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7 Times the Exposure for 
Your 5¢ Click

by Sid Hale

You've seen the ads.   Make MASSIVE Amounts of Money In Record Time on Google (Even Without a Website or a Product!) Sounds attractive.  Especially if you're new to marketing on the internet, and are a little tentative about making the commitment to get into it full-time.   Maybe you have no desire to do it full-time.  Maybe you just want to make enough to handle the payment on a new pick 'em up truck. So this is ideal, right?  No need to decide on a domain name, contract for hosting, learn HTML or copywriting skills.  Just put ads on the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines, and drive traffic to the merchant's website.  You get rich off the commissions! Well, I only wish it were that easy.   If you've been around for 30 days or more, you've also heard that it takes 7 or so exposures (on average) for a visitor to take action.  Now, I haven't personally confirmed that number, but I can say unequivocally that it is EXTREMELY rare that a visitor to any of my websites buys anything the first time they read my sales page! Now put that concept together with the fact that on a PPC search engine, one click brings a visitor to your landing page ONCE! What happens if the merchant's sales page isn't very compelling?  Or if your ad wasn't very targeted?  If your ad happens to be the "7"th time this visitor has been exposed to the merchant's product you may be in luck, but does that mean that 6 in 7 of your click-thrus are doomed to failure? This isn't rocket science.  You could figure this out for yourself by just analyzing your own behavior.  Are you that different from your potential customer? How many times have you read a sales page on the web, scrolled down to the price, and decided to just think about it a while.  Days or even weeks later you come across another ad for the product and go back to re-read the sales page - make sure your first impressions were right.  That maybe, just maybe the product is something you want or need.   Then you check the price again.  Can you really justify that much money right now?  You decide to think about it until later tonight, or tomorrow... Get the picture? Is there any reason to expect your visitors to behave any differently than you do?  Is your ad so much better and the product so great that your visitors will just have to snatch it up the first time they click through from your ad? With a single contact, it's much easier to get a visitor to sign up for a free newsletter or quality download, and then you get to contact that same visitor more than once.  I've been using Google Adwords for about a year for various campaigns.  On one campaign I got 866 click thrus (1%) last month and from those, I got 209 sign ups for a free 5-day course.  At 8 cents per click, that means it cost me $65.35 for those 209 opt-ins.  But...  I promote 2 different recurring income programs in the free course and follow-up emails.  If 2 of those 209 opt-ins sign up for one of those programs (1% conversion), I'm better than break even for the month.  For every month that they keep their membership, the commissions for those months are pure profit.  Plus they're still on my list and I can promote other offers to them over time.  Rather than trying to sell a product with PPC advertising, I use it to generate targeted leads.  I know that they are interested in what I'm selling because my course is closely aligned with what I'm selling.  Rather than a single shot at them when they click on my Google ad, I get to send them an email every day for 5 days.  Then I send them a special report at the end of the course that still promotes my primary offer, and they are on my list so I can keep selling to them.  For the right product in the right niche, with a great sales page and a good commission rate - you may be able to do very well promoting the merchant's sales page for a while.  But when the sales begin to dry up you have to start all over again, because they were never your customer.  They are the merchant's customer.   You don't have their contact info, much less their permission to contact them.  How are you going to sell anything else to them?  What was the total lifetime value of the customer? Instead, use your PPC ads to get an opt-in.  Create a sales page to give away a free course or a subscription to your newsletter - in exchange for an opt-in to your list.   Each click-thru costs the same.  In fact it may be cheaper - because there's less competition (and more demand) for freebies on the Pay-Per-Clicks.  Most advertisers aren't willing to spend money to give something away, and there are many more prospects willing to pay with their email address rather than cash.  What's the down side of this strategy?  You'll probably pay for some opt-ins that will never buy anything from you (but you paid the same as you would have paid for a single opportunity to sell to them). The up side?  You get many chances to "warm" them to your original offer - greatly increasing your chances of making a sale.  You get to make offers for related products - greatly increasing your chances of making a sale.  You get to "poll" them to see what other products might be of benefit to them - greatly increasing your chances to make ANOTHER sale. If you can make a sale from a single exposure to your PPC ad, great.  More power to you.  But at the very least, make sure you capture the lead.  Don't spend your 5¢ simply to have them click away - never to be seen again!   About the Author: Sid Hale is the owner of several successful websites including ad-CLiX.com and Info-Syndicate.com, and is co-creator of  jvAlert - a membership site for facilitating high-level Joint Ventures. Join thousands of subscribers who benefit from our highly informative iMarketing iNsight ezine. 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