Is Direct Linking Back?
Back in 2003, I read a book called Google Cash, by Chris Carpenter.
It revolutionized the way I was doing my affiliate marketing by proving that I could put an affiliate link in directly into AdWord ads and earn amazing affiliate commissions, without having to set up a website. Since then the Google Slap came in and I had to come up with another way of making a killing from AdWords.
So I went for the longer approach, I set up mini-websites, each containing about 20-30 pages of content, plus pay per click landing pages for each ad group. This method has worked exceedingly well for me, but it is time consuming and Chris just showed me a private video where he reveals over 26,000 direct linking ClickBank campaigns that are hugely profitable. I thought direct linking was dead, yet this video proves me wrong.
I'm really keen to hear your feedback on what you think of this method? My guess is that if this works as well as it appears to, then I'd better master it before competitors do.What are your thoughts?
Click here to watch this video!
Also, I've managed to talk Chris into appearing on a live teleseminar that you can listen to on Thursday, 9pm EST (New York Time). I'm going to grill him as much as I can to find out exactly how he makes so much money by direct linking, and also you guys will be able to ask your own questions live on the call. Here are the details below:
Interview with Millionaire Chris Carpenter (Direct linking PPC Expert)
- When: Thursday 9pm EST (New York Time)
- Where: Click here to view location
All the best,
Mark
View all 38 comments (Currently displaying latest 20)
By Troy at 8:18 3 Mar 2009
Juergen and Bob.. good posts guys.
I too would like to know the answer to this.
The reason why I do not do direct linking is because of that google rule.
Maybe I am missing something tooo..lol
Might be good to grill him with some questions on Thursdays call.
Regards
Troy
By simonslade at 8:54 3 Mar 2009
Some great questions guys! Save them all up for the interview and you will be able to grill Chris live :)
Make sure you have the date booked in and your questions written down.
By DamianC at 18:24 4 Mar 2009
OH MY GOD! Finally I was trying to find this answer forever! FINALLY!
By MARK BARKOW at 19:34 4 Mar 2009
First of all, Google will not allow this to get out of hand. They frown on direct linking as it is. Sure, you can make money at it if you are really good, but you have to be using keywords with very little competition in most cases, and get really good bid prices which he does. If too many people start direct linking again, Google will slap even harder or will totally ban it entirely. Another point is that Chris's money figures that he shows in his Clickbank account are misleading. he shows an average price per click of .28. Yeah, that might be the cost for his account. His account is mature, Clickbank knows he gives them a lot of business and his account is in very good standing with them. If you are first starting out and open a new account AND USE IT, YOU WILL BE PAYING A LOT MORE PER KEYWORD. Sometimes even more than double what he shows. Where is the profitability then?? Also I know for a fact that this is over $500 program upfront with a high monthly fee, i think $97. In my opinion it is not worth it. In my opinion,there are other spying tools just as good such as pc bully that do just as much for a fraction. If you want to do good at ppc, you really need relevant landing pages. He is full of b.s
By Ronster at 23:50 4 Mar 2009
Do people not remember what happened the first time he launched GCD back in 2006?
Google it, or search for some youtube vids on the subject.
Once bitten, twice shy!
By Sterling at 17:58 5 Mar 2009
One heck of a slick pre-launch campaign! Selling these programs must be where the money is now.
Look, nobody can deliver the holy grail for making money. These gurus are all together sharing and sharing alike here: an "interlocking board of directors."
I brokered and traded futures for 40 years. Over that time, lots of materials appeared that promised the inside track, easy, mechanical no-brainer guide to riches. Now if the product could deliver that, who would share it?
Don't sell the goose that lays the golden eggs.
If I had the ability to generate such enormous profits, why would I take the time and expense required just to dilute it, to educate my competition? Perhaps I would for $500,000 upfront and an easy $100 a month from, say 700 subscribers.
Hey, you think 700 subscribers cloning reversephonelookup are all going to make $1000 a day?
Remember the adage: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Take Adrienne Devita's sound advice: roll up the sleeves and get your hands dirty with the data. Do it by hand and master the techniques in the course. (Recall the part about long-term "Authority sites?) When you get really good at it, know all the ins-and-outs, then you can start selling your own software. :)
By BlueFire at 18:03 5 Mar 2009
You guys/gals are missing one key concept, which is what makes GCD unique.
KeywordSpy, KeyCompete and SpyFu allow you to determine which keywords are being bidded on per destination URL. They have hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of keywords which they have been tracking for many months.
