Pay-Per-Click Affiliate Marketing: Why PPC Affiliates Need Better Keyword Tools

Pay-per-click (PPC) affiliate marketing is a fiercely competitive field of search. Marketers recieve revenue from the actions that website visitors take, including clicks, impressions, and leads. Accordingly, the key to success in affiliate marketing is choosing a niche where you can build up an engaged audience that is likely to take actions on your site, such as clicking on your ads.

Profitable PPC affiliates operate on very large scales and at very high efficiencies.

Other Types of Affiliate Marketing

• Pay per impression affiliate – Advertisers receive revenue based on the number of impressions ads served on their website are viewed by visitors. These are often seen in niche websites with a targeted audience.
• Pay per lead affiliate – Advertisers are compensated for attracting website visitors who fill out enough information in a web form to be sold off to other companies. These are often offered by financial services.
• Pay per action affiliate – Advertisers earn revenue based on the number of defined actions from the network ads that live on their affiliate websites.

To overcome these challenges, you need to quickly uncover profitable keyword niches before the competition can get to them.

How Keyword Research Benefits Pay-per-click Affiliate Marketers

To operate on the massive scales necessary to make a living as an affiliate marketer, you need to practice ongoing, iterative keyword research. You need both popular, competitive keywords as well as thousands of targeted, high-intent keywords. This will require tapping into the long-tail of search.

Having the right keywords is even more important for affiliate PPC than having an extensive list. After all, traffic alone isn’t enough—you need to push targeted traffic to an affiliate website to drive sales and make money.

Using WordStream’s Keyword Tools for Affiliate Marketing Research

The first step to building a successful affiliate marketing site is choosing a profitable niche. Here are some tips for finding the right niche for your site, via Sugarrae:

• Look to your hobbies (and your friends’ hobbies) – People are passionate about their hobbies and often spend a lot of money on gear and supplies to feed their hobbies. Think: fly fishing, knitting, car repair, coin collecting….
• Think about accessories – If there’s a popular product, there are popular accessories for it. Think: iPhone accessories, car accessories, home decor…..
• Browse Google Trends – Google Trends is a good way to get inspired by topics and new niches that are currently driving a ton of consumer interest.

Once you’ve chosen your niche, it’s time to do your research. Use the Free Keyword Tool to uncover hundreds of relevant keywords to use in your affiliate marketing campaigns and on your website.

Be sure to choose your location and industry, and connect your Google Ads PPC account for the most accurate results and tons of actionable competitive data:

Just enter your email address to get the full list of keywords.

By including high-volume niche keywords on your affiliate site, you can drive a lot of interested, targeted traffic and start earning income from your ad clicks.

Need more help? Check out our easy guide to keyword research