Sweet baby Jesus I’m giving away $40-$50 per month on ATM fees, and I use my credit card a lot. Remember, the little deli charging you $2.00 to access your own money is only half of it. Your bank is also slapping you with another $2.00 fee. If you pulled out a $20 bill and you were charged $2.00 by the bank and the deli you’re being charged a 20% fee just to get your own money. Man, that’s what I call a business.

To put this into perspective, an article in Industry Week says the average Chinese manufacturer earns 60 cents per hour, or $4.80 per day. At that rate, and my regular monthly ATM fees, I could hire a Chinese manufacturer for 10 days (2 work weeks!) every month! I could start my own sweat shop practically for free if I stopped using other ATMs! I could run a drop-shipping ebay company for dirt! Or, at $10 an article, I could hire a ghostwriter to post on this blog for a week! Or, at 50 cents per refill, I could get 100 iced coffees at Starbucks! Or……

• Adgroups not targeted to keywords
• No keyword conversion data
• CPC too high
• Qualiy score too low

Problem 1) Adgroups Not Targeted To Keywords

Right off the bat one of the biggest problems was the sheer number of keywords in my adgroup and their lack of focus. 150-200 keywords cannot all be targeted for an adgroup. I also used the KEYWORD command in almost every ad so I was getting quite a few clicks, but they weren’t converting because they were unrelated to the dating site offer.

Lesson 1) Selecting tons of unrelated keywords and using the keyword command is a recipe for disaster. Getting lots of non-targeted clicks with no conversions is a great way to lose money.

Solution 1) Take the top 10-15 keywords, based on Click Through Rate (CTR) and relevancy. Create an adgroup for each individual keyword and at least 2 ads to split test.

Problem 2) No keyword Conversion Data

After pausing the campaign and looking at my conversions I had one lump number: 6. I had 6 conversions, but which keywords converted? I don’t know because I didn’t set up Sub-IDs. What is a Sub-ID? A Sub-ID is a phrase added on to the end of your affiliate link that lets you know which keyword your target entered to find your offer. Example:

http://www.your-affiliate-link.com/AffID=123&SubID=Keyword

The syntax varies from offer to offer but that is the general format. Your affiliate manager can talk you through putting in your first Sub-ID. So now instead of our conversion screen looking like this:

http://www.you-affiliate-link.com/AffID=123 12 clicks, 2 conversions (Where AffID is just your individual affiliate code)

It looks like this:

http://www.your-affiliate-link.com/AffID=123&SubID=BlackCars 7 click, 0 conversions
http://www.your-affiliate-link.com/AffID=123&SubID=YellowCars 5 clicks, 2 conversions

Now isn’t that a lot more useful? Clearly we can see that people searching for Black Cars aren’t converting at all (conversion rate = 0/7 = 0%), and people searching for Yellow Cars are (conversion rate = 2/5 = 40%). You can include as much information in your Sub-ID as you’d like. Just remember to use - or _ to seperate words and not spaces. This should be obvious but it’s extremely important so to repeat: Use - or _ to separate words, not spaces in your Sub-IDs! For this campaign my Sub-ID will include which search engine was used (Y for Yahoo) and the keyword entered. Example:

http://www.my-dating-site-offer.com/AffID=123&SubID=Y-Free-Online-Dating

Currently I’m only working with Yahoo Search Marketing (tackle one search engine at a time) and it is a bear to implement Sub-IDs with yahoo. You have to put a custom destination URL for each and every keyword. Very tedious and time consuming.

Problem 3) Cost Per Click Too High
                                                                                   Avg CPC       Avg Position                                CTR%

There were plenty of keywords I bid far too much on. Considering historical conversion averages of 5-8%, I was often putting in bids that would require a 30% conversion rate to break even. However, I want to overpay at first to get higher placement and thus a higher click through rate then bringing bids down over time. Why not just bid low right off the bat? Because you will end up lower in placement and get fewer clicks, a lower CTR, and thus a lower QS.

