Someone once said there are as many ways to do PPC Management as there are to paint a painting.

While that may be true, there are definitely several distinct approaches to PPC Management that work better than others.

Today, I'd like to examine three distinct approaches to Super Affiliate PPC Management by three renowned PPC Experts:


Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney,
Mr. "I never pay more than the minimum":
Case in point: NextPimp.com

Jeremy's portfolio approach to Pay Per Click, buying hundreds of thousands of generic keywords, bidding minimum amounts, deleting those that don't convert and uploading new ones, is great -- whenever you're targeting a generic offer that would appeal to a large percentage of your target audience.

RingTones, BlockBuster, NetFlix etc. are all excellent generic offers that would work very well under this model. And indeed Jeremy has been very open sharing his success applying this portfolio approach to PPC Management on these verticals.

Two tips if you're going to choose this approach:

1. Focus on a solid keyword database of at least 30,000 generic keywords. Jeremy shared how he purchased the CNet database of every single search phrase made on CNet. A more recent example is the AOL database that became public domain. Whatever you do, don't just pick words from a dictionary. Make sure you pick words that are actually being searched for at a decent volume.

2. PPC API. Managing this huge volume of keywords, across multiple search engines, is going to be virtually impossible without applying some automated scripts that periodically communicate with PPC Search engines using the PPC API.

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Kris Jones of PepperJam,
Mr. "Make $50 from one program, then find a way to scale it across 2,000 programs"
Case in point: 1InSearch.com, Shogging.com

Unlike Jeremy's approach which works well only with the most generic offers, Kris suggests targeting every single offer on CommissionJunction, ClickBank, AzoogleAds etc., automating as much as possible so that you never have to go through a per-offer research.

This approach requires more advanced coding skills. To utilize Kris' approach at its full extent, you're going to have to use data feeds (automatically export new offers from CJ, AzoogleAds, ClickBank), PPC API (Huge volume of campaigns to manage - automatically shutting down those that don't bring a positive 2x1 ROI) and basic Web design skills.

Here's a simplified version of implementing Kris' approach, doing the bare minimum and direct linking to the affiliate offer:

Step 1: Download all offers from ClickBank into an Excel file.

Step 2: Sort the offers so that you have the redirect link in one column, the name of the affiliate company in another column and the company's website in the third column.

Step 3: Write a series of PPC ads that are generic enough to work well with all offers. I'm sure you've seen those before (hint: we use those too). The template goes like this: Product Reviews & Coupons for {COMPANY_NAME}. Click Here

Step 4: Write a basic PPC AdWords API script that will iterate through all columns and create a new campaign on Google, bidding $1 on two keywords: CompanyName, CompanyDomain.

Explanation: For every offer, if it's popular enough, the top converting keyword is typically going to be the company-name. For example with BlockBuster, if someone is searching for "BlockBuster" or "BlockBuster.com" and they are presented with your BlockBuster ad, they are likely to convert.

That's it.

Naturally a more advanced version will involve monitoring your PPC campaigns automatically, shutting down those that don't convert and increase the bids on those that convert well. But this is the gist of the go-wide-and-scale approach.

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Amit Mehta of SuperAffiliateMindset,
Mr. "Focus on 3 strong niches and build content around them"

It is not by accident that I've chosen to list Amit Mehta's approach as the third one.

In many ways, I like to think of Jeremy's PPC Management strategy as "Generation 1.0" (When MSN traffic was a nickel a keyword), Kris' PPC Management strategy as "Generation 2.0" (When you wanted to expand into targeting offers that don't work well with generic keywords) and Amit's PPC Management strategy as "Generation 3.0".

With the recent Quality Score, rising PPC costs and market saturation, thin affiliate pages, huge (irrelevant) keyword volume and mashed-up content, no longer works. Well, at least not as a long term strategy.

Sure, you can still make money with Jeremy's approach and yes there are still several players utilizing Kris' approach to this day (ever seen the infamous "I got scammed 47 times" ad? Generic ad that leads to a different offer every time).

The major difference between the three approaches is that while the first two can deliver serious net profits in a much shorter time-frame, the third approach of building a complete super-site surrounding one (or a few related) affiliate offers, requires less ongoing management and delivers ongoing increase in profits over time.

As long as you do this right (keep adding content, tweak landing pages, keep building links) Your sites will grow stronger and more competitive, revenues will increase and the value of your website will grow providing another form of monetization when you sell the site.


In summary, I hold a lot of respect to all three PPC Experts. All of these approaches to PPC Management are proven to work in the real world, but times are changing and windows of opportunity are closing.

Find your winning strategy by experimenting with these three, combining them together or outsourcing your PPC Management needs to a full-service Internet Marketing agency.

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For those of you who don't know the "rules" behind the Make Money with SoftwareProjects series, here they are:

Every Friday, SoftwareProjects will post a new "make money by doing X" post. It can be an invitation to perform a service, a tried-and-tested technique to immediately boost sales, free traffic etc. The only requirement is that whatever we post as part of our "Make Money by doing X" series - must be stuff you can immediately take to the bank, and not just vague ideas.

Hopefully this series will encourage & inspire new entreprenuers, provide value to business owners and demonstrate the depth and breadth of SoftwareProjects services.

Hi Mike. I have been reading your posts for a few weeks now. Its one of the best resources I have found on these topics. You write well and give great information.

Could you post what you know about selling web applications? I am writing a web app that I think can make a lot of money through ads and premium subscriptions. I, however, don't really have the business expertise to run it, nor do I have the resources such as servers, domains, databases, time(!). So I was wondering if there is a market out there to sell software that hasn't be "proven" yet, that is to say, the software is written, tested, and ready to go, I just need someone to put it out there and get users to it.

Thoughts on this?

Mike -- Thank you for the kind words.

The short answer is "yes" - there is a market of buyers looking to buy developed scripts that are sold as-is, as opposed to a full fledged website with users and a proven business model.

You could sell your script on Site Point, DigitalPoint and even eBay just to name a few.

However, if you truly believe in your script, I would recommend one of two things -

(1) Host it (You can get cheap $6/month hosting), Start offering it to the relevant users for free (post on forums and invite folks to use it) and gradually build up features until you start sensing your users are really gaining value from your solution. A hosted web service with 100 happy customers is worth a lot more than source code sold as is.

(2) Find a champion - a partner company that believes in your script and is willing to do what it takes to further develop it, keeping you in the loop and paying you X percent of all sales or any other arrangement you make.

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Feel free to drop me a note with more info about what you have planned. I'll be happy to offer my insight.

You're right. Your comment "A hosted web service with 100 happy customers is worth a lot more than source code sold as is" makes complete sense to me.

I am going to finish this app and get it out there and used.

Thanks for the advice. Cheers, mate.

Very informative post and great strategies when aligned with the most suitable market areas