Affiliate Marketing E-Course
Lesson 7 - Cashing In With Cheap Traffic
Welcome back!
In this lesson I want to talk about how to give your campaign a real kick in the pants with a few simple yet very powerful cheap traffic techniques.
Although this lesson focuses on using 2nd Tier Pay Per Click Search Engines as a source of cheap traffic, the underlying concepts of how to squeeze maximum value from traffic can be applied to any source of traffic.
The concepts presented in this lesson form the underlying principles behind the structure of our campaign diagram which is why I actually consider this lesson to be one of the most important lessons in the course!
Have a look at our campaign diagram again
One of the most common questions I get about this diagram is why would anyone in their right mind send their blog traffic to an article directory? Why send your blog traffic to your articles ... isn't it supposed to be the other way around?
Although this particular lesson is not about blogs in particular (that's the next lesson), I'm confident once you get through this lesson the answer to that diagram question will be quite apparent. In fact, with the knowledge of this lesson in hand I expect this diagram will kick off a whole series of ah ha moments for you!
2nd Tier PPC Search Engines
When most people think of pay per click search engine advertising the first thing that comes to mind is Google AdWords, those ads you see on the right side of the Google search results pages. This is completely understandable given that AdWords is the largest PPC advertising network in existence.
But Google isn't the only game in town when it comes to PPC advertising. What many people aren't aware of is that there's a huge thriving industry of second tier PPC search engines willing to take your advertising dollars just as readily as Google. (see resources at end of lesson)
Unlike Google Adwords, with 2nd tier PPC search engines you're bidding not for ad placement on the side of the results page, but actual listing in the results themselves. You can simply buy the first page top listing for a keyword!
With some 2nd tier PPC services you can even see the price the person paid for the position in the search result listings. At GoClick.com you can see that at the time I too the snap shot below the top spot for "car insurance" was selling for $.03 per click, and the second place position could be had for only a penny!
So if Google AdWords is the biggest why bother with these small PPC search engines? Because traffic at $.03 a click (or less) is something you're not going to find on Google Adwords!
If it's so cheap why doesn't everyone use them?
Because they don't know how!
Traffic Quality
Many people dismiss the use of these 2nd tier PPC search engines because they don't understand how to extract value from them ... they don't understand the traffic currency metaphor and how to turn low quality traffic into high quality traffic.
Before I talk about the power of the traffic currency metaphor I want to describe what I mean by traffic quality.
If you're hoping to sell something to the traffic coming from a 2nd tier PPC engine then you may be a little disappointed. In my experience the traffic quality coming from these 2nd tier PPC search engines is simply not the same quality as you get from Google AdWords.
By low traffic quality I mean that the traffic fails to convert in to a sale as well as you would expect. For example, the same ad placed on Google as placed on a 2nd tier PPC search engine will almost always show better conversions for Google. Why? Relevance and fraud!
As I already mentioned, with 2nd tier PPC search engines you are bidding not on ad placement on the side of the results page, but actual listings in the results themselves. You can simply buy the first page top listing for a keyword! Sounds great right? Saddly there are consequences to this model.
Google takes great care in trying to make the AdWords ads relevant to the search being performed, but these other 2nd tier PPC search engines often have different priorities which means the ads (actually search results) are not always as relevant to the searcher as you would hope. Unfortunately, this means a lot of this traffic isn't well targeted and will therefore convert at a lower rate.
The other issue contributing to lower quality traffic is click fraud. Click fraud is an industry wide problem, even with Google. That said, Google has tremendous resources to fight fraud and by all accounts does a reasonably good job of it. Unfortunately, the small 2nd tier PPC search engines do the best they can, but simply cannot match the protection Google offers.
There are hundreds maybe even thousands of 2nd tier PPC search engines, and of course some are better than others. From personal experience I would estimate the better ones to have a click fraud rate of about 25-30%. So even the better ones show perhaps 3 out of every 10 clicks to be fraudulent.
