I have been in the PL course for two weeks now. I was trying to use one of the products the PL course has set up for us to use to practice Affiliate marketing skills. In Google Adwords, you have to supply a Display URL (such as www.mystore.com) and a Destination URL. The PL course has provided the web address on the 12 products that the program has set up for us to use, but where do we get the Display URL? Do we have to create one? Another question - Have any of you tried using the 12 products that the PL course provides for learning Affiliate Marketing? If so, how did you do?
I'm not a member of PL so I can't comment on that. And I'm not that experienced with PPC, but I have tried it out a little. There are two URLs for your ad, the display URL and the destination URL. The destination URL is where the ad will actually link to. You want to use that to link to your landing page or directly to your affiliate link. The display URL is what actually shows up on your ad when other people see it. You don't want that big ugly hoplink showing, so you use a short catchy display URL. Also, with Adwords, your display url has to have the same root as the destination url. For example.... Destination url- www.clickbank.com/hoplink/randomthing/numbers1234/html Display URL- www.Clickbank.com I hope this helps.
fatman pretty much summed it up. Personally, I haven't used those websites, but I did use them as an example to see how to set up my own!
I hate to keep asking all of you these questions, but I am new at this and I cannot say that I am a computer wizard, but- 1. So, pcwork, have you done this before? Are you saying I should secure a URL Domain, create a web page, and add all 12 of the products that the PL course gives us to that URL Domain? 2. Question for fatman - The destination URL's that the PL course gives us for the 12 products that they want us to practice our marketing skills are as follows: http://myPLcoursename.bezoogle.com/pp/producttype. All 12 of the products have this destination URL. I am not sure what "bezoogle.com/pp/" stands for, but all of these addresses will take me to the landing page. If what you are saying is correct, all 12 of the products will have a destination URL of www.myPLcoursename.com. Are you sure this is correct? 3. To all, my understanding is that to get a URL Domain name, you have to buy one from a registrar. Is this correct? No way to get a free URL Domain name? That means, that every product that an Affiliate marketer wants to sell, if he wants a unique display URL name, he has to pay for it. Correct?
Don't feel bad about asking questions, we're all here to help! I'm no computer whiz either, but I'm learning new little things every day. Again, I don't know too much about Profit Lance, so I can't offer specific advice. Are you trying to link to a single landing page with 12 products on it, or are you trying to link to 12 different landing pages? I'm a little confused. The link you posted didn't work for me. If there are 12 different landing pages and all of them start with myPLcoursename.com in the actual URL, then yes I think they will all have the same display URL too...somebody can correct me if I'm wrong though. And yes, unfortunately you have to buy domain names. If there actually was a way to get free domain names, I'm not sure I'd trust the service since you don't know how reliable it could be. Domain names aren't that expensive though....1&1 sells .com domains for only $7, and other extensions are even cheaper. Feel free to ask any other questions, I hope this helped some. Good luck!
You should register a domain name for each group of related products you intend to promote. Do not promote cars and horses on the same domain name. This domain name page is the hub for all your product pages and display url for google adwords. For Example if you are selling 3 different pet toys your display url might be: http://www.pet-toys.com Next you want to make a landing page for each product each containing a review or your thoughts on that specific product. If you don't know HTML use a program that makes it easy. These pages link to your main page and contain links leading your visitors to the products you are promoting, along with your affiliate code. So If you are selling dog toys, cat toys and bird food, your landing pages, or google destination urls for each ad might be: http://www.pet-toys.com/dog-toys.html http://www.pet-toys.com/cat-toys.html http://www.pet-toys.com/bird-food.html Tip: use your keywords in your page names When you tell people about your pet toy web site in general use www.pet-toys.com When using google search people are looking for highly relevant results, which is why you use your specific landing pages and adwords destination URLs. You get them where they need to go, but your ad still looks pretty because you used a different display URL. People on the web have very short attention spans. If they don't immediately see what they are looking for, they will go somewhere else. Experts say you have less than 5 seconds to make a person feel they are in the right place when they arrive at your landing page. In reality there are two types of shoppers using google search. Browsers and buyers. Browsers are going to type a very general word into google like "pet toys", browse around your site and buy nothing. Yes they found your site, but you paid for the clicks. Buyers use very specific keywords like "chew toys for large dogs". When you set up your google adwords campaigns you want to avoid using too many general keywords and blowing your budget. Instead, think of more specific keywords and you will get more sales. Another Example: "home based typing jobs" is a better keyword than "home jobs". Hope this helps you get started! Cheers
To fatman, since I wrote the above question, I have done some further research and found out that there are free sites URL names, but as you said, they are not reliable. So, I learned I will need to buy one. What is the web address for the one you talked about - 1&1? Are any of these registrar's for domain names better than others - or, is there only a price difference? In answer to your quetion, fatman, right now I am only trying to link to one landing page. The PL course gives us 12 landing pages - each one is a review of a different product. I am trying to link to only one of these. The problem I will have if I have more and if you are correct about the display URL must have the same beginning root as the destination URL, is that I will have 12 products that will all have the same display URL - that is www.myPLcoursename.com. And that makes no sense. Also, myPLcoursename is not very catchy for the product I am trying to promote - no relevence! To Steve, you gave some great advice. Thanks! But as you can read above, I still have a problem with creating my display URL. Do you know if the display URL has to have the same root as the beginning root of the destination URL? If so, I believe that is a problem in promoting these particular products. Thanks to all and I will look for some further advice - hopefully from all of you and others.
