With so many people trying to make money on the web and so many products being sold with resell and master resell rights, its a wonder anyone can make any money at all at it!
Indeed, most people dont.
Why
Sometimes its because people get in on the tail end of the product being sold and start trying to resell it just as the original creator decides to start giving it away for free. Generally this is 3-4 months after the product debuts.
But lots of times people actually learn quickly about a new resale product, but dont have a mailing list or website with lots of traffic to advertise the product to.
So what are you to do if youre one of these folks You use Google Adwords as your new best friend.
Notice that I said AdWORDS, not AdSENSE. Whats the difference Adsense is the big thing those marketing gurus have recently been talking up. You know...make a web page specifically designed for a search term, put Google Adsense on that page, and make tons of money when people click on those ads. (Yeah, right, sure. They dont happen to mention that you need *traffic* before you can get clicks.)
AdWords, on the other hand, are those ads themselves. Where YOU are the person paying every time someone clicks on one of them. And I have found them to be the #1 way to make money with short-term resell products if you dont have a decent mailing list.
Steps and Rules of Thumb
Here are the steps and rules of thumb I use to achieve good to great profits on short-term sales items - those products that will be sold quickly then given away free within 3-4 months - practically every time.
#1 ~~ I do a Google search on the product name to see if the market is already saturated (not all new products are actually new), to see if the product is already being given away free (most end up this way), and to see what the Google Adwords competition looks like.
If everybody and his brother are already selling or giving it away, I look for a new product.
#2 ~~ Assuming theres an opportunity here, I use the Overture Keyword Bid Amounts Lookup Tool < http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/ > and FindWhat.com, as well as Google Adwords itself, to see what advertisers are paying for various search words and phrases, and compare the cost per click to the sale price of the item.
Rule of Thumb: I dont spend more than 1/100th of the price of an item on a click.
That means a $10 item couldnt cost more than $.10 a click or a $37 item couldnt cost more than $.37 a click.
#3 ~~ I determine who my audience is and write my ads and choose my keywords accordingly. For example, a lot of products include resell or master resell rights. If you look at the sales web page included, youll see that is seen as a selling point. But I never mention that in my Google ads. Instead, I choose to sell to people for whom the product would be useful by itself. Ive even rewritten the sales page copy to remove most resell rights information and instead emphasize the usefulness of the product itself. Plus, when I include bonuses, I only include those bonuses that enhance the product.
#4 ~~ I set an initial budget and time period that I will give the ad in which to make money. I know that I probably wont get my ad worded perfectly right off and will need to tweak it before I start attracting the right type of buyer and start making sales. But I cant tweak the ad until I start advertising and see the statistics that Google provides. Depending on the product price, I will give myself 2-3 weeks to maximize the ad.
Rule of Thumb: ALWAYS put the price of your product in your Google ad.
You dont want just anyone clicking on your ad because each click costs you money. You want to let people know up front that you are selling something and for how much. They wont click if they arent willing to spend that or if they dont think they can get something for free.
#5 ~~ I always quit when I determine by results that the product is no longer selling sufficiently to justify my continuing to pay Google. I never assume that things will pick up after my cutoff point.
Rule of Thumb: Once I stop selling 2 items per week, I quit selling the item.
The first sale is to cover the price of the ads. The second sale is to cover other costs as well as give me a profit. If theres no profit, theres no point in advertising.
[By the way, you have the option of your ads showing up just on Google search results or also on peoples websites. Ive found I generally do better just advertising on Google, but it depends on what youre selling.]
Conclusion: It can be hard for people to quickly break into the reselling world, even with a great product, without a large mailing list or a website with lots of traffic. Using Google AdWords can seriously level the resell playing field and help *you* make a profit!
(This article include full reprint rights as long as you do not change the article and include the byline box.)
About the Author: Kendall Simmons of , the largest resellers membership site on the web, has been making money online since 1996. Her Reselling4Profit Newsletter contains practical how-tos and step-by-steps designed to help you make a *PROFIT* online. Each issue also includes at least one free quality download that you can sell, use or give away. Subscribe at
Watch out for a shift in the pay-per-click (PPC) industry, happening right now! This shift is finally going to give smaller search engines and directories the ability to tap into the PPC market, currently monopolized by the big guns online (Google, Yahoo & MSN). They will attain this lofty goal by banding together and delivering paid ad placements on a mass community scale for a fraction of the cost.
More and more advertisers are going to want to advertise through the ISEDN because of the sheer amount of exposure that they will be able to receive through all the search engines and directories partnered together through this network.
I was able to be the first to interview Mel Strocen, CEO of Jayde Online, Inc., the parent company of ExactSeek.com.
The Independent Search Engine & Directory Network (ISEDN) was an outgrowth of ExactSeeks commitment to bring affordable and effective search advertising to the web community. Although ExactSeek was successful in partnering with a number of search engines and directories, it became apparent that popularization of a new pay-for-inclusion program would be better served by an active and independent association of search engines and directories than by a single engine.
Here are some excerpts from that interview:
Martin: When was the ISEDN formed ( http://www.isedn.org )
Mel: The organization was officially founded in June of this year, although the idea for a network of this kind was being discussed for several months previous to that. The ISEDN website, however, is only a few days old.
Martin: How many members does the ISEDN network have right now
Mel: 47 members at the moment, but the network has been acquiring new members at a rate of 3 - 5 per week.
