02.29.08

Budgeting with an expected CTR

Posted in Questions and Comments at 8:05 pm by mattycb

Tony, I know in your book you recommend never budgeting more money than you are willing to lose. Believe me, I consider this some of the wisest advice in the book. However, my question concerns whether one can use a rule of thumb click-through-rate (CTR) for budget estimates.

For example, let’s say I don’t want to spend more than $150 per month on a campaign. So, on Google that’s roughly a $5.00 per day budget. But I’m beginning to get the feeling that the $5.00 per day budget doesn’t generate enough impressions with a small CTR to really risk hitting my budget.

Does it make more sense to use perhaps a $300.00 budget that will yield more impressions, get me more clicks, but still not really go over the 150 to 200 range on cost?

Permalink 1 Comment

02.27.08

Display URL

Posted in Questions and Comments at 10:13 pm by sierra

Dear Tony,

It seems many of CJ programs require that I display my own URL, and/or link to my own website first. It seems you do not have any banner ads on your site. How are you dealing with this issue?

 Thank you!

 Sierra

Permalink 1 Comment

02.25.08

Newbie to search marketing

Posted in Questions and Comments at 1:47 am by bestgreengear

Hi Tony,

I have immersed myself in the world of building affiliate websites. I now have four (in 10 months) and really really want them to generate revenue (as I’m sure we all do). After reading your book, I am confident that I could accelerate my wealth building with search marketing. My websites feature over 200 plus affiliate products or services (mostly products) and i’m using two keyword tools (including google’s) to be determine which products would be the best to initiate campaigns with. I’m now re-reading it for a second time and about to launch my first campaign. I’m a bit nervous about the process and have a few questions about how to best determine which product to promote. I’m sure that I can overkill the thought process as well. I’m not afraid of hard work, am willing to take risks, but need some help with these questions:

1. It appears that since the writing of your book I’ll need to use my website pages to link to the adwords and the affiliate products to legitimately use the affiliate and the programs. Your use of affiliates at the time of writing the book was brilliant but I believe not an accepted practice as much today?

2. Should I target keywords that have little to no google adword campaigns? In other words when I google the “keyword” and if there are less than 8 adwords should this be a good campaign to start with?
3. Most of the keywords that I target in the google adwords keyword tool either show ‘no competition’ and low to moderate demand. Should I even bother and only aim for moderate to high demand?

Any other recommendations, advice, or coaching would be most greatly appreciated. Thank you for sharing your success and moreso educating the rest of us. I’m determined to be successful in the web world!

http://www.gearup4nature.com

http://www.gearup4water.com

http://www.gearup4travel.com

http://www.bestgreengear.com

Permalink 1 Comment

Are Advertisers Cheating me?

Posted in Questions and Comments at 1:41 am by dstv

Hi,

I’ve been involved in search marketing for about 4 months now and monitor my performance a few times per day.  One of my links generates a fairly consistent conversion rate.  Then all of a sudden it came to a halt and I was not getting any sales at all for a couple of weeks.  I emailed the advertiser about the situation and they claimed everything was fine.  Well, later that day my conversion performance returned to it’s normal level.  Sounds suspicious, right?

Also, another advertiser I was affiliated with did not award me any commission for a fairly large purchase that was made by a friend whom I directed toward this company using one of the links provided.  I emailed the company multiple times and got no response.  Finally, I was able to make contact with someone in their affiliate sales department whom I exchange a few emails with about the situation.  Well, when I gave them the order information and requested if they could submit the commission manually, I never heard from this person again and they will not return my emails or phone calls.

I guess what my question is, how do I know if a purchase was made through my link and is there any way that I can be sure that I am not being cheated out of my commissions after putting much effort and $$$ into creating ads?

Permalink 2 Comments

02.24.08

EPC on CJ

Posted in Questions and Comments at 10:07 pm by afb

Hi Tony,

 I have been looking for something to provide some additional income and came across your book. I found it very informative and easy to follow. THank you for writing it. I do have a couple questions though that I hope you can help me with.

 1) On CJ, I was curious about the 3 month EPC and 7 day EPC. I noticed that often, the 7 day EPC is much higher than the 3 month EPC, why would this be? I’m assuming it may be due to leads that are generated and commision paid for, but no sales generated as a result? But when I look at the earnings trend, for the 30 day period, it shows consistently the 7 day EPC is quite high, so I don’t fully understand why this wouldn’t translate into the 3 month EPC.

 2) I am new at this, and was wondering if you have any advise on how many campaigns it is generally good to start off with? Can a person make a good start with only one or two campaigns, or is that a recipe for failure? I know that in investing, diversification is key, so I would assume the same applies here?

