08.30.07
Posted in Questions and Comments at 10:28 pm by VoodooChild
Hi Tony,
Thanks for the incredible book. This book really made the lightbulb turn on for me.
A couple of questions:
1.) I jumped right in and started my first campaign a couple days ago. The day after activating my campaign I received an email from Google stating they had de-activated my campaign because my display URL didn’t match my destination URL. This confused me a little but I’m thinking maybe this is something that’s changed since you wrote the book. It seems like most of the affiliates will not allow you to use their URL in your ad text so I’m assuming this means that we now have to create our own landing pages for search marketing. Is this correct or am I missing something?
2.) Of course I know you can’t divulge specifics on your own campaigns but in general do you recommend marketing specific products and going for commissions generated on actual sales or would you lean more towards lead or other free registration type campaigns?
These questions are also directed to any other knowledgeable individuals in this forum.
Also, any other advice for a guy just jumping into this would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
V
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Posted in Search Marketing News at 9:23 pm by Administrator
Microsoft AdCenter sent out the following notice today;
Microsoft adCenter is changing the way we manage our trademark policy starting September 10, 2007. While no change will be made to the trademark policy itself, this update aligns better with marketplace practices, speeds up editorial review to get your ads live faster, and ensures consumers see relevant ads.Microsoft adCenter’s Trademark PolicyAs stated above, we are not changing the trademark policy itself:
http://msmedia.microsoft.com/Key=7884.P6Q.C.C.Crpyzw
You may still use trademarked terms in your ads when you, as the advertiser, are the owner of the trademark, an affiliate or reseller of trademarked products or services, or a site that uses the trademarked term in an informational, descriptive, or non-competitive manner. Infringing use of trademark terms by direct competitors remains a violation of Microsoft adCenter policies.What’s changing?It will now be the advertiser’s responsibility to obtain permission from the trademark owner to use a trademarked term in their ads. It will also be the trademark owner’s responsibility to address ongoing incorrect usage of their trademark term(s) directly with third-party advertisers. Microsoft adCenter will no longer intercede to obtain permission for the advertiser wanting to use a trademarked term.
What does this mean for my search advertising?
- Your ads may display next to other ads that contain your trademarked terms.
- Affiliates, resellers, and third parties may show up against queries for your trademarked terms.
- Competitor’s ads may show up in search results against queries for trademarks in certain scenarios, due to match types other than exact.
For example, if a generic term is included in the overall search query, advertisers who bid on the generic term may show up in the search results.
If you are a trademark owner and you believe your trademark is being misused in Microsoft adCenter, you can submit a report by following the instructions on our Trademark Concern Form:
http://msmedia.microsoft.com/Key=7884.P6Q.D.C.DGy4fx
Visit our adCenter Blog post to read more about this change:http://msmedia.microsoft.com/Key=7884.P6Q.F.C.CzNRGland if you have additional questions about these changes please contact our adCenter Support Team:http://msmedia.microsoft.com/Key=7884.P6Q.J.C.CfwvyP
Sincerely, The Microsoft adCenter Team
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08.28.07
Posted in Questions and Comments at 6:58 am by Korak_1
Tony,
Can you give us a rule of thumb for what kind of conversion rate you look for on your ads? Obviously that will vary greatly based on product type, ad network, etc. How about an example for Google and Amazon together? Click through rate based on a specific product ad and a conversion rate on the Amazon side? I’ve got several small campaigns running and would like to optimize them but right now I don’t know if my ads are performing horribly or pretty good!
Korak
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08.22.07
Posted in Search Marketing News at 9:21 pm by Administrator
Google provided the following notice;
How is the formula for top ad placement changing?
In the coming weeks, we’re improving how high quality ads are selected for top positions above Google search results. This change is designed to improve the quality of our ad results, and to give you more control over achieving top ad placement.
The core components of the top ad placement formula will remain price and quality. However, we are improving the way we factor price into the formula. We’re also adjusting the way your actual cost-per-click (CPC) is determined for ads in top spots. As always, only ads that meet our stringent quality requirements will be eligible to appear in top spots.
What are the details?
