On Deck Online Money Making Ideas Part 1 – PPC Affiliate Marketing

As most of you probably know, my main source of income online comes from a blog I created where I sell an eBook and now an audio guide as well. The audio guide was recently launched and is doing very well, but I’ll talk more about the results in my monthly report at the beginning of next month. I also do a little bit of affiliate marketing as well as write articles on eHow (although it’s been a while but I’m still pulling in cash every day). Last month, I grossed around $12,000 in total.

It’s funny because I work from home, but the “work” I do is virtually unrelated to my current income streams. For instance, I would say that with the near $10,000 I made from my other blog in December, I spent a total of less than 10 hours of actual work related to it the entire month – which was mainly answering customer service emails. So, when you say, “Pat, you’re not really making passive income if you’re working,” what I’m really working on is new projects that may help generate more passive income in the future.

I’d like to share with you now some other money making ideas that I’m currently working on.

PPC Affiliate Marketing

This is basically a way of earning money by selling other people’s products. However, the method that is used here, rather than posting affiliate links on websites or in emails, is to use pay-per-click advertising to generate affiliate traffic.

Here’s a made-up example of how this process actually works:

Joe The Plumber has an eBook called “Joe’s Plumbing Guide” (the product doesn’t have to be an eBook. Actually, there are a wide range of things you can be an affiliate for, from services to diet pills and much much more. This is just an example).

Joe wants to sell his product, so he signs up for an Affiliate Marketing Group as an Advertiser. The Affiliate Marketing Group is basically a hub of products and offers that advertisers like Joe go to in hopes that their product will be promoted and sold, and in return the Affiliate Marketing Group will get a small percentage of the sale.

So how is the product promoted? People like me sign up with the same Affiliate Marketing Group as a Publisher. As a publisher, I have access to all of the different products and offers that are being promoted. I notice Joe’s eBook, visit his sales page to see what it’s like, and I decide I want to be an affiliate for his product.

I also notice that there’s a $15.00 commission everytime I help sell his item. That means that if anyone uses the link that is provided to me by the Affiliate Marketing Group to purchase Joe’s eBook, I get $15.00.

The Trick…

The trick is to find customers that will click on the link that brings them to Joe’s website. Many times, people use email lists or post banners on their own websites, but that is not PPC Affiliate Marketing – that’s just plain affiliate marketing.

PPC (again, pay-per-click) marketing comes into play when I use Google Adwords to place advertisements on webpages and google search pages that contain that “hoplink” to Joe’s website, which is connected to my name on the Affiliate Marketing Group.

I’ll pick certain keywords or choose different websites where I want my advertisement to be shown. When people click on those ads, I pay Google money (and if the ad was on a website, Google gives some of my money to the website owner through Google AdSense). This doesn’t guarantee that people will buy the book, and most of the time – they won’t.

Soooooooo….I have to choose the best keywords (using keyword research), create the best ad text (using research and trial and error), and target the best customers. If I can earn more from commissions than I will be paying for Adwords, that is golden. That is the real goal with PPC Affiliate Marketing.

This is a Form of Passive Income Because…

Once you find the right offers and the correct methods of promoting those specific offers, you basically “set it and forget it” and let it run on auto-pilot.

I’ve just started to do real research on this method of making money online, but there are real people making $5000+ a day, which is 1.8 million a year! Just for finding the right things to sell (which aren’t even theirs) and the right combination of keywords and ads to use. I want to be one of those guys.

What I Got Going On Right Now

Right now, I am signed up with 4 of those “Affiliate Marketing Groups”, where I have access to thousands of products and commissions. I started a few campaigns, but I’m still learning all of the techniques, so it’s not much to brag about. In total, I’ve made a little over $200 so far. It’s a start, but I have a long way to go.

One of my best friends is actually a lot more familiar with this stuff than I am, and hopefully I can get him to write a guest post or two about it sometime in the near future as my experience with PPC affiliate marketing grows.

Part 2 of my On Deck Money Making Ideas is about iPhone applications. You don’t want to miss it.

Posted on : January 21st, 2009

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21 Comments (Click Here to Leave a Comment Below)

Reply Sarah H. on January 21st, 2009 at 6:45 am

Thanks for this explanation of the difference between PPC Affiliate Marketing and just plain Affiliate Marketing. I did not know you could work with affiliate links in these ways. I look forward to hearing about your progress. My only experience with affiliate marketing so far is putting a few plain Amazon affiliate links on my blog and in my eHow articles, but diversification is a great thing!

I’m most definitely looking forward to your upcoming post about iPhone apps!!

Sarah H.´s last blog post..Transform a room in less than 10 seconds

Reply Pat on January 22nd, 2009 at 3:05 am

@Sarah H., Yes indeed, diversification is key, which is why I’m exploring all of these different methods. By the way, how are the eHow articles going for you?

Reply Sarah H. on January 22nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm

@Pat,

My eHow articles are SLOWLY gaining momentum. I am on track to earn more than $10 this month (I earned $10.40 last month). I have 73 articles total and it seems like the old ones are starting to pick up the pace a little. But it’s pretty sporadic…two days ago I earned 7 cents and yesterday I earned $1. Plus the 28 articles that I’ve written since Jan 5 have earned nothing yet (with one exception). So I’m just being patient and hoping that they will ‘marinate’ as you say and start earning soon. As far as affiliate links go, I just first added some links this past weekend so I don’t have anything to report yet (in fact I don’t think I’ve even checked the account).