The theory is that if a particular keyword is still being paid for by people for a particular destination URL, then it should be profitable. For example, it may show you that the keyword "make money online" is being paid for by the people who own/promote the destination URL "affilorama.com".
The problem with the above is that you have no way of knowing WHO is bidding on that keyword when pointing to that destination URL. You'll have a never-ending stream of newbies out there who will throw up thousands of keywords on Google and point it to their favorite affiliate site.
So even if the word has been paid for by people for the past year, it may have been promoted by hundreds of newbie affiliates who paid for that keyword for a few weeks and then went broke.
The second type of tracking available is from sites/products such as: Hexatrack, PPC Bully, Ad Spy Pro, Affiliate Elite, Traffic Travis, etc.
These technologies are one step down from those listed above, since you have to manually enter the list of keywords which you want tracked.
You then need to wait many days to see any useful results (typically recommended at 20 days) before you can act on it with some degree of safety.
In contrast, Google Cash Detective 2 is the only technology I know of which enables you to track the TARGET URL rather than the DISPLAY URL.
So instead of spying on people pointing to the display URL "salehoo.com", you can now spy on a specific target URL such as "myafflink.salehoo.hop.clickbank.net".
If that same target URL is consistently displayed in the Google ads for more than 20 days, then you've just found a specific affiliate who seems to have a profitable combination of: keyword, ad, destination page.
Some other affiliates will use a review page as a landing page, or a pre-sell landing page.
GCD2 will allow you to spy on all of it.
I hope that helps to make things clear.
It is true that the first time that Chris launched Google Cash Detective and Google Cash Automator, there were a lot of problems. I didn't personally sign up at that point, so I'm unaware of the specifics....but I have heard various other people warn me of this.
Even though this product is unique, hopefully has been fixed from the prior problems it had, and shows great potential.....be prepared to pay for it. The upfront cost is expected to be around $1000 with an ongoing monthly fee of around $100.
There's a lot more that goes into having a consistently profitable campaign than just keyword spying: tracking, split testing, further keyword research to expand on long tail terms, expand to the content network, content network research, landing page creation, adgroup management, creating a proper sales funnel, email promotion, etc, etc, etc.
Don't think that GCD2 is the silver bullet that will change your life.....especially if you're not in a position to afford of $1000 to get this tool.
Having said that, I'll likely buy this product on launch day, due to seeing the potential of it.....but I'm already in a position where I'm earning thousands of dollars in profit per month from my existing internet marketing activities. It's always good to re-invest in your business, but again, please be careful with thinking this is a silver bullet if you can't afford the price.
By Cascadia at 21:47 5 Mar 2009
You are probably correct about his account being mature and are right to be skeptical. If you don't put the time and energy into it and learn from the training, it will be useless and you will fail. What you can do from looking at the campaigns revealed in the program is what has been successful and learn from that. You can copy it but it is better to revise it and put your own mark on it. Don't slap it together and expect to be successful. This is not a get rich overnight program. Some probably will have success overnight but not many. The majority will give up before they have really tried. I have seen many tools as well but this one combines many of them and brings it all together. It is a worthwhile tool if you are serious about it.
By cmadams154 at 23:19 5 Mar 2009
As another student of Arbitrage Conspiracy and being in our 9th week of INTENSE training, I can see the value of this tool. However, it is just a tool and like learning anything in life, it is always good to learn how to do it yourself FIRST and then you are better able to determine which tool is best for YOU and your needs. We are learning the techniques to do this manually...it can be done but wow does it take time and my wrists hurt already from all the hours of typing and clicking I've done for AC!!. Investment versus expense and ROI is the decision formula. I"ll buy when I've got enough in my PPC account to invest in more tools...I believe in PPC..persistence and application of the knowledge will pay off....Go Turtles!!
By mkproglass at 1:01 6 Mar 2009
Mark,
I really like the new tool and can barely wait to get my hands on it.
Thanks,
Ken
By Nicm at 20:07 6 Mar 2009
I believe this is ppc marketing in its finest form
Nic
By Dez Futak at 7:55 7 Mar 2009
I second CMAdam's & BlueFIre's comments - as a fellow AC member, I've been learning that there are many factors & skills needed for successful PPC campaigns. I'm sure GCD2 will be of great help - but at the end of the day, it will only be the most useful to those who've put in the consistent effort to *master* the skills needed - and as always in life, there is no real shortcut to mastery :)
By robertcwik at 10:27 8 Mar 2009
@Ben,
You were lucky! I did exactly the same, and even created a landing page (was easy as the reverse phone det. provides one). 70 clicks, 0 sales. I don't mention the cost... Simply put, If he had left this campaign running, then those 6 sales would be soon diluted in empty clicks, too.
