TC Online Marketing

Archive for March, 2008

There have been thousands and thousands of post on how to effectively use PPC advertising such as Google AdWords, MSN, Yahoo and Facebook, just to name a few. I plan to just give you a quick refresher and offer some tips that you may have heard before and you may find a few new ones as well.

When you dive into a niche, make sure that you do your research first. Too many people have lost way too much money without doing the proper research first, myself included when I first started out. So how do you do your research? First, find out how competitive that niche is and whether or not it is worth it as an affiliate to target the main keywords. If you are going after the cash advance niche, you will probably need to own a cash advance store to make any money off of it. Cash advance leads pay nicely at any network, but getting to the first page of Google with your ads will cost you a pretty penny.

So, how can you overcome a highly competitive niche? Well, it is simple sort of. You need to think outside of the box. Do some research and find a less competitive niche that is similar but does not cost as much to get on the first page of Google. Then you can set up those high paying leads without having to break the bank and start to make some. I don’t want to disclose all of the methods that I use to do this, but the key is to do your research and the ideas will flow. You are more than likely a member of many networks, so you have literally hundreds or even thousands of offers to choose from to promote. Also, remember that your affiliate manager is a huge key to your success. Talk to them regularly to find out which offers are converting the best at the time and also which ones have not performed as well.

As part of your research, don’t take the easy way out. If someone is selling a list of keywords, they obviously are either overpriced keywords or just crappy ones that are not converting well at all. Keywords are the lifeblood of PPC marketers, and those list are one of things that we will never give away if it is actually making money. If can use take another person’s list and do well with it, by all means try. Sometimes, you may just need to group the keywords better, tweak the ad copy or just have a much better landing page. Those could be reasons, but it is always best to just make your own keywords instead of taking the easy way out. More then likely, you will lose money and waste the time setting up the campaign. 

Monitor your campaigns as often as you can and make small changes where is necessary. However, don’t make radical changes without giving the campaign some time. If you have 20 clicks with no sales, there is no reason to panic. Give it some more time. In the next 20 clicks, you may get 5-10 conversions, and you are back on track. Always make sure that you have a large sample to analyze your date effectively.

Another common mistake is not testing the offer out at all to see what will work the best. I always like to split test a few campaigns by changing a few things on the landing page, such as color, wording and placement of critical items. Remember, there is some psychology when you are doing marketing, so your ad copy needs to be dead on. Use professional colors when designing your page and make sure your wording is not messed up in any way. One thing that will turn people away and make you lose credibility instantly is having a spelling mistake in the ad copy. A small grammar mistake is not a huge deal to the majority of the population, as most will not catch on to it, but you need to make sure you don’t have any major mistake such as using there when you should have used their. Also, placing around with your call to action phrases and placement of buttons is critical, so it is always best to split test in order to optimize your campaign.

Another major element to your campaign is the wording of your ad. If you are targeting a specific keyword and it is directly related to your niche, you don’t need to tell the user what to do as much as other times. What I mean is that if you are running an ad on the keyword cash advance, people are already looking to get a cash advance and if they click your link, they know they are going to probably fill out an application, which means you get paid. However, if you are running an ad or a poll like question on a different niche, yu may want to pre-qualify those clicking your ads. What I mean is that when you write the ad, also include what they need to do or what you want them to do in order for you to get paid. This is great for email and zip submit offers, where all you need is their email address or zip code. Usually, I will word an ad like Win a $500 Gift Card! Just enter your email to see if you qualify. That is a simple way to make sure that when people click on the ad, they know exactly what is going on and what is expected of them when they click the ad.

Finally, the last little tip that I will mention today is the fact of grouping your keywords in a small group. Campaigns are easy to set up, so it is better to target a group of keywords with each ad and then you can even tweak each separate ad to fit the keywords in your group a bit better. This will help you get better quality clicks and also higher conversion rates.

For people just getting into the domain name business, you will learn quick that it is tough to buy names. Ones you think may be gold are absolute crap and then you will pass on a steal that you could have flipped for a huge amount. I think it is safe to say that almost all in the business have been in the same boat. So how do you help speed the learning curve?

Well, first off you need to learn a bit about the business and what is hot and what may be hot. There are many great sites out there that will tell you what is going on in the domain world from the best experts in the field. There is a great domain section at WickedFire that you have to pay for but it is full of information. Other places you can learn can be DNForum, NamePros or DomainingTips.com. Read the information that is given to you and then read it again. This is the only way you can be successful.