Problem 4) Quality Score Too Low

What is Yahoo’s quality score? In summary, the quality score is Yahoo’s way of weeding out crappy, non-converting ads. Your quality score directly affects the amount you bid and often makes the difference between a profitable campaign, and a loser. You want, you need, to get your quality score up to 5 bars. There are a lot of theories about how to increase your quality score for yahoo and I’ve come up with 4 things that supposedly increase your quality score.

1. Click Through Rate
2. Keyword in Ad Title
3. Keyword in Short Description
4. Keyword in the URL
5. The Word “Free”

The CTR seems to affect the quality score quite a bit. Yahoo’s not stupid, if people aren’t clicking, they’re not making any money so they raise your minimum bids so high they’ll still make decent money when that rare soul clicks on your ad (You just won’t make any money). How do you increase your CTR? Make better, more relevant ads. The second quality score item is the keyword in the ad title. If you notice, when you put the exact keyword in your title, it gets bolded. I’m not sure if this only shows up in your ad management or if the actual ad in the search engine results is bolded as well. Anyway, for each individual adgroup and keyword I make sure to include the exact keyword in the title.

Third, keyword in the short description. Again you’ll notice if you put the exact keyword in your short description it will become bold. I make sure my exact keyword is in the short description as well. The keyword in the URL supposedly affects the quality score as well. However, I’m not about to register a separate domain for each keyword for a cheap dating offer so I’m not implementing this. An experiment for the future would be setting up subdomains that match each keyword on 1 main domain. Lastly, the word “Free” seems to be a real trigger word for search engines. Placing it in the ad might create a lower quality score or more intense developer scrutiny. So I’ve created a third ad in each adgroup/keyword that has the word “Free” in the title and short description. We’ll see how that affects the quality score and CTR.

Results Of Tweaking

Another crash and burn. Instead of increasing my quality score, in many instances, my quality score bottomed out at 1 bar. There was so little traffic going to these keywords that there were very few clicks and the CTR suffered. Back to the drawing board…

Tags: PPC, Fail

Facebook Ads vs. Other Search Engines

• Ability to include a picture in the ad
• No quality score (…..sort of)
• Audience of mainly highschool/college students
• Poor ad management interface
• No keywords (….sort of)

Facebook has a fairly targeted demographic already. Most of its users are young to middle age high school or college students (but that demographic is changing as the college students on Facebook graduate and continue to keep in touch via this social medium). If you can find offers that would interest this crowd (iPods, video games, partying, other social offers) you might have a winner. Facebook also has no real quality score to speak of. However, just like other search engines, they’re there to turn a profit. If your CTR sucks, Facebook makes no money so they crank up your minimum bid. Facebook also lets you include a picture in your ad which brings a whole different element to marketing (think distinct colors, hot girls, cars, pictures of money). You can target certain “interest” words in viewers profiles (only show my ad to people who list “cigarettes” in their interests), much like keywords but you don’t want to limit your audience so I often leave this out. Lastly, their ad management interface sucks. Once you create an ad you can’t change much about it. You can’t change the destination URL, the picture, or even which ad group it’s in. So to tweak anything you have to create a whole new ad and wait the 24 some odd hours before the ad starts running.

First Attempt

At first I picked out a few ads that I thought might convert. Just about every ad I see while I’m on Facebook is a dating site. So, rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ll go along with the crowd. Also, I was recently a college student, and I love coffee. I also love cheap stuff. So I grabbed a Gevalia coffee offer ($3 for 3 bags of “premium” coffee and a travel mug. I’d do it) as well. So I set up 2 ads for each offer and then created the same 2 offers for about 2-3 different age and sex demographics. I put in a bid at the low end of the range and let it go. Results? You guessed it.

