07.25.08

Direct Linking…hard to find!

Posted in Questions and Comments at 4:29 pm by loopster

Tony,

Hey. Hope your move went well.

Question 1: I’ve joined multiple Affiliate Networks. What I’m seeing is that very few have Merchants that allow direct linking (allowing their URL in the Display URL). Can you point me to a network that is more “direct linking” friendly? Maybe you could offer suggestions?
Question 2: Can you state whether 301 redirects from my domain to merchant’s domains is OK with Google? Getting lots of fuzzy answers on that question.

Thanks!
Loopster

07.22.08

Connecting keywords/phrases with conversions

Posted in Questions and Comments at 10:35 pm by Brian

Is there any way, using the methods you discuss in your Affiliate Millions book, to connect the specific keyword or keyword phrase that someone has searched for and clicked through, to the actual purchase transaction? I currently measure this data on my own sites with Google Analytics, but since the Adwords ads and associated text links already have the variables defined, and since I can’t track what actually happens at the retailer’s end of things, it seems like I am unable to fine tune my campaigns by the effectiveness of specific keywords.

Or I’m just missing something. Any ideas?

07.07.08

Product Selection?

Posted in Questions and Comments at 9:59 pm by sepinsonneault

Hello Tony,

I just finished reading your book, actually, I’ve been through it twice, and appreciated the “no nonsense” approach you take when explaining this business. I have a question that Jason also hit on in an earlier post. I’ve run many campaigns, some with limited success, and my biggest road block seems to be product selection.

My question would be, do you think product selection based on popularity (search traffic, etc.) is better than program earnings? I’ve marketed a few high network earning products, had great CTR, but little or no conversions. In comparison, when I’ve marketed targeted products or product lines using targeted, narrow keywords, I’ve had more success.

I get the feeling from your book, and some of your posts here that you go more for the high volume, high competition products, and beat them with better ad copy. Is this a correct assumption?

Thanks,

Shawn

06.29.08

Adwords and how to make the destination link work with an affiliate ID

Posted in Questions and Comments at 3:39 pm by juliejam77

Hello,

I have had a website on skin care for over a year and have affiliates from Commision Junction, LinkShare and a few others all on my site. I wanted to get into using Adwords as the Affiliate Millions book does (which sounds wonderful), but cannot figure out how to configure the click on URL to let me get the credit for the click. I have asked both CJ and LinkShare but they are not much help, and don’t quite get what I am asking for. I would like to be able to direct click thrus to a specific product page on a website, not just the home page. Does anyone know how to make this work?

Thank you,

Julie

06.25.08

Confusing Performance

Posted in Questions and Comments at 1:31 am by T

Tony,

I recently launched my first campaigns and things seem to be progressing well except that the reported clicks on Commission Junction are typically 3 times the reported clicks on Google - for example, I had only 5 clicks reported on Google today and 18 reported on Commission Junction.  Luckily its not the other way around but I’m still confused by the discrepancy.  Do you have any ideas as to what the issue might be?

Thanks for the help.

Best,

T

06.04.08

Google’s Affiliate Policy

Posted in Questions and Comments at 4:08 am by rishi

Hi,

First of all I would like to thank you for the wonderful book, it really opened my eyes about Affiliate Marketing.

On some further research I came across Google’s affiliate policy at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=14844 that states “We’ll only display one ad per search query for advertisers sharing the same top-level domain in the display url.” This appears to be a problem for search advertisers as it could greatly reduce chances our ad getting showed, unless ofcoarse we build our own website.

What are your thoughts on this?

 Rishi

06.03.08

Short question

Posted in Questions and Comments at 10:06 pm by loopster

Hey Tony,

Apologies for throwing the universe at you in my last post….here’s a smaller question.

In your book, page 100, you talk about 3 month EPC and 7 day EPC.  You then say these are per 100 clicks.  So divide by 100 and set a bid in that neighborhood.  My question is, bid for which keywords?  I know you mean setting a bid for keywords, but which ones?

After doing the calculation and coming up with a bid amount, it’s not clear what keyword the bid applies towards.

Can you clear this up?  Or if I’ve missed something, help get me on track?

Thanks!

Loopster

Is search marketing too competitive?

Posted in Questions and Comments at 2:50 am by osu2008

Tony,

I just finished reading your book,and I just started my first marketing campaign with no success,but i refuse to give up. However, I would appreciate your honest opinion on whether or not you truly believe someone with relatively little web experience can be successful in such a highly competitive industry. I just graduated college with a marketing degree, so i do understand the marketing aspect of this business but I am new to the google adworld and lack the savvy web skills that i think are necessary to be competitive. I am very optimistic and think i can succeed, but at the same time, am i kidding myself into believing that i can compete with people like yourself that know all the tricks?

