PPC And Direct Linking On Google
I just heard an interview with Chris Carpenter of Google Cash fame.
I thought it was a very interesting interview. He talks about direct linking and how he still is able to employ this strategy despite restrictions from Google.
One golden nugget I found on the interview was on quality score. He goes through a very simple strategy of achieving good quality scores through a bidding technique that he uses.
I was also surprised to find that he doesn’t promote/utilize direct linking the way I thought he would. I had Chris pegged for someone that only uses direct linking. But he utilizes many other strategies as well e.g. squeeze pages, mini-websites.
He realizes that direct linking does work and that there are people that make a lot of money purely from just doing direct linking. But he also feels it is not the best way to develop long term stability for a niche you are promoting.
Check out the interview here.
YouTube Video SEO
There is something that I have been realizing for a while now (and so have a lot of others, most long before I did) and that is…video is huge to getting your rankings up. I am looking to putting a lot more focus on this in the future. Not only on this website but also on my business websites too.
I stumbled on this blog post yesterday on how to get started on YouTube SEO by Jason Dodd on affilorama.com. Check out an excerpt below.
=====
First, when optimising a video for keyterms, make sure relevant keyterms are used in the video titles, descriptions, tags, keyterms and even the video file name.
- Video Title – The video title, like with web pages, is the most important aspect of search engine optimisation because it defines the entire media and the page it is housed on. Links to the video page throughout YouTube will include the title text and inbound links, if they are built, should also represent the title.
- Video Description – Think of the video description as an effective compliment to the title tags in video SEO. Make sure that the description actually describes the video and also uses specific terms you want to rank for.
- Video Tags – Think of the ability to tag videos when uploading to YouTube or other video sharing sites as a powerful version of the meta keyword tag in traditional SEO. However, like Flickr and Delicious, these tags serve as navigational and categorising tools which define not only the video, but the groups it is related to. Tags also help the videos appear under the related videos sections of other works on YouTube, so this even makes them more valuable as YouTube will suggest the video after and during the viewing of other related works.
- Uploading Videos – Use a tool such as TubeMogul for uploading videos. TubeMogul provides a quick access to quite a number of well known video hosting services, including MySpace, Yahoo!, Howcast, Viddler, Crackle, Revver, Dailymotion, YouTube and others.
- Create a Personality – It’s more likely you’ll get followers (subscribers) to your YouTube channel if you build a rapport with your audience. Think about your target market and appeal to their wants, needs or sense of humour. You don’t need the charm of george Clooney to win fans – just be passionate and enthusiastic about your subject and the rest will take care of itself.
=====
Read the whole blog post here. I will be creating a video on how you can do the above some time this week. So stay tuned.
Almost Back
Ok…I have finally gotten my blog up and running the way I want. All the technical stuff is out the way. Now I have to start posting again. Will get cracking this week.
BTW in case you were wondering…just did a back up 
Blog Meltdown
This past week I wanted to start blogging again after quite a long absence. But when I got back to my blogging platform I found that everything had gone down the tubes (I suffered a computer crash earlier this year). I am only now realizing that it also impacted my blog.
As a result I have lost a lot of the posts and comments on my blog. I have slavaged what I can. Apologies if you have come back to find some posts missing and the blog not looking great.
Anyway, is just another reminder to always backup!
Properly Split Test Your Ads on AdWords
The purpose of split testing on AdWords is to always out perform your previous best ad. Doing so will lead you towards higher CTRs and lower bid costs. Now, the question becomes, how do you properly split test your ads?
Follow the process below and make sure that you are comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges.
Once you have determined the winner from your 2 original ads (A and B), in this case A; what you want to do is then create 2 new ads, C and D.
Where ad C is the exact duplicate of the winning ad. And D is the new test ad that will be tested against your control ad (Ad C).
To start your new split test, just pause ads A and B and activate ads C and D.
You want to do it this way because, true split testing, means you are testing one variable that is different at a time e.g. Headline, Description Line 1 or 2, Display URL.
But you should also be aware that the time period is also a variable. By split testing ad D with A, the comparison would be incorrect. You need to reset the ads, by starting them all over again.
I know you can overcome the time period variable by filtering the results on Google AdWords by the respective date range. But I just find my way a lot cleaner.
