In the good old days, an affiliate marketer could just advertise their affiliate link with Adwords, send the prospects right to the affiliate page, and pocket their profits. It doesn't work like that any more, for a couple of reasons:

1. Google only allows one unique address to show up for any particular search. In other words, if 2 people are bidding on a search term and they are both sending prospects to the same sales page, only the person with the highest bid gets their ad shown.

2.The landing page quality score has become very important. (The landing page is where people end up after clicking your ad.) The keywords used to send people to the landing page must be very relevant to the text on the page. A bad quality score can place your cost per click out of reach.

I found out the hard way about the whole landing page thing. I wanted to send people directly to the product I was promoting, but the sales page was so poorly optimized that Google wanted to charge me $4.00 per click. This was odd, because I had purchased the product myself and thought it was very good. This just shows the importance of creating a good landing page.

So what is the best strategy for an affiliate marketer to use now that the rules are more strict? Well, for one thing, you pretty much have to have your own website or blog to set up your landing pages. If you don't want to spend money hosting your own site, Blogger or Squidoo are both good free options.

Set up your landing pages with your keywords in mind. If you are using keywords like affiliate marketing or online income, make sure those phrases are included in your landing page text. Don't over do it, though. Just use your keywords naturally for the best effect.

A lot of affiliate marketers are using reviews to create landing pages. They simply describe the product they are promoting, giving the pros and cons in a "pre-sell" kind of way, and provide their affiliate link in a couple of different places. This procedure solves both the duplicate web address and landing page quality score problems.

If you are going to use Google Adwords to promote your affiliate products, set up relevant landing pages with the appropriate search terms included in the text. Use Blogger or Squidoo if you don't want to invest in your own website. This will greatly improve your chances for success and keep your advertising costs down.