Lately, I've been monitoring my campaigns rather closely. In fact, I've been doing updates on 30-minute intervals to check my spend/revenue (profit) throughout the day over a period of about a week. It's difficult to be robotic about it, but it's necessary if I want to maximize my profit.

What I've noticed is that (of course) some common hours of the day are much more profitable than others. In fact, I noticed something that I thought I noticed when I first got started with affiliate marketing- if I stop the campaign at a particular part of the day, I make more money overall.

Yup, that's right. Instead of letting my campaigns just run, I've learned to pause them at a particular point (when profit is highest). My partner practiced this for a long time when we were heavy into ring tones and kept telling me to do it, as he said it would increase my profits. Turns out, I should have listened back then as it makes more sense to me now that I'm dealing with more money.

So now that I'm essentially scheduling my campaign on and off periods, it makes perfect sense that I use tools available to me to do the scheduling for me. My poor partner had to do it manually, but that was when we were mainly using YSM for our affiliate adventures. Now that we're using Adwords, we've got the most beautiful tool in the world- Google Adwords Ad Scheduling (picture on the right).

If you'll take a second to look at the screen cap from a campaign I was testing it on, you can literally stop and start your campaign for every day based on specific times. It's simple yet elegant and so far, it's saved me a bundle.

What's more, you can set how MUCH of your budget you want to spend at a particular interval based on a percentage. Of course, when I have my campaigns on, I like them running at 100% but if you wanted to, you could completely maximize your revenue if you did enough testing.

I highly recommend this if you want to make the most of your affiliate marketing adventures. Hopefully Yahoo! will jump on the bandwagon soon and implement this feature, but until then, Google is your friend when it comes to scheduling.

Hope that helps,

Scott

Popularity: 2% [?]

This post ties in with my "Understanding the Adwords Formula" post and provides a little more perspective on what Google wants from you -- money.

Lately, I've had a good deal of success with several of my campaigns. I won't discuss how much quite yet, but we'll just say my new record kick's the old record's ass.

Moving forward- I've had a chance to dance a bit more with Google AdWords over the last few weeks.  And when I say dance, I don't mean the nice kind. When I started a campaign recently, I saw great success in the first twenty-four-or-so hours. My wife and I couldn't be happier and we were both in disbelief. Our disbelief proved correct when Google proceeded to slap us down with the fury of Zeus. Our minimum bids went from being under $1.00 (profitable) right up to $10.00 (not profitable). I'll admit, I hadn't been more pissed off in quite some time and yet I'd never felt so helpless.

After that point, I had a good friend of mine do a test using his account to see whether he could achieve similar success. He didn't want to spend quite as much, but lo and behold, he saw a similar success but without fail, was slapped down by the mighty hand of Google.

What we've learned in the ensuing weeks could prove more valuable than any advice we've ever read in blogs or e-books and so far, that has been true:

Google just wants more money.

Yes, it's that simple. After increasing the bids on both our accounts for a period of about three to four days, Google started displaying our ads again (even though it said otherwise in our accounts). Sure, we lost money but were able to slowly adjust the knob back down to break-even and finally, to profit. I'll warn you - we lost thousands - but it will be returned to us within a few days and with what we've learned, we can now apply it to our other campaigns and Google-slapped keywords to return them to the SERPS and now you can, too.

So if you're feeling helpless because big brother Google has taken away your keywords, worry no more! If you've got a little money to burn, Google seems to accept bribes. Apparently, they just want to know you're serious.

And that's all there is to it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Lately, I've been obsessed with the Google Adwords Quality Score or Adwords QS system. Especially when considering very short tail keywords as discussed in my last post, it's important to educate yourself on what Google actually considers as quality when it comes to not just your landing page but also your very ad text and keywords.

In my search for the answer to such puzzling questions, I've come across a few sites that help put the QS into perspective. Back in August of last year, GrayWolf put it best when he titled a post "New Google Adwords Formula = Just Pay Us More." And from what I've been reading, more or less he's right.

From Google's perspective (I hate thinking this way more than anyone because it utterly debilitates me and makes me feel helpless), they want to do three key things:

1. Maintain their position as internet god
2. Provide an easy and useful experience to users
3. Profit, profit, profit

This makes complete sense. Who doesn't want to profit? I know I do. The problem is that they are telling us "as long as your ad generates enough clicks and/or pays us enough, we'll keep it running and in good positions." Yes, some people might pay less as a reward for really good CTR (Click-through ratio) and still end up in a similar ad position, but it doesn't cushion the fact that someone in the ad right above or below them is simply just paying more to be there. For those of us who can't afford such a luxury, it's completely daunting. Especially when you take into consideration the fact that you could be removed from first or second page results due to this fact or even Google Slapped.