 Thanks again!

Permalink 1 Comment

02.23.08

Timely Success!

Posted in Success Stories at 6:27 am by cpcdablue

Hey Tony,

Just a small thanks for the book.  I started affilliate marketing with a few websites in Aug with 00000 sales.  I read your book and Netted over 700 in december: my first month! I just received my second direct deposit from commission junction for January’s sales…540$ (plus still waiting on 239$ from Azoogle.) This month It’s less but still on track to make several hundred dollars.  Even though it’s not retirement yet -it’s been a great blessing to me and my family.

Thanks Again

Corey

Permalink 6 Comments

02.21.08

Book Is going Back To The Store!!!

Posted in Questions and Comments at 7:36 pm by bubba

Please pull your outdated book from the stores….Your information is outdated…You are making money off ideas that don’t work anymore….I am sure I am not the only person to say this…PULL YOUR BOOK!!!!

How about Those Giants???????? 

Permalink 3 Comments

SID Confusion

Posted in Questions and Comments at 3:58 pm by mattycb

Tony, I just want to double check something. In your book you suggest appending “&SID=” to the direct link so you can track things better. I’ve noticed that within CJ, for keyword links, you have to manually add the SID code but for content links, banners, etc. they actually give you an SID field that you can fill in and once you do that, they update the link code for you.

My question is this. When CJ adds the code for you, they use “?SID=”, not “&SID=”. Does this matter? Should we be using ?SID when we manually put them in our keyword links?

Permalink 1 Comment

02.20.08

Thank You Tony

Posted in Questions and Comments at 7:19 pm by Lovecakes

Thank you for writing your book. I’m about to apply your techniques and I am so greatful to have found your book. It will be my manual/GPS as I navigate thru this process of affiliate marketing.  I am half way thru it and my website will be up and running next week. I finally decided to take a look at your site and was very pleased with what I found. The fact that you give personal attention and support to your blog is wonderful.  I will recommend it to anyone I know searching for the same information.  You will hear from me in the near future, because I’m sure I will have questions.  I just wanted to say thanks for giving information that could benefit others.    

Permalink 1 Comment

02.18.08

Google Ad Variations

Posted in Questions and Comments at 4:32 am by mattycb

According to Google, if I have two ad variations, they will run both and favor the more successful one. I’ve got one ad group with two variations and one of the variations has had zero impressions after several days. How can Google figure out which one works better when they don’t seem to be giving my newer variation a chance to get seen?

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02.17.08

Google Content Network

Posted in Questions and Comments at 11:08 pm by mattycb

I’m looking at what seems an odd phenomenon and I hope someone can shed some light on it. One of my campaigns has roughly 67,000  impressions on the Google search network and 21,000 impressions on the content network. To me this seems reasonable. It seems intuitive to me that Google would show my ads more often on the search network. But here’s the oddity: I have another campaign with only 1300 impressions on the search network but 113,600 impressions on the content network! This has me confused. On the one hand, I’m wondering if I need to tweak something to get more impressions on searches. On the other hand, I’m getting loads of impressions on the content network and more total clicks there as well (although a smaller CTR). It should be noted I did not place a separate bid on the content network. I let that default to whatever Google defaulted it to.

I’m pretty sure the one commission I earned came from the content network. Should I lower my bids on my keywords so my CPC on the search network goes down? At this point, this campaign is barely breaking even so I’d like to reduce my costs without interfering with the likelihood of getting more sales.

Also, while I’m here, a quick questions about keywords. I had a case where Google ended up deactivating ALL my keywords, thereby basically pausing the ad for all intents and purposes. Should I take a knee jerk approach and raise my bids or sit tight hoping that keywords get reactivated after some time has passed?

Permalink 5 Comments

02.14.08

Microsoft adCenter Updates terms and Conditions

Posted in Search Marketing News at 9:34 pm by Administrator

I received the following notice from MicroSoft adCenter today;

Revisions to Microsoft adCenter Terms and Conditions We added a new section, 5(b), to your adCenter Terms and Conditions agreement called “Campaign Content.” The new section describes your rights when you receive assistance from Microsoft adCenter support and service with your campaigns. Now, the adCenter support team will have more flexibility to assist you with updating your advertising campaigns.

http://msmedia.microsoft.com/Key=12833.CMD.D.C.Tqqdr If you have questions, please send e-mail to our Support Center:http://msmedia.microsoft.com/Key=12833.CMD.F.C.QXttJor contact us at (800) 518-5689, seven days a week, from 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. Pacific Time.Thank you for choosing Microsoft adCenter.Sincerely,