In the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to 3 top PPC (pay-per-click) affiliate marketers. More than that, I’ve had the opportunity to gain insight into how they operate their businesses as well as set up and fine tune their PPC campaigns.

Although I shouldn’t have been that surprised, still it’s quite amazing how different their approaches are from each other. Which goes to show that there are multiple avenues to achieve your goals with PPC and affiliate marketing.

Note: I’ll be painting in broad strokes here, so expect some generalizations.

(left-to-right) Jeremy Palmer, Amit Mehta, John Hasson

Jeremy Palmer is a name that comes up often, especially if you’re a Commission Junction (CJ) affiliate or if you attend the Affiliate Summit. I’ve found that Jeremy and I use a similar approach in looking at offline research avenues, including books, magazines and reports to research niches, and develop deep, content rich sites.

Given his experience as a web developer, I guess it’s not surprising that he tends to build sites from the ground up. Also, having presented and watched his Black Ink project unfold, I’ve seen how Jeremy uses a systematic approach to building his campaigns.

You can check out Jeremy’s appearance on the Friday Podcast.

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Amit Mehta has spoken at the past 3 Affiliate Summits, and given his background as a researcher at MIT’s Lincoln Labs, it’s not suprising how he has a rigorous process to set up keywords and test them. In particular, his PPC optimization process and use of statistics, as well as split-test are among his strongest competitive edge.

Not forgetting that Amit’s quite the “mindset” man in my book (You would not expect anything less from someone who blogs at the SuperAffiliateMindset.com blog). His mental attitude and “inner game” skills sets him apart from many affiliates. Also, his business acumen and ability to scale his business through team building and outsourcing are pretty impressive.

You can check out Amit’s recent appearance on the Friday Podcast.

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John Hasson might not be a name that you are familiar with, unless you’ve attended the last 2 Affiliate Summits where John has spoken at. With his background as a programmer/developer, I was very impressed at the level of automation and scripting that John uses in his PPC campaigns.

Having developed a number of shareware applications and his experience as a Microsoft .Net developer gives him an edge, especially when it comes to interfacing with merchant and affiliate networks APIs and backend systems.

John came out with a number of great insights, especially for new affiliates.

Stay tune for John’s appearance on this week’s Friday Podcast (coming out on Friday!)