Niche Blaster Method
The glory days of PPC affiliate marketing for all intents appear to be just a distant memory. Sad stories of lifetime bans on AdWords accounts and the frustration of trying to move campaigns onto MSN adCenter and the second tier PPC networks have become pretty common. My core traffic generation method has always been PPC and remains that way even now.
I’ve taken my knocks trying to squeeze out any kind of traffic volume from MSN adCenter after getting the boot along with many others from Google AdWords. Though it’s not quite at the same levels of volume that once could be had from AdWords, it’s enough to work with. And MSN adCenter is certainly without its own drama and frustration.
However, I still enjoy reaping the traffic benefits of both paid and organic traffic. From here on out I’ll refer to the non-paid form of traffic as “organic” traffic rather than “free” traffic since all forms of traffic incur some degree of cost. Putting “The Niche Blaster Method” more succinctly, it’s all about doing niche research from buying data.
The concept of buying data online is certainly not new. If you’re willing to lose (invest) some of your ad spend in acquiring impressions and clicks, then with proper tracking in place you can begin to mine that data for trends. These trends range from popular searches, conversion data in the form of converting keywords and ad placements as well as the highest converting days, times and regions. As long as you’ve acquired enough clicks and conversions to be statistically significant, you can then begin your analysis in earnest. Analysis of this data can then allow you to optimize your paid search campaigns to squeeze out the maximum possible profit from your efforts and ad spend. However, this is usually about as far as most PPC marketers take things.
The approach of “traffic brokering” or “click flipping” becomes a numbers game or lather, rinse, repeat.
It’s a proven strategy, but yet also doesn’t work nearly as well as it used to. The reasons for this are listed below:
- Google AdWords has gone psychotic and is extremely fickle about what it will and will not allow to run. In many cases, you better off not even subjecting yourself to their abusive practices towards advertisers.
- MSN adCenter, though much more reasonable to deal with than AdWords has extremely low traffic volumes (on their Search N/W anyway) to make building campaigns with them very unappealing for many marketers.
- Moving your traffic onto the so-called second-tier PPC networks is a crap shoot at best with many low-quality publishers and evidence of click fraud on some of the networks.
This just covers obstacles in the PPC realm. Many paid search marketers have since moved on to what at the time seemed like greener pastures. Cost Per View (CPV or PPV). FaceBook ads, and various forms of media buys have proven wildly profitable for many. I on the hand, still struggle for the scraps that I can scrounge from what’s left of the first-tier PPC search engines: MSN adCenter.
Now the writing has been on the wall for some time now, at least since the final AdWords ban hammer came down, that building sites for long term organic rankings was something to at least have a look at. This is where the buying data part comes back into the picture. In addition to using the purchased data to optimize PPC campaigns, why not also use it to quickly test out niches, products, offers, search volume, and converting keywords for possible build out into sites for organic rankings and ultimately “free” traffic?
So in summary, here is the very simple 2-step Niche Blaster Formula:
- Quickly test out a wide variety of niches and offers using PPC. In my case MSN adCenter search network. While optimizing campaigns, also compile a list of niches and offers that show promise for building content sites around.
- Prioritize the compiled list from step 1 above and build the content sites for attracting organic traffic.
Of course, this is a very high-level view of the method and there are procedural details that I will explain further in posts to follow. For now, if you can accept simply breaking even on most of your PPC campaigns with the longer term goal of building assets for the long haul, then perhaps the Niche Blaster Method is for you.
