I’ve Had More Failed Campaigns Than Successful Ones

April 26, 2010 By 10 Comments

If you are going to work in this business, that is the affiliate marketing business, you need to learn one thing…

You will fail, in fact, you will most likely fail a lot!

There isn’t much you can do about it, oh wait…there is one important thing that you must do with failed campaigns…

Learn from them!!!

Seriously, if you are expecting your first campaign to be successful in this business you have a ton to learn.  Failure is part of business and in this business it’s amazing just how much you’ll fail.  In fact, 90% of the campaigns I start never make money.

There is no formula to always have a successful campaign, there are so many factors that stop a campaign from becoming profitable, including factors that are completely out of your hands.

Don’t give up, instead keep learning and pumping out campaigns and your time will come and you’ll make a ton of money from this business.

With All Sincerity,

Good Luck

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Tips

Understanding How Google Ranks Ads – Content Network

April 23, 2010 By 9 Comments

In the last post about understanding how Google ranks ads, we talked about how Google rank ads in the Search Network.  In this post, I was to discuss how Google ranks ads that you are bidding on in the Content Network.

We already know that they care about bid prices and quality score, and I’m pretty sure most of you realize by now that the higher your bid the better, but we also know that you can’t just bid extremely high cause you’ll lose money, thus, just like with the search network side, there are things you can do on the content network side to raise your quality score in order to get a higher position with a lower bid.  This will allow for higher profits margins and more traffic from being in higher ad positions.

So let’s take a look at a couple of the factors that affects your quality score on the content network side of Google.

  • The Ad’s Past Performance On The Site & On Similar Sites – Just as Google takes your ad CTR and stuff in to effect on the search network, they also take this in to effect on the content network.  However, the major difference is that with the content network, Google looks at it on a more site by site basis instead of across the board.  This means that maybe on one set of sites that are similar to each other you are getting a great CTR while on another set you aren’t doing as well.  Google most likely (it isn’t always the case) still give you a great position on the one set that is doing well, and will only penalize you for the sites you aren’t performing well on.
  • Relevance of Ads and Keywords to Site(s) – If you remember in the last post, the search network post, we said that Google looks at how relevant your ads and keywords are to your landing page.  On the content network, Google is more concerned at how well your ads and keywords relate to the website they are being displayed on and not so much on how well they match your website (landing page).
  • Your Landing Page’s Quality – Even though Google looks more closely at how related your ads and keywords are related to the website you are advertising on in the content network, they still care that you have a landing page that is of high quality.  There are tons of factors that determines if Google sees your landing page as a quality site or not, so the best I can do in this post is link to a page at Google about landing pages.

Those are the three main factors that Google takes in to account when determining your quality score for the content network side of Google Adwords!  You can see pretty easily that Google doesn’t have near the amount of stipulations for the content network as they do for the search network.

It’s a pretty well known fact that they are more strict on the search network then they are on the content network, however, it’s still imperative that you are using the above factors to your advantage when bidding on keyword or placement targeting on the content network.

In affiliate marketing most of the time, it’s the little things that boosts your ad over your competitors ad…the extra time you take that your competitor doesn’t!

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Tips

What’s Going On In My Life?

April 22, 2010 By 6 Comments

So a couple posts ago, I said I was going to do a blog post letting everyone know what’s going on in my life.  So this is strictly a personal post.

First, my wife and I were not able to save our marriage, we both made too many mistakes before either of us were willing to wake up and try to actually fix it.  It was a case of both of us wanting to be right…even when we were dead wrong!  All the papers are filed, so we are just waiting on the courts now and we’ll be officially divorced, although, we’ve been separated for a year and two months now, so…yeah

Also, I decided to finish my degree.  I’m a huge fan of learning…I believe you should never ever stop learning in your lifetime and that you should always push yourself to learning as much as you can.  I had went to school went I left high school, but left when I got married and started internet marketing and then affiliate marketing.

Since my wife and I split, I had a ton of free time and I was sitting around at the house doing nothing…which is never good, so I decided I needed something that would get me out and around other people on a weekly basis…hence I decided to go back to school and finish my degree in Psychology…

If there is one thing that can help you in the business of selling, it’s probably knowing how people think! :P

Just kidding!  Actually I just really enjoy the subject!

I’m also going to throw a post up here telling of all the big changes happening at Click Consultants (like the CC Forums becoming FREE!!!) and also all the big changes that are yet to come!  Trust me there are a ton!  So watch for that post!

Anyways, I went through a bit of a rough patch in my life after the divorce, but I’m glad to be back and am planning on being back in full swing from now on!

Filed Under: Personal Posts

Understanding How Google Ranks Ads – Search Network

April 19, 2010 By 3 Comments

There are several factors that determine where Google places your ad when you are bidding on keywords in Google Adwords.  These factors are all added together to come up with, as Google calls it, your Ad Rank Score.  Some factors have more weight than other factors, but every single one of them is important in making sure you get the best possible ad position for your ad.

