Bing Ads & Affiliate Marketing

Over the coming weeks I’m going to be sporadically documenting my attempts to drive traffic and sales with Bing Ads and affiliate marketing. The truth is, I’m getting a bit over the SEO grind … and am finding through my “day job” that I’m much more interested in paid traffic such as Adwords, Facebook ads, and Bing (although content writing will always remain my #1 favourite thing to do).

For starters, here are three different strategies which I can envisage being “workable” for Bing Ads:

1. Bing ads direct to affiliate link. This is the quickest and easiest way of getting started. Bing’s network seems very affiliate friendly provided you meet their landing page requirements (no auto-play, unable to pause videos and no exit popups). I’ve run about $50 worth of traffic to a few different offers in this way and have seen some decent click throughs and even some order form impressions on Clickbank offers . However, the consensus seems to be that direct linking is the easiest way to lose money as an affiliate marketer buying PPC traffic. I think that direct linking is best for quickly determining traffic levels and viability.
2. Bing ads to squeeze page & promote via follow up series. I’ve always been a fan of building up a list when it comes to affiliate marketing. In fact, if I had to pick between having a high traffic website or a healthy, targeted list, I’d pick the list any day as it’s just so much easier to convert subscribers/leads into sales. The downside is that you don’t get the chance to profit immediately, which means that getting to the “profitability” stage of things becomes harder.
3. Bing ads to a pre-sell page. Seems like a very popular option with affiliates who claim to be doing well with Bing. Pre-sell gives you a chance to “warm” the traffic, and hopefully increase conversion rates. Also gives an opportunity to catch traffic via an opt-in form as well. Basically, you’ve got the chance to kill two birds with one stone – by having a great review/pre-sell you can hopefully convert more clicks into buyers, and then try and convert the traffic that falls through the cracks into leads.

My goal with Bing Ads experimentation is to eventually get to the point where I’m able to at least triple my money.