You mentioned several times that ad copy is king, and how important it has been to your overall success. Just wondering if you could offer any advice on how to formulate successful ad copy. Any books or articles that inspired you that you would be willing to share? if not i guess i understand. Also while im at it, how do you go about searching for new campaigns, what do you look for, is there something that tips you off, a good product, a new affiliate program or network, a combination of both etc… I know i’m probably asking too much but i would like to avoid wasting excessive time and money if at all possible. So ultimately do you think their is potential for newbies to make it in this industry and what’s the best advice for achieving success?   if anyone would be willing to offer some advice or just blatantly tell me i don’t have chance in this business i would really appreciate it, heres my email, ajme_osu2008@yahoo.com

Thanks,

Jason

Thanks

06.02.08

adCenter $75 free credit promotion ending.

Posted in Questions and Comments at 5:16 pm by Administrator

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to let you know, if you haven’t tried adCenter out yet, and you are looking to do so for free, you only have the rest of June to do it in.

adCenter’s $75 free credit promotion is ending soon.  If you want to take advantage of some FREE advertising, here is the link;

Try Microsoft adCenter for free* with a $75 credit for paid search clicks.

05.27.08

What am i missing ?

Posted in Questions and Comments at 10:20 pm by oscar

Hi Anthony

 Gona start as so meny others to thank you for a grate book! Ive been trying affiliate’s on home pages for some time but i broke my earning record thx to your book, and amazon.com / amazon.co.uk ;) I ran into a problem when i was gona advance into using cj.com thu.. hope you can help me out! Seems like google dosnt allow the destination url to differ from the shown url.. So when i, for example, type http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-3021883-10296175 wich is the link for ConstantContact.com ’s affiliate program google deactivates the ad whitin 10 mins.. i eaven tryed to type  http://www.kqzyfj.com as shown url , but that didnt work either. I hope you can help me out. I feel kinda dumb not seeing the misstake here… ?

 Thx in advance! And sorry for eny gramatic flaws, im swedish (yes your book has reached us to :) )

 /Oscar

05.23.08

Amazon products

Posted in Questions and Comments at 4:59 pm by afb

Hi Tony,

I was curious about the Amazon Associates program. I know you’ve often promoted their affiliate program, and I am enrolled in it as well. I was wanting to know though, when you direct your ads to products on their website, is there any specific page you link to? For example, if I was advertising mountain bikes would I link to a search results page on mountain bikes, or advertise a specific brand of bike and maybe link to the detail page for that particular model? I’m just wondering how successful you can be if linking directly to Amazon’s page as opposed to creating your own landing page for a product.

 Thanks,

CR

05.21.08

Yes, I’m posting again! You might find this entertaining…

Posted in Questions and Comments at 5:12 am by loopster

I am really becoming a fan! Oh wait, that’s Facebook and Hubpages…

Speaking of HubPages (this might be entertaining for you, a seasoned veteran) I recently wrote a Hub called Affiliate Marketing Challenge - Can a Sale be made in 24 hours?
The idea was that I would start from scratch and choose (1) a product (2) keywords to promote with and (3) Run an ad. I chose a Clickbank product. The timeline for all this was 24 hours.

I enjoyed challenging myself to see what I could accomplish, and if I could get the process down quickly and make a sale. Check out the story for details (and entertainment)…

Anyway, I had another small brainchild today and invite your opinions/thoughts. Here goes (please be gentle)…

Heard of Cinco de Mayo? I’m considering doing a “Cincuenta de Mayo.” What is that? Well, I had to look it up, it’s May 50. The thought is to stretch my nerves even more and do 50 promotions. That could be 50 campaigns of 1 ad group, or 5 campaigns of 10 ad groups each, etc. I discuss the variations below. And, of course, log and describe it all for the world to see the craziness.

Here are the possible promotion variations:

  • Pick 50 products, promote 5 groups of 10 different products across 5 different Search Marketing companies.
  • Pick 10 products, promote each 10 across 5 different Search Marketing companies.
  • For several products, use 4 keyword types ads: Broad (with negatives), Phrase, Exact Term, and a mix of the basic 3 types. This might cause a conflict so I would need to be careful. What I mean is that some search engines don’t allow the same Keywords with the same display URL to be displayed at the same time. This one might be tricky or even too tricky.
  • I might consider doing some geotargeting. 10 different products across 5 different countries.
  • Any variations you think should be tried or might be promising?

I have accounts with most of the Search Marketing companies you write about in “Affiliate Millions” pages 32 to 35. And novice experience with 2 of them.

