One of the most important things in affiliate marketing is understanding the PPC game.  For anyone who doesn't know what PPC means, it means Pay-Per-Click, and it is the text advertising that appears on search engines around the organic (or natural) results.  To see the difference, simply run a search on Google and you'll see the ads separated from the organic.

 

 

The biggest difference between these two is that the organic results are controlled by the search engine's algorithm, while the PPC results are paid placement, so they are ads that anyone can buy.  Here are some differences between the two:

Organic Search Results:

• It can take months or years to get placement in the search engines.  You probably are competing with thousands of websites for your keywords.
• You can "optimize" the way your site is "read" by a search engine, but you have no control over your rankings.  If anyone tells you they can guarantee to get you on the first page of Google's organic results, they are lying.
• The traffic is free, so if you can get it, its great traffic.  Some will argue it is higher quality traffic because people place a lot of value in who search engines rank on the first page.
• Algorithms change frequently, so you may have great rankings one day and not the next.
  

Paid Search Results:

•  You pay for your ad each time it is clicked on.  This is powerful because you only pay if a visitor actually comes to your site.  You don't pay to run a PPC ad.
• You bid on specific keywords, so you can target your traffic by selecting keywords that are relevant to what's on your site.
• You are paying for every click, so you want to make sure to have analytics in place so that you can see if your visitors are doing what you want them to do, and if not, make changes.

I am going to start with PPC advertising, because there is an instant gratification to it that I can start getting traffic within 5 minutes of launching an ad on Google Adwords.  siteMighty is built with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind, so I'll focus on getting natural traffic later on, but for now, I'm going to start with PPC.

Tomorrow, we'll take the first steps towards launching a successful PPC campaign.  The key to success is understanding who I want to target my site to, and then what they are searching for.  In other words, its all about the keywords, baby!

I'm eager to start promoting Creditmighty.com and generating some traffic, and I want to make sure my site is as attractive and professional looking as possible before I do so.  I've found over the years with credit card sites that the more professional and polished you can make them, the more trust you instill in your users. Afterall, I want my users to trust Creditmighty as a resource for making a decision as to what credit card they are interested in applying for (and then apply from my site so I earn the commission).

So, here we go.  Today's tasks are:

1. Choose the theme for the site
2. Upload a logo to match the theme and complete the look of my site.

Both of these are accomplished by navigating to the [Design] link on the blue navigation bar.  So click that, and let's by choosing a theme. 

Choosing a Theme 

The theme of the site is like the site's template.  It enables you to personalize your site to your own design preferences.  We'll be adding more themes all the time, so check back frequently for new themes.  Eventually, we'll be adding the option of creating your own them; so you can truly make your site your own.  I've found the best way to choose a theme is to see what my site looks like skinned with each different theme.  You can do this by clicking the [use this theme] link beside each theme, and then clicking the [view site] link.  Your site will open up a new window, and you can keep this window open and go back to the theme chooser, and switch themes. Open each theme in a new window, and then see which one best matches your tastes.  I like the bright blue colors of the Ocean Breeze theme, so I'm going to go with it.   Remember, you can change your theme at any time, and you can always update your theme as we add new ones.

Uploading a Logo

Now that I've selected my theme, I'm ready to upload a logo.  Creating your own logo will really give your site a professional and unique look.  You may want to design a logo to match the theme you've selected, as you can see, I design my logo with a blue background to match the theme of selected.  Your logo will be automatically resized to fit the theme you've selected.  In some cases it may take a few tries to get the dimensions of your logo to best fit.  But we try to handle this for you by resizing your logo to match the theme.  It's easy to switch back and forth between using a logo and simply using the text of your site's name, so don't worry if you don't get this process exactly right the first time.  You can always update your logo in the future too.  

To upload my logo, I click the [Design] link followed by the {page layout] link.  In the middle of the page, you'll see a "+" icon.  This indicates an expandable drop-down area.  Simply click this, click the browse button and select where you have the logo saved on your computer, and then click upload. Your logo will now be uploaded. I then click my site's name [Creditmighty] in the upper right corner to go look at my site.  Wow, my new logo looks great with this theme, if I do say so myself.

My site's starting to look good, and I'm ready to make some money.  So my next post will be about taking steps to launch a PPC campaign for Creditmighty.com.  Stay tuned.

I'm almost ready to start a PPC campaign and start paying for traffic to Creditmighty.com.  The final step in getting my site ready for traffic is to make sure that all of the affiliate offers on my site are prepared to convert the traffic into applications in the best possible way.  In order to prepare the site for traffic, the best thing I can do is make the site is attractive and usable to me as possible.

Today, I am going to do three things to prep my site:

1. Sort the offers in each category
2. Set my page layout style
3. Set my homepage

Let's get started.

Sorting Offers -- I have the ability to sort all the credit card offers on my site within the navigation categories they are presented.  I want to sort the offers within each category in the way that I think they will be best presented to my users.  This means presenting my best cards at the top of the page. ( I may sort cards based on different reasons: highest payout, most likely to convert, best card, most popular card). Any of these are a great way to sort the offers on your site, just do what makes the most sense to you now, and it's easy to change this at any time. To sort offers, I select the [optimize] link. Here, I can select each category from the drop-down menu, and then sort the cards within that category simply by dragging and dropping them in the order that I want.  It's as easy as that.

Setting Page Layout -- I can set the style that I want the offers to lay out on my page by clicking the [Design] link and clicking the [Page layout] link below it. here I have the option of "stack view" and "tile view". The layouts that these provide for me are represented by the icons.  After I select my style, I can click on the link of my site's name (creditmighty)  in the upper right to view each layout. I'm going to try starting with the tile view.

Setting the Homepage -- I want to set the homepage to the page that I think will be the most useful page on my site for my users.  For example, if I were themeing my site to bad credit cards, I want that category to appear on the home page.  In my case, I think the best card for my site are the low interest credit cards.  To set my homepage to these cards, I click [optimize] and then [homepage].  I now select the radio button next to the category of "low interest credit cards". And that's it!

Creditmighty.com is now just about ready for traffic, the only thing left is to customize my site a little bit to give it its own personality.  next I'll be uploading my own logo, and choosing my favorite design.

Stay tuned for my next post.