Pay Per Click (PPC) Archives

Many search engine marketing people are obsessed about getting more traffic! Since you want more traffic, I will share this simple idea that can work for you. A straight forward and simple way to get more traffic is simply by increasing your chances of getting more clicks.

Showing Up

Someone once said that you must first show up in order to be successful. If you want to be twice as successful, you must show up more than once! The best way to get more clicks and more traffic to your website is simply to show up for both the paid and free search engine listings.

More Traffic

The reason why this works is because you have a higher chance of getting more clicks and more traffic when your website show up more than once for the same keywords. Sounds tricky? It is actually simpler than you think.

Paid Search

You must always track your paid search results so that you will know exactly which keywords are converting into leads or sales for you. You then take those keywords and you optimize them to rank well on the organic search engine listings.

Organic Search

You need to do some optimization on your pages then you get other sites to link back to your website consistently over time. Not too fast, just do it regularly over time. In this way you will rank well on the left side as well.

Summary

In short, take your best converting keywords from your paid search campaigns, then use them to optimize your pages to rank well on the left side of the search engines. When you show up on both the left and right side, you chances of getting more traffic goes up.

When I first heard about Affiliate Payload, the first thing that came across my mind is “oh no! not another PPC Google assassin rehashed junk!”. But since this is from Alex Goad; I’ve purchased many of his products before and I know he always has some innovative and ingenious money-making tricks up his sleeve. So, I bought and read it.

And here is my review of Affiliate Payload…

Like the title of this article suggests, this is not another PPC or Google killer stuffs. The manual does cover how to use AdWords and other PPC systems to drive targeted traffic but it’s used as a way of testing and finding the profitable keywords. This part is very important because the key to PPC success is to buy profitable yet cost-effective keywords. That’s all about PPC covered in Affiliate Payload. If you want to learn how to use AdWords or PPC, this is not for you.

The main focus of Affiliate Payload is about marketing CPA offers. CPA is Cost Per Action or also known as Pay Per Action. These are offers from companies where you’ll get paid if you send someone to provide his/her name, email address and zip code for them.

Now, to earn money, you need to drive traffic to those sites that have CPA offers. The Affiliate Payload will you the best CPA network list and teach you how to drive targeted traffic to those sites. Besides using PPC for testing, Affiliate Payload also teaches you how to generate lots of FREE traffic.

I’ve never focused my effort on CPA before; but after reading Affiliate Payload, I’ve now got another avenue to create additional income stream online. The CPA Network List is invaluable; you don’t have to waste time hunting for profitable CPA offers, all are provided for you. This will save you lots of time.

Another part I appreciate is the Mindmaps; this comes in a separate pdf file. It breaks down the entire system using flowcharts and diagrams. Make sure you print out the Mindmaps so that you can see clearly how the methods interconnect and work together.

Another new money-making technique I learn from Affiliate Payload is the “Event Hijack Method”. This is an invaluable method you should add in your money-making arsenal; it teaches you how to profit from news headlines and trends in CPA offers. Hint: think Olympics…

So, as you can see, Affiliate Payload is not another PPC or Google killer hype or rehashed materials. In fact, making money from CPA offers makes sense because it’s a lot easier to convince people to take action by giving their names or email addresses rather than asking them to buy something. Don’t you agree?

On the whole, I think Alex Goad doesn’t disappoint me with Affiliate Payload. I do learn lots of new money-making skills which I can use to build additional income streams online. This review is not an endorsement of the product but I do strongly feel that it could serve to teach people how to earn extra incomes.

With all the acronyms being thrown around in the Internet marketing industry, it’s easy to see how a novice marketer could become confused.  Below you’ll find a quick guide to the most important acronyms you’ll encounter in your Internet marketing ventures.

PPC – Pay per click

Pay per click is a form of advertising in which the advertiser pays only for those users who “click” on his or her ad. Google AdWords is the most popular PPC program currently available.

PPI – Pay per impression

Pay per impression is an older form of advertising in which the advertiser pays for the ad based on the number of page views or impressions the ad receives.  Whereas PPC only charges the advertiser for people who actually take action, PPI charges the advertiser for everyone who sees the ad.

SEO – Search Engine optimization

Search Engine optimization is the process of improving a website’s ranking in the organic search engine results.  Search engine optimization is generally part of a larger search engine marketing campaign.