Gevalia Coffee: 0 conversions
Singles Dating Site: 3 conversions
Net Loss: About $50

Learning Time

What went wrong here? Conversions were low, possibly because the coffee offer isn’t relevant to our target audience and the dating site probably failed because of market saturation. My click through rates were abysmally low so Facebook made my minimum bid so high that it wasn’t worth it. Also having “free” in my ads is worth looking into. Seems to trigger a lot of other search engines’ alarms.

Tweaking For Second Attempt:

• More targeted ads to Facebook demographic
• Better ads (Call to Action?)
• Remove word “Free” from ad
• Ask affiliate manager for suggestion on ad to run

Tags: PPC, Facebook, Fail

Just a quick plug for Paul at Inspired Money Maker. He’s currently running a contest for MarketLeverage and the prizes include a Flip Mino (awesome video recorder for your blog), a 2GB pen and a $50 AMEX card.

You can check out the contest here

Are you a visual person? According to Cynthia Tobias, author of They Way They Learn 60% of adults are considered “visual” learners. The remaining percentage are audio (30%) and kinesthetic (10%) learners. If you’re in the majority you learn and focus best on visual cues. Do you get sidetracked easily? How many times have you sat down to work towards your goals and gotten off track by a new blog post, friendfeed, tweet or StumbleUpon page? Visual learners are generally high-energy individuals but are distracted easily and are not good at multi-tasking (not quite adult A.D.D. but pretty close). I know there have been plenty of nights I’ve intended to research a new PPC campaign or write a few articles for an affiliate website and ended up chatting on AIM, stumbling and forum browsing.

How Can Visualization Help You? (Give your brain what it wants)

Recently I’ve accepted my visual learning style and rather than fight it, I’ve worked with it. If you are a visual person give your brain visual cues. How? Write down your internet marketing goal. Is it $1 per day? Is it $10? $100? Now, make a bar or graph chart and print it out (or go all the way and have it done at a kinkos) and stick it on your desk.

Make sure it’s in plain view while you’re in front of your monitor. Whenever I get distracted online I see my chart out of the corner of my eye and I ask myself “What am I doing to get towards my goal?” It works because it’s a visual cue. The bigger and more colorful I make it, the more distracting it is. Go nuts with it. Blow it up to 3 times as big as it should be. Make it more colorful than a Grateful Dead t-shirt. Stick clown shoes on the bottom of it, whatever.

The Right Motivation

If you try out the chart and it doesn’t work for you there may be a good reason. More money in and of itself may not be your true motivation. Why do you want this extra income? Is it a bigger house? Is it better vacations? College tuition for your children? Put your real motivation right next to the chart on your desk. I still recommend putting a numerical value on your internet marketing goal via a chart as this helps avoid “Pie in the Sky” goal setting. The interesting side effect of placing a concrete number on your goal is that your brain immediately asks “How do I get there?” You’ll be amazed at what answers you can get from yourself. I know you’ve read a ton of blog and forum posts on ways to generate income online. You know how to start making a bit of income! So stop distractions by making your goal the biggest distraction of all.

Tags: visualization, goal setting, motivation, make money online

Pay Per Click advertising, or PPC, is a quick way to generate a ton of traffic for your site. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN all have marketing programs that allow advertising to put up ads above and to the right of normal, or “organic”, search results.

The difference between the highlighted “sponsored links” and normal search results is that advertisers pay the search engines to have their ads listed on sponsored links while organic search results are not paid for. Advertisers generally pay on a “per click” (whenever a viewer clicks on their ad) basis rather than a “per impression” basis (an advertiser would pay every time his ad came up on the page).

Generally, companies pay these search engine companies to list their own website or product. But what if you’re not a marketer for a company or have no product of your own to offer? Enter the world of Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing allows independent internet marketers to promote other companies’ products for a cut of the sale or lead.

How Does It Work?

