It seems at the moment that everybody is telling you that the easiest and quickest way to make money online is with Google Adwords and affiliate programs.
It sounds so easy. You join a programme, get a link, choose a couple of keywords, put up an ad and the money flows. Many have tried and many have failed.
Don't get me wrong, it's possible to make money this way and to be very successful. There are many people making $100's per day from their Adwords campaigns. But those that are successful don't follow the herd, they think for themselves.
As with all things in life the greater success is found on the ‘road less travelled' which means if you do what everybody else is doing you will get the results that everybody else is getting. And the fact is that everybody else, or at least the majority, are trying maybe making a little money, getting disheartened and moving on to something else.
We need to be different.
So what does our average money maker do? First he goes to Click Bank and visits the ‘Money & Employment' category and he selects one of the top 10 products. That is not bad strategy but maybe we should be a little different if we must sell in the making money online space then why don't we find excellent products that aren't available on Click Bank.
A little but a bit of work at Google will uncover a number of directories where we can find products to promote. Or better still why not find out who the top names are in the making money online space and search out their affiliate programs. Yanik Silver, Marlon Sanders & John Reese all operate their own affiliate programs & these guys also have excellent materials that will help you to sell their products.
But even better still we could target a totally different market. There are millions of people spending millions of dollars on things other than how to get rich products. Checkout these links to see what people are searching on this month.
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
http://50.lycos.com/
http://buzz.yahoo.com/overall/
Once our Money Maker (MM) has selected the same product to promote as everybody else he then chooses the same keywords as everybody else to bid on at Google. He will type those words into the Keyword tool at Overture or into Adwords Analyzer. Then he will have a big list of the same keywords as everybody else promoting that product.
Do you think there might be a little competition for these keywords? You think those words might be expensive to bid on? You betcha.
What we need to do is think a little differently whatever market we choose there will be competition and if there is no competition it probably means that nobody is spending in this market. We need to think ‘outside of the box'. We need to get inside the minds of the typical buyer of a product. We need to think what related problems they may be having what other things they will be searching for and we need to create our own keyword list.
Finally MM writes one ad, that will show for all his keywords. His ad describes the features of the product. We on the other hand will write an ad highlighting the benefits of the product. All those eyeballs will be attracted to our ‘sizzle, not the sausage'. We will include a call to action.
We will have multiple ad groups separated out into themes, our ads will be relevant to the keywords in the group and we will have two ads for each group so we can see what works and what doesn't. We will test, test & test some more.
Our success will be found on the road less travelled.
There is still plenty of room in the Adwords pool as long as we are prepared to think for ourselves and not expect a free ride.
The absolute best guide I have read to succeeding with Google Adwords is Greg Heslins Adwords 123. There have been other books including the well known Google Cash. But Adwords 123 has taken things a step further and I highly recomend that you get a copy of you are serious about making money with Adwords. Click Here for further details.
The reason that I recommend Adwords 123 so strongly is because it not only takes you from beginner to expert user but it also teaches how to get inside the head of the Google searcher. This is exactly what we have just discussed in this article. You need to understand how the searcher thinks, what other things they are thinking about, what is the problem they are trying to solve.
These questions will allow you to create a list of keywords that you can use to get visitors at a price per click that you can afford. Instead of competing on the common words at prices that don't always make sense.
Once you have gotten the basics under your belt the next step is to learn some more advanced strategies. For that you need Perry Marshall's Definitive Guide to Google Adwords.
So to summarize my recommendations.
Think outside the box and avoid the crowd
Buy Adwords 123 to get you off to a flying start
Buy The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords once you have gotten started and you are ready to move it up a level.