SEM – Search Engine marketing

Search engine marketing is a type of marketing that aims to promote a website within the search engine.  Search engine marketing can include SEO and PPC campaigns.

CPI – Cost per impression

Cost per impression is frequently used to measure the results of an SEM campaign.  This statistic is used to determine the cost of each page view the website receives because of the SEM campaign.

PR – Page rank

Page rank is used to describe the number assigned to a particular website by Google for a specific search term. A site that ranks #2 for the phrase “free book” would have a PR of 2 for that term.

Over the years, I have spoken to so many fellow business owners & internet marketers. I have seen so many mistakes, in fact, I can compile all the mistakes into a book. Here are 3 fatal mistakes that can destroy your business.

Not Tracking

At the minimum, you must place a small piece of conversion tracking code on our thank you page so that you can track either leads or sales. This is the most basic form of tracking & it must be done. Period.

No excuse for this! Almost all pay per click search engines would provide you with a piece of conversion tracking code for you to place on your conversion page. It is simpler than you think.

Not Testing Ads

You must always be rotating at least 2 pay per click ads if not how are you ever going to find your ultimate winning ad? With technology, now you have the luxury of rotating ads evenly in real time, so take advantage of it, test it!

The ad that gets the most response is usually not what you expect so keep testing until you find it. Even after you find it, what makes you think you cannot create another ad that beats your current best performing ad.

Not Testing Landing Pages

What is the point of a super responsive, super high click through rate pay per click ad when your landing page sucks! If you do not test your landing page, how are you going to improve your leads or sales conversion rates?

With free tools such as Google Website Optimizer, you got no more excuses! Not only it is free, it is so easy to use. Good landing page conversion rates can often turn a losing campaign into a winning campaign.

Summary

In short, always be testing, never stop testing. The money is made in tracking your results, testing variables & then tweaking it accordingly. Nothing sexy, nothing new, just plain old direct response marketing.

How to Find Affiliate Tracking Software

To make money, many online business owners are making the decision to create their own affiliate program. An affiliate program connects business owners with website publishers, who are often referred to as affiliates.

With an affiliate program, an affiliate is compensated each time they use their website to generate a sale for their affiliate partner, the business in question. This partnership has helped to increase the revenue of many businesses and it can do the same for your business.
If you are interested in starting your own affiliate program, there is something important that you will need to obtain. That item is affiliate tracking software. Affiliate tracking software is used to monitor and keep track of businesses affiliates, whether there is only one participating affiliate or thousands of them. The information that a tracking software program will record outlines how each customer made its way to your website. If they were directed to your online store or website and made a purchase via one of your affiliates, the tracking software will make note of that sale, including the amount of it. This information is vital when it comes to time to pay your affiliates all of the money they have earned.

If you have decided that an affiliate program is right for you and your business, you will have to start searching for a software program. There are a number of different search methods that you can use. All of these methods should provide you with a number of results. However, for the best results, you are encouraged to try a combination of these methods. These popular search methods include, standard internet searching, online affiliate resource guides, and recommendations from other business owners.

A standard internet search is, perhaps, the best way to find affiliate tracking software. This is because almost all of the individuals and companies selling this software have an online website. Those online websites will come up in most standard internet searches, performed with the words affiliate tracking software. When examining these websites, you are not only urged to examine the price of the software, but also the features that it has. This is extremely important; you do not want to pay a large amount of money for a software program that you cannot use.

In addition to performing a standard internet search, you can also obtain information on affiliate tracking software by finding an online website or resource guide that is designed to assist business owners, like yourself. These resource guides often give you inside information on the world of affiliate marketing. In addition to valuable tips and helpful information, many of these online websites and resource guides give detailed information, including product reviews, on a number of different affiliate tracking software programs. By examining these reviews, you should be able to find a number of software programs.

It may also be a good idea to seek software recommendations for other business owners, especially ones that run their own affiliate program. Not all, but a number of these business owners would be more than willing to assist you anyway that they can. Obtaining feedback is important because many business owners may not only be able to provide you with positive feedback, but negative feedback as well. If you do not feel comfortable outright asking another business owner for help, you can find that help online. Similar to the above mentioned online resource guides, there are also online message boards designed for business owners participating in affiliate programs. By finding and visiting these message boards, you should be able to learn about numerous affiliate tracking software programs.