In this article I’ll discuss the factors that determine your ad position when you are bidding on keywords on the search network of Google Adwords.

In the next post I write, I’ll discuss the factors that determine your ad position when bidding on keywords on the content network of Google Adwords.

The formula for Ad Rank is pretty simple…

Ad Rank Formula = Max CPC Bid x Quality Score

Most of you know what Max CPC bid, it’s just the maximum you are willing to spend per click and is a number you set in your Adwords account on either an ad group level, or if your smart on a per keyword level.  It’s the biggest factor determining in what position your ad will appear within the search results Sponsored Links section.

This means that you can’t bid .10 cents on a keyword like auto insurance even if you have the best quality score possible and expect to show up in position one… it just isn’t gonna happen…

Moving on, so what affects your quality score?

The quality score you receive is based on a number of factors, however, once again there is one major factor that tends to be the most important.  That is your CTR (click through rate) of your ad.  The higher your click through rate, the higher your quality score.  The reason for this is because Google is out to make money…I know…shocker…right?

The only way that Google makes money is when someone clicks on your ad.  If you write an ad and Google shows it yet no one ever clicks on it, then they make nothing.  So naturally Google desires for you to have the highest CTR that you can, which also benefits you!  It means more traffic for you, and more money for Google as their being paid per click and the higher your CTR the more clicks you are getting for the same amount of impressions.

So the two biggest factors is your Max CPC (Max Bid) and Ad CTR (click through rate), however, what happens when you have a competitive bid price and a great Ad CTR but yet you still just can’t seem to beat that one competitor that is outranking you?

Well, there are several other factors that Google uses to determine your quality score, and while they may not give you as big of a boast as having a high CTR would give you, they can still help you tremendously.

  • Your Account History – Not only does Google care about your CTR that you are currently getting on a campaign, but they also take in to account the overall CTR that you’ve received for all your campaigns, ads, and keywords.  The better CTR you have long term, the strong your account becomes.
  • Ads Relevant to Keywords? – Google also takes in to account how well related your ads are to your keywords.  If your writing ads about selling a dog training ebook, yet your keywords are on ringtones, that will lower your quality score.
  • Ads & Keywords Relevant to Landing Page? – Another factor that will affect your quality score is whether or not your ads and keywords are relevant to your landing page.  Again, if you are bidding on keywords and writing ads on things that aren’t related to the actual product or service you are promoting, it will negatively affect your quality score!

There are several other factors that will affect your quality score, however, the ones listed above are the ones that I’ve found to affect your quality score the most.

While Google doesn’t show the actual quality score you have, they do now give a number 1-10 to help you see how a keyword is ranking quality score wise.  You can see this quality score by going to an ad group and looking at the keywords and turning it on by click the show/hide columns button and selecting it.

In the next post I write, I’ll discuss what factors determine your quality score when bidding on keywords on the Content Network, so make sure you subscribe to my feed if you haven’t yet to make sure you get an update when the next one is posted.

Update – Understanding How Google Ranks Ads on the Content Network

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Tips, Google, PPC

Local Lead Generation – What?!?

April 17, 2010 By 6 Comments

Dentist's OfficeHey guys, my buddy Chad over at CDFNetworks just released his new local lead generation course.  I just finished it myself and I think it’s one of the best complete guides that I’ve seen on the internet about local lead generation.

Local lead generation is affiliate marketing, however, instead of using CPA networks like Market Leverage, AzoogleAds, etc in order to get offers, you find local businesses that are looking for leads, like maybe a local dentist office, and enter in to a contract with them to supply them local leads using the same methods that you are using already for affiliate marketing.

The biggest difference is that you are advertising in Google Adwords, Yahoo, etc locally instead of advertising your stuff across the entire country.

There have been several large affiliate marketers talking about this method of affiliate marketing lately at a lot of different affiliate marketing blogs, however, no one has really put together much information about it in to an easy resource.  For example, Shoemoney talked about the possibilities of local affiliate marketing on his blog.

This is what Chad has done!

His course includes an ebook that explains everything you need to know about local lead generation, but it also goes much further by including sample contracts, sales proposals, invoices, etc to help you do it correctly and so that you are taken seriously when you go in to your local dentist office…don’t want them thinking your an idiot do ya? Haha!

Anyways, it really is a great course if you’ve been wondering how local lead generation works or if you’ve been wanting to give it a go.  It’s only $79 bucks and honestly, after reading it and looking through all the stuff you get, I think it’s worth every single penny.

Your probably thinking this is another course that is just going to take your money and provide you with nothing of real value like so many courses in this industry does…however, I encourage you to at least visit his site, view his video, and read about the course before just completely writing it off!  As I said, I’ve personally gone through it and although I’ve never personally run any local affiliate programs, I must admit that I’m pretty excited to give it a try.

He’s running the program through ClickBank which means that it offers a 60 day money back guarantee if you’re not completely satisfied, so trying it out for yourself can’t hurt you…

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Tools
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