Let’s assume you have a great going PPC campaign. Traffic is good, CTR is good, conversions are rolling in and then suddenly the offer stops converting. Nothing has changed - not your landing page, not the number of clicks on your ads, not the landing page of the merchant. I usually give it a little time before looking into it. For an example one of my campaigns has been going great for a while until suddenly the conversions stopped. On the second day there was no conversion until late afternoon and between 6 and 7 PM I suddenly had a big pile of conversions. For me this looked strange as the actual clicks on my are usually going down around that time of the day (people leaving office, dinner time, etc.). I suspected some tracking problems that were fixed and the day results rolled up in one big pile (so to speak). The next day I got a single conversion. One! 1! Same traffic, same amount of clicks (same range) - one conversion. In that moment I figured something is up. Is the affiliate network upping up its own share (of course not ;)) or is it the merchant maybe (in this case I am kinda ruling it out)? Since I am a small player my affiliate network always pushes back and rules out tracking problems. I don’t have enough voice and $$$-Power to be heard I guess.

So, it is always good to have other options. Whenever I am working a new campaign/niche I try to find a backup provider. Some other network I can switch to that runs the same or a similar offer. In this case it is the same offer going to the same merchant landing page. Since I am hiding affiliate links through a redirect file system I can swap offers on the fly without affecting my landing page at all. Sure, I make a little less per click, but I’d rather take that, than continuing to lose money. In this case now I am making $0.20 less per click, but that is still plenty. I can now monitor conversion and use that data to go back to the other affiliate network and make my case. This type of stuff does not happen too often, but in general it is a good idea to have more than one choice. What if the merchant pulls the offer? Is your campaign dead in the water then? Or can you replace the offer with a different one and continue to make money (even if it is a little less)? I choose the second option whenever possible.

Here is some criteria to look for:

• Is the offer available through more than one network?
• Are there similar offers available that can be a substitute?
• Could you modify the landing page slightly and adjust for a different offer easily?

So, add some redundancy to your PPC marketing efforts now.