I've been working a lot this weekend and as such, I've come across some pretty great things so I thought I'd tell you about two of them.

High Performance Affiliate Marketing

One of them I came across while reading my buddy Jon's blog. It's called High Performance Affiliate Marketing and it's a free, extremely thorough guide on affiliate marketing from getting started to making it big. We're talking over $100,000 per month big. The guy who wrote the guide made over $1.7 million last year and is set to make even more this year.

I definitely recommend the guide. I haven't finished reading it yet, but for something free, what I've read so far is valuable so go get yourself a copy (click here).

10 Ways To Increase Adwords Quality Score

Part of running a blog like this is finding information that is lost in the jungle we call the interweb. I found this link while perusing a few search results and it's helped me to increase my quality score on Adwords already. This sounds like an infomercial but it's true.

As we all know, the key to paying less per click on Adwords for the same position is getting a higher quality score. Sometimes, the way to getting a lower QS isn't a clear-cut path and it's actually pretty difficult to do.

If you're having difficulty, definitely give this post from RedFly Marketing called 10 Ways To Increase Adwords Quality Score. It was written in March of last year but the rules still apply today. No, there are no short-cuts per se, but it will definitely give you a better idea of how you can create a better quality website and adset so that Google will "like" your campaign enough to increase your quality score (hopefully). So far, it's worked for me and that spells profit, baby.

And profit is king.

Scott

Popularity: 3% [?]

Google Adwords advertisers! If you don't know about this, you're only hurting yourself.

This is just a cool little trick I learned from one of my friends while chatting with them today. We were talking about a dating offer and he nonchalantly pasted a link to me and, despite how long I've been marketing, I had no idea this was a feature. I was happy to find out about it though.

So basically, you can go on Google and search for any keywords you have ads for, but in the URL you place this little bad boy:

http://www.google.com/search?q=dating&adtest=on

Yup, it's that easy. Google will say the following at the top of the page to indicate that you're viewing ads in test mode:

Warning: This page is a tool for AdWords advertisers to test their ads. For full Google functionality return to the Google homepage.

How awesome is that? On top of that, you can't click on any of the ads accidentally. This is especially great for people who have max bids above $1.00, but also good for anyone who just doesn't want to get charged for clicking on their ads.

The best part is that it doesn't run up your impressions, which directly affects your CTR (Click Through Ratio) as the formula is literally Impressions / Clicks. You want as little impressions-per-clicks as possible.

Anyway, I just thought I'd let you know. Hope it helps.

Scott

** Update 2/1/2008 **

Okay, so I found out there's an actual URL you can go to in order to perform this search and it's even more powerful than I thought. Just go over to-

http://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool

You can preview your ad from different contexts, like location, which google search engine, display language, etc. Very cool stuff.

Popularity: 5% [?]

For those of you who didn't catch it, we recently launched a small forum to help people get started on their affiliate marketing adventure. When I say "we" I mean the community and myself of course, but I thought perhaps not everyone was aware of the fact. Of course, we're technically in a beta just to see how everyone reacts to the idea of a new affiliate marketing forum.

So far, we've had a decent amount of daily activity in there and I started it small so that it could grow as needed vs pouring tons of forums in there and hoping people would just start filling up the vast emptiness.

I'm pretty proud of how it's turning out in so little time. People are already helping each other out and I'm able to interact directly with people to give them tips and advice.

Right now we have 12, count 'em, TWELVE active members and already, we have success stories. For example, Killafawk has already seen some success with a campaign he's been helping others with (read more here).

Overall, I'm happy with our progress and hope it continues on the upward trend. If you haven't already, register on the new forum and start asking questions! Or, if you're an affiliate master, we can always use your brain.

Popularity: 3% [?]

As an affiliate marketer, it's an insane game of catch-up when you have to go back and forth between your sales stats and your spend stats. When you want to do reporting, if you aren't using any kind of keyword tracking software, it's a bitch to generate your own. Well, these are just a couple most of the many gripes that inspired this post. This is basically a wish list I'm creating in hopes that someone out there will answer my prayers and make something resembling this dream system.

Free

It's a long shot, but hey, it's the perfect price. I believe that any software worth having should, at the very least, have a free package amongst its paid packages that doesn't limit you too much to use on a small-time basis but limits you just enough so that you eventually do have to upgrade if you become a more intense user. Oh and also, I don't mean a timed trial. When I say free, I mean free for the long-haul baby. Any perfect keyword tracking software would have to start out FREE.