More details:

  • As far as Copy goes, I would do at least 2 splits, maybe more to find the winners. Yes, I promise to try and learn something, from you and others, about good copy.
  • Choose decent Keywords that get at least 100 searches per day predicted. If I do phrase or exact, the Keywords will probably be longtail, at least 3 words but probably not more than 6 in a phrase.
  • Would go for ad positions 1 through 5
  • Get more involved in content ads
  • You recommended Key Compete, I’ll take a look there to see if I can get some ideas on KWs others are using in various markets
  • I would monitor very closely, especially the Broad Match campaigns which seem to me have great CTR but cost a lot and probably have lower conversions than long tails
  • I’ll drop low CTR keywords after 24 to 48 hours
  • I’ll say probably 2 or 3 days to see if Keywords are paying off. I’ll frequently monitor ads and see if I need to write some more splits
  • After 3 days or too much spend with no or low return, I should have an idea of the winners, then I’ll start getting rid of the losers (pause them, save them to analyze later)
  • Any thoughts or suggestions for things to add here?

What I hope to accomplish:

  • Make money
  • Learn about how different product categories perform
  • Have greater exposure to different affiliate products
  • Get experience writing good ad copy and with altering and improving ad copy in split tests
  • Get experience with Google’s dynamic keyword function
  • Learn more about keywords and the 3 types of keyword bid types
  • Research more about competitor’s ads

My target is to start this soon, and launch on Memorial day…

Please share your thoughts oh generous one with great skills!

Loopster

05.18.08

Oh what fun it is to…

Posted in Questions and Comments at 4:04 pm by loopster

…make money all through the night!!!

Well, for me, in theory anyways. I’ve been putting a bunch of my time into building websites, reading, looking and learning. Now I want to be part of the Affiliate Millionaire Club!

OK Tony, first, some ways for you to make more suitcases of money:

1. Have you thought about a Membership site on AffiliateMillions? Where you would share some real deep “how to” stuff? Bet you could get a few thousand members pretty quick… Maybe juice up the membership with a Tony’s Top Earners or AffiliateMillion’s challenge to create 10 New Affiliate Millionaires. By the way…pick me!

2. What about selling links on your site? Mega moolah is my guess.

OK, Now about me:

  1. Did I mention I’d love to have a mentor take me to the top in 60 - 90 days? I’m pretty confident I’m going to fly, but would love a great mentor to help be “the wind beneath my wings…”
  2. In your ads, do you prefer: broad KWs with numerous negative KWs; specific exact phrase KWs, or what?
  3. Do you favor longtails KWs over broad? When, if ever, is Broad a good way to go?
  4. What do you consider good CTR for a campaign? Do you drop lagging keywords as quick as you can in order to improve Ad Quality/Quality Score?
  5. What, if any, software do you use to manage your campaigns? I am assuming you are running 20 to 100 campaigns (or more) at any time. Please discuss.
  6. You seem to have a real “voodoo” about making great ad copy. Can you give some serious hints?
  7. Can you share any real dangers you’ve encountered and lessons of things a person never wants to do in advertising and affiliate marketing?
  8. Are you a big fan of newsletter lists?
  9. Are you seeing that less and less companies are allowing Search Engine Marketing? I read in another post that you have no experience with ClickBank. I’m a member of CB, LinkShare and CJ. Do you have any thoughts or other recommendations?
  10. Do you have any thoughts or guidelines about Content Marketing? Is there a way to make it work or work better?

Hope I didn’t ask too many questions all at once!  Inquiring minds want to know… Thanks for your insights and congrats on your success!

Carl

05.16.08

Newbie to the business!!!!

Posted in Questions and Comments at 7:48 pm by rookieboy

Hi Tony,

 Am just starting out in the business, I been research for the past few months of what is out there. There is a lot of negativity going on online nowadays. I joined CJ, and clickbank so far. What is your take on clickbank?. My main goal is to be making at least 2500$ in profits within 6-8 months. Some might say that isn’t reasonable, but that is my goal. What is your opinion on the book called ultimate guide to google adwords by Perry Marshall? Your book gave me a better view of how the online industry works. It was well written and a great read. Any help full suggestion please and thank you.

 

 Thanks in advance

 

Rookie Boy

05.15.08

Keyword Tools

Posted in Questions and Comments at 5:14 pm by loopster

Tony Rocks!

Hey, just wanted to get your attention and remembered how you liked that intro…

OK, I’ve been looking and learning (and some doing) for months.  I still feel like Keywords are a major skill that needs to be developed.  It seems EVERYTHING on the internet relies on Keyword Research. (Please feel free to disagree!)

Anyhow, can you tell me what are some of your Keyword tools or how you go about researching for Keywords?

Appreciate any thoughts and pointers you want to share!
Carl

« Previous entries · Next entries »