Ever wish pay-per-click marketing could be as easy as copy-and-paste? I won’t waste your time trying to convince you it is, because it’s not, but all too many affiliates shoot themselves in the foot by focusing all of their attention where the competition is fiercest – Google.
Most PPC beginners would automatically assume that Google’s traffic is always the highest-converting and most profitable, simply because it is the biggest game in town. They would be wrong. In fact, there are other pay-per-click advertising networks out there that can be easier to use, cheaper and sometimes even more profitable than Google Adwords.
One of the most frequently overlooked is MSN Adcenter. By rights, it should hardly be obscure, given that it is owned and operated by Microsoft, but surprisingly few marketers are taking advantage of the advertising opportunities MSN has to offer.
Sure, MSN may have less than 10% of online search traffic, but that still amounts to hundreds of millions of visitors per month. What’s more, the quality of MSN’s visitors, from a marketer’s perspective, is very high – a high percentage of them have made recent online purchases.
MSN Adcenter has some qualities that make it ideal for the beginner, such as the absence of some of the more burdensome rules and regulations that stymy many beginner affiliate marketers. While there are ad quality guidelines, there is no “Google Slap” to worry about on MSN Adcenter. Ads will not mysteriously start demanding $5 or $10 bids per click in order to keep running, and click prices overall can be considerably cheaper than those on Google Adwords in many cases.
Affiliates advertising on MSN Adcenter also do not have to worry about direct linking – unlike Google Adwords, Adcenter has no rules requiring that only one advertiser per keyword link to a particular landing page, so you are under no obligation to go to the trouble of designing a squeeze page for your campaigns.
Don’t get me wrong – Google Adwords is, and will continue to be, a great advertising platform for affiliates. The thing to remember is that despite its size, Google is not the be-all and end-all of online advertising and affiliate marketing – the field of opportunities is much bigger than that.
For tips and techniques on how to get the most out of MSN Adcenter, check out or click on the banner below. Once you know the secrets of the pros, you may feel like you are literally cutting and pasting your way to a full-time online income.