to succeeding in such a competitive industry is to find a niche that is not saturated. I found several. One unsaturated niche is Fha Streamline Refinances. I researched and found many keyword combinations related to Fha streamline refinances. As with the eBay.de example, when I saw that this Google AdWords campaign was very profitable, I had Heidi build a quick webpage with affiliate links on it pointing to LowCostLending.com. You can visit that website at: http://www.wherelenderscompete.com And if you are thinking of refinancing or need a loan ­ please fill out the form. Lenders will contact you and compete for your business Next, I went to Overture and bid on the same keywords that I use in my Google AdWords Campaigns, and I pointed the Overture Ads to http://www.wherelenderscompete.com. Remember, Overture does not let you link directly to the Merchants site from your Ad with an affiliate link. The Overture ad has to link to a webpage that you own. Notice how all of the links go to LowCostLending.com and have my affiliate ID embedded in them. I also bid on the same keywords with two other PPC engines: Findwhat.com and 7Search.com. Isn't this cool? It's so simple and it works so well. OK I think you are getting the idea. Perhaps you are even anxious to get started. I will now show you what you need to do to begin. Then I will show you how to find affiliate programs that will make you money.

Introduction

Introduction
Congratulations and welcome to "Google Cash!" You are on your way to earning thousands right from the comfort of your own home. Upon completing this eBook, you will know how to select Affiliate Programs that will be successful, and how to write Google AdWords that will promote these lucrative Programs. Here's all you need to get started: · Google Cash · A computer with access to the Internet · A credit card to bid on Google Adwords · A Bank Account for depositing your commissions · A few hours of time Print out the eBook and keep it next to you to follow and to write notes on. You should read through it once quickly so you can get the big picture before you begin. Then, get comfortable by your computer. You'll be on the Internet a lot. In each section you'll be provided with links to sites that you will visit regularly. You will be given detailed instructions on utilizing these services. Spend time on each site mastering these instructions. Note: If you would like to read some tips on using Adobe Acrobat Reader to read this eBook, Click Here. When reading, make sure that you are connected to the Internet so that
you can follow the eBook links. To follow a link in this PDF file, move your cursor over the link and click. You can also find all of the links on the Resource Website. This site also contains many informative eBooks and tools that are available to you at no cost. http://www.GoogleCash.com/priv/resources Before setting up your own programs, you should read and understand all of the examples. As you read, you may be tempted to jump ahead and start on a program immediately. This is understandable because it is exciting stuff, but be patient. Read the entire book, and then Go for It! Let's get started.