Google’s Affiliate Network has grown big and has now more advertisers to choose from. Affiliate marketing as you know is one excellent form of making money online and best of all, you do not have to worry about virtually anything. Promote a product or service, get it to convert and eventually receive a commission.
About Google Affiliate Network
Google acquired the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate operations in March 2008. Performics was founded as the first full-service affiliate network in 1998 and was acquired by DoubleClick in 2004. Today Performics Affiliate operates as Google Affiliate Network and remains committed to delivering affiliate channel growth for advertisers and publishers.
Google’s Affiliate Network works just like your normal affiliate ad network. Publishers get paid for every successful sale transactions that a website brings to advertisers. This program works separately from Google Adsense (for the moment) and joining the program is relatively easy. However, the payments of Google’s Affiliate Program is now integrated with that of AdSense making it also easier to reach the payment threshold.
As with any other affiliate network, there comes a time when it starts to be difficult to choose which product or services one will be promoting. Promoting companies as a whole is not targeted (unless they only offer one or two services, such as web hosting) and you may not be very successful in generating any sale as it is not specific. Targeting specific products or services may perform better and can blend much easier either within your blogs topic or for a specific post or review you are writing. Recently, a feature called product search, has been introduced into Google’s Affiliate Network. This is slightly different from the main product search service that Google offers as it is tailored specifically to find products or services within the affiliate network. This feature combined with Google’s Insight For Search can be a powerful tool when choosing the right product you will be promoting.
How To Find Targeted Products Or Services?
Say I have a blog which is about Digital Camera reviews. I can simply join advertisers from the network that sells Videos, Cameras and related accessories and send a link for people to browse around their huge list of items. Rather than doing that, I would prefer to see what people are actually searching for and be more specific, building a link that directs them directly to the product they might be more interested in. This way, there is a much greater possibility that it may convert. Here is how I will do it.
First. I head over to Google’s Insight For Search. I’ll enter the search term “camera” and filter it for, products only, within the US, and for the last 30 days. Here are the results (query done today).
By looking at the results, I immediately see that the top search term for the period I have queried is “digital camera”. On the right hand side of the report, I see that the rising trend (a whopping 200%) for the query I have made is “Pentax Digital Camera”. Heading back to Google’s affiliate network search option I type in “Pentax Camera” and do a search.
From the results found, all I have to do now is select a product and promote it. Obviously, there is a possibility that you won’t find a product or service within the network. If that happens, you can always use any other affiliate network you are working with. This method when applied will allow you to promote more targeted products or services while at the same time promote the advertiser’s other available items. In either cases, if it converts, you make a sale and earn your commission.
Have you tried this technique before? What results have you achieved? If not, give it a try and see how it goes. Good luck and to your success with Google’s Affiliate Network.
Hi Ditesco, Excellent post with two great tools to use for Affiliate Marketing w/Google. I am signed up as a publisher but just haven’t put it to use yet. So the information you provided is great, although I’m having trouble with the first part Google Insight for Search I entered or tried a couple of different items that I’m interested in and didn’t get anywhere. I’ll keep trying to figure out what I’m doing or not doing right. Thanks so much though for a very informative post! Nice blog btw. ur blogging buddy jj p.s. might come back for help if I can’t get what I’m looking for.
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Hi JJ and welcome. First thanks for your comment as I truly appreciate it. Second, if you don’t mind, can you tell me what product are you actually searching for? Sometimes you either have to broaden the search first and then narrow it down, to get the results you want. Other issue is the location or the number of days. For example, a particular product that has not been searched for the last 30 days will most likely not appear if you have it filtered to only show the last 30 days. In any event this won’t be too interesting as you want to find for products who’s trends are rising. This is where the demand is. Good luck and if I can be of help just shoot me an email.
Dave Doolin
One of the most annoying things about affiliate marketing is keeping track of everything. I’m super weak at that. If I understand what Google is doing here, this is going to make affiliate marketing a lot easier.
.-= Dave Doolin invites you to check this out.. How To Unlaunch Your Ebook =-.
Absolutely. You understood that just right. Targeting specific products is way a lot easier than promoting just one sole company with a bunch of products. It really does not make too much sense even promote it.
I am mainly looking forward to see some hosting and other blogging products to join google affiliate network so that i am able to promote them and make some money out of it
.-= Gautam Hans @ Blog Godown invites you to check this out.. Why Bloggers Should Use Videos On Their Sites =-.
Hello Gautam. Yeah, Google’s Affiliate Network is not (yet) strong on those areas you have mentioned. They are great for other products but not for web hosting or related blog products. Clickbank and CJ fits nicely for that matter.
lawmacs
Thanks Ditesco i always enjoy coming here you have always provide such detals on your chosen topic and i totally agree with you targeting specific products are much easier and a better way of earning commission. I never uses Google affiliate network but thanks for this something worth looking at.
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You are welcome Lawmacs. I strongly believe that we should try at all possible every form of marketing products or services online. Targeting is a good way to go because you are giving “buyers” what they are looking for instead of those generic links that sometimes lead them to no where. Give Google Affiliate a try, you might get surprised, although you may have to create another niche blog for that matter, they do not have many options for MMO type blogs:)
Robert
If memory serves me correctly and that’s very doubtful these days 😉 I think I read a post you wrote some time ago and mentioned Google Affiliate Network. At the time, I gave it a try but didn’t have much success finding relevant products for my niche. Guess I’ll need to check it out once more.
In any case, your article is very informative and I think many people will benefit from the info you provided.
.-= Robert invites you to check this out.. Want Success? Do What The Successful Affiliates Do =-.
Ryan Cowles
I’ve finally been looking into monetizing (or trying to) a few different blogs. It can be difficult, but maybe I’ll give this a shot, haha. What have I got to lose, right?
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Right, nothing to loose and (maybe) a lot to gain. Just take action on it and see if it works for you. Good luck
Hannah
I love your posts! Very helpful information. I came here looking for a post about very beginner steps of using the links. I am wondering if the affiliate link they send you can just be added to your site once and will track or if you need to add it to each post that you do.
Amar
Very Informative article,Is it possible to direct link the offer to advertisers page through ppc,or will that lead to low QS?
Regards
Amar
techberth
thanks for the info, i’ll try google affiliate network
Thank you Ditesco for this informative article. Finally I found all my queries in Google Affiliate Network.
Stress Hives
Hello DiTesco,
thanks a lot for your article about Google Affilate Network. I didn´t know Google Insights For Search before, so thanks a lot for that tip :-))
Welcome. Insights is one of my favorite tools to search for “trending” products… Makes it a lot easier 🙂