A great way to create a passive income stream is to find a product or service you want to promote, write some creative content about it, and promote it via PPC. The idea is simple – if you can come up with a conversion ratio that, when multiplied by your PPC costs, exceeds the payout that the product or service gives you, then you win. Winning is good.
Let’s start with an example, shall we?
I personally like email/zip/first-page submits because although the payout isn’t great, the conversion ratio is high and it’s much easier to measure how your PPC is doing when you have more conversions. Using your favorite affiliate network (Copeac is my favorite), look for programs with decent payouts that might be part of a long-tail search. Markets like free iPhones and ringtones are pretty saturated, so maybe look for something that’s a little more off-the-wall or that you’ve had experience with (i.e. a niche dating site).
The tricky part here is creativity – it’s 4-fold, really: you need to pick a good offer, come up with a nice domain, write some solid content, and create your ads wisely. This took several iterations to get good at – and even now not every one of my sites are home runs. Here’s what I do, in super brief description, from end-to-end:
- Think of a domain that would adequately describe the site without infringing on any trademarks
- Go to GoDaddy, register the domain, set up your dedicated hosting server (hopefully you have one if you’re serious about doing this!) to point to it
- Create a virtual host for the domain (I have lots of domains on the same physical server), create a directory for the Web site content, create a test index file to ensure everything’s working, and hit it in a browser to make sure the DNS has propagated
- Install Wordpress in the site’s root directory
- Pick a theme for the site that suits your content – for example, if you’re going to create content on a automobile offer, pick a suitable automobile theme
- Write, write, write. Come up with some good content that is informative, fun to read, and serves a purpose of promoting whatever offer you chose. This is extremely important because your content is a big part of your Google Quality Score, and this will affect your CPC costs down the road. Remember that your content should be helpful, accurate and informational.
- Link to your offer throughout your site but not in any sort of overbearing way. The goal is to encourage visitors that the product or service is valuable and that entering their email or zip code is worthwhile.
- Start a PPC campaign with long-tail ad groups. If you’re promoting paid surveys, for example, use keywords such as “make money online survey” or “free fun myspace survey” instead of just “paid survey” or “fun survey”. The latter keywords are more expensive because they’re more common, and many times the market on those keywords is very saturated.
After implementing all these steps, you’ll be up and running! Again, this is oversimplified, but this is a true end-to-end business that just about anyone can start.
In terms of what to do going forward, you’ll want to tweak each of these steps to a certain extent. As I’ve listed them above, you’ll want to spend the most time tweaking the bottom step and work your way up. For example, spend the most time on monitoring and modifying your PPC campaign, a bit less time tweaking your content, and even less time changing your Wordpress theme.
The details of the PPC campaign are key because if you’re not getting enough conversions to pay for your PPC costs, this will be a losing venture. It’s as important to find diamond-in-the-rough offers with higher payouts as it is to keep your ad groups very targeted. Low PPC costs and higher payouts give you a much higher margin of error for a lower conversion rate.