Just like with any business, you will need to be able to take a loss from some mistakes you may encounter. My first big mistake was not recognizing fake PRs. Pretty dumb and costly mistake, but I developed the sites that were fake, got them re-indexed and sold most of them for more then I bought them for. Some never got out of fake PR status, so I just cut the names as a loss and moved on. Don’t hang on to crap that is weighing you down and never stress over the loss. It will happen.

The single best free tool that I use is found at Estibot.com. The major tool that I love is the domain name appraiser. While you should never take the appraisal at face value and you should never make a purchase solely off of this tool, it provides you great resources. The thing I love about the tool is that it gives you WordTracker stats, Overture stats, frequency in Google and other cool stats and really can determine the worth of a name.

Also, there are some other great tools on that site. If you are looking for Overture states only, they have a super fast lookup tool that will give you instant information. Besides that great tool, they have bulk overture lookup, bulk appraisal, portfolio appraisal and even and IDN conversion tool. So, if you are looking for a tool that will help you not make so many mistakes, use estibot.com. You will still need to know what you are looking at and how to interpret that, but it gives you a head start that many others would have loved to have.

The large internet advertising network, ClickBooth, has sued WickedFire.com and the owner of the site, Jon. The reason they are doing this is due to false and misleading information apparently posted by Jon on the WickedFire.com forum.

WickedFire will be fighting the lawsuit against ClickBooth and the owner, John Lemp. According to almost every major publisher you talk to on the internet, Jon’s claims are dead on and ClickBooth will likely fail in this attempt, in my opinion, to bully WickedFire and every other publisher who tried to speak out about their experience with ClickBooth.

If you would like to be kept informed on updates and opinions about the case, there is a thread at WickedFire named “ClickBooth is Suing Me & Wickedfire – LOL“. There is a lot of good information about ClickBooth in that thread, so make sure you read it.

ClickBooth has a bad reputation among publishers already, and a lawsuit about forum posts will not help their credibility among the publishers. Most publishers are very liberal and hate large corporations who take legal action when something doesn’t go their way.

Apparently, ClickBooth could be in for a world of trouble. According to Jon, the earnings they say they pay their publishers does not match the amount they report, something that could get them in serious trouble with the IRS. So either they are lying to the IRS or they are lying to the publishers, so which one is it? Either way, I am sure that it will kill the business if they do not make smart moves in this case.

Email advertising can be an extremely tricky business to get into. Most people can not afford to get into email advertising due to the high startup cost it takes. This does not mean that you can not do this, however.

Generic email lists convert horrible, and what I mean by that is that it is very hard to get any sales or leads from a campaign. Even targeted lists convert horrible and the reason for this is that the end user does not trust the source. Follow me here on this one.

How many times have you signed up for a newsletter or entered your email address to visit a site or a “special” report? Tons of times, I am sure. Most of the time, you do not even know where these emails come from. Many times, you are receiving emails from sites you don’t even remember every day of the week until you get fed up and unsubscribe from that list. Now how is this type of marketing really good for your business?

There is a new type of list out there that is converting really well to be honest. People may not think it would convert well but they really do. It is the list that PTR, or Paid to Read, sites are using and gathering. What these sites are doing is paying their members a portion of the revenue they get for handling the emails. It is a win-win situation for everyone really. Let me show you how.

From an advertiser’s point of view, this is how it is broken down. Certain offers, like home based business opportunities and reward sites, will convert the best because that is what people who are members of these sites are interested in. Also, you are guaranteeing that people will read your email no matter what, and curiosity always kills the cat, so you will get some interested folks in your offer. If you are targeting your offers by interest, you have an even better chance at getting leads.

Now, if you look at it from a member’s point of view, this is how it is broken down. The member gets paid from reading an advertiser message. First off, they will read the email because they are getting paid for it. Now that they are not being spammed, their defense mode goes down and they are more likely to look at an offer for what it is really worth. Knowing they are getting emails from a trusted source also is a positive as well.

The last part of this chain is the supplier or owner of the list of people. This part is very important, as they need to build a good list of people who trust them in order to be able to sell a good list that will get repeat sales. They also need a good software program and good email server in order to track all stats and to ensure that the emails will get sent out properly.

So, that is how to get the best results in your email marketing. It is a small market that is not utilized much, but it is time that email advertising starts to change and think about paying the people on the list to read the ad. I am sure many companies would see the advantage and start to see some real change in their online marketing efforts.