Affiliate Marketing Challenge - 50 promotions at once!

This is an interactive Hub, where you have a chance to give input and see results from your suggestions. I recently wrote a Hub called Affiliate Marketing Challenge - Can a Sale be made in 24 hours?

The idea was that I would start from scratch and choose (1) a product (2) keywords to promote with and (3) Run an ad. I chose a Clickbank product. The timeline for all this was 24 hours.

I enjoyed challenging myself to see what I could accomplish, and if I could get the process down quickly and make a sale. Check out the story for details (and entertainment)…

Anyway, I had another small brainchild today and invite your opinions/thoughts. Here goes (please be gentle)…

Heard of Cinco de Mayo? I’m considering doing a “Cincuenta de Mayo.” What is that? Well, I had to look it up, it’s May 50. The thought is to stretch my nerves even more and do 50 promotions. These will be Search Engine Marketing promotions (PPC).

What products to promote?

Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think might be hot to sell. I will probably include some ClickBank products, but I'm going to go beyond ClickBank and promote some other affiliate network products from Commission Junction and others. Here's a Hub with some techniques I know about for doing market research: Market Research Tips.

This time the focus on amount of campaigns and campaign broadness and not time. Ideas of variations could be 50 product campaigns each having their own ad group(s), or 50 product campaigns, 10 products across 5 different Search Engines, etc. I discuss the variations below. And, of course, this would be logged and described it all for the world to see, probably in 2 to 4 hour intervals.

Here are some possible promotion variations:

• Pick 50 products, promote 5 groups of 10 different products across 5 different Search Marketing companies.
• Pick 10 products, promote each 10 across 5 different Search Marketing companies.
• For several products, use 4 keyword types ads: Broad (with negatives), Phrase, Exact Term, and a mix of the basic 3 types. This might cause a conflict so I would need to be careful. What I mean is that some search engines don’t allow the same Keywords with the same display URL to be displayed at the same time. This one might be tricky or even too tricky.
• I might consider doing some geotargeting. 10 different products across 5 different countries.
• Any variations you think should be tried or might be promising?

I have Pay Per Click accounts with most of the Search Engines.

More "Affiliate Marketing Challenge" details:

• As far as Copy goes, I would do at least 2 splits, maybe more to find the winners. Many have written that "ad copy is king."
• Choose decent Keywords that get at least 100 searches per day predicted. If I do phrase or exact, the Keywords will probably be longtail, at least 3 words but probably not more than 6 in a phrase.
• Would go for ad positions 1 through 5
• Get more involved in content ads
• You recommended Key Compete, I’ll take a look there to see if I can get some ideas on KWs others are using in various markets
• I would monitor very closely, especially the Broad Match campaigns which seem to me have great CTR but cost a lot and probably have lower conversions than long tails
• I’ll drop low CTR keywords after 24 to 48 hours
• I’ll say probably 2 or 3 days to see if Keywords are paying off. I’ll frequently monitor ads and see if I need to write some more splits
• After 2 days or 200 impressions with no or low return, I should have an idea of the winners, then I’ll start getting rid of the losers (write new ads and split test, pause them, save them to analyze later)
• Any thoughts or suggestions for things to add here?

What is hoped will be accomplished:

• Make money
• Create a great story
• Learn about how different products and product categories perform
• Have more experience to a broader variety of affiliate products
• Get experience writing good ad copy and with altering and improving ad copy in split tests
• Get experience with Google’s dynamic keyword function
• Learn even more about keywords and the 3 types of keyword bid types
• Research more about competitor’s ads
• Improve ad copy writing

I have begun researching to find "hot" markets and products for those markets, and have already started keyword research. My target is to start this launch early June...

Be a part of the experiment, get involved in the action learn a lot! Leave comments and give your inupt now!

Let's get started!

************* 5/29/2008 **********************

Alright, For me, keyword tools and techniques are typically heavy on explaining functionality...sometimes I get lost in the trees and can't see the forest. So, to reset and get focused, I write down my Goals:

1. Have a process that finds markets or takes a desired market from keyword research to PPC ads and to website search engine optimized content
2. Finding niche markets with keywords

3. Get good keywords with high KEI for website content and anchor text backlinks to my website.
4. Get "commercial intent" keywords at reasonable prices for PPC campaigns

5. Create great content and ad copy

The questions we want to answer are:

1. What is a great process to follow for achieving the goals above? Finding a good market, developing keywords, creating PPC campaigns.

2. What tools are best to facilitate the process and needs that are shown above? Features I can think are important (I don't think 1 tool has it all):

• Finding Niche Markets

• KEI, search volume

• Anchor text links

• Competitor's keywords

• Competitor's PPC data

• PPC bid costs

• Keyword trends

• Lateral and Thesaurus capability (most tools have this)
• Long-tail keywords

I have worked with WordTracker, WordZE, NicheBot, Keyword Elite, Free Wordtracker, Free Keyword tools at SEOBook. Many tools have either:

• Decent functionality set but doesn't seem reliable (bizarre KEI, unbelievable PPC bid cost data)
• Or, limited functionality set

I'll be back to fill in some ideas I think can be a good process for the 1, 2, 3 punch that's needed: Finding Markets, Finalize the Keywords, Getting the PPC campaigns out there.