affiliate campaigns

Publishers often have questions about using affiliate links in the Google Adwords contextual advertising system. In this article, we’ll discuss how and where to insert affiliate links, plus how to transfer the necessary parameters from Adwords to affiliate network for further analysis and ad optimization.

Affiliate links need to be inserted in the tracking template, and a direct link specified to the advertiser’s website in the Final URL field. If the Final URL field contains a redirected affiliate link, your ad will be rejected because of a “Mismatch between the Display URL and Final URL.”

You can specify a tracking template for your account, campaign, ad group or key phrase. If there are several tracking templates at different levels, then the template with the narrowest scope will be used. Please see Help to find out more about tracking templates.

Your ad’s affiliate link should be inserted in the tracking template as follows:

https://ad.admitad.com/g/123asdfg/?ulp={lpurl},

where {lpurl} is the Adwords macro; when clicking on the ad, {lpurl} is replaced with the Final URL.

Users can also specify a common tracking template at the account or campaign level, so when a new ad is created, it will suffice to just add a direct link to the advertiser’s website in the Final URL. This is one of the main advantages of tracking templates: you do not have to generate a deep link for each landing page, as is the case with Yandex.Direct.

So I took an affiliate network and did a survey how is the traffic we send from Adwords to ads in admitad analyzed?

Subid tags in admitad and macros in Adwords are used for this purpose. For example, we can use the appropriate Adwords macros to transfer the campaign id, ad group id, and keyphrase id to subid tags in admitad:

{campaignid}, {adgroupid}, {targetid}.

Here is an example of the tracking template:

https://ad.admitad.com/g/123asdfg/?ulp={lpurl}&subid={campaignid}&subid1={adgroupid}&subid2={targetid}

As a result, the stats in will look like this:

They transferred the ad group id to subid1, so this screenshot shows the number of orders and revenue for each ad group.

Adwords also provides a variety of different macros besides those described here, which can be used to transfer click data and analyze this information to optimize ad campaigns. Please click here for a complete list of available macros.

EXCLUSIVE!

They have also introduced a new exclusive tool (other affiliate networks don’t provide anything like this): Integration with AdWords. This tool allows users to export conversions from admitad to Adwords, where Adwords statistics show which campaigns, ads and key phrases resulted in conversions. This approach helps optimize ads in Google much more quickly and efficiently. Users can also take advantage of the built-in cost-optimizer for conversions and conversion-based automated strategies.

The fetched table then shows the standard Adwords metrics for conversions: conversions, conversion cost, conversion value. Also, include two additional custom metrics:

value — cost

value * approval rate — cost incl. VAT

The second metric allows to accurately calculate potential revenue: here we calculate revenue by taking into account the approval rate (as a percentage) for the ad and 18% VAT.

This tool will prove useful to anyone who gets a lot of conversions from Google AdWords related to a specific offer and is enabled upon request after moderation. To complete integration, there are a few things left to configure on your own in Google AdWords to receive access to the AdWords API. Please see your networks Help Center for more details.

Affiliate marketing can be daunting, especially if you’re starting out from scratch. Most of the affiliates struggle in the initial phase of their business because of insufficient cash flow.

It’s okay to get all motivated reading ‘affiliate success stories’. But realize that you will have some expenses to run the business. In order to find the best converting offers and get a good return on investment, it’s important that you have startup cash.

Now, before you actually start calculating how much cash you need to have saved up for running your affiliate campaigns, ask yourself:

How much money do you need?

First of all, understand that it will take you a while before you hit a winning campaign. You will fail more than you succeed. That’s how you get to learn the ropes. The solution? You have to move beyond the ‘one campaign’ thinking and aim for testing multiple campaigns.

Start off with a couple of offers and test them out. For instance, you can test one campaign with PPC. Another one with PPV. The next one with Social media. And then the last one with search traffic.

Since you are in the beginning phase, spend about $100 for traffic on each of the campaigns to know how they’re performing. This would give you a fair idea of what’s working and what’s not. If a campaign’s giving you a decent return on investment, it’s good enough for ramping up.

Your focus should be on boosting the conversion rate of your landing pages, so that you’re able to get the most out of your traffic.

Now with that said, you need $500 – $1,000 in your pocket to start off with the initial campaign testing. One of the best ways to generate this cash would be to…

Sell Your Services

Find a skill that you are good at and look for people who would need your services. For example, if you’re good at writing, you can create articles for clients. Or if you’re know how to do web designing or SEO, you can find people that will give you paying projects.

There are many job boards online that you can use to find freelance opportunities. You can also get in touch with potential clients on relevant forums. Try and stay away from ‘freelance bidding’ sites because usually people are competing there for pennies. What you are looking for are stable freelance opportunities that can help you raise funds.

What if you’re unable to find clients?

If you’re having a hard time getting projects, then create something with your skills first and then look for buyers. For example, you can create articles and sell them at Constant-Content.com or create turnkey websites and sell them at Flippa.com. If you look around, you’ll find many more places where you can actually sell what you create, rather than providing a service.

The most important thing is to take a start on raising capital because quality affiliate marketing doesn’t come for free.

Do you have any ideas on how to get startup cash for getting into the affiliate business? If yes, then share them in the comments section below!

Tag: affiliate campaigns

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