by: Arun Agrawal
Are you an affiliate marketer who is concerned about the recent Adwords changes that have threatened to pull the rug from under you? Here is a short note about life of an affiliate marketer under the new Adwords regime.
Before the new rules were announced, many affiliate marketers were posting ads on Adwords which took the prospect directly to the merchant’s site. They completely depended on the merchant to get the sale. Now the prospect would become the customer of the merchant, if he bought something from him. However the advertiser has completely lost contact with this person except for getting the credit for the 1 sale that he referred.
The super affiliate did not operate this way. He would advertise on Adwords for sure but send the prospect to a landing page on his own site where he will pre-sell the prospect. This means that he will provide relevant information about the product, an honest review, even mention some shortcomings (if he knows about something), offer tutorials or screen-shots and like. Then he will offer some free gift in return for the prospect’s email address for further follow up. From the thank you page here, he will refer the prospect to the merchant’s sales page.
This way even if the prospect will not buy anything from the merchant, the affiliate does not lose him completely. He can regularly follow up with relevant information and send solicitations for other products for long term profits.
This is the way of the masters and if you are following this path, you will end up doing much more work. However there are rich rewards for reaping. The excellent Make Your Content Pre-sell guide (http://www.ebizindia.com/mycps.php) discusses this concept in great details and is a must-have for any serious affiliate marketer.
This type of affiliates will be absolutely untouched by the new Adwords guidelines. However if you have been sending your prospects directly to the merchant, it is high time you made a move. Shift all your campaigns to a landing page on your site and you have no worries.
As a bonus, you even get to eliminate the Aff. or affiliate identification you had to put on every ad, which was a big stumbling block in the sale process.
Best of success for your Adwords campaign in the new era!