Before we get in to a panic let's put this click fraud issue into perspective.
Imagine I'm buying some advertising and I'm paying $.03/click. I spend $1 and expect to receive approximately 33 clicks or 33 people visiting my site. Unfortunately, I only see 25 visitors to my site for those supposed 33 clicks because I lost 25% to click fraud. So in reality I'm paying not $.03/click but more like $.04/click. In my opinion, $.04 per click is still very cheap.
So what good is cheap traffic if it's low quality and doesn't convert well?
The Traffic Currency Metaphor
Traffic is a form of currency. When you spend money on advertising you're essentially buying traffic which you eventually hope to trade back into money by making a sale. Like real world currency, traffic currency is not all valued the same. Traffic from Google is much higher quality than a second tier PPC so it's "currency" value is higher. You pay more for it, but you get more for it because it converts back to real world money more easily.
Now here's the key ... like real world currency, how you use, or spend, that traffic currency matters!
If you invest it in the right places it will appreciate in value. The return on your traffic will actually grow well beyond the original value you paid for the traffic. The trick then is try to use your traffic where there is leverage to be had , where it has growth potential.
Let's go though a few examples to help clarify the idea.
If you buy a click for $0.04 and send that visitor to a web page on your website then the value of that click is basically the chance this one visitor may turn into a sale. If the visitor doesn't buy there's a good chance they're gone forever and that $.04 you paid is an investment loss.
So how can we improve the value of that $.04 click investment?
One way we could improve the value of this visit is to add a mailing list signup, also known as an opt-in form. Capturing the visitor's email would now increase the value of that same visitor because for the onetime price of $.04 you can contact them again and again.
List building is a major cornerstone of almost all successful campaigns and will be covered in detail in one of the next lessons.
What other ways can we increase the value of our cheap traffic?
One of the most successful methods I know is to send the traffic to a web site where you get extra credit for the visit.
Squidoo.com is a great example of such a site. Squidoo has a lens ranking system that places a huge amount of emphasis on the number of visits to the lens. There are other factors that contribute to your lens rank, such as how frequently it's updated, but traffic plays a significant role.
So by sending my cheap $.04 traffic to my Squidoo lens I may or may not make a sale, but I'm certainly contributing to my lens rank. I'm always getting something for that $.04 no matter what the visitor does!
This increase in Squidoo lens rank does two things for us which in turn increases the value of our $.04 visitor
- Increased Traffic - A higher lens rank improves traffic in a number of ways. The obvious way is through people viewing the top ranked lens for a category they're interested in. Another way is through Squidoo search. When someone does a search on Squidoo, if the search contains a word you've specified as a label for your lens then your lens will be part of the search results. The important thing to realize is that the ordering of the search results is based entirely on lens rank. So the higher your lens rank the more often you'll show up for a search.
Is this obvious? OK, then let me ask you a question, how many labels do you have for your lens? You'd be surprised at how many people only have a dozen or so labels for their lens. Squidoo allows up to 40 labels for each lens and if you're not making use of them in conjunction with a high lens rank you're missing out on a ton of traffic! So get out there and fill your label quota. Revisite the label every week or so. Drop the ones that are not doing anything and look for new ones that will. Your label list is something that needs maintainance from time to time so don't neglect it. - Authority - The other big advantage is the authority that accompanies a decent lens rank. When you visit a lens with a high rank the obvious first impression for most people is that this lens is well regarded by others and therefore must be of great value.
This is a hugely powerful concept in marketing known as social proof. When we see others approve of something our natural tendency is to also approve, or at the very least give it the benefit of the doubt until otherwise proven false. Why else would that toothpaste commercial tell me that 4 out of 5 dentists recommend xyz toothpaste?
Remember, the ultimate goal of a visit is to eventually sell something, but before that happens you need to convince the reader that you know what you're talking about and that the product or service you're recommending is based on quality information. Social proof can go a very long way in this regard. It adds credibility to everything that follows. It's where relationship building begins.
