A common misconception about sending PPC to traffic to affiliate offer is that its a very high risk activity. Although there are very often large sums of money spent, and many possible things that can go wrong, overall I consider it very low risk. That risk can even approach zero when starting out, and here’s why.
1. Real time tracking eliminates much of the risk. You can monitor your spend and your earnings simultaneously. This way you can see exactly what is happening hour by hour throughout the day, and make adjustments on the fly. There are not many things in business that give you this level of control. You can simplify the whole concept to 2 bars – red and green. As long as the green bar is rising faster than the red, you are making profit. Check with your account manager about any reporting delays before starting an offer, and get to know the update frequency of your PPC service. There might be small delays, but for the most part, tracking is nearly real time. Watch your bars frequently and reduce your risk.
2. To completely eliminate risk, you can use free clicks with new accounts. Most of the big 3 PPC engines have coupons, or links that provide free clicks when opening new accounts. Google and Yahoo always have them, MSN only occasionally. For example, the Yahoo banner on the right of this blog will lead to $50 in free clicks on YSM. (B.t.w. – You can now fund new YSM accounts with Paypal, no credit card needed. 2nd account anyone?) This takes the initial risk of spending money on non converting offers right off the table. If you were to bid .10 clicks that would be 500 clicks to throw at a new offer, which should be more than enough to see if it converts.
Just out of curiosity, what RIO do you usually shoot for?
Jared, I shoot for any positive ROI. Even a break even campaign makes money on your credit card rewards reimbursement.
really as long as its profitable I don’t mind