As previously mentioned, it is recommended that you use a number of the above mentioned search methods. The more research you do, to find an affiliate tracking software, the more results you will be presented with. A large number of results is helpful when looking for the affiliate tracking software program that best fits your needs.

Nicholas Tan has been involved in Article Writing, providing Free Articles, Internet Marketing, SEO, Adwords, & Adsense for more than 5 years and designs and develops websites. Submit your free articles and get your articles noticed! Get your Free Articles here! Submit Articles! We provide free articles and information. Check us out at Free Articles!

Article by Nicholas Tan

Cost-Per-Action (CPA)

Definition

Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations.

Information

The actions defined in a cost-per-action agreement relate directly to some type of conversion, with sales and registrations among the most common. This does not include deals based solely on solely clicks, which are referred to specifically as cost-per-click or CPC.

The cost-per-action (CPA) model is at the other end of the spectrum from the cost-per-impressions model (CPM), with the cost-per-click (CPC) model somewhere in the middle. In a CPA model, the publisher is taking most of the advertising risk, as their commissions are dependant on good conversion rates from the advertiser’s creative units and Web site.

Marketers looking for cost-per-action deals have several options. Publishers with considerable excess inventory may be willing to consider nonstandard offers. Sites specializing in incentive programs are in a position to offer CPA pricing on various types of leads, although the usual caveats concerning incentivized traffic still apply. Perhaps the most widespread use of performance-based pricing is affiliate marketing, whereby merchants/advertisers determine what actions they want to reward and how much they are willing to pay.

PPC Advertising – Pay Per Click Programs

Paid search is the hottest area of online marketing today and this trend is only going to strengthen. Piper Jaffray forecasts sales in paid search of over 14 Billion US in this year alone and will continue to grow at an astounding rate of 37% each year.

Google leads the way with its increasing share of paid search, primarily from its pay per click service, AdWords. Traditional media is losing its market share as ad dollars move to online marketing, and specifically the paid search arena. With this glut of dollars invading the paid space, unwary advertisers are at risk of making mistakes that can quietly consumer thousands of dollars.

Take a closer look at how you can set up and optimize your PPC campaign.

Simple and Informative

Advertisers enjoy PPC advertising because it is simple, they have greater control over their ad campaign, and they receive better feedback on its performance. The growing importance of online marketing makes PPC an important arena for them to use and master and in fact, it’s not uncommon for CEO’s to do their own company’s PPC campaigns.

If you’re not currently using pay per click campaigns, it is increasingly important to understand them and have a strategy to optimize their performance. Large campaigns need to be well planned and managed. It looks simple but it’s easy to waste thousands of dollars. The beauty of PPC advertising is the speed at which you can reach your target market and the high quality of sales leads that can be generated. The downside is the price and the need for excellent conversion to sales. At $5.00 to $10.00 USD per click in many cases, you can run through your ad budget quickly.

The pay per click advertising programs with the greatest market reach are offered by Google and Yahoo. Google’s program called AdWords delivers targeted pay per click ads via its own search engine Web sites and a host of partner sites.

Yahoo purchased Overture Search in 2003 October and renamed it Yahoo Search Marketing, which has a selection of specialized Pay Per Click advertising programs. These major PPC advertising programs offer an astounding reach to highly targeted consumers. In contrast to organic search engine listings, PPC listings don’t require an extensive content development and link building campaign.

Planning and Writing Skill is Needed

The key to effective PPC campaigns is in your keyword strategy and the quality of your visitor analytics. Many companies set up their PPC advertising campaigns without much planning. Campaigns need to be structured so that unproductive keywords can be filtered out and high performers improved upon.

On occasion, an advertiser will find themselves prohibited from bidding on a keyword phrases because their ad’s click through rate was so poor. You definitely want to avoid that problem. Popular keywords are associated with particular solutions in consumer’s minds. You’ll find you’re competing with companies that offer a more popular solution, so although your ad shows for that particular search phrase, it isn’t really what most people are looking for. This means your click through rate will be low and your ad will stop being shown. Your ad’s appearance is not a certainty when you’re trying to sell a specialized niche product under a general common search term. A sophisticated keyword and ad copy strategy will be needed.