In the current top ad placement formula, we consider your Quality Score and your actual CPC, which is determined in part by the bids of advertisers below you. Even if you have a high quality ad, if advertisers below you are not bidding very much, your actual CPC may not be high enough to qualify your ad to appear in a top position.
With this new formula, instead of considering your actual CPC, we’ll consider your maximum CPC bid, which you control. This means that your ad’s eligibility to be promoted is no longer dependent on the bids of advertisers below you. Therefore, if you have a high quality ad, you now have more control to achieve a top position by increasing your maximum CPC.
Your actual CPC will continue to be determined by the auction, but subject to a minimum price for top spots. The minimum price is based on the quality of your ad and is the minimum amount required for your ad to achieve top placement above Google search results. As always, the higher your ad’s quality, the less you will pay. And you will never be charged more than your maximum CPC bid.
How might this affect me?
We anticipate that most of your ads will continue to perform as they have in the past. In some cases, you may see that ads previously shown alongside search results are now shown in top spots, and vice versa. As a result, you may see a change in the average number of clicks and average CPCs for impacted ads.
Be sure to check your stats regularly and adapt your campaigns as you see fit. Here are some quick tips:
- If you don’t want ads that usually appear in high positions alongside search results to appear above search results, check that their maximum CPCs are not dramatically higher than the actual CPCs you normally pay.
- Continue to make routine quality optimizations to keep your costs down and your performance high.
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08.21.07
Posted in Newsletter Archives at 3:02 am by Administrator
Hey Everybody,
Sorry to keep you all waiting so long for this month’s newsletter, but I was having such a good time on the ranch that we stayed a little longer than I’d planned. It sure is nice to be my own boss. 
I’d also like to apologize to those of you who posted questions this past week to the Affiliate Millions Discussion Board. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting for a response, but I had a problem with my Administrator account that I have only just resolved. My responses are now available.
Affiliate Networks & Programs
New Affiliate Networks
This week I have added two new affiliate networks to the Affiliate Millions site.
Linkshare.com – LinkShare is an e-commerce business solution for over 3.5 million online relationships. Become an affiliate of the LinkShare Network for FREE and earn revenue by linking to over 500 premier online merchants!
incentAclick.com – IncentAclick is easy to use and easy to join, and they offer hundreds of competitive affiliate programs.
New Affiliate Program Offers
Affiliate Fuel
“Zooba Book-of-The-Month Club – All Books $9.95 each – Free Shipping with Membership.” (OfferID=122504) is now live as of August 9, 2007.
Affiliate payout for this offer is $22.75!
“AutoCheck Vehicle History Report – Protect yourself before you purchase. Save yourself time and money down the road.” (OfferID=131301) is now live as of August 1, 2007.
Affiliate payout for this offer is $6.00!
AzoogleAds.com
ID Top 5 Performing Offers eCPC CR Offer Landing Page
4539 Blockbuster Total Access ($9.99/mo) $2.78 5.31% http://x.azjmp.com/0nlml
3350 Blinko Wizard – Today’s Hottest Ringtones! $0.93 6.76% http://x.azjmp.com/0YrkK
3341 Singlesnet | Online Dating Made Easy $0.22 5.50% http://x.azjmp.com/0nlms
4000 True.com | Search Only $0.34 8.91% http://x.azjmp.com/0nlnd
1885 DadaMobile – 10 Bonus Tones $0.34 2.59% http://x.azjmp.com/0YrrM
Search Engine Marketing Tips
Keyword Research Tool
A lot of you have written asking for assistance researching new keywords. Although I believe the free tools offered by Google and Yahoo are quite good, if you are willing to pay a premium for more information, KeyCompete.com offers detailed information on what keywords are working for which sites.
Search and Content Networks
Yahoo/Overture Sponsored Search – Yahoo! represents one of the largest and oldest search engines on the web. They are currently running a promotion offering $25 worth of free advertising to new customers. That could translate to as many as 250 free clicks through to the affiliate programs you choose to advertise. Click on the link below to take advantage of this great offer.
Yahoo! Sponsored Search connects businesses and customers online. Sign up and get a $25 credit.
Google AdWords – The pioneer in pay-for-performance search marketing. Google’s AdWords program is one of the top pay-for-performance search engines.