Here is something that I do that you may want to adopt. You can delete ads A and B once you know for sure that ads C and D are running fine. But I just keep them paused. I do this for 2 reasons:
- To keep a history of my ads online
- To keep the ads visible on the offline AdWords Editor. When I edit ads I like to see a history of previous ads. If I delete the ads, they will not show up on AdWords Editor. Pausing is just a quick workaround for me.
Tracking AdWords on ClickBank With TID
One of the new things I have learned recently is the ability to track conversions on ClickBank while using AdWords.This post goes into how you can start implementing this tracking system, its limitations and possible solutions for you.
As any good marketer knows, tracking what works and what doesn’t work to convert sales e.g. keywords, is vital to determining your success in a market. I previously thought that it was not possible to track keyword conversions for ClickBank, as I was not able to add Google conversion scripts to the publisher’s “Thank You” page.
I now know that ClickBank allows you to add a unique TID (Tracking ID) to your hoplink. This enables you to see the TID everytime someone purchases an item off ClickBank.
How Does It Work?
Well your normal hoplink would look like:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/
To add a TID to the link, you only need to add ?tid=xyz after your hoplink. Where xyz would be a unique ID number. So that your modified hoplink will now look like this:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=xyz
How To Put This Into Practice?
In an AdWords campaign, you want to be able to know which of your keywords ultimately converts to sales. So assuming you are selling a single product from ClickBank, you want to assign a TID to each keyword that you have.
keyword 1 = assign TID 001
keyword 2 = assign TID 002
keyword 3 = assign TID 003
and so on (You are going to want to record these somewhere).
You then implement this by putting your assigned TIDs to the end of each keyword’s destination URL on AdWords. So if we took one AdGroup as an example:
AdGroup 1
keyword 1 destination URL:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=001
keyword 2 destination URL:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=002
keyword 3 destination URL:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=003
Putting It Together
Once someone clicks on your ad and ultimately buys, the TID will be captured by ClickBank and will now be shown on your sales reports.
By matching the converting TIDs to the keywords you assigned them to; you may then be able to eliminate those that convert poorly and/or are too expensive. Of course you will also be able to determine which keywords don’t convert at all.
Limitations/Obstacles
Just to be clear, if you want to track each keyword, you will need to assign each keyword a TID code regardless of match type. So even if you have the same keyword, but with different match types, then each match type needs it’s own TID. So for example:
cookie recipe = http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=001
“cookie recipe” = http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=002
[cookie recipe] = http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=003
Now…at this point you may be thinking “holy crap!”. Cos if you had several ClickBank campaigns, with several AdGroups, containing dozens, if not hundreds of keywords and with different match types to boot, that is going to be one hell of a TID list you need to manually track. I would then say “Yep!” you are right, cos I thought the same way.
One solution could be, to keep track of conversions at the AdGroup level. By giving all the keywords in a particular AdGroup the same TID code. You would then, at least know, which AdGroup converted.
Now, I felt this would be OK during the initial stages of your campaign. When you are just testing out the response to a new campaign and don’t necessarily want to put too much work into setting up your tracking.
But over the long run, I would want a robust tracking system to see the conversion rates of my individual keywords.
Fortunately, there are options for you to automate this process. But it will involve purchasing software/utilities to automatically assign TIDs for you. Personally, I have started to use Xtreme Conversions. It helps by assigning TIDs automatically to my keywords. And providing a system for me to upload my sales reports from ClickBank to tie everything back together.
Whatever your preference, manual or automated, remember tracking is key.
Getting Started With AdWords
When I got started with Internet Marketing, I think I tried everything else but AdWords. Mainly because of the fact that it was a traffic generating tool that involved paying someone (Google in this case). I had also heard of lots of people just bombing out and loosing money.
Of course being new, that was something I really wanted to avoid. So I stayed clear of AdWords completely and opted for other means of traffic generation like blogging and article marketing.
Then of course I got into Andrew & Daryl Grant’s course which uses AdWords extensively in their business. I then decided that I better get into it and learn up.
They had recommended an e-book, Perry Marshall’s “Definitive Guide To AdWords”. Perry is widely regarded as the premier AdWords “Guru”. I immediately bought his e-book and poured through it. What I discovered after I implemented his lessons, really made me wish I had started sooner.