You can apply directly to companies to promote their products but that takes quite a while to track down enough companies willing to let you sell their products and it requires you to monitor each campaign individually. Solution? Affiliate Networks. Affiliate networks such as Neverblue Ads, Advaliant and Pepperjam find companies that want affiliate marketers to promote their products for a percentage of the sale or lead. The affiliate network then puts up a list of these campaigns and offers a tracking system to show which affiliate marketers are making which sales. Do these networks do this out of the kindness of their internet-loving hearts? No, of course not. The network, and especially your affiliate manager, takes a cut of the sale as well. What does this mean? It means you would probably get a higher payout per sale/lead if you worked directly with the company (cut out the middleman). However, Affiliate networks offer a valuable service in tracking down companies and keeping companies honest in their payouts. A good affiliate manager is easily worth the percentage he takes per sale.

Ok, Now What?

Now we’ve got the two halves of general PPC Affiliate Marketing: Search engine pay per click advertising, and affiliate networks. You pay the search engine companies and the affiliate networks pay you. As long as your Earnings Per Click (EPC) is greater than your Cost Per Click (CPC) you make money (EPC > CPC). We’ll go over EPC, CPC and a few other terms you’ll need to know in the next post.

A Reminder: There are many other ways to promote affiliate offers or your own products besides PPC, but these guides will primarily focus on promoting Affiliate offers through search engine marketing.

Recommended Affiliate Networks I work with: Neverblue Ads, Pepperjam, Advaliant.

So after setting up accounts with Google Adwords, Yahoo Marketing Solutions and Microsoft Adcenter I chose a dating offer from Neverblue Ads. I also registered a relevant domain name with my hosting company, HostMonster. After being approved for the campaign, I simply set up a 301 redirect on my registered domain to point to my affiliate link.

To do this, go into your file manager and edit the code of your index.php. Erase all of the code there and put in your 301 php redirect.

<?php
header(”Location: http://www.YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK-HERE.com/”);
?>

For the slow, you replace that URL with your affiliate link. After that, I used Google’s keyword tool to come up with about 150-200 related keywords and used the dynamic keyword insertion tool. What is a dynamic keyword insertion? It is a command that allows you to place whatever keyword the user searched for in your ad with a default keyword if the title is too long. The syntax is:

{KEYWORD: DEFAULT}
Where DEFAULT is the default keyword you wish to use. So say, for example, you want your ad to read “Low Cost KEYWORD” where KEYWORD is whatever they searched for. You would enter “Low Cost {KEYWORD: Stuff} and if their keyword is too long for the ad it would simply display “Low Cost Stuff”.

Then I made 1 adgroup, put in moderate bids, made 2 ads for split testing and hit GO! ………………The results?

Let’s see the specifics. The middle campaign is the campaign we’ll be discussing.

The campaign cost me $82.55 and brought in a whopping $19.80 for 6 conversions and a net loss of $62.75. What went wrong? A lot of things. After pausing my campaign (stop the bleeding! please!), I went back to reading forums, blogs and garbage ebooks and came up with a few answers.

Reasons My Campaign Failed

• Adgroups not targeted to Keywords
• CPC too high
• Quality Score too low

Stay tuned for my explanation, tweaking, and subsequent results.

Tags: PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Fail

My name is Evan Hood and I am a 25 year old Sales Rep and Marketer living in New York City. All of the horror stories you hear about rent and living space in New York are true. Seriously, the room doesn’t even have a closet.

What Is This Blog?

This blog is a record of my attempts at making money online. I have spent months reading blogs, forums and ebooks about pay per click marketing, article marketing, seo, website design, blogging and affiliate marketing. I am primarily concerned with pay per click advertising but I am also participating in Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge. (The 30 Day Challenge is an annual event that walks newbies through making their first $10 online. You can find me in their forums as Evan Hood).

Why Should You Read This Blog?

If you are new to internet marketing and want to learn along with me stay tuned and hopefully you can learn from the mistakes. There will be no over-hyped ebooks or information courses here. I will be giving a full account of my revenue and expenses as well as lessons learned along the way. Keep up to date on the profitability of each project in the Projects tab at the top. Stay tuned for the first installment of PPC marketing.