How To Get Around Product Name Bidding Ban?

[metoo]

I'm selling a physical product. A lot of these physical product sellers all have bans on bidding on their product names etc (cos they convert well I guess).

But they have high EPC's with the network. What sort of strategy should I be looking at to sell these types of products?

I guess you can't really tell what I'm bidding on if I'm using content right? I'd love to get involved further with this sort of advertising.

Do you have any ideas?

 

[johu]

Pick up the product from another company that sells it, not from the direct merchant's affiliate program, and put up ads for it on the brand terms.

 

[nickycakes]

I'm selling a physical product. A lot of these physical product sellers all have bans on bidding on their product names etc (cos they convert well I guess).

But they have high EPC's with the network. What sort of strategy should I be looking at to sell these types of products?

I guess you can't really tell what I'm bidding on if I'm using content right? I'd love to get involved further with this sort of advertising.

Do you have any ideas?

yeah they can't get you for content bidding realistically. it's more for search.

Here's an idea:

Fake Out Your Adwords Competitors With Location Targeting | NickyCakes.com

About 2 years old and works fine. Geotarget out the merchants location so they can't see your ads unless they search from elsewhere.

 

[megatabbers]

Pick up the product from another company that sells it, not from the direct merchant's affiliate program, and put up ads for it on the brand terms.

Not sure if we're saying the same thing but here's something to try:

Sign up to a competing affiliate program, bid on the original product name (i.e. the one you're promoting at the moment), create a lander for the competing product and also stuff a cookie for the original product.

Then do the opposite for the other product.

It's a bit black-hat but it works.

 

[WayneDog]

Not sure if we're saying the same thing but here's something to try:

Sign up to a competing affiliate program, bid on the original product name (i.e. the one you're promoting at the moment), create a lander for the competing product and also stuff a cookie for the original product.

Then do the opposite for the other product.

It's a bit black-hat but it works.

I use to do this for a long time (about 2 years ago) with a review lander. I still blocked the advertisers entire state in adwords etc as well as cloak based on location of the users IP just in case they came across your page another way or a friend sent them a link to your LP to show them. If you really want to be safe just turn on at night (if there is enough traffic) and this should bank for a very long time.

 

[johu]

yeah they can't get you for content bidding realistically. it's more for search.

Here's an idea:

Fake Out Your Adwords Competitors With Location Targeting | NickyCakes.com

About 2 years old and works fine. Geotarget out the merchants location so they can't see your ads unless they search from elsewhere.

You do risk getting kicked out of an affiliate program (and commission withheld) if you get caught, though - Just to note, in something like CJ, you'll often have to un-geotarget the merchant, all of the network's offices, the merchant's search/affiliate agencies (if you can find those out), and still risk getting picked up by the automated TM protection services out there (BrandVerity, TheSearchMonitor, Adgooroo, or agency interns away at college like I did). So of course, it can be worth it, but there's a level of risk you're assuming that you should be comfortable with. Some merchants are uber-sophisticated in this area, others are blithering idiots.

For my post, I was referring to a situation where the product you wanted to advertise (let's say USA Today newspaper, or the Apple Store) had a direct affiliate program where you are not allowed to bid on brand terms - You then pick the product from another retailer (Magazines.com in the first case, NewEgg or MacMall in the second), and advertise on the brand term with that.

Or you could just use your uber search skills to bid on non-brand terms.

 

[johu]

I guess you can't really tell what I'm bidding on if I'm using content right? I'd love to get involved further with this sort of advertising.

Do you have any ideas?

Oh, if any merchant tries to enforce a keyword bidding policy on the content network, tell them to go fuck themselves.

 

[metoo]

Cheers guys. I'll give that a go though. I'm also thinking of trying to maybe build a site with a few pages of content (for QS) then advertise with ppc on the brand terms and collect the email -> redirects to the offer perhaps.

Anyone here collecting emails then marketing almost like on your own backend?

As for:

"Sign up to a competing affiliate program, bid on the original product name (i.e. the one you're promoting at the moment), create a lander for the competing product and also stuff a cookie for the original product.

Then do the opposite for the other product."

Am I asking for Google Slapwords with this? This would be new for me but I'll definitely give it a whirl, stuffing with an img drop redirected with htaccess to make it look like a jpg file.

 

[Boomstick]

Misspellings are fair game. Geotargeting works well. If you want to be real sneaky, you can use dayparting and restrict the ads to nights and weekends when they're less likely to be checking that shit.

You can make some decent loot with poaching, shit I did it when i was starting out, but bottom feedings not gonna get you anywhere in the long run. Once you start scaling, you'll find it is more time consuming than building legit traffic as you gotta keep your stats from setting off red flags.

 

[DelJean]

You can make some decent loot with poaching, shit I did it when i was starting out, but bottom feedings not gonna get you anywhere in the long run. Once you start scaling, you'll find it is more time consuming than building legit traffic as you gotta keep your stats from setting off red flags.

What he said.

Diversify and build for the long run. Two pieces of advice that will never lead you astray.

 

[rogerrabbit]

Something I recently realized has been working EXCELLENT for me. Remember, just because they say you can't bid on their brand name / domain or whatever in SEARCH doesn't mean you can't elsewhere..... creativity is the key to success in affiliate marketing.

 

[metoo]

Once you start scaling, you'll find it is more time consuming than building legit traffic

THIS is what I'm trying to achieve but I'm not too sure how to go about it.

I'm thinking dropping cookies with any of:

- Single LP review plus bonus (can be seen as thin aff site = slappage)
- Single pre sell page with link to offer
- WP blog site (say 6 pages of content) acting as a pre sell with link to offer

Any others you are thinking of?

 

[megatabbers]

As for:

"Sign up to a competing affiliate program, bid on the original product name (i.e. the one you're promoting at the moment), create a lander for the competing product and also stuff a cookie for the original product.

Then do the opposite for the other product."

Am I asking for Google Slapwords with this? This would be new for me but I'll definitely give it a whirl, stuffing with an img drop redirected with htaccess to make it look like a jpg file.

There are no guarantees when it comes to Google. With that said, you should be fine if you can maintain a high enough CTR and a low enough bounce rate on your page. I'm assuming you're not allowed to put the product name in the ad, correct? (i.e. Is X Better than X?)

If that's the case, maintaining a high CTR is imperative. Bid like a cowboy for a bit to establish a good history with the keyword then slowly decrease your bids. Again, there are no guarantees but you should be fine. Worst case scenario, you get slapped on the individual KW with a low QS for not being relevant.

 

[metoo]

I'm assuming you're not allowed to put the product name in the ad, correct? (i.e. Is X Better than X?)

If that's the case, maintaining a high CTR is imperative. Bid like a cowboy for a bit to establish a good history with the keyword then slowly decrease your bids. Again, there are no guarantees but you should be fine. Worst case scenario, you get slapped on the individual KW with a low QS for not being relevant.

Yep that's the case. No product names.

I'm currently experimenting. Ran a similar test for a product name (was allowed) and no joke, bidding like a cowboy was an understatement. This was burning pure cash on one particular keyword until bid prices dropped (around 12 days in - new adwords account).

It's finally profitable, but I'm kinda new to this. I'm just jumping in and having a go really.

Now I'm looking at the much more profitable and vast selection of products whos names you are not allowed to bid on.

Keep tips coming - I need all the help I can get.