Sounds like you are doing a good job with your research. I think the price for domain names is about the same everywhere, but the service might vary. I have heard a lot of complaints about using Godaddy. I have used 1&1 multiple times at www.1and1.com and the service is fast and nice. I have also heard good things about www.namecheap.com if you want to try that. No matter where you buy from, .com names are the most popular and they are about $7. Also, I don't currently do PPC, but the last time I experimented with it, Google required you to have the same root for your display and destination urls. And the extension has to match too. For example, I made a site for free with Weebly and it had the subdomain .weebly.com. When I made the ad on Adwords I put the display url as mysite.weebly.com and the display url as just mysite.com since it looked shorter and more professional. They quickly took down my ads though and said that the names had to match exactly. That is just for Adwords though. If you use Yahoo Search Marketing, then you can pick whatever display url you want. For example, you would have myprofitlancecourse.landingpage/whatever/numbersandjunk/html as the destination URL. You can pick anything as the display though, such as GreatEbook.com and it would get approved. Yahoo is much more easy to do what you want with, but Google gets the majority of the visitors, so the choice is yours. Hope this helps.
STOP! It's great to share knowledge but you have to be careful about spreading misinformed knowledge. First, misunderstanding about domain names... fatman: For example, I made a site for free with Weebly and it had the subdomain .weebly.com. When I made the ad on Adwords I put the display url as mysite.weebly.com and the display url as just mysite.com weebly.com IS NOT the subdomain! weebly.com IS the domain! mysite is actually the subdomain of weebly.com fatman: When I made the ad on Adwords I put the display url as mysite.weebly.com and the display url as just mysite.com since it looked shorter and more professional. They quickly took down my ads though and said that the names had to match exactly. Secondly, the display URL and the destination URL DO NOT have to match exactly in Google Adwords! In fact, they do not have to match at all! The main reason why people lose money in adwords is because they don't understand it and don't know what they're doing. But that's good for people who knows what they're doing because eventually, those that don't know quit. Listen very carefully... The display URL has to be the same domain as the domain of your landing page. Read the above statement again. Notice I did not say the display URL has to match the destination URL. In the case of Profit Lance... The destination URL would be: http://myPLcoursename.bezoogle.com/pp/producttype The display URL could be any of the following: http://myPLcoursename.bezoogle.com/pp/producttype www.bezoogle.com www.BeZoogle.com bezoogle.com BeZoogle.com ...and it could be many many more. In this case, bezoogle.com is the domain. It is also the domain in which the user lands on after clicking your adwords. That page which the user lands on after clicking your ad would be the landing page. Here, myPLcoursename is actually the subdomain of the domain bezoogle.com. fatman, now you understand why Google rejected your ad? The display domain has to be a VALID domain name and has to be the domain in which the user is taken to after clicking the ad. So what happens if you put myPLcoursename.com as the display URL? Of course your ad would be rejected. But here's why... The user doesn't land on myPLcoursename.com after clicking your the ad. They're taken to bezoogle.com. If myPLcoursename.com isn't a registered domain, it would be an invalid domain. So it seems you haven't quite understand the difference between a domain and a subdomain. And it's obvious you don't understand adwords enough. Now, why did I say the display URL and the destination URL don't have to match at all? Because the destination URL can be a redirect, a hoplink, or a tracking URL. Here's the sequence... user clicks ad -> destination URL redirects to landing page -> user lands on landing page. So here the destination URL can be on a different domain from the landing page. But the display URL has to be the same domain as the landing page, not the destination URL. Again, this is why forum isn't always the best place to learn for FREE. What's FREE could be totally wrong and could cost you more than you think. But what you just got from me is a valuable freebie!
Nice post, thanks for the information! I already stated that I am not an expert with Adwords....in fact, I have only lost money with PPC. All I did was describe my experiences in hopes of clarifying some things for him. I'm glad you jumped in to correct me. I don't think all of my advice was bad, but yes, regarding PPC I am definitely not an expert. All I know is that when I put up my ad as whatever.com it was rejected. Then when I changed it to whatever.weebly.com it was approved. So the "weebly" part is the most important part you are saying? If I just put Weebly.com as the display url it would have worked? Or maybe I could have used weebly.com/whatever as the display? Thanks again for the advice. As long as people with experience do share their info, then I forums are a nice place to learn. Good luck to us all!
display URL is what you want people to see as the url and the destination URL what the actual url is RIGHT? so if I put my url say www.fakeurl.gov as the display but the actual url is www.fakeurl.gov/320983/blah/fakeagain Adwords will say thats okay? Just want to get it straight I'm alittle confuse with adwords.
Thanks to all - some important info. I have read this six times, and might have to soak it in another six times. So, in my PL case. If my destination URL is http://myPLcoursename.bezoogle.com/pp/producttype, would the following be acceptable as a display URL: http://www.BeZoogle.com/producttype??
