I thought that everyone knew about this but after speaking to a couple of affiliates I realised that it wasn't common practice so I thought I would share one of my processes for building keyword lists.
One of the first things I do when deciding to promote a merchant via Pay Per Click is to see if they have a datafeed available. Now don't worry I'm not going to get all technical here and tell you that you need to build a database etc, in fact here's some easy steps using
Affiliate Window an an example on how to download a datafeed. BTW all networks offer datafeeds I'm just using AW as they have made it easy and I have a browser window open to them at the moment.
Step 1: Click on the "Datafeed" link on the Affiliate Window control panel.
Step 2: You are then presented with a table of all the merchants who offer datafeeds, including the date it was last updated and how many products are available in the feed. Cool.
Step 3: Simply tick the datafeed you want to download and you're away!
It really is that simple. once you have downloaded the file you are left with a spreadsheet that is chock full of keywords. Simple cut and paste the "item description" or "product name" fields from your spreadsheet straight into your favourite PPC engine.
I've found that for best results use the dynamic keyword insertion tool to create your ad text. So lets say that one of the search terms you are targetting is for "Queen Size Beds" for say
Bedstar. Your ad would look like this:
(BTW if you want to preview how your PPC ads will look like then I can recommend
PreviewMyPPC.com, and yes its my site)
Tip: I've found that if you have the keyword/term in the title as well as the body text it really helps conversions.
So there you go, with minimum effort you can create a PPC campaign in next to no time that will deliver traffic to your site/landing page or even direct to merchant that is 100% relevant as you are using the merchants actual product list. All I would say is to keep an eye on it and keep trimming out underperforming keywords etc.
Some merchants like Woolworths for example have a datafeed with over 300,000 items. So thats an instant keyword list of 300,000 terms for you to have a go at.
What I'm listening to right now: Usher ft Mario – "My Love"
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other stuff. I have no idea why I'm blue on this photo though but I like it!
Damn. I thought I’d invented this technique.
It’s worth taking a quick look through your keywords and starting with low bids though. I didn’t and burned through a fair bit of cash very quickly because some of the product names were also generic terms which sent a load of untargetted clicks. Thankfully I had a very low campaign maximum spend which limited my losses.
Hey K!
This really is the ultimate blog for any affiliate marketer. Could you answer me one quick q.. Do you use that affilistore for etoys.co.uk?
Hi Ben, no I use the ShopWindow toolset from Affiliate Window. See http://www.here.org.uk/2007/06/update-on-database-driven-websites-using-shopwindow-toolset.html
Great post as usual. I am just getting started with some niche sites in development and have tinkered around with some direct ppc. I have looked around the CJ interface and can’t find a reference to datafeeds. Does CJ offer them through their interface. I also looked at Azoogle and didn’t find them. I will email my account manager on Azoogle.
Hi Kerion,
The more I gather the knowledge on the affiliate marketing, more I discover new ways, strategies etc.
Thanks for the this great idea.. Putting this in my arsenal tool box..
Vijay
Great post. Maybe you have a list of affiliate networks that have datafeeds?
That technique sounds a bit dangerous to me. You must be going through that spreadsheet line by line to check for bad keywords?
Dazza, its hardly “dangerous” and I’ve yet to come across a bad keyword as the keywords all relate to the product the merchant sells.
I use this technique a lot, but I take it one step further and expand on many of the niche terms already in the feed. Yep, labourious but I find I get some good cheap targeted traffic out of it. Often with a high EPC too. Its only dangerous if you don’t monitor whats happening… but that’s PPC all over!