To maximize your PPC advertising performance, you must bid on the right selected keyword phrases, write persuasive, moving ad copy, and have a well written page to have them click through to. If you know how to attract the prospect and deliver them seamlessly to a solution they need, you’ll be rewarded with a good sales rate. The number, style and type of words you can use in your ads is restricted so writing attractive, persuasive text ads is much harder than you’d expect.

Tip: A custom prepared PPC campaign by an SEO Professional is still the best approach to pay per click. A large corporation can save substantial amounts and maximize performance by outsourcing to an SEO Consultant.

Self Managed PPC Campaigns

Are self-managed PPC advertising campaigns a wise decision? With solid promotional writing skills, and understanding of consumer psychology and lots of time, you may save money. In my experience, clients tend not to be strategic enough and they spend far too much and bid on too many unproductive keywords, hoping that some of their ads are generating sales leads. A search engine marketing professional specializing in this area can develop a system to progressively focus in on the best ad copy, bidding price and timing of ad positions.

PPC advertising is all about relevance, particularly with Google AdWords. If your ads don’t get clicked on enough, they will be removed.

If your advertising needs are high and you have to find click throughs cheaper than $5.00 USD, it may be wiser to use the services of an SEO consultant. However, if you want to pursue it on your own, this article discusses how the PPC programs work and some of the techniques SEO consultants use.

Pay Per Click Marketing has Matured

The PPC/CPC industry has undergone consolidation with Google and Yahoo’s program still standing. Mamma.com is also available but doesn’t have the reach of the two PPC giants. MSN is currently testing a new pay per click search engine marketing service. The date for its rollout hasn’t been set.

  1. How Does PPC Advertising Work?
  2. Good Targeting and Timing
  3. Finding the Right Keywords
  4. Writing Your PPC Ads
  5. Writing Your Ad Titles
  6. Top PPC Pay Per Click Programs

How Does PPC Advertising Work?

Basically, you the advertiser pay a rate you specify for every visitor who clicks through from the search engine site (or their affiliates) to your web site. It’s simple and quick. Each unique keyword phrase (e.g. digital cameras) has its own bid price. You set the budget. With a credit card and a web site readied, you’re on your way to advertising on the web’s top sites in no time.

Overture offers numerous PPC subprograms. Overture has renamed its products many times which has made it confusing for some advertisers and thus discouraged new advertisers. Google as well, has created some special capabilities in AdWords that are worth using. Both have introduced tracking and return on cost statistical features which can be very beneficial to those who don’t have their own ecommerce team.

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Good Targeting and Timing

As you know, search engines return a list of web sites relevant to a person’s keyword search. High rankings in the free (organic) search results is an exceptionally valuable achievement. However, with tens of thousands of web sites all competing for a keyword phrase ranking, it is difficult to rank highly for multiple keyword phrases.

Pay per click advertising on the other hand, allows you to get your web site listed on the results pages of an almost limitless number of keyword phrases. That kind of reach is incredibly powerful.

For most of the PPC search engines, the advertising rules and listing procedures are straightforward. The highest bidder for a phrase gets top spot. Both programs have relevance requirements. That means you have to target the right type of searcher or consumer with the right keywords. Your ad must get clicked on regularly enough or it will be removed.

Generally speaking, before launching your pay per click campaign you should take an inventory of the product and services categories you’re interested in, along with the specific products and services you have to offer. Make sure these products and what you’re going to say about them, is substantiated by your web site content otherwise your ad won’t be allowed.

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Finding the Right Keywords

Your search engine optimization consultant should help you target the right keywords. There are keyword suggestion tools you can use such as those provided by Yahoo!, Google and Wordtracker. Through experience you’ll see these keyword services can lack accuracy. Good keyword selection goes deeper than this because you must still filter out those ads that don’t bring real paying customers.

Tip: Avoid bidding wars by searching for more specific multiword, targeted keyword phrases.

That means you’ll have to find lesser-used, two or three-word phrases, many of which aren’t suggested in the keyword suggestion tools. It takes skill and experience to cull out the good keyword phrases. Keywords can also be found in your web site transfer log files however, they will only show those keyword phases your site is already ranking high on. Both AdWords and Overture have keyword rules and they may not allow you to bid on keywords that aren’t used very often, even if those keywords are highly productive in terms of profit.

Tip: Pause your campaign during those times when your top prospects aren’t normally searching for your service or products.