So the next logical step, of course, would be to pony up and pay the piper, right? Instead of cursing at Google for being so unfair, I like to look at this as an opportunity to take advantage of a beautiful system.

As an unnamed Google Expert put it back in May of 2007 in an exclusive interview:

Start overbidding! I am serious! You hit the nail on the head when you shared your shocking results that new Google AdWords advertisers are screwed. They have no history, no good quality score, so they have to bid high to get into the door and stand a fighting chance. You have to start out aggressive and then scale back. Otherwise your campaigns will never get off the ground.

By overbidding, of course, the expert meant bidding significantly more than your minimum bid in order to get over the 24-hour window where Google decides whether you are worthy of maintaining your good standing with a particular keyword. You do this in hopes for a high CTR (counterintuitive, I know) so you can start slowly decreasing your bid down to something manageable and hopefully, profitable.

So this is where we're at as the new marketing generation. It's come down to a price war between advertisers. The great Google has spoken and that's pretty much all there is to it. Don't worry about high-quality ads anymore. Focus more intently on keyword-stuffing your landing pages and overbidding just to slowly adjust your bids back to profit.

On a more personal note, if there's one thing I hate most about Google, it's their customer service. Am I alone when I say I feel helpless when I talk to them? It's not because they scare me. It's just that they're so robotic, as if they're the human form of a help wizard. They have no real authority, either. Essentially, they tell me to view the tips on improving my quality score. Honestly, if the solution to my issues were just that simple, don't you think I'd be calling them with something more important? I thought so. Oh, and if there were one more thing I'd say I hate most, it's that they act as if they have no regard for people who spend $5 to $10k every day. Yahoo, on the other hand, has assigned someone specifically to me and they call ME if anything goes wrong.

Now that is what I call customer service. But in the end, Google is king and we all know it. That shouldn't stop you from dominating your niche, so go out there and kill!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Generally, stuffing as many keywords as possible into each ad group and campaign is thought to be the best practice. This is the exact reason we have such pervasive terms as 'keyword trimming' and the like. Essentially, you start with, say, 50,000 keywords and you run them for about a week. After a week, you start trimming (hopefully using one of the methods described here) and you end up with fewer non-converting keywords using up your money. You repeat this cycle until (hopefully) you are only spending the majority of your money on keywords that convert directly into sales.

This might work for some, but for those of us who want to DOMINATE a specific market, it just doesn't work. We're talking thousands per day here, not hundreds. So what's an affiliate marketer to do? Well, instead of using a machine gun, use a sniper rifle.

That is to say, instead of using tons of keywords that might garner a few weak hits, try using a few high-traffic keywords. My first thought when reading the previous sentence is "but that's going to cost a ton." But then I answer myself by saying "experience has taught me otherwise."

I've tried high-traffic keywords in the past and we'll just say, I've been dragged through the mud. So a warning to all those who dare to tread on dangerous ground, you CAN get burned and get slapped with thousands of dollars that you have to figure out how to pay back. Now that I've scared you, let me give you the good news. If you find high traffic keywords in areas that aren't as highly competitive as, for example, "make money online", "web host reviews" or "christmas gifts", you just might find a few winning keywords.

So my advice here is to stay away from the already crazy-saturated markets and find those with tons of daily searches but less competition. Note: there will ALWAYS be competition no matter what you try. At some point, someone else will have your idea and it's usually before you. That's no reason to step out of the race though. There are literally millions of dollars to be made.

So your next step is finding those keywords that are high traffic and for some of them, you just might be surprised. To find our prize winning keywords, we head over to Google Trends (of course) and start doing searches that revolve around our target niche. For instance, let's assume we want to sell Teddy Bears, we'd want to find out what searches there are on keywords like Teddy, Teddy Bear and perhaps, Stuffed Bear. So we'd do our search like so: Teddy vs. Teddy Bear vs. Stuffed Bear. What you'll notice right away about the search is that 'Teddy' dominates over all, while 'Stuffed Bear' is definitely something we can toss to the wayside.

What we'll want to focus on is keywords that are more like 'Teddy' and less like 'Stuffed Bear.' Now the keyword 'Teddy Bear' is right in the middle, so you'll just have to see how it converts.

The next step is tweaking. I like to think of it as turning the adjustment knobs to get everything running just right. You'll have to come up with multiple ads for each keyword. What I do to guarantee that I focus on specific keywords is literally make ONE keyword per ad group. That way, I know each ad is tailored to that keyword and quality score will be less likely to flounder. Trust me, you want to keep your quality score up and that means reading Google's quality score guidelines in detail. Make sure you don't screw this part up. "Why's that?" you might ask.