Live Statistics

And I mean LIVE baby, like right now! This goes several ways, from spend sources to revenue stats to visitor stats. When I want to know what my spend stats are for a particular PPC source, like Adwords, I have to log in and run a report to get my most up-to-date spend stats for the day. When I want to see how much I've earned, I have to log in to my statistics application that I developed myself and when I want to see live visitor data--well--I can't ... yet. Having live statistics from all my sites would, in turn, allow me to have a central location for all my information and that's a beautiful thing. Any keyword tracking software worth its salt would need live statistics polled, say, every ten minutes or so. That way all my graphs would be up to date.

Graphs, Charts & Reports (Oh My)

What good are stats if I can't see them graphically? What if I'm a visual learner? I need graphs, baby! Pretty ones, too. If you're going to build that perfect keyword tracking system, it had better have graphs ("wow" looking ones). Then, what if, at the beginning of a new year, I need to print out all my data for tax purposes? I need exportable reports. Yeah, I'm talking about CSV, Excel and the like.

Easy-To-Implement Code For Landing Pages And Such

My biggest peeve with every keyword tracking system I've used so far, mainly affiliate radar, has been its implementation. Although it's not impossible to figure out, it lacks that ease of use that would take it to a godly status. Face it, most affiliate marketers aren't developers or even HTML jockeys to say the least, so the best bet would be to make something really easy to implement -- something like Google Adsense code. And the site would have to SHOW us how to place the code, preferably with videos!

Video Tutorials

How awesome are video tutorials? They make learning fun and easy. Hell, I love to make them in my spare time and post them up on Youtube (check them out here), so it can't be that difficult to make tutorials on the keyword tracking website and all the bullet point features. Also, it makes the site look less enormous and daunting if you see someone else actually using the site the way it's intended to be used.

Security

The last thing I need as an affiliate marketer is to worry about people stealing my keywords, looking at my landing pages and basically stealing my business model for the campaigns I run. Additionally, I don't want to have to worry about the people who run my site looking through my financial data or about the site being hacked and random people gaining access to my data. This means strong security measures have to be in place for data storage and the site owners would need some kind of absolute accountability to its public. How that would happen, I do not know.

One more note on security. At the landing page level, keywords would have to be encrypted as well so that random affiliates and affiliate managers will keep their grubby fingers away.

Customer Service

This kind of goes without saying, but I felt I should include it anyway. Customer service is always a must to at least provide some kind of sense of "I care"-edness to the service, even if they don't. It gives the customer the sense that they are actually helping to turn the gears of action to get them what they want, even if the customer service rep is merely a middle man between the person and a FAQ list and eventually, a trouble ticket form. Sometimes you just need a live person.

Web 2.0 Hotness

Is it too much to ask for the site to be strikingly handsome? That's right, if I'm going to be married to this site for the long haul, I want it to be pretty for as long as possible--just like my wife (thanks Sarah). That means, it has to not only look great but also carry web 2.0 functionality with it. Just enough, but don't get carried the *!#% away (Yahoo! Search Marketing, you know who I'm talking about). AJAX is a feature not the main show, baby. Just keep it fresh.

Auto Stop Losses

This is a feature I've been scheming up in my head since I started. I figure, since this dream keyword tracking software can already tap into the back-ends of my PPC sites (like Adwords, YSM and Adcenter), it should be able to turn my campaigns on and off based on my current profit standing. As affiliate marketers, we all have those days where a campaign that is normally doing great decides to put on its ugly face and turn on us. Not to mention when we were first starting out and didn't really know what the hell we were doing and lost $5,000 within the first month (sorry Sarah).

Just imagine-- if you could put in a "stop loss" amount of, for example, $50.00 and the system would constantly monitor your stats and automagically shut the proper campaign(s) down as soon as it noticed you were $50.00 into the negative. How cool would that be?

Of course, you wouldn't want to set some small number as your "stop loss" as there are times when campaigns that are breaking even temporarily dip into the negatives and then shoot into profit; however, you wouldn't want to set it to a number that is too high either as it can take search engines a while to stop showing ads even after you've turned them off. Overall, I think you get the point.

Auto Suggestions

With the right statistical data, this hypothetical system could make suggestions about whether or not to look for new keywords for the campaign, remove non-converting keywords, ditch the campaign, adjust spending on the campaign, try different ads on the campaign, etc. Not only would this be an insanely awesome tool for n00bs, it would help seasoned affiliates maximize their profits and learn new tricks here and there to apply to new campaigns.

Centralized Advertising System (CAS?)

Going back to the idea of a central location for live data, why stop there? While we're at it, we might as well allow affiliates to stop using the clunky interfaces of Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Adcenter and start using the ONE interface for the keyword tracking software. For what, you ask? Well, for creating/managing ads and keywords of course! How many times have you been inside your YSM Panel and thought "Dear god, what monkey built this thing?" You aren't alone.