One of the first things that Perry teaches, is that there is a wrong way and a right way to set up an AdWords campaign. The wrong way is to just write and ad and put every keyword for your market to trigger that ad…WRONG.
The right way is to put your keywords into very tight groups. Where each group represents a unique mindset or topic within your market. That way you can right an ad that is highly related to the keywords in that group; increasing the probability of it being clicked by your target customer.
By just implementing this strategy alone, I believe is the main reason, I have continually managed to get average CTRs of 2% to 3% within the first week of launching campaigns (CTR is a Google metric of ad relevance).
There is of course so much more that he shares. That is why I really recommend his e-book if you want to get started with AdWords. But if you want to just get an idea of the value he can deliver, then click here to sign up for Perry’s free 5 day AdWords course.
The Courses That Started It All
In my last post I mentioned 2 courses I took that formed the way I do my business. And I thought I would just write a short post to give you an idea about them (not intended as a comprehensive review).
To me they are both very similar in that both use surveys and AdWords as the main part of their strategy. But they differ in the extent they use surveys.
The Grant’s use surveys in a very easy and basic way to scope out their markets needs. Which is great for beginners and those looking for faster results from surveys.
But Glenn’s course goes far greater into detail on how to use surveys. He teaches a very specific process which allows you to be very laser precise about what your market wants. His process involves you getting in touch with your “Inner Geek” as you will be analyzing a significant amount of numbers/information; his process also requires more time in getting the results required from surveys.
If I had to sum it up for you; both have their merits and have helped people be successful. It depends which one suits you best.
I started with the Grant’s course which really formed the basics of how I do business on the Internet now. Their course is really targeted towards the beginner, it includes weekly emails that carry you through their process. I found these really helpful because they really do give assistance from beginning to end. In addition, you are entitled to 4 hours worth of one on one consulting time for Q & A, which can be very valuable to the new kid on the block.
Then I came across Glenn’s course and was blown away by his success rate of how he enters markets. But to be honest with you, it took me weeks to decide to purchase his course, because it was on the high side. Once I did, I was amazed at the amount of material that was included (there was a lot!). His course is targeted towards existing marketers (and perhaps really aggressive newbies). I think even existing marketers will have a challenge understanding his method right away. And as I mentioned earlier, his method involves a lot of work. More work than most marketers are willing to do, but in my opinion well worth it.
My Business Process of Creating Products
The chart below is a high level diagram flow of the process I have adopted in creating my businesses. It actually came about from following 2 separate courses I went through (Andrew & Daryl Grant’s and Glenn Livingston’s).
Identify Market
The first thing I do is identify a market that would be worth while exploring. What makes a market worth while? Well I look at a few things:
- Is it big enough? – Is there sufficient numbers of people looking/searching for information in that market on the Internet. Why is that important? Well if there are not enough numbers you will end up not having enough potential traffic coming into your business.
- Is there existing competition? – Competition in the form of AdWords and/or people already selling products is a good sign there is money to be made.
- How much will it cost to advertise on PPC? – Really what I want to know is if I will be profitable if I bid on specific keywords for this market.
- Do I feel empathy for this market? – I want to know that I will be able to deliver something that will help people in the market that I choose (and feel good about it). If I can’t feel empathetic, I know it will be pretty painful to go through the entire product and marketing process.
Survey & Analyze
I have become a huge proponent of the survey process in creating products. Why? Because you will be able to tell whether you are going to be successful or not before any major spending on product creation and marketing even begins:
- The response rates and quality of responses from your surveys will give you a good sense of the demand for potential products.
- You will get a very good indication of how much traffic you will get and how much it will cost you to drive that traffic to your website. Which will be key to help you estimate your potential revenues.
- The survey responses also gives you excellent ideas for content/product creation.
After completing this part of the process I will know exactly if this is a GO or NO GO market to enter. If it is a GO then I will move to the next step. If it is a NO GO, I will just go find another market to survey.
Create
From the survey process, I will already have gathered a really good idea as to what content I will need to provide to be successful. I will also get a sense as to what type of product it will need to be i.e. e-book, video, audio etc.
