Before you flip that click...
Judging by the number of people who are stopping here via Technorati and the "click flipping" tag used on a few other posts, I feel like I should take a moment and remind those who are interested in becoming click flippers to consider an alternative model.
Let's say you want to make a bundle flipping clicks. What will you need to have in your toolbox to get the job done? You'll need to be able to build and fund a good pay-per-click campaign. You'll need the skills necessary to build a good landing page for those who click on your Adsense ads. You must do the research necessary to pair traffic with a third party who is offering something upon which your clickers will take action and that will pay you enough for those actions to underwrite the PPC campaign and leave you with profits.
If you can do all of those things, you can flip clicks profitably. However, you might want to consider putting those skills to a more lucrative use.
What if, instead of flipping those clicks to someone else who was willing to give you a percentage of the take, you could convert them into your own customers and keep all the loot? What if you could then boost your earnings even more by having other click flippers and affiliates send you prospects to whom you could sell.
Let's do some math. Let's say you decide to flip clicks. You start a smartly-targetted PPC campaign. Each visitor is going to cost you a dime. You are going to get 100 clicks a day for ten measly bucks. You then send those clicks to a third party who is willing to pay you a whopping $10 for each person who takes action. That's $1,000 potential income per day. The key word, though, is potential. The adjustments are really going to whack you.
Let's be dangerous and assume you can flip a massive 20% of your clicks to the third party who has a great setup and is able to convert 30% of your your traffic into action-takers.
100 clicks x .20 CTR x .30 conversion x $10.00/conversion = $60.
Subtract then $10 you spent on your PPC campaign and you make $50.
Not too shabby. However, those numbers are inflated across the board. They are intentionally exaggerated. Nonetheless, we can play with them.
Now, let's say you have created your own product that you will sell for $30 in the same field/niche. Let's say your sales page converts at only 3%.
100 clicks x .03 conversion rate x $30/sale = $90.
Minus the cost of the PPC ads, and you are in the black for $80.
Those numbers aren't artificially inflated. You can muster a higher sell-through rate and $30 is a low price for a good informational product.
So, which makes more sense? Before you answer that question, consider a few of the other advantages you get as a product owner/seller.
You can use a free report or some other inducement to build a list of folks to whom you can sell later. Even if the sales page doesn't do the trick, you get automatic "second chances" to seal the deal, plus a prequalified customer pool to whom you can sell other products or services.
You can set up your own affiliate program. Those who haven't moved up to product ownership will send the traffic and you just pay the commission. You get your own sales team to push your product.
So, if you are capable of doing the kinds of things that will really make click flipping work, you have the ability to run your own show instead. That's where the money really is, anyway.
Why flip clicks then? There are some legit reasons. First, you might be able to find ways to monetize smaller traffic streams that wouldn't warrant an investment in product creation. That's conceivable, I suppose. Second, there are overhead and start up costs associated with product development and ownership that you get to duck if you are just flipping the clicks. Those expenses might be beyond your means (but they probably aren't if you have the kind of skills you need to make a bundle with click flipping).
Before you flip that click, think about climbing the ladder to product ownership and sales. If you can drive traffic and do solid market research, you can make much more money from being the product owner than you ever could as a middle-person.
Do you have a good product idea? Just need a way to translate your plan into a tangible "something" that you can sell? If so, you might want to team with Content Done Better. I can produce a great ebook offering your message that you can then sell. We can bundle the product up with a great sales letter, too. If you need supporting materials to maximize your sales opportunities (reports, autoresponders, content for article marketing, etc.), we can make that part of the deal.
Hey, click flipping may be perfect for some folks. To me, however, it makes much more sense to be the owner instead of the commissioned salesperson in cases like this.
Make your product idea a reality and you can profit from those clicks directly instead of selling them off to someone who already has a product.
