A: Is Google AdWords the least expensive way to advertise affiliate programs?

I'm not sure if "Sandi" (who used a Yahoo email address to send her? question) was sending me a legitimate question or was just trying to get free publicity for the five web site links that she? posted in the email. The sites all had a similar... ahem... adult party theme and I'm not going to list them here (nice try though!).

But because I'm bored, I'm going to give Sandi the benefit of the doubt and answer her question.

Sandi, advertising costs are relative to ROI. The only way for me to know if AdWords is your least expensive advertising option is to know your affiliate price point and AdWords conversion rate. As you are in a highly competitive market, you may find bidding for keywords is expensive and tightly held by companies with deeper pockets.

I also know that Google places specific restrictions on affiliate sites - only one ad per search query is allowed for advertisers sharing the same top-level domain in the display URL. In other words, if you're an affiliate advertiser, your ad may not show for a query because another affiliate or the website that runs the affiliate program also has ads using the same (or similar) domain. More information is available here. Give AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) a good 3 month try with well-written landing pages and they may work out to be cost-effective for you. But I would also try lesser known Pay Per Click search engines as listed on this page, where the competition isn't as steep and the click costs are lower.