On how I create the products, just one word “OUTSOURCE”. Even if it is something simple like an e-book, I will generally want to get someone else to do it. My rationale is that, I am not a writer, software developer, video editor etc., so I would need someone to do a great job for me (what would probably take me weeks or even a month to do, could be completed in a fraction of the time).
The only thing to really consider is of course the cost of getting this done. Now, here is a important thing that I have realized; because, I have gone through the survey process, I have more confidence that I will succeed. So I am more willing to spend the money.
Drive Traffic
During the survey process I use AdWords to drive traffic to my survey sites. Once I am ready to launch, I will again use AdWords as my main source of traffic. I like AdWords for various reasons, but, in the initial stages of my launch, I like it most because I get instant results.
I will be able to drive traffic and “kick the tyres” of my sales process, to see if it works (converts to sales). And it will take me a really short time to figure that out. Then once sales starts to stabilize, I will then completely go nuts and utilize other traffic generation methods with better confidence.
Track & Improve
You are always going to want to track and improve your sales process. I adopt several tools like Google Analytics, Google Conversion Tracking etc. to track how well I am converting. The key is to really keep improving it a little bit at a time via split testing. I split test quite a few things in my sales process e.g. AdWord Ads, Landing Pages etc.
I also take some small percentage of my traffic and divert them to survey sites. Where I can ask them questions to help me improve my overall process and/or product. If I get information worth implementing I just put it back into my process cycle.
This is the process which I am following in my business. I hope you got something out of it. Now, I know this hasn’t shared a lot of detail, this post was really meant to give you a overview; and I will go into each part in more detail in separate posts.
But, if you guys could also let me know, what you would like to hear more about, it would help me plan and structure my future posts on the subject.
Have a great week ahead.
My Interview With JobsDB
It is really weird how things kinda of happen. I was at a friends wedding reception and was seated to a guy named Mark. We had one of those conversations, you know “so how do you know the groom/bride?” kind.
Anyway, we eventually got to sharing what we did for a living. It turns out Mark works for JobsDB Singapore. He was very keen to do an interview with me. I was actually very surprised. But they were doing a series of interviews with young entrepreneurs. And in my case specifically they were looking to share my story of how I left my banking career and went on to Internet Marketing.
Long story short, we did the interview, it went live a few days ago and I thought I would share it with you here as well.
=====
What is your business about?
My business involves creating and selling very niche products online. Currently I am focusing on informational/educational products that can be bought and downloaded online e.g. PDF Books. But I plan to add other type of products like software in the future.
What inspired you to start your own business?
I have always wanted to be part of a successful business, even from a very young age. However, it has only been the past 3 to 5 years that I felt that I wanted to own my own business. I think there are some obvious reasons why one might want to own their own business e.g. money, own boss, time flexibility etc. And all of them had a part in my decision to start.
But what started me moving in this direction was knowing what I didn’t want anymore. I just grew tired of working for someone else i.e. working very hard and long hours for something/someone and not being able to receive the ultimate reward/benefit from it. I just started to think, if I am going to work this hard and this much, I might as well work for myself.
What were your previous jobs before you started your own business?
My professional background has always been in banking. Specifically an area in banking called Cash Management. I have worked for 2 foreign banks at the local and regional level. My last position was in a local bank here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where I headed the Sales division for Cash Management.
What do you like best about being an entrepreneur?
In my particular business, I really like that I am not stuck doing the same thing over and over again (things are always new). Once I have finished creating and setting up a particular product, I can then start to think about the next.
Yes, there are certain fundamentals in developing, selling and maintaining the product. But each new product idea brings a new set of challenges and excitement. I feel quite lucky because this aspect of my business suits my personality very well.
What challenges do you face being an entrepreneur?
Right now, owning a very new business and being the only person running it, my challenge is to stay on course and not have my hands in too many different things, just yet (So focus and discipline is key). It sounds pretty obvious, but I really found that it was a challenge.
I can afford to do other types of businesses/ventures later. But for now my focus is very laser sharp on what I am doing now to ensure its success i.e. one step at a time
What are your business goals for the future?
Ultimately, I would like to build and own several successful businesses. It will take some time of course, but like I said earlier, one step at a time. And then later I will just be able to do it faster.
Check out Shazlan’s website at www.shazlansufian.com
=====
You can check out the original interview by clicking here.