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Writing Your PPC Ads

The wording of your ad listing is a tricky matter because of the limited space you’re given and the restriction on the wording you can use. Believe me, these restrictions do pose a problem and you’ll be anguishing a little as you try to write an that works. You’ll want to use natural promotional language in your ads, but you may not be allowed.

Not being able to use direct marketing type copy is an extra challenge as one Overture client said to me, “Overture (Yahoo!) is very picky and has a policy that doesn’t allow me to implement my key words, which is very baffling.”

Below is an example for the fictitious business, www.example.com. Notice there is no use of superlatives such as lowest and best. And you can’t use promo punctuation such as ! and $ and, forget about excessive capitalization. Try and get your direct mail copywriter to conform to these rules!

New Automobile Price Quotes – Free all the Time. Save money at Example
www.example.com

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Writing Your Ad Titles

The title (first line of your ad) is treated differently by different PPC programs, however, having your keywords placed in the title is a good decision usually. That’s the golden rule of search engine marketing, use your customer’s words to grab their attention. When you test different ad wordings, you’ll discover which are effective. You have to learn quickly however, because you may not be allowed to bid on that phrase again, if your ads performance was particularly poor. Some of your competitors will be making offers to customers that you’d think would wipe all chance of profit, and their ad may make your well written masterpiece invisible in comparison. It is competitive, and you must be prepared to deal with the challenges that you’ll face from your competitors.

Of course the words free, instant, and bonus, are attention getters. Call now, or get yours here, are calls to action to encourage readers to click through to your site. Each program has guidelines that you’ll have to read. If you make mistakes, you’ll be warned (disapproved) once, then ignored. They have no interest in your web master’s problems or your manager’s concern with legality of terms.

Your domain name listed below the title can influence the reader’s perception of the quality and relevance of your ad. If your current domain name sounds unrelated or too promotional sounding, you might consider getting a new domain with a name that sounds a little more serious. An important thing to remember is how your value proposition to the customer can be conveyed in a few select words.

Having a search engine copywriter do this for you makes sense because they are familiar with the psychology involved, keyword choices, and the rules and regulations of the PPC programs. They also know what copy content is needed in your pages. Generally speaking, before launching your PPC campaign you should take an inventory of the product and services categories you’re interested in, along with the specific products and services you have to offer.

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The Top PPC Programs

There are numerous PPC programs available. Those pay per click programs listed below are your best choices because they can deliver sufficient results for most campaigns. There are other PPC programs available and you may find value in them depending on the type of product or service you’re offering. You’ll be happy to know that both programs have limited the maximum bid at $100.00 USD per click! Just in case you get a little carried away.

Applying For Google AdSense

O.K so you would like to use Google AdSense to generate a passive revenue for your site. So you just apply get granted an account, then cut and paste the standard code right? Well no that’s very inaccurate. Let me start at the beginning with the correct way to sign up for an AdSense account. It is as reasonably basic process but get it wrong and they’ll turn down your request and your odds of a successful re-application are slim to zero.

So on with the fundamentals of trying for the programme. You will need one of two things to try this, either have a website or a blog with blogger.com.

Firstly to Google content is king it is that straightforward, so in both cases you will need to have some decent content be it on your blog or your web site, as an example you can sign up for an AdSense account directly from blogger and this route does seem to be the fastest technique to get a new account, but you clearly have to have some content on the blog first so if you choose this route then make 8-10 high quality post before trying for the AdSense program. You can do this without delay from Blogger under ‘Configure blog post’ where there is a link to the programme.

Secondly you can do what the general public do and apply for it for you web site. Now there’s a myth that you’ve got to have had a site for a set time before getting licensed, it is simply that a myth! It’s all down to content, if you’ve had a site for 5 years but it has no real content as such you won’t get authorized. Yet if you started a new site a few days back but you have great content that folk will find engaging then you will get approved. It really is that simple.

Time for approval? The time it uses to get licensed varies but I’m pretty certain that this is only down to demand e.g. If ten thousand apply one week and 100,000 the AdSense team will suffer the same peaks and troughs in their workload as we all do. It can take 5-10 working days, if you have not heard anything after fifteen days send them a polite email progressing your application.

So remember ‘Content is King’ and use the time while you area waiting to hear back on your claim to build more great content.

Just remember you can’t run AdSense on an adult site, drugs related site, or hate fueled site, oddly nor can you run it on a site just about AdSense.

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