One of the questions I get more often than not from new affiliates is “how do they do it?” How is it that InsureMe has affiliates who are pulling in tens of thousand, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars each month? Is it PPC? SEO? Something else?

My honest answer? I’m not totally sure.

Yes, our top affiliates use both PPC and SEO. But beyond the generalized tactics of creating good content, great ads, and knowing how to optimize for natural and paid search, there is a little extra something that all of our top affiliates use to make it to the top of our affiliate rankings.

Creativity.

But what is creativity when it comes to PPC? I mean, isn’t it all about good bids, high quality score and good click-through? Not always. Top affiliates make it a point to think WAY outside the box when it comes to PPC.

The Shoemoney Blog has recently pointed out two of these “outside the box” tactics. While these examples might be a little borderline, they are a good example of creative thinking in competitive PPC verticals. Check them out:

• How to earn an awesome quality score by sending your ads to a Google redirect
• Creating new AdWords accounts every few minutes and paying for them with resold AdWords coupons

Again, there are just examples of creative AdWords strategies. I don’t think copying them will get you very far, since there’s a good chance someone is correcting these loopholes as we speak, but I do thing they show the kind of thinking that is implemented by top affiliates.

So next time you are strategizing about your AdWords accounts, try to think outside of the box. Actually, strike that, burn the box altogether.