This might be old news to a lot of you, but there is a bit of buzz in the search marketing blogosphere about the end of “set it and forget it” pay-per-click marketing campaigns.
Now some of you PPC whipper-snappers might be wondering if you could ever just set up a PPC account and make money without any upkeep - but take it from old man Omdahl, the answer is yes. Back in the olden days (four years ago), we set up a Google account and after building it up, the thing just sat around and made money. We rarely touched it, and it seemed like if we did make changes, it hurt us more than it helped. So we set it and forgot about it…and counted the cash coming it.
Question: Why Bother with Smaller PPC Search Engines?
Answer: I have no idea.
End of blog post.
Just kidding…actually, most people who do PPC always have a nagging feeling that they are missing out on some magical pile of free money that they could get from advertising on second tier search engines. Eventually, that nagging gets to us and we take the plunge and sink some bucks into trying out some of the beautiful losers of the search world.
I don’t know how Scott Jangro finds the time, but he continues to delight the BUMPzee community with frequent upgrades to the site. Aside from some very nice aesthetic upgrades, the new features include:
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a little smacked-down today. You see, I didn’t sleep very well last night, and I wasn’t sure why until I got up and learned about this. Yes, another Ferrari Enzo has met an untimely death…and that gives James a restless sleep. (No need to comment…I am fully aware I am a nerd.)
So today, instead of waxing poetically about the state of the search industry (har), I’ve decided to pass you on to a site that both educates and entertains. I give you the Search Engine Smackdown.
I’ve heard various reports of Google testing different colors for their top AdWords banner, but never actually saw one of the tests myself, that is, until last week. It seems that for some reason our CFO Mike has been tagged for yellow AdWords ads, as seen in the screen capture below.
While I know that it won’t happen, I’d love to see Google publish the click-through results from the yellow ads. On one hand I think it could increase clicks because the yellow makes those listing really stand out. On the other hand I wonder if making the ads stand out cause people to avoid them.
We’re in the process of putting together a number of how-to videos for our affiliate web site that will help our affiliates take advantage of some of the more advanced functionality our affiliate program offers (auto cobranding, PPC conversion tracking, etc.). In the midst of doing all that, I put together this…ahem…movie trailer to help get the word out about InsureMe.
I know it is pretty cheesy - hence the “InsureMe Cheeseball Productions” you see at the start - but I hope it will show people why some of the rockinest affiliates are working with us.
Please enjoy, give some BUMPzee bump-action, and forward it to the people you love…or something like that. Happy Friday.
I am listening to Affiliate Arbitrage - Winning Bets in Paid Search session at eComXpo right now, and something was brought up by Vinny Lingham that really resonated with me. Vinny, one of the more advanced affiliate marketers on the planet, pointed out that succeeding in the pay-per-click market is not really all about return on investment, but about return on effort (ROE).
In my experience in this business, the affiliates with an eye for ROE are the most successful. ROE is all about working smart - getting the projects done that will have the most meaningful impacts on your bottom line, and knowing how to spot and drop projects that will have little or no impact.
Examples of ROE Decisions
A good way to illustrate ROE is to look at some of the decisions that affiliates are faced with on a daily basis. Questions like:
Have you ever considered how your site visitors feel when they land on your homepage? Do they feel relaxed enough to cruise around, read your content and start the lead process—or does what they see make them immediately bounce?
Those first impressions have a lot to do with how long visitors stay on your site—and even more do do with conversion. According to Todd Follansbee, a user experience expert with Web Marketing Resources, anxiety is one of the biggest reasons visitors fail to convert.
You and I can relate to the truth in that, cant we? Lets face it, were all surrounded by phishing scams, identity theft and viruses these days, and all those things make us uneasy when it comes to interacting online. But if you work to reduce anxiety on your site, Follansbee says youll establish credibility and increase conversion considerably—putting money in your pocket in the process.
So what kinds of things make people nervous when they hit your site?
Searching around this morning it looks like a number of the affiliate/search marketing experts have put in their two cents about Google CPA ads’ potential to cripple affiliate networks. In general, a majority of people are skeptical that CPA ads will have much of an effect on the affiliate industry…but with that said, there are some people that see tougher times ahead for companies like Commission Junction, Linkshare, and the smaller CPA imitators out there.
Here are some of the posts I ran across this morning:
Exciting and/or scary news from the Google AdWords team - after years of speculation, Google is finally taking beta tester for cost-per-action (CPA) ads.
All of the test ads will be placed through AdSense and it sounds like both AdWords and AdSense advertisers will have a lot of control over the use and placement of CPA ads…which is good, since I could see a large amount of fraud cropping up with CPA based ads.
But wait a second…CPA is what the affiliate business is all about - what could Google be up to? Does this program signal Google’s entrance into the CPA, and therefore affiliate world? Is Google’s CPA program going to compete with the affiliate networks?
