Glend Article

Why Not Tracking Your Campaigns can Cost you Money!

Monday, August 18th, 2008

You can read everywhere that people suggest you track you campaigns and statistics, even on this blog. Meaning not relying on Google, Yahoo, Msn or other networks to rely on them to send you just the country or target traffic you are paying for.? There are many programs out there that you can pay for that will track the IP??s of your visitors and be able to tag to a certain campaign, or you can have one built. I personally had one built for me as the ones out there worked but I couldn??t get the information I wanted or get it in the way I wanted it. Yes this cost me a decent penny to get this tracking program built, but it has paid for itself already several times over.
Take this example. I am running a campaign on yahoo search marketing and I was checking my program stats and noticed that I was seeing a lot of traffic from foreign countries and my whole account is set to US only.? So I dig thru my stats for Aug 1 thru 13 and find that anywhere from 10 to 25% is from.... Read More

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Leaving Your Day Job to Work Online

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Many people know that in October of 2006 I left my day job (Electrical Engineer) to work online full time, and i get asked all the time how i did it. Well today i am going to go over some things i did to prepare for that day but also how i came to the conclusion that it was worth the risk. ***

First thing I suggest to anyone is that if you are currently doing it as a hobby don’t use the extra money to just have fun, use it to pay off debt. When i turned in my resignation at my day job the only debt i had was my mortgage, no car notes, no credit card bills. I was able to do this because i planned ahead and used the extra money i was making online to pay off those debts. I would highly suggest this to anyone that is considering leaving, that is if you have debt at all.  (If you don’t already have one, build up a nest egg that you culd support your family for atleast 6 months, i recomend a year but 6 months will do.)

Second can i handle working from home or do i need a.... Read More

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Clicks Don’t Equal Sales

Monday, August 18th, 2008

I need a computer to count how many times I see a user post in a forum or send me an email saying. Affiliate marketing isn’t real i sent 10,000 visitors to the offer or site and didn’t get one lead. Usually the main reason it doesn’t convert is the traffic is untargetted or the traffic isn’t really traffic.

First there are programs/sites all over the net that will popup, under, intersestial for a split second your ad/landing page in a window then 98% of the time the user just closes it or it gets closed by a program. But the programs call these visitors when they aren’t. These are those get 10000 visitors for 5 bucks etc… I have tried one or two of these I won’t lie but the traffic is JUST TRASH!

Secondly I find people are taking the wrong traffic and pushing it to the wrong offer. Example one guy emailed me that his stuff wasn’t converting and he was pushing a ton of traffic to the offers. They were mortgage offers. Well the traffic he was pushing was .... Read More

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You are having success with a CPA offer now what?

Monday, August 18th, 2008

So you are having success with a CPA offer, now what? I received this question via my contact form so i decided to answer it.
Here are a few questions that go thru my mind when i have success with a CPA offer:

1. Am I reaching all of the audience i can (Meaning advertising on other advertising networks, sites etc)
2. A. Should I create a landing page If i am sending it directly to the offer page (will it increase conversions?)
B. Can i improve My landing page/site?
3. Should I bid more to capture more clicks? or Should i bid less and see if my conversions hold? (I usually test both)
4. If I am not already setup to promote via Natural Search Engine rankings, is the offer going to last and make it worth it to target natural rankings?
5. Is there a similar offer that i can promote the same ways?
6. Can i target another audience with this offer?
7. Try different Ad copy to see if i can get better click thru ratio.
8. Have I resea.... Read More

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How to Track Keywords & Tell Which Keywords Convert

Monday, August 18th, 2008

First off thanks to all those who have used the new contact form it works great… almost to great as i got TONS of questions. So i decided to answer my first one today which revolves around tracking keywords for your campaigns and how to tell which ones convert. The Actual Question is:

How do I know which KeyWord is converting the best? 

1. How Do You Know Which Keyword is converting best?

• First you have to Track your Keywords either using 3rd party software, custom software or simple code.
• The Simple code can take the searched Keyword and tag it in the subid placement.

Place this code in between your head tags:

<?php ob_start();

if(isset($_REQUEST[’kw’]))    

    {    

         $kw = preg_replace(’/%20/’,’ ‘,$_REQUEST[’kw’]).””;

        $k1w = urldecode( $_REQUEST[’kw’] ).””;  

    }    Read More

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Which CPA Network is the Best?

Monday, August 18th, 2008

I get asked this all the time which CPA Network is the best? Well honestly it is a tough question to answer but yet it is easy. It is easy to say what CPA Network is best for me but it is hard for me to say for sure what CPA network is best for you. I use MANY CPA Networks, but i do have a few choice networks that are my bread and butter. But this post isn’t about me it is about you and what CPA network will work best for you.

First, search the CPA networks, see who has good reviews and reputation with other webprenuers. You can do this by visiting blogs, forums and even searching for review of CPA Network X. Once you narrow your list down to 20 or 30… yes there are hundreds of CPA networks out there but the key is finding the right one for you.

Second, DON’T automatically signup for all those networks. Contact them and ask them about their offers, ask for a list of there offers (with links if possible) and even rates (not all will give you the list of rates but i.... Read More

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What NOT to do with a New PPC Campaign

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Over the years of me doing business online I have made my share of mistakes and hear from others about their mistakes.The key is learning from your mistakes or better yet learning from OTHERS mistakes. This mistake is one that occurs usually with a new person just getting into utilizing PPC advertising via adwords, Yahoo search marketing or MSN Adcenter. What you don’t want to do is setup a campaign an leave for hours without checking things out, as you would be surprised how fast your money can be spent. Especially if you are utilizing content or targeting high traffic terms like myspace, ebay etc… So on a new campaign check every few minutes to make sure everything is going right and you are turning a profit, or set your Adwords spend for the day of what you can afford to really spend.

This is VERY simple thing to do but you would be surprised how many new people contact me saying they burnt their budget in an hour. I know, I know where is the rocket science post that t.... Read More

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High Pay-Per-Click Bids does always not mean High profits

Monday, August 18th, 2008

I was asked recently what my high bid was for Ringtones PPC campaigns and I gave an honest answer of .75 per click is my highest bid. The guy was like great ran off and started a PPC campaign on Google Adwords before I could say anything else he was logged off of aim. Well for him I hope he is reading this post, as I stated my highest bid for PPC in ringtones is .75 BUT majority of my bids are less than .20.

Remember my PPC bids are from information and ROI statistics from this past year of promoting ringtones. So I know for each target audience I got after what my return is and what I should bid. People should not be asking what is your highest or even lowest bid is they should look at their own campaigns and their ad placement.

I have found the sweet spots to be in top 3 or bottom 3 with the middle spots giving the lowest return. It is as if they do not even see them or the people that do are just clickers and not a buyer. Note this may not be true for ALL campaigns bu.... Read More

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Powerful Open Source ( FREE ) Click tracking tools to improve your Pay Per Click Conversions

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Couple of great open source resources for Heat Mapping and click path tracking. Find out where people are clicking and how long they’re staying.

http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html

Also if you have a complex site and are looking to track paths of your visitors to find out where they’re leaving you can check out.

http://www.phpopentracker.de

It has the capability of adding plug-in’s to it that will allow you to track conversion. It’s written in PHP and easily extendable to suit your needs. A great place to start if you want to create a full fledged tracking system for and E-commerce site or a large scale site with paths to a sale..... Read More

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