This is an example of how a cheap $.04 visitor can actually provide so much more value than simply the chance of an immediate sale.
Of course this only works for sites with a ranking system that is largely based on traffic in which you can leverage the ranking system for additional walk-in traffic, like Squidoo.com.
So the moral of this story is that cheap traffic, whether it comes from PPC or elsewhere, can have significant value if it's used in such a way that the traffic can be leveraged.
Whenever you're considering a traffic technique ask yourself "how can I maximize the value of this traffic?".
There are many sites around the web where this type of technique can be used, especially with the prevalence of the new web 2.0 style social sites, which almost always have a ranking system of some sort. The ones to watch for and take advantage of are the ones where the ranking system is based largely on traffic and not just votes.
Don't Squander Your Authority
The other thing to keep in mind is that true "sustainable" authority can't be bought so easily. You might think this contradicts what I've just finished explaining, but you'll recall that I said that a high rank will give a great first impression. If the content on the high ranking page fails to deliver and is low quality then the first impression you created is going to be squandered and your $.04 investment is not going to see any of that growth potential we just talked about.
What's the solution?
As always, CREATE QUALITY CONTENT.
If you focus on trying to solve someone's problem in your marketing campaign, and you make a real effort to help them, then your content will be able to stand on its own and the authority will be justified and in turn reinforced by your visitor.
Like I said, there are many second tire PPC search engines out there. That's a lot of cheap traffic driving my scattered web content to the top ranks of the social sites. And let me tell you, it's not lonely at the top at all because a lot of people come by to visit you!
Why Send Blog Traffic To Your Article Directories?
The question I mentioned in the intro to this lesson about why you'd want to send traffic to an article at an article directory can now be answered.
Many article directories, ezinearticles.com included, have a top viewed list. With ezinearticles there is a "top viewed in past 90 days" list that appears at the bottom of every article page. Furthermore, the list is specific for the category the article is in so the top viewed list at the bottom is always fairly relevant.
Also at the bottom of every article page the number ov views the article has had to date. This is important becasue you can use this to see how competitive it will be to try and get your article on the top of the "top view" list on ezinearticles.
Here's what you do
- Go to any article in the category you want to submit to
- Scroll to the bottom where the "top viewed in 90 days" list is and view the bottom article
- At the bottom of the article note the number of views it has to date. This is the number of views you need to have in order to make the list
- Do the same for the top most article on the list to see how hard it will be to get to the top of the list
- Start directing cheap traffic to your article once you've submitted it. This may be PPC or it may be traffic from your blog. The point is that now you know how many views you need to make the list.
The power of being on this list can't be overstated. Think about it. Not only are you an instant authority, but for every article in your category the reader is being exposed to this list at the end of the article. And who can resist looking at an article that is at the top of the list ... an article that has social proof by the bucket loads.
In my first campaign to which this course is based on I had 4 articles on this list for nearly 3 months. Being on this top viewed list gave me a tremendous amount of additional exposure which is one reason I only needed to write 9 article in total for my campaign!
Of course the articles were not fluff, but actual quality content that helped people and as a result the click through rate on average for the articles was about 40% amounting to about an additional 70 hits a day to my squidoo page ... where of course I receives extra credit for the squidoo hits pushing my lens rank in the right direction ;)
Cautionary Note:
This technique of sending cheap traffic to various sites needs to be done with some tact. There is nothing wrong with promoting your content, which is what you do when you advertise, but if you start flooding your content with too much traffic some sites may not like it too much. It's always best to use moderation and and make the traffic look natural to avoid someone looking funny to the powers that be. In otherwords, don't send 1200 views to your article the day after publishing it. Spread out the traffic over a week or so so it seems more natural and that way you won't ruffle any feathers.
Campaign Update - Where the Heck Are We?
