Wow. This is huge. Google is now beginning to offer "pay per lead" and other types of pay per action through their Adwords program. For those who get in early, this will be a real money-maker. Even when it gets going, it will still be a tremendous source of leads and sales, but the "early adopters" will have it all to themselves for a while.

Those who have been hurt by the various "Google Slap" changes over the past year or two now have a whole new venue to explore with the introduction of Google Adwords Pay Per Action

No more worries about page quality scores and all that other stuff. You just implement Google Conversion Tracking, place your bids, and away you go.

Instead of being charged "per click" as you are in the current Adwords program, you will be charged only for "actions" such as newsletter subscriptions or product purchases, and how much you pay will be determined by how competitive your bid is.

As of this writing, the program is in "beta" and only available to US advertisers who use, or can implement, Conversion Tracking on their thank you pages. Eventually, it will be open to everybody, although my guess is that use of Google's Conversion Tracking feature will still be a requirement. That's not a big deal, though, as it takes only a few minutes to set up.

In this same announcement, Google also introduced their new "contextual links" program, which will allow you to put adsense links in the context of your blog posts or web site pages, instead of using the traditional ad blocks or text link blocks. This promises to be a big change, too, as publishers can use Adsense contextual links the same way they have been using affiliate links. The fact it's an adsense link will be largely disguised, which will help with click-through rates and earnings.

If you haven't already, sign up (free) for both Google Adwords and also for Google Adsense and explore these new ways of monetizing your website and generating customers, newsletter subscribers, or leads.

Technorati Tags: pay per lead, Google Slap, Google Adwords Pay Per Action

A recent release I've been testing out is Derrick VanDyke's great new membership site, Affiliate Cash Secrets.

In a nutshell, it's a membership that provides you all the tools to promote selected Clickbank products, even if you don't have a website. There are also specific instructions on how to use a variety of methods to get traffic to your splash pages, and how to build and exploit an opt-in email list.

Derrick provides a small and growing list of recommended Clickbank products, and also provides pre-fab splash pages you can use to build your opt-in list while you're promoting the product. The strategy is a tried and true one used by quite a few "Super Affiliates". Instead of just referring people to the sales page and getting one shot at a commission, you get them to subscribe to your list and can continue to market the product (and other related products) to them over a period of time.

In addition to the splash pages, you get recommended email promotions for each product, as well as all the code needed to set up your campaign using any of several popular autoresponders. Campaign tracking is also available, as are some pretty good pointers on how to use articles, ezine advertising, and online list and traffic exchanges, among other traffic tactics.

This is a great product for "newbies" as well as for busy marketers who want to easily add some Clickbank promotions to their arsenal. There really is nothing to stop you from making some minor modifications to some of the splash pages and going on to promote other products, as well.

The formula is simple and straightforward, and the instructions equally clear for each of the several recommended traffic strategies. The beauty of this affiliate marketing system is its simplicity and ease of implementation, and the fact that new products are being added each month.

The main drawback appears to be that as membership grows, you'll find yourself competing with more and more people promoting exactly the same products in exactly the same way. Of course, with a minor ammount of creativity you can "personalize" the splash pages enough to make them different from everyone else's.

The bottom line? Affiliate Cash Secrets appears to be a solid system that should be profitable for most people who are willing to put in even minimal effort, especially given the modest monthly membership fee and excellent support materials provided.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing system, Affiliate Cash Secrets