Sarah H.´s last blog post..Transform a room in less than 10 seconds

Reply Jennifer on January 21st, 2009 at 8:04 am

This is very useful information that I was not aware of. I have jsut started to work on some affiliate marketing. There is so much to learn when it comes to the different ways of affiliate marketing. Thank you for sharing what you are learning with us.

Reply Pat on January 22nd, 2009 at 3:09 am

@Jennifer, there is honestly SOOOOOOO much information to learn. It’s almost like learning another language or an entire year of science class. The experts really have it down to a science…it’s just our job to pick their brains

Reply jen brister on January 21st, 2009 at 8:51 am

This was a great post. I can’t wait to watch your progress as this goes along.

jen brister´s last blog post..Are You Doing this To Add Backlinks?

Reply pfincome on January 21st, 2009 at 9:49 am

Pat – As usual, a very inspiring post. I just recently started adding affiliate links on PFI as well as eHow articles. $12,000 a month? That is awesome and is what I need to keep motivating myself. THANKS!!!

pfincome´s last blog post..Passive Income – How to recycle your cash flow

Reply How to Make Money - Passive Income | PROVEN WAYS TO CREATE A PASSIVE INCOME on January 21st, 2009 at 10:43 am

[...] Money Making Ideas Part 1 – PPC Affiliate Marketing As most of you probably know, my main source of income online comes from a blog I created where I sell an eBook and now an audio guide as well. [...]

Reply Vik Dulat on January 21st, 2009 at 12:24 pm

Is the $200 you made all profit or is that just sales?

Vik Dulat´s last blog post..6 strategies to fireproofing your job

Reply Pat on January 22nd, 2009 at 3:04 am

@Vik Dulat, The $200 is money I’ve earned, but I did spend a little to get that, so in essence my total profit was less, but it was profit nonetheless. I should of clarified this in the post, my apologies.

Reply Mz eb. on January 21st, 2009 at 1:21 pm

This is the best explanation I’ve read about PPC affiliate marketing. Thanks for including us in your learning process. More grease to your elbow.

Looking forward to the next installment.

take care…

Reply Pat on January 22nd, 2009 at 3:08 am

@Mz eb., Thanks for the comment, abd by the way that yellow character on your website freaked me out, but it’s pretty awesome looking! I appreciate your comment – I hope I can provide more useful information to you in the future

Reply Earlyriser on January 21st, 2009 at 1:50 pm

Pat-
What are you some kinda Yoda knockoff? Another great post. I heard that a rule of thumb is to not do any PPC adverts until your other revenue streams are bringing in $500.00 per month on a regular basis… I wonder what your opinion on that is? As always, I’ll be watching your progress closely.
Thanks for sharing your work with us,
Andy

Earlyriser´s last blog post..Passive Income- Writing for Ehow

Reply Pat on January 22nd, 2009 at 3:07 am

@Earlyriser, lol @ yoda. Anyways, I haven’t heard about the $500.00 rule, but I expect it’s because it definitely takes money to make money using the PPC Affiliate Marketing method. However, I’d heard of people using free $100.00 Adwords coupons to start their campaigns who were successful enough to grow that money into thousands. Pretty crazy stuff!

Reply Sam on January 21st, 2009 at 6:06 pm

Why don’t you use that to sell your ebook? It only costs you if you sell them right? So mark up the price a little and have other people sell it for you!

Oh and I might not recommend doing ppc and affiliate marketing on your ebook website. I was recently purchasing something and on that website, they had an ad, so I left their site and bought from another site. Well they may have made .10 from that click, but they lost a sale, which was probably much more valuable.

Sam´s last blog post..How Much Home Can You Afford To Buy?

Reply WriterGig on January 22nd, 2009 at 4:00 pm

SO far I’ve earned all my affiliate commissions through free or nearly free emais — blog posts, website articles, eHow articles, emails. I’ve considered the PPC method and read a very good book on the topic, but haven’t taken that plunge — quite yet.

WriterGig´s last blog post..Revenue Sharing Sites: eHow, Bukisa, and InfoBarrel

Reply Start-Up on January 23rd, 2009 at 1:07 pm

Initially I was confused as to how the PPC modified the affiliate marketing. Upon a second read I think I understand. So you pay AdWords to advertise on other people’s sites. I suppose the hope is that more people who click on your ad will buy Joe’s book than those who click on the ad and don’t buy. Interesting. I suppose you have to do a lot of research and fully believe what you are advertising for has a large enough market.

Start-Up´s last blog post..Biggest Lesson Learned from this Bear Market

Reply Lazy Man and Money on February 11th, 2009 at 9:02 pm

I have looked into this, but it seems pretty competitive. Also some affiliate programs prohibit this kind of arbitrage (I think).

Lazy Man and Money´s last blog post..My Wife and I Robbed Black Angus Last Night

Reply Margie McGilty on March 16th, 2009 at 12:11 am
This is perfect, I am looking to do something similiar very soon and this article makes perfect sense.

Reply Misha on August 25th, 2009 at 10:25 pm

i am just starting out with affiliate marketing. i have signed up with Clickbank and Amazon. i am still reading lots of stuffs on the net about how to be successful on affiliate marketing.

Reply Nuphedragen on March 8th, 2010 at 10:54 am

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