Most of you have heard of Tracking202 from Wes Mahler.  It’s a service that’s completely free to use and allows you to track which keywords in your PPC campaigns are converting and which ones aren’t.  This allows you to bid higher on keywords that convert and get rid of keywords that don’t.  Sound pretty simple right?  We’ll believe it or not, most affiliates have a very hard time tracking keywords and most new affiliates don’t have the money for a paid tracking tool.

Also, most people don’t like that idea of sharing which keywords are converting with these companies that allow you to track for free.  For example, Google Adwords Pixel, Yahoo’s Pixel, and even Tracking202.  This is where Prosper202 comes into play.

Prosper202 is a free PPC keyword tracking application from Wes Mahler and his crew.  It’s the same people that created Tracking202 only this tool (Prosper202) allows you to host the application directly on your hosting account if your not willing or are feeling nervous about your keyword information being out there on someone else’s server.

You can visit their site for more information about the product and all of it’s features, as I’m only going to touch on a few of the products features.

• Works with Every Single PPC Network Out There!
• Cloaks Keywords from Advertisers and Affiliate Networks keeping them a secret!
• Works with Landing Pages or With Direct Linking!

Again, it seems like a great tool, I’ve only been able to play around with it for a little while but I definitely think you should check out the service being provided by Prosper202 if your in need of a great keywords tracking application.

Also, just to give you guys a little recap and to give a little more insight on some of their other “202″ tools they have available…

• Tracking202 - PPC Keyword Tracking tool that is completely FREE of charge.  This application is hosted on their servers.  Good if you don’t have a server to put Prosper202 on and you wanting to use this program.
• Prosper202 - Same thing as Tracking202 only you can use this version on your own server thus allowing you to keep all your secret ninja like stuff from getting into the wrong hands.
• Export202 - Allows you to easily convert campaigns from one PPC campaign to another.  Currently works with Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN Adcenter.  Again this program like the other two is completely free to use.

Again, I think Wes Mahler and the team are doing a great job and I can’t wait to see what other tools they release under the “202″ brand.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Most affiliates that have been running any type of profitable campaign know that there are certain hours when customers will convert better than other hours.

The question is what can you do about this phenomenon to help increase your ROI (return on investment)? The answer is actually quite simple and easy, Dayparting!

First lets start off with the basics…

What is Dayparting?

Dayparting is a tool that is currently available in Google Adwords, as well as Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Adcenter, that allows you to set bids automatically depending on the day of the week, hour of the day, or both!

A definition of dayparting would be something like:

“Dayparting, the practice of adjusting pay-per-click campaigns based on time of day or day of the week.”

How does dayparting work?

Dayparting is currently available in all of the major search engines PPC program. In Google, dayparting is actually referred to as Ad Scheduling.

To make this alot easy let me give you a few examples of what you can have dayparting do for you and your search campaigns.

Let’s say that you are running an affiliate offer for Payday Loans. Now, we have found out by tracking that between the hours of 1:00 A.M. to 6:00 A.M. we don’t get any conversions at all.

We can now go into Google Adwords and go into our campaign and click on edit campaign, now look for ad scheduling and turn it on and we can now go in and completely turn off our payday loans campaign during those hours. So from now on between the hours of 1:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M. our campaign will automatically pause and then resume once it hits 6:01 A.M.

Lets say that we notice instead though that between the hours of 1:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M. we are still getting conversions only not as many and we have a lower ecpc because of a lower conversion rate during those hours. What we can do is go inside of Google Adwords and the ad scheduling and instead of pausing our campaign during those hours, we can instead just lower the bids by 20% across the board and then they will automatically go back up after 6:00 A.M.

So by now you should be seeing the picture and understand why dayparting can significantly increase your ROI, because not only can you lower your bids during certain times, but you can also raise them during certain times. If you notice between the hours of 4:00 P.M. and 6:00 P.M. your conversions really pick up, you can then raise your bid 20% across the board during those times.

Again, the great thing about this is its all automatic. Once you set it up, you never have to worry about it again, it will continue to do it everyday as long as you have it on!

Popularity: 48% [?]

I’ve decided to post about something you don’t really see/read about too often when it comes to PPC. The title of this post really hits the nail on the head but I wanted to go into it a little deeper with some of my own personal experiences.

We’ve all been at the point in our campaigns where we upload our keywords, write our ads, design our landing pages, etc. After we finish doing these, we must make a rather important decision. What do I set my max cpc at?

So, you finally decide what to set your max cpc at only to find that your losing money with your newly established campaign. So what now? Well, according to most affiliates I talk to that are just starting out, common sense would tell them to lower their bids on their keywords. My question to you is why would you think that? I challenge you to try a different approach.

First, lets list some reasons why being at the bottom of the list of ads hurts you and your conversions.

1. A lot of affiliate marketers out there are using the same affiliate program you are using, so while being in position 6 or even 8 may seem like a good idea, you have to realize that someone may have already seen the same affiliate landing page your promoting from an affiliate in one of the top positions, which could hurt your conversions.

2. Most of the people that come down the list of ads and click on them one by one and look at the offers are normally the type of people that are looking for the best deal and not just going to make a spur of the moment decision and purchase your product without doing research to see if someone is offering it at a better price.

3. And last but not least, by bidding lower and being the lower ad positions, you are inhibiting your ability to get the impressions/leads that you want in order for your campaign to really kick ass!

So, I challenge you to try something new when you launch a campaign and it doesn’t take off and you don’t see the conversions you would like to see. Instead of automatically lowering all your bids across the board, try increasing your bids…You may very well be surprised!

For example, when I was doing some insurance niches, like auto, health, home, and life insurance, I started my bids at an average of .30 cents per click. My campaign lost money…the first day I lost about 400 bucks total. I almost scrapped the campaign but then decided that maybe the users were getting to my site but not completing the step required for me to receive the payout because of some or all of the examples I gave above. I thought if I increase my bids and get higher ad spots, maybe, just maybe it will help my conversions. Sure enough, I raised my bids to .60 cents average and the next day made 400 dollars profit instead of losing 400 dollars. So try it out, see if it will help you. You never know until you test!

Please Note: Now, before I get comments saying that the above isn’t true, I am fully aware that sometimes bidding lower works and sometime bidding higher doesn’t work, I’m simply saying that sometimes it does and too many times we lower our bids trying to make a profit when sometimes what we really need to do is increase our bids to make a profit.

Popularity: 6% [?]