A bit of background for those new to it. Google pay-Per-Click Adwords advertisement of Affiliate marketed products is the biggest single discussed online business approach, there are 1000 eBooks and tutorial packages on the subject, often written as the first information product of an adwords marketer expanding into new territory. Several factors have made adwords marketing a much tougher undertaking than it was 5 years ago. A careful, systamic approach explained by seasoned professionals is more than ever an essential for profitable marketing.

The single most useful resource for those new to adwords driven affiliate sites that I have encountered is Commission Blueprint, a video, ebook and template package made in 2008,  selling for $97 that’s more useful than some >$1000 packages. Many find the ” looking over the expert’s shoulder” style of video tutorials, a real time saver and confidence builder.   Offering detailed sober advice on the steps and numbers involved in making a working PPC-affiliate marketing business. No short lived get rich quick tricks, or blackhat stuff here. One demonstration included is a test case he sets up  that loses money in a rather un-magical way, until fine tuning is applied. Besides the detailed keyword acquisition and tracking talk, he also gives some guidelines criteria for deciding whether to bail out of a campaign or keep on plugging, he also offers some basic advice on money management.

Commission Blueprint Sample Screen

The main thrust of the package is the careful tracking and analysis of keyword selections. You will learn that adwords advertising is not all about creatively writing 12 word ads., but rather is a demanding process requiring careful spread sheet numbers analysis.  (If you could not bear balancing your checkbook several times a day, this adwords thing might not be your cup of tea.)

This package consists of:

• 17 bite sized videos, totaling 4 hours 40 minutes.
• 45 pages of supplemental pdf text pages
• 4 pre-made web page templates

Leaving the the basic education on adwords, site design and affiliates to other sources, he does briefly demonstrate the use of (in order of importance): marketsamurai.com, speedppc.com, Adwords editor, nameboy.com, Sedo.com, deleteddomains.com

An aside: The authors suggest that their biggest competition are the endless parade of adwords novices who try the game for a few weeks, lose their shirt, and move on to something easier.

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Pay per click marketing seems to be these guys’ core skill.  I have viewed 2 other products they have producted in much the same style:

SEM Blueprint A guide to becoming a Pay Per Click Management and Search Engine Marketing consultant. Building on the skills aquired in Commission Blueprint. He suggests the possibility of earning $10k per client, helping local brick and mortar businesses with their marketing efforts. Priced at $197, this 3 Hr., 10 Min. of video and supplemental material is not as great a value as Commission Blueprint,  some new material on keywords, link building, etc is provided by a guest contributor Mike Hamby?. I suppose price is proportioned to the degree of specialization. The specific advice on finding clients, selling and pricing services and the example proposal and contract included are not commonplace information.

Niche Blueprint Their 3rd? product, is a from the ground up guide to creating and operating an ecommerce store. Instructional modules include Selecting a market, finding drop-shippers/wholesales, pricing, store site setup and operation. Source code for a an ecommerce site is included with the 5 1/2 hours of instructional videos and pdf documents. I have viewed most of the pachage it looks like a solid starter guide. Dave Hermonson contributes his ecommerce expertise to this product.  Interoduced in Jan 2009, Niche Blueprint was re-released in March and is currently Sold Out again, you can go to the product page and sign up for re-release news.

Those with established ecommerce businesses or high volume brick and mortar store might benefit from advanced training programs, such as those offered by Stompernet. Their membership fee is, I believe $800/mo with additional conference and coaching costs. A 1 or 2 percent profit improvement may justify this training cost for established major players.  Stompernet has a stunning library of instructional material available as well as a growing faculty of recognized experts.

Here is a list of 60 BLOGs that report their income, broken down by income source. Many are from Dec. 2008, some are from earlier.

A related subject is: The top 100 365 Money Making Blogs
Ranked by site PR and traffic. Unlike the list above, these authors may not reveal their specific income sources, bear in mind the top sites might not be the best models for one just starting out.

To see how you place in a larger field, here’s a “how much did you make” suvey of 4028 Blogs who made money in October 2008, there are summary graphs included in the report.

1) Labor intensive, slow growing search engine optimized web site development.

2) Simple affiliate product sales pages driven by pay per click traffic.

The first case relies on developing popular, high ranking web sites that include soft sell advertisements. Developing a site that ranks highly with the search engines as measured by original content volume and incoming link quantity/quality is key.

The second case utilizes the paid advertisement that appear on the “sponsored” right edge of a search results page to drive targeted buyers to a focused preliminary hard sell page, steering the visitor to an internet store offering an affiliate sales percentage for advertiser generated traffic. Depending on paid advertising cost and affiliate payoff delays, one may have to float 2x to 10x the desired monthly income.The great thing about paid advertising being to start small, then going big by pouring in more advertising money when a campaign is found to be a winner.

Google search PPC Adwords are the gold standard for paid advertising, though lower cost advertising, including ads that appear on sites like case 1 above can be used to increase traffic and improve margins. One should expect to lose some money when first running test advertising campaigns, or when the window of change, new competition, bankrupt affiliates, etc. hit.

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