Martin: What kind of market reach can the network deliver
Mel: It really depends on how big the network becomes. Some search engine and directory members have reported 10,000,000+ searches/month but, given the rapid growth of the ISEDN and the fact that its only a few weeks old, we really havent had the opportunity to determine the total number of search impressions the network can deliver. We expect to receive specific numbers from the members in the coming weeks which will enable us to provide a more accurate picture of the networks search reach. My best guesstimate right now is that pay-for-inclusion listings are displayed approximately 120 million times per month. Of course, that figure will grow as the ISEDN grows.
Martin: Why should advertisers choose the ISEDN network over Google or Yahoo
Mel: The most obvious reason is cost. An advertiser buying a 3 or 12 month listing is looking at a cost of $3 - $4 a month. Im not aware of any other engine that can match what the ISEDN offers in terms of value or exposure. Where else can you buy targeted keyword terms for less than $5 a month and get top 10 exposure for your site listings across 45+ search engines and directories
Martin: Youre right, that is amazing!
Martin: Because of the sheer distribution size this could potentially have, what preventive measures are being implemented for click fraud
Mel: In the ISEDN advertising model there is no incentive for click fraud to occur. You pay a one time fee for your selected keyword term and thats it. Competitors or bots could click on your ad repeatedly and it wouldnt cost you a penny more. With the monetary motive for click fraud removed, its unlikely to be a problem.
Martin: What does the future hold for the ISEDN
Mel: Its a little early for me to speculate on how the ISEDN might evolve. ExactSeek is just one member. Future plans will depend on member participation and input in the coming months. What I would like to see is for the ISEDN to become a counter weight to the gradual monopolization of search on the Web by engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. I would also like to see the ISEDN contribute in other areas related to search such as search relevance and possibly the support of open source search software. In the long term, I believe the Web and searchers in general will be better served by diversity than by monopoly.
Martin: Are members going to decide the future of the network
Mel: The short answer is yes, they will. To function effectively, the ISEDN will in time need to implement some kind of governing structure that determines the organizations future course. What that structure is and how the ISEDN evolves will depend on input from the members. Initially, direction and objectives will most likely be determined by majority concensus.
Weve just added a private member discussion forum to the ISEDN website which will allow members to voice their views on issues such as the networks direction, objectives, online advertising, governing structure, network promotion and other topics of relevance to the membership.
Martin: So will any of the discussions from the network forum be opened up to the public
Mel: Eventually, yes. Assuming public interest, well setup discussion forums that allow webmasters and/or siteowners to ask questions and provide feedback to individual ISEDN members or to the membership as a whole. If we go this route and, I expect we will, it should help to improve communication between searchers and search providers. It should also help raise general public awareness of the many excellent directories and search engines on the Web that currently are under the radar.
Martin: So how does the advertising portion work
Mel: Every ISEDN member is provided with an XML feed to implement within their search results or directory listings. The feed can be modified by the individual members so that pay-for-inclusion listings are displayed in a way that matches their site look and feel, but regardless of how the listings are displayed, advertisers are guaranteed top 10 exposure across the entire ISEDN network. Premium placement of this kind is made possible by the fact that we limit the number of times any one keyword term can be purchased and because all paid listings are rotated in the SERPs (search engine result pages) on each individual engine and directory.
Surveys have consistently shown that few searchers look at more than 30 search results for any given search query. The ISEDN advertising model takes this into account and limits the sale of any keyword term to 30. If a keyword term has been sold less than 10 times, the paid listing almost always appears on the first page of search results (depends on how many listings an ISEDN member displays per page) although not always in the same position. If a keyword term has been sold more than 10 times then paid listings begin to rotate between the SERPs. On sold out keyword terms, the worst case scenario for an advertiser would be that his listing would appear on the first page of results roughly once of every 3 searches on his keyword term. This is somewhat offset, however, by the fact that the system supports broad keyword matching as well as exact keyword matching.
Martin: With this first come, first serve program - Are you worried that bigger companies will buy out all the keywords available
Mel: Not really. There are literally millions of keyword term combinations available. As the more obvious terms are bought out, it might require more creative thinking on the part of advertisers to come up with good searchable terms, but other than that, I dont anticipate a problem. Based on current trends, many buyers either forget to renew their keywords or simply let their listings expire. The end result is that thousands of keyword terms will be rolling over on a continual basis. In the event that the program becomes so wildly popular that keyword availability does become a problem, we may have to look at changing the parameters of the system to accomodate demand, but thats unlikely in the forseeable future.
THIS IS AN ADVERTISERS DREAM!
Anytime a PPC or paid inclusion ad can get distributed through an entire network of competitors, it has the potential to be very powerful and deliver a lot of quality results. Personally, I would much prefer to advertise within 100 websites rather than just one. The power of advertising is in the numbers!
This couldnt have come at a better time. The SEO industry is crying for quality PPC alternatives. Googles recent battle with click fraud has left many advertisers world wide wondering if they should really keep their entire internet advertising budget within one basket.
Increase Your ROI Through Smaller Programs Online:
More and more, Smartads is recommending paid advertising in smaller, more tightly knit search engines and directories to our clients. ROI (Return on investment) is very important to the adverising industry, and we have found that advertising in smaller ventures rather than the bigger gorillas online, brings better results.
The reason for this is simple:
* - Less competition* - Greater targeted audience* - More local opportunities* - More exposure for your money
In the old days, creating smaller, more targeted PPC campaigns used to be a lot of work for the marketing professional to research and maintain. The ISEDN has made that job a lot easier for us to maintain on a larger scale. Why would spend hours trying to find smaller directories and other programs, when you can find them under one umbrella
To check out this internet advertising shift for yourself, go here: http://www.isedn.org
About The Author:
Martin Lemieux is the president of the Smartads Advertising Network. Smartads helps all sorts of companies world wide to grow their business offline and online. Visit Today!
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