What's the fuss about it? Are you folks really so happy to spend more and more money to feed Google and creators of various programs, like this?
OK, I think I have seen here someone say they were successful. My question always is: how much does it cost? Because telling me "I earn $2000 a month on the internet" does not impress me. You may earn $2.000 profit spending $100.000, and I am not in a position to do that. Show me the way to EARN $10 a day, spending $50 (a real one, one that works, and the one for which you don't have to include the "Earnings Disclaimer" in fine print), and which I can scale to reach even $1000 a day spending $5000, and I will even share my profits with you.
I know, there isn't such program, and all this is just another nice try to drain your pockets. The same quality as PPC Classroom, and others. And I have already paid to dearly for my online "success".
By Yahara at 14:03 8 Mar 2009
Is it ethical to copy and paste all the ads at GCD?
By bollox at 15:20 9 Mar 2009
You lots are just stupid. If you really could earn so much every day on the internet everyone would be doing it! Plus you would not get told how to do it! The reason why these people make money is because people like you pay for it, so that is how they make their money!
They promise that you will make money like them, so you pay them adding to their money and you get told something you can find out for free on google! lol
By Ronster at 17:16 9 Mar 2009
Yahara wrote,
"Is it ethical to copy and paste all the ads at GCD?"
If you spent months setting up a profitable campaign, researching profitable keywords, testing and tweaking it by running split tests, and then someone came by and stole it from you...
How would you feel?
This is assuming that GCD works. There's still no evidence of that yet. People shouldn't listen to pre-launch hype from people who stand to gain financially from it. They have a biased opinion.
There are other much better ways of doing research for profitable niches and keywords.
PPCKahuna teaches how to set up profitable campaigns by using PPC plus SEO systems so if you were to stop running your Adwords campaign you're still going to get traffic from natural search queries. This is a much better long term approach in my opinion. Plus you don't have to steal anyone's hard work.
-Ronster
By Stephen at 3:17 19 Mar 2009
Direct linking is not back in my opinion. You try setting up any adwords campaign with dl and see how hard you get slapped. Even if you get a Domain name from go daddy or GDI, you will still get slapped by Google because one of their terms clearly states that your display url cannot be similar to any other ad bidding for the same keyword. The same goes for your destination url. Google wil only show the higher ranking one. Even if you increase your bid, that doesn't mean that your ad will be shown. You still need a better CTR than the higher ranking ad. So you can bid as high as you like to achieve a better CTR and spend hundreds if not thousands in adwords. PPC spy GCD etc. are good tools to learn ccp but by no means a silver bullet
By Suprah at 6:02 19 Oct 2009
Hey guys, my first affilorama post but not a good one :(
I signed up to the trial of Google Cash, GCD and GCA, it was alright but i didn't have any luck with it. I've been attempting to cancel my subscription with absolutely no success. All support e-mails from their cancellation policy bounce back from the postmaster saying the mailboxes don't exist, and i just sent through a support ticket but i don't expect a reply. Of course once the 7 day trial is over you get billed fairly big amounts, (big to me, as i'm just a newbie with no money).
I just called my bank and cancelled my credit card, just to be sure. Googling "google cash" comes up with a lot of sites with people having the same problem. Also, I found that ethically the google cash system isn't fair, as I wasn't aware the strategy was just "copy other people".
**when everyone elses strategy stops working, you'll just go down with them!**
The lesson I think i'm learning is that there isn't gonna be a big short-cut to finding a successful strategy. I'll continue to learn from free content from sites like this, but this is definitely a good wake up call!
By Suprah at 1:12 20 Oct 2009
Re: my above post
I sent a 'support ticket' to google cash asking to cancel the trial and they responded back to me via e-mail within a day (which was good) asking to confirm cancellation. I feel a bit more relieved but it's still a worry that the e-mails in their cancellation policy don't exist.
I highly recommend doing some research on google cash before trialling/purchasing.
By jpastorizo at 19:00 20 Oct 2009
Suprah,
Welcome!
You're fortunate cause you are now here and can learn a lot here to start building your online business. Always remember, "There are no shortcuts to a place worth going."
See you in the forum.
Regards,
Renato
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