Well, imagine having a campaign that does $5,000.00 one day and gets Google-slapped, as it were, and suddenly your beautiful $0.25/click bid goes up to a $10.00 minimum bid. How do you get yourself out of that pickle? It's a terribly discouraging feeling that I've had on multiple occasions and I wouldn't wish it on any of you. The truth is, all you can do is do your best to make sure your landing page meets all of the quality score guidelines and that your ads get as many clicks as possible (high CTR = good). You have to do all this, of course, while making sure you're in profit. It's a tightrope walk, no doubt about it.

But the pay-off is great. You'll have multiple-hundred and thousand-dollar days going for you every day, as long as Google likes you and your offer stays in tact. Make no mistake -- there is no auto-pilot about it. If you want to make this kind of money, you have to constantly monitor your campaigns or you will be killed. It's a cut-throat industry, so stay on top of it and you should be fine.

On a lighter note, you'll be working hard but hopefully, in much nicer clothes, a nicer car and a nicer house. That's the dream, isn't it? Good luck to you.

Popularity: 2% [?]

You might enjoy using Microsoft AdCenter and at one point, I was as well. If you'd used Microsoft's AdCenter about two months ago, you would've been somewhat content with their turnaround time on approving ads and keywords.

Well fast forward to now where it takes about 12-24 hours to get your keywords and junk approved, I must say I am thoroughly disappointed.

It's not that I'm surprised about this being a Microsoft product, but more-so that the third runner in the PPC Search Engine battle would be so careless about Read More »

Popularity: 6% [?]

This must be one of the most frequent questions I get asked. The short answer is no. You don't technically need a landing page to be successful with affiliate marketing. Overall, you basically just need a referral link to send traffic to in order for your sales to get tracked properly. If you had a mailing list of 10,000 people that you just sent different referral links to each day, you would never need a landing page.

So when do you need landing pages? When you're dealing with search engines, landing pages become a necessity. Not only for PPC (Pay Per Click) traffic, but for organic traffic as well. Trust me, your referral (jump) links are extremely difficult to get indexed on Google. Sure, you might be able to get a referral link to work for a while on AdWords or YSM for PPC, but eventually they'll filter your ads out and you'll notice all your traffic has gone.

When you have a website you can send traffic to, even if Read More »

Popularity: 6% [?]

When setting your max bid price on ad networks like Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing or Microsoft AdCenter, it's best to know how much you're getting in return (profit) before you settle on a number. If you bid too high, you might get more sales but still be in the red. If you bid too low, you might make an okay profit but less conversions. The trick is to find just the right number and that takes time and finesse but here's a quick way to determine what your max bid should be.

In general, the formula I use for determining max bid is basically this:

((ecpc * (1 - bounce rate)) - 0.01)

So if your ecpc is $0.75 and your bounce rate is 40%, that means you really generate $0.45 ecpc. Subtract $0.01 from that ($0.44 ecpc) and you'll have a very safe maximum to set your keyword bids at. Read More »

Popularity: 9% [?]

Recently, I created a post on Digital Point Forums in order to help those that are either new to Azoogle or those that are frustrated and need a little guidance to make their first dollar. In general, people seem to be having a lot of difficulty getting their campaigns off the ground, so I thought I'd help anyone with this problem out and give them a little push in the right direction.

• Choosing Offers
• Landing Pages
• Mailing Lists
• Advertising
• Funding
• Conclusion

First off, you should register with AzoogleAds if you haven't already. Next, you should get very familiar with the interface. Once you've checked both these things off your list, it's time to choose your offer(s).

Choosing Offers

Choosing the right product is probably the second hardest part of affiliate marketing, next to advertising. There's definitely no right answer when it comes to choosing products, and in general, I like to test every product I come across. Honestly, that's the best way to determine which products actually work for you to sell. Just think, if you could test every product you saw, you might find just 5 that convert profitably and you'd already be in business.

Read More »

Popularity: 11% [?]

When it comes to the art of Affiliate Marketing, many people are lost when they encounter what seems like a vast array of confusion. Our goal at the AffToolbox is to remove that illusion of confusion and focus on the key points to a successful affiliate marketing campaign for any product you throw up. A huge part of that success is tracking.

Tracking allows you to know which search engine brought you a sale, which keyword triggered the ad that led to the sale and which ad led to the click that gave you the sale. It's really that simple. Of course, additional information can be tacked on but for the purposes of this how-to, I'm going to show you how to track the following: search engine, specific ad and specific keyword.

Read More »

Popularity: 11% [?]