Once and for all, there should be an intuitive system for adding keywords and distributing them across ad groups in such a way that maximizes efficiency. Also, as affiliate marketers, we use individual ads across multiple ad groups. Why not use one ad and apply it to multiple ad groups instead of creating the same ad over and over and over?

This would be the mother of all features but if done right, would revolutionize this business.

Email Collection (Aweber Style)

While it's in the business of hanging out on our landing pages, the software might as well have an option for collecting e-mails in an Aweber-like fashion. That is, it would pop up with a box or hang out somewhere on the landing page and ask people to sign up on the mailing list. Then it would have follow up messages and the ability to broadcast without being spammy. Don't get me wrong, I love Aweber but if some software could centralize all my affiliate tools, I'd be there in a heart beat.

Click Tracking (CrazyEgg Style)

Although CrazyEgg does an incredible job, live click tracking is just a cool feature to have. Google Analytics is also a great tool for this kind of thing, I know but wouldn't it be cool (once again) to be able to manage all of your affiliate-related tools in one place? On top of that, the software could suggest strategic placement based on clicking hotspots to maximize revenue. Just a thought.

Conclusion

I know there are POS's (pieces of software) out there that already do some of the things I mentioned but I have yet to find one that does all of them or even most of them. Someone out there has to be willing to build such a monster and when they do -- game over. I will be MAD RICH. Until then, I am just making a decent living.

But I can dream.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Good things are happening lately and that makes it an exciting time to be an affiliate marketer. Aside from all that fluff, however, I have two good bits of news to share.

First off, although I know it waivers to and fro, our reader base has jumped up to 200 within the last month! Wow! I am seriously happy that this blog is helping people to start affiliate marketing and also helping to increase their profits. All I can say is that I hope you keep coming back for more and I hope more people will begin to participate in discussions. Just like back in the day when the teacher would ask us to speak up so everyone could hear our questions, it's good for other people who are too shy to ask when you ask your questions or make your statements.

Speaking of discussion, the second bit of greatness I have to announce is that I've officially started building the Affiliate Toolbox Forums (click here to view). I've created a tab at the top of the blog so that people who are interested in watching it be built and grow will be able to, and also so that the search engines can index that bad boy.

In previous posts, I talked about releasing it some time this year but the coolest thing happened today. I remembered that I still had a vBulletin license from one of my crazy endeavors that I stopped putting effort into, so I stole it from there and slapped it up and I've been sorting through the jungle of options that is the vBulletin Admin panel. I'm really happy it's all working out though. Plus, the license expires in March of this year so we still have time to figure out whether it's a worthy addition to the site.

So if you're so-inclined, feel free to sign up on the forum and introduce yourself. Hopefully we can get some experts and newbies together to spark some conversation. If not, oh well. I figured we'd give it a shot and see what the response is like over the next few months.

Currently, I'm trying to make the forum heavily focused on matters close to affiliate marketing. However, if you have any suggestions as to what else you'd like to see in the forum, please let me know.

Scott

Popularity: 2% [?]

Have you ever found yourself wondering "on which results page will my domain pop up for this keyword?" Well, wonder no longer.

I just found out today that Shoemoney has a nice little SERPS tool for free use on his site. Instead of giving you the page, it does you one better and gives you the result NUMBER for which your page comes up.

For instance, I did a search on the keyword "affiliate toolbox" for www.afftoolbox.com and apparently, we're the first result on Google and the third on MSN and AltaVista. Apparently, Yahoo hasn't gotten with the program yet!

But I digress. The point is that you can see the instant value in such an application.

Thanks, Shoe. Keep up the good work. Sorry about talking smack about you and John.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I don't know why, but my Azoogle Toolbar hasn't worked in the past couple of weeks at work or at home. How am I supposed to track my every lead without my precious toolbar? Now before you go saying I'm technologically impaired, remember I am a web developer and a Cisco Certified Network Associate so I should be slightly less retarded than your average user, but hey-- anything's possible.

For anyone that wants to shoot me down, I'm running the latest version of Firefox on Windows Vista. My best guess is the latter, but I've been wrong before.

But seriously, is anyone else experiencing this problem or is it just me?

Popularity: 4% [?]

I've been thinking of writing a 'favorite tools' post for a few days now and after reading Shoemoney's "What is your edge?" post, I'm convinced the edge of this blog is to give out the top notch hints and tips for free.

Essentially, I give you the information you'd normally pay $97 for from some guy with a really long landing page. And why not? It keeps you coming back.