EcomXpo, the “virtual tradeshow for ecommerce marketers” starts tomorrow and runs through Thursday. I’m not totally sold on the concept of a virtual tradeshow - just doesn’t really appeal to me - but then again I am not much for the online chat/Second Life thing. With that said, it sounds like some of the bigger names in affiliate marketing are taking part in some of the sessions, and the list of sessions is truly impressive. You can check out the full list here. I know I am going to try to tune in to some of sessions.
It also looks like a number of SEM companies, affiliate networks and search engines have signed up to sponsor the event and have virtual tradeshow booths. So if you have some questions for the exhibitors you should be able to contact them through live chat.
Registration is free, so there isn’t really anything to lose if you sign up. To register, hop over to the eComXpo site. Maybe I will virtually see you there…wow, that sounds geeky…
Building a PPC search product has got to be amazingly difficult. I appreciate that. But I don’t appreciate a total lack of common sense when it comes to customer acquisition and usability. I mean, if you are a second-tier PPC engine, you want customers to sign up with you and have a positive experience, right?
I figured I would give 7Search a chance since I have heard some decent things about their traffic. So two days ago I decided to open an account. I went through the basic online setup, giving my contact info and credit card information. After that was done I was told that my account needed to be “verified” - whatever that means.
MarektingSherpa has come out with Affiliate Marketing 2007 Special Report which is an interesting look into the minds of both affiliate marketers and the merchants who work with them. To get the full report head over to Shawn Collin’s blog and click the “download” link.
Some of the more interesting bits of information that I ran across in the report were:
Time and time again I run across affiliates who spend weeks putting together the perfect homepage for their site. They fuss over their top banner, the layout of the page, where they are going to place their affiliate links, etc. But once they have the homepage built, they call it a day and start promoting the heck out of their one page web site.
Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this approach. In fact, I have seen it work for affiliates in the past. But over the last year I have seen more and more of our top affiliates taking the time to build bigger, content rich, high-quality sites - and I have also watched them reap the rewards from doing this.
So today I figured I would give you a quick list of seven reasons why affiliates need to be creating sites with high-quality, focused landing pages. Here we go:
Duplicate content. It’s one of those things in life that we all hate but can’t avoid…like taxes, buses and bathing (joking).
But what is duplicate content? How does Google handle duplicate content? And can you really be penalized for it?
These are all good questions, and thanks to Rand at SEOmoz, we know have a slightly clearer idea of how Google identifies and handles duplicate content. Rand also goes through some of the more questions about duplicate content.
It’s Friday, you’re an affiliate, and it is getting late in the day. Your fingers are sore from a week of web site designing, keyword bidding and frantic PPC account optimizing. You need a break…but you don’t want to feel like you are completely off task.
Well good news. I ran across Aaron Wall’s SEO plug-in for Firefox today and it looks to be a great way to a) analyze your competitor’s web sites and b) kill some time before five o’clock.
I’d go into detail here, but it looks like Barry Schwartz posted a video of the tool on YouTube, which you can check out below.
Being in the affiliate business means building web sites. And with the direction things are going lately, building a successful web site means building a decent looking site with a number of web pages. But as many of us know, building a nice site and managing a a lot of web pages can be a real bear.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. The miracle factory that is the Intarweb has once again answered our prayer and given us content management systems (CMS). Thanks to the open source apostles of the web, there are many fantastic and affordable CMS systems available for use on your next affiliate site.
First off, if you are reading this, it is a small miracle. The company that hosts our blogs, Mosso, has been experiencing problems for over a week now - yes A WEEK. We have seen everything from slow page loading to the site being completely down. If moving our blogs to a different host wasn’t such a pain, I think we would be changing hosts ASAP.
I think that after our experience with Mosso, it is safe to say that hosting an affiliate web site with Mosso is a very, very bad idea. I couldn’t imagine how furious I would be if I was pointing PPC ads to a site that was hosted by Mosso right now. If we were hosting a highly trafficked PPC site on Mosso, I bet our losses would be in the hundreds if not thousands of dollars over the last week - and you can bet that Mosso wouldn’t be paying for your losses.
[The ironic thing is that while our sites are down, Mosso's site is up and running like a champ. I wonder who hosts their site?]
But to keep this post from being a total flamefest, let’s make this into something productive shall we? Leave a comment and tell me what hosting companies you have worked with that you would recommend to other affiliates.
If you thought SEO was difficult now, you will be sad to know that things are only going to get more difficult…or will they? The introduction and proliferation of personalized search in Google will give users their own search results, but also make it impossible for SEOs to claim that they are ranking #1 for a particular keyword. But at the same time, having more than one #1 gives more web sites the opportunity to benefit from Google’s search traffic - which could be a awesome thing for savvy affiliate marketers.
