A few hours spent optimizing pay per click advertising campaigns can sometimes be a wiser investment of time than continually chasing after new products. There is a time and place for doing that, but my advice to affiliates is to make the most of the good products you have already identified and ‘milk them' for every dollar that you can.

Recently I went through some of my own ‘successful' campaigns and I was quite surprised to learn how easily I could increase the performance of each campaign. Almost every campaign became more profitable as I employed a combination of the following techniques. I suggest that you check if any of these might lead to improving the profitability of your advertising campaigns.

If other affiliates are promoting the same product at the same pay per click network, then you must make every effort to capture as high a percentage of the available traffic as possible. One of the best ways to get your ad showing instead of your competitors' ads is to increase the CTR or click-through ratio of your ads. The reason for this is that major advertising networks usually prefer to show ads with good click-through rates.

So how can you increase your click-through ratio? The simplest way is to split test your ad. Always be running at least two versions of each ad. After you see the click-through rates for each version, discard the worst performing ad and write a new one. Keep repeating this process over and over again, improving each time.

A good shortcut is to study your competitor's ads. Why pay for all the research and testing of ads when other affiliates are doing it already? It is a good idea to monitor other affiliates' ads for a week or two and note any changes that they make. To see their ads either do a search at Google or use Google's free AdSense Preview Tool. There are also a number of great competitor analysis tools available on the market.

Another way to maximize the revenue from your PPC advertising campaign is to increase your keywords. You can quickly generate large keyword lists using software such as Good Keywords, which is free, or even better, Keyword Elite if you can afford it.

One word of caution. If you add too many keyword phrases that are broadly related to your product, then even though your ad impressions and overall clicks may increase, your sales and commission conversion rates could fall. Take care when adding keywords to add only those keyword phrases that will result in targeted visitors who might purchase the product you are advertising.

When you created your original campaign, which geographical settings did you specify? For example, you may have targeted USA only, or North America. Now that your product is proven to be successful in the original region, consider whether people might purchase the product in additional countries. How about United Kingdom and Australia? Depending upon the product you might also discover a good response from Europe, Asia, or even the Middle East.

The key to success here is to test the new market independently, so be sure you have a way to track which countries your commissions are coming from.

You have already found a product that converts well when promoting it through one pay per click advertising network. Now replicate that success at the other major advertising networks. I try to replicate every successful campaign at Google AdWords, MSN Adcenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing. Due to differences in visitor demographics, traffic quality and editorial policies it is not always possible to get every campaign working successfully at all three networks, but that is always my goal.

These four techniques will make a big difference to the profitability of your affiliate pay per click advertising campaigns, and that's all without going out and finding another product.