So here's my current list of favorite tools:

1. Keyword Spy ($) - One of the biggest problems when doing PPC is coming up with a solid list of keywords. Even worse is coming up with the keywords your competition is using and Keyword Spy will give you just that. I will say that their information is a little out of date and seems to come mainly from Google rather than Yahoo or AdCenter, but you are able to download not only your competition's keywords but also their ads. I'd go into detail on what they have to offer, but truthfully, I only use about three things. One thing that is worth mentioning is that they have a Clickbank product lookup to give you keywords used to generate get to specific Clickbank products.
2. WordTracker ($) - Although it's not too different from Keyword Spy, WordTracker offers a couple of things that Keyword Spy doesn't seem to. For instance, WordTracker has a built-in thesauraus and lateral search that you can use to find similar keywords in the particular niche you're searching in. One notable difference is the cheaper price. At $59/mo, this one is definitely a contender with Keyword Spy.
3. Google AdWords Keywords Tool (free) - AKA Old Faithful has been a staple in my affiliate marketing career from day one. If you want to generate a sturdy list of keywords for any product you're selling, you need to use this bad boy on a daily basis. For a free tool, I give this two thumbs up.
4. Google Trends (free) - If you're going to get into any market, make sure you do your research first. No, Google Trends won't give you actual numbers to go by but it will give you a relative comparison of the search trends for particular keywords. This baby will tell you how well ringtones are doing (not great) and whether 'sex' or 'stock' is the top keyword of the day. Or say you want to know what the hot topics are today -- Google Trends has them for you. Never go without this bad boy.
5. Aweber ($) - If you're running any kind of opt-in mailing list (and you should be), you need Aweber. With Aweber, you can send personalized email messages to all your subscribers easily. What I like best is that it checks my broadcast messages to see whether they're too spammy or not and gives me a scale to check. If they're going to be too spammy and picked up by spam filters, I just remove a few things until I'm flying close to zero on the spam-o-meter and bam. You wouldn't believe how many legitimate messages are thrown into the spam bin until you use this service. On top of that, you can have a list of pre-written messages that can be sent out at different intervals based on when a user signs up. It's truly beautiful and I would never be without it.
6. Good Keywords (free) - When I started doing ring tones I needed a ton of, well, good keywords. Someone recommended this software to me and I was able to generate long lists of keywords for my campaigns. I've used it ever since and I intend to keep using it. This bad boy will tell you whether a keyword gets a lot of searches or not as well as generate misspellings for you. It does more, but as I said before, this is all about what I use the thing for.

So these are my golden six, I guess you might say. These are the tools I use on a regular basis to grow my business and conquer different niches. That's not to say they are the best of the best and if you know of any that are better, please feel free to let the people know!

To the best of my knowledge, however, these work great.

Popularity: 4% [?]

To build on three previous posts Why Use Tracking Code, How To Put Tracking Code On Your Landing Page and How To Cloak Your Affiliate Links, the intention of this post is to inform you on how to track the keyword someone used to get to your site from a PPC (Pay Per Click) Ad, no matter which page they come in from.

The problem that people have that made this post necessary is losing the keyword when someone comes in either from a different page or visits the page, leaves and then comes back. Without knowing which keyword got the person there in the first place, marketers like you and me are lost on how to properly spend our money and on which keywords are terrible at converting. We definitely need that information, so we must make sure to do our best to track it.

Now going into this post, I have to assume three things: you can follow instructions, you are using one of the major search engines for your CPC ads and you are using PHP for your web pages. With that out of the way, let's proceed..

In the header of your PHP files, you'll want to include the following code-

keyword_tracking_php.txt

Once you've placed your keyword tracking code in your header(s), you'll need code in place to pass the captured keyword to your hop-link. If you aren't familiar with hop links and passing information using them, please read How To Put Tracking Code On Your Landing Page.

Additionally, if you'd like to learn about cloaking your hop links, please read How To Cloak Your Affiliate Links.

Now to extend the post on cloaking, you can modify your jump.php file with the following code-

jump_php2.txt

It's really as simple as that. The first page captures the keywords and feeds them into the jump.php for Azoogle (or whichever network you're using) to track. What's more is that you can track additional information just by doing the same thing with other information you pass (such as the name of the ad group, specific ad, etc.) in other cookies. Then, you can just append that to the actual jump link's 'sub' tracking variable using a pipe (|) to separate the different variables, respectively.

So there you have it, proper keyword/ad tracking with cloaked links.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Have you ever visited a landing page and thought "holy hell, those affiliate links are just painfully obvious!" ? Well, I have. So I thought I'd create a post to let you know how to cloak your links so they at least aren't so obvious.

Requirements

• PHP
• Apache
• Affiliate Link

Description

What you're going to do is create a couple of lines (if they don't exist already) in your .htaccess file. Then you're going to create a PHP file that the lines will point to and then you'll create your links. Easy as pie.

Step 1 Read More »

Popularity: 5% [?]