In a recent (and very long) interview with Google’s Matt Cutts on the Out of My Gord blog, Matt makes some insightful statements regarding the impact of personalized search on the SEO community. Since the interview is crazy-long, I figured I’d pull some choice quotes to give you the jist:
The PPC team here at InsureMe spends a significant amount of time on A/B testing. And were often amazed at the results. Often, the ads we predict will have the highest click-through rates dont—and those we dont expect to perform, do.
Thats why A/B testing is so important to start with. By changing variables and closely monitoring the results, we find what works for each particular ad group—and its not always the same from one ad group to another. But the more we learn, the more successful our PPC efforts…and that makes it all worthwhile.
It never ceases to amaze me what draws consumers attention and compels them to click on an ad. Sometimes its all about the wording, other times its the total message. Regardless, making our ads stand out by being different from our competitors seems to please both the search engines and the searcher.
In performing ad testing, Ive learned a few things I thought might help those of you who are new to the concept, so Id like to share them with you now. If youve experimented on your own and found ways to help your ads perform better, wed love it if youd share, too!
Every Monday morning I take a few minutes to check the rank of www.insureme.com on various search engines. I also use the SEOpen tool to do a backlink check on InsureMe to see the number of links that are being shown by Google, Yahoo and MSN. While Google and Yahoo’s link counts are usually fairly steady, with occasional index update, MSN is all over the place.
Here is a little visual representation of the last three months of MSN backlink counts using “link:www.insureme.com” as the search:
Pop-quiz hot shots - true or false - Only 0.02% of Google Clicks are Invalid
Well, Google says the answer is true - and they are feeling pretty confidant that their AdWords anti-fraud countermeasures are working quite well. Based on a post at the Inside AdWords blog, Google says that an external audit showed that 10% of AdWords’ clicks are invalid - but after filtering out the clicks that advertisers aren’t charged for, advertisers only experience a 0.02% invalid-chargeable click rate.
I am a little skeptical about this one…mainly because the 0.02% represents the invalid clicks they found through investigations of click fraud that was initiated by advertisers. As we all know, most advertisers write off fraudulent clicks on Google as a cost of doing business, so I think a lot more than 0.02% of charged clicks are invalid.
First off, my apologies for the lack of post yesterday. The entire Affiliate Blog squad was out of the office (and in a snow storm) helping build a house for Habitat for Humanity. Habitat is a great organization and we had a wonderful time - I highly recommend it if you want to do a little (non-court ordered) community service.
In lieu of a personal rant, or any original content for that matter, I though I would point you to three other affiliate blog posts that rule the school:
1) ReveNews’ Carstem Cumbrowski posts a roundup of some of the more helpful affiliate resources out there. It’s well worth a read, and maybe a bookmark. Check it our here.
2) Search Engine Journal’s Rhea Drysdale helps us networking-challenged types learn how to build a bigger search marketing network with her post, 11 Networking Tips for Search Marketers.
3) Shoemoney is taking a little poll over at his blog that asks if affiliates trust their affiliate companies. Make sure you drop by and vote - and also peruse the comments to see what other affiliates are thinking (Hint: it isn’t looking so good for the affiliate companies).
I am listening to Affiliate Arbitrage - Winning Bets in Paid Search session at eComXpo right now, and something was brought up by 
Do they feel relaxed enough to cruise around, read your content and start the lead process—or does what they see make them immediately bounce?
Time and time again I run across affiliates who spend weeks putting together the perfect homepage for their site. They fuss over their top banner, the layout of the page, where they are going to place their affiliate links, etc. But once they have the homepage built, they call it a day and start promoting the heck out of their one page web site.
Duplicate content. It’s one of those things in life that we all hate but can’t avoid…like taxes, buses and bathing (joking).
Being in the affiliate business means building web sites. And with the direction things are going lately, building a successful web site means building a decent looking site with a number of web pages. But as many of us know, building a nice site and managing a a lot of web pages can be a real bear.
First off, if you are reading this, it is a small miracle. The company that hosts our blogs, 
If you thought SEO was difficult now, you will be sad to know that things are only going to get more difficult…or will they? The introduction and proliferation of personalized search in Google will give users their own search results, but also make it impossible for SEOs to claim that they are ranking #1 for a particular keyword. But at the same time, having more than one #1 gives more web sites the opportunity to benefit from Google’s search traffic - which could be a awesome thing for savvy affiliate marketers.
First off, my apologies for the lack of post yesterday. The entire Affiliate Blog squad was out of the office (and in a snow storm) helping build a house for Habitat for Humanity. Habitat is a great organization and we had a wonderful time - I highly recommend it if you want to do a little (non-court ordered) community service.