Website Design & Marketing Tips
Website Tools
I recently came across a great new company named Mpire that creates widgets for eBay and Amazon (among others). These widgets are a great blend of content and revenue generation. I have an example on my own site at www.AffiliateMillions.com/web-design.html that dynamically compares current prices for the same product on both Amazon and eBay.
Good Luck, Affiliate Millionaires in training!
Anthony Borelli
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08.18.07
Posted in Questions and Comments at 1:15 pm by Terrilynn
Tony, can you give us any information on click fraud. Have you experienced this type of fraud in any of your adverstising? How would you go about preventing it? Or do you do anything at all?
On the average, how many clicks would you allow on a campaign before it started making money to realize something is going on?
If anyone else would like to comment on this thread that would be great.
Terri
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08.17.07
Posted in Questions and Comments at 3:19 am by Korak_1
Anthony,
Just got some of my keywords denied on Yahoo. I was referred to the following rules:
Web Site Ownership / Affiliates
All sites must follow the web site ownership / affiliate guidelines listed below:
- We will send traffic only to an advertiser’s own web pages.
- Submit only sites owned or controlled by you.
- Do not submit sites that automatically redirect to a site owned or controlled by you.
- We will accept grantor pages submitted by affiliates that are clearly co-branded or personalized with the affiliate’s name or business name.
- Affiliates must list their business name in titles and descriptions when bidding on their grantor’s name or domain name.
It looks like Yahoo has decided they don’t want any direct search marketing at all! Is this what you find to be true or am I misinterpreting things? Do you think that search engines are moving away from allowing this kind of advertising?
Thanks for you thoughts,
Korak
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08.08.07
Posted in Questions and Comments at 8:57 am by shazlig
Hi Tony,
I have a problem with some commission programs as they do not allow their website to be on the display URL (e.g. napster). Do we have to create our own website and use that in the display URL?
Regards,
Shazli
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Posted in Questions and Comments at 6:03 am by Korak_1
Hi Anthony/Greg,
Like everyone else want to thank you for writing the book. Have gotten a lot out of it. I’ve been doing some Adwords work with Amazon and find that I’m often stuck without ads showing due to a previously existing marketer running an ad with an Amazon URL too. Since they presumably have history to base their quality score on and I don’t, am I doomed to bidding an unprofitable amount for a while to build my own history for those keywords or is there a better way? I sure hate to burn cash if there is another option…
Korak
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08.04.07
Posted in Success Stories at 4:13 pm by Terrilynn
Thanks for your vision to others. Of all the books on affiliate marketing at Barnes & Nobles, I bought yours a month ago and have already made money!!
I truly believe faith has brought you to many and we will all prosper due to your generosity.
Terri
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08.01.07
Posted in Questions and Comments at 7:16 pm by crazyfangear
Tony,
Hello, I just recently purchased your book, and found it to be a good read. There really isn’t much published on this topic that is worth the money or the time to read. Prior to purchasing your book I was already a member of Commission Junction for a website that I own and had converted from a dropship type setup to a GoldenCan product fed affiliate website. I haven’t done much with it, but it did OK during the Christmas Season.
I have a couple of questions. One, I am into goal setting, and I was wondering if it is realistic to set a goal of trying to get 10 different ads to produce $10 a day in profit? If so, in what time frame? I realize that last question has many varaibles like ad writing abilities and product line and desirability, but for someone who hasn’t made more than $250 in affiliate efforts, I was just trying to figure out a realistic time frame to reach the goal mentioned.
Question #2 is when I see sponsored ads for eBay’s site, I notice that sometimes I am searching on something that obviously isn’t a product and if you follow the link it really leads to a generic ebay page. I was wondering is there a technique on GoogleAds to create an ad that uses information from the original search to create the ad? Example lets say for my website http://www.crazyfangear.com is a fans site to buy team clothing and other items for their favorite teams. I’d like to run some type of ad so that if someone has searched on the term Kentucky Wildcats or Utah Jazz, that my ad will use the proper team and send to my page for that team?
Also, do you recommend any books on writing good ad copy?
Thanks again,
Troy Gregory
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