As some of you already know that most anticipated game ever “Halo 3″ from Microsoft came out today at midnight. Well, I don’t follow games as much as I used to - you grow out of playing games, right? Plus, I kind of parted my ways out of investing in game companies like “Take Two Interactive (Grand Theft Auto)”, “Activision ( Quake, Call of Duty, Doom 3, Tony Hawk)” and most prominent industry leader “Electronic Arts (Madden Football, Tiger Woods).” These companies have done me very well during the cyclical holiday seasons and that’s coming around again so you know stock prices are going to go right back up once more. Okay before I get carried away with that, let me get back on track with Halo 3 release.

When I promote time sensitive affiliate programs I have to use as many resources as I can, and I use many keyword tracking software programs like Wordtracker, Keyword Elite, and Google Trends. If you don’t want to fork out money to buy these programs then you can still use FREE searches:

Free Wordtracker URL: freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
Free Keyword Discovery Search: www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
Digital point Keyword Suggestion: www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Google trends here: www.google.com/trends/

I liked that Google Trends decided to change and give us almost real-time search results. You can now find hot search topics here: www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X I’ll get into details about each one down the road but going back to Halo 3 release:

Last night I was looking at this very carefully because I missed out with Harry Potter presale - I got in late trying to sell it when it was already released. That didn’t work out so well
I was slow to go on the Halo 3 presale as well but I figured I would score some sales next couple of days.

GOOGLE TREND PHOTOS GO HERE

It is obvious that people are searching for Halo 3 related information today so lets talk about how to take advantage of this. I’m going to use Amazon Affiliate because people trust Amazon and shipping is almost flawless. We want to focus on “BUY” keywords. I did some research and created adwords ppc campaign with keywords:

buy halo 3, halo 3 sales, halo 3 legendary edition.

You are probably thinking why not use “Halo 3” most search term? I totally agree that “Halo 3” is top searched term but I’m taking that out because three reasons.

1. Halo 3 is too general. We don’t want people clicking on our PPC ads when they are searching for words as you see above (halo 3 reviews, halo 3 cheats, halo 3 wallpaper) etc.

2. “Halo 3” keyword’s minimum bid with adwords is $0.50 and that is pointing to Amazon.com landing page. So I decided to stay out of it this keyword because of profit margin $59.99 per sale x commission rate. I don’t think I could be profitable at $0.50 per click with $60 sales with halo game.

3. Third reason is that there is some fierce competition in US and UK. Every affiliate in the world are wanting share of this HUGE demand. It is estimate to bring in $150 million in sales with Halo3!

Here are some Google Search Results for US: Halo 3

Google UK Search Results for US: Buy Halo 3

So, last night I stayed up late getting my latest PPC campaign running. I wake up this afternoon, first thing I do is login to my adwords account to check stats before even brushing my teeth. I was worried and I wasn’t sure how much traffic I would receive over night and I had budget for $75/day per campaign. I hate to mess up and waste a boatload of money. I’ve had my share of losing money with PPC making some stupid mistakes, and I don’t have $30,000 to do $10,000 PPC experiment like Shoemoney.

My Stats this afternoon.

We won’t be able to find out the conversion rate until Amazon stats update tomorrow. Amazon seems to still be in the 90’s with their stats being updated while many companies update their stuff in real-time. I wish I had more time to get into details today. Maybe I’ll break down this post and do a follow up? I really want to share some insights on how to take advantage of Amazon referral rate here:

Amazon.com Referral Rate

I still fail at PPC campaigns to this day but I’m not going to give up because I learn from my mistakes. I learn as I test and compare stats. Occasionally, I will run into what I call “Wall Street” when you hit a jackpot with affiliate program that converts well and profit margin is good. Until…lol they pull the program.

If you want to make some money with affiliate programs then this is the time. You should prepare domain names, landing pages, keywords, do a small test run then run it fully this holiday season because it only comes once a year. So much money to be made so take advantage of this. Next one coming up: Halloween Products

If you are not familiar with Amazon Affiliate then check out more info here: affiliate-program.amazon.com
I’m currently at 6.5%, I don’t promote amazon.com consistently. I have sold between 31 – 100 items via amazon.com affiliate and they are paying me 6.5% performance rate for each product. I’m going to point out that PROFIT MARGIN is very important when you are promoting Amazon products. Because getting paid 4% vs. 6-7% commission is huge difference.

For example: Would you want to promote a book at $15 at 4% commission rate versus promoting higher ticket item like $60 game at 4%?

Anyways, this is all for now. Thanks for reading.

Filed under: Make Money Online