At the time of writing this lesson we're currently sitting at 14 sales for our Keyword Elite product. Admittedly this isn't many sales so far, but to be fair we haven't done a lot so far to promote the prodyct either. This should begin to change now that we're starting to drive traffic. Please keep in mind that normally this kind of campaign would only take a couple weeks to roll out, but when you're developing a course as well as managing 3 other campaigns it can take a little longer ;) Hope you all understand.
So anyway, after adding the 2nd Tier PPC our campaign structure now looks something like this.
For the sample campaign I'm going to start off spending $1.50 / day sending traffic to the squidoo lens and $1.50 / day on traffic to ezinearticles. Note that this money being spent is not out of pocket money but rather reinvested money that we made from previous sales.
This is going to cost us about $90 per month meaning we need only 1 sale a month to break even on our PPC costs.
What's Next?
We're only a few couple lessons away from wrapping up this course so I hope things are starting to come together with this lesson. I hope concepts of how to leverage your traffic to the best effect is starting to give you ideas of why the arrows in our campaign diagram are the way they are. It's all about moving your traffic in the most advantageous way.
The next lesson on how to incorporate a simple blog in to the campaign structure will bring most of the campaign concepts together in to a system that you can take and make your own. Nothing in this business is static so at this point you'll have enough that you'll understand how to modify the structure for your situation.
Additional Resources
General Resources
Wealthy Affiliate - I know there are probably a lot of questions floating around in your head and I am doing my best to answer them when they come in, but sometimes I simply can't handle the work load. As always, I strongly recommend the Wealthy Affiliates as the number one destination for mentorship in affiliate marketing. The forums at WA have so many top marketers ready and willing to answer questions and engage in conversation that I couldn't in good conscience recommend any other place for mentorship.
Long Tail Treasure Blog - The blog for this course is where you'll find some of the latest strategies and techniques I'm using. It's also where I'll be addressing common questions I receive from course members.
One of the best ways to keep up to date with what's going on at the Long Tail Treasure
is to subscribe to the RSS blog feed for this course
Cheap traffic
GoClick.com - GoClick is a PPC search engine that I've used off and on for a number of campaigns. The nice thing about GoClick is thay have a minimum click bid of only $.01. One of my campaigns has nearly 400 keywords in it and most of them are set to $.01 a click. Although I don't often get many hits on each one, the mass number of keywords means I am actually getting a lot of $.01 traffic. Very sweet!
If you're sending the traffic from GoClick to your Squidoo lens you will see it show up in the lens stats as coming from many different sites. This is because GoClick is part of a large network of search engines where your ad will appear.
Findology.com - Findology is another PPC search enigne I make frequent use of. Although the minimum bid for traffic from Findology is $.03, there is often much more traffic available than via GoClick. Findology is also part of a larger network of PPC services so your traffic will actually be generated from a number of different locations. One thing to note about Findology traffic and Squidoo is that most of the traffic will appear in the Squidoo stats as coming from one url, while some of the traffic will appear as though it came from Squidoo itself (Squidoo referal). In the referral section of your lens stats click the url for the Findology traffic and you'll be able to see which keywords were actually driving traffic to your lens.
T2000 Ultra - An interesting system for generating FREE (but very low quality) traffic. This is basically a big pyramid type of scheme. By simply viewing 6 other web pages you earn the right to register and add your web page to the top of the list. You're then given an URL that you can then give out to others who can then do the same thing you just did. The traffic is obviously not targeted and the viewers for the most part could care less what your page is about, but a traffic hit is still a hit if it's sent to the right place. The traffic this can generate can grow quite a bit over time if you get your link out there to enough people. And believe it or not, I have actually sold a few things through this mechanism.
T2000 Ultra will not however work with Squidoo pages simply because Squidoo isn't friendly to pages that want to display in a frame, which is what T2000 Ultra does.
Anyway, the best way to understand it is to simply go check it out. It's free.
Cheers,
Todd Ariss