Do you use Adwords or other PPC services?

If so… are you split-testing your ads for better conversion rates?

In case you’re unfamiliar, split-testing is the process of continually trying new headlines, ad text, copy text, images, etc etc…. anything you use in your marketing to see if it converts better.  If you have successful ad headline A,  you might try new headline B to see if you get a better clickthrough rate, more overall conversions, longer visitor time on site, etc etc.

Since the difference between two different ads can mean the difference between a profitable campaign and one that just gradually turns into a money-sucking vortex of doom (or just plain is unprofitable!)… it’s definitely something you want to be doing on a weekly, even daily basis.

eBook: Adwords Copywriting Tips

But how do you split test - when you’re not sure what you can do differently, or better… and you don’t want to waste a lot of time or money trying things that you have no idea about?

Well, to a large extent - it comes down to testing - seeing what works & what doesn’t - in your own niche.

For instance, is your headline solid, but your call to action week?

Or maybe you’re using all the right buzzwords for your niche on your landing page, but your ad CTR is poor because your display URL is more like “MyGenericReviewSite.com” than something highly targed for your audience.

At any rate, chances are, no matter how good your PPC conversion rate, you might be still leaving money on the table that you could be putting in your pockets with 5 minutes of tweaking your ad.

Anyways, I recently found a mini-eBook with a whole bunch of stellar Ad copywriting tips and split testing stats to back their suggestions up… and figured I’d post it up here for anyone whose interested in fine-tuning their ads just a bit further.

Download the free report below & leave me a comment with your thoughts - is there anything in it that you can use to help fine-tune YOUR campaign?

eBook: Adwords Copywriting Tips

Just in case you were wondering when a new PPC training course might come along on DVD for free, today(well, yesterday, technically) ’s your lucky day!

Anik Singal & Amit Mehta have formed up a pretty cool deal over at the acclaimed PPC Classroom… they’re giving away PPC Classroom 2.0 for free on DVD (well, plus a small shipping charge).

These guys are definitely some of the most well-respected in the affiliate/PPC community (Anik was listed as #2 of Business Week’s top entrepreneurs under 25), so this offer’s one I’m looking forward to for sure… even moreso since it’s free!

This offer is one I’d normally expect to see go for $97 or even $197 or $297, so at $0, it’s worth checking out.

Of course, there are a fair number of upsells after you enter your info to receive the free DVD, but as far as I can tell right now, they’re all totally optional (but may be just the ticket for you, if that’s what your IM career needs at the moment).

Going to claim your free copy? Heres the Link:

Link: PPC Classroom 2.0 for free

I was browsing Jennifer (PotPieGirl’s) blog recently and found a link to a pretty nice free SEO package she put up from WebCEO.com.

After downloading it, I was pleasantly surprised by the options it offers, considering its price.

Structured into 4 main categories (Find your Niche, Promote your Site, Analyze your Site, and Maintain your Site), it goes beyond traditional free bare-bones SEO programs by offering a more comprehensive suite of tools.  Not only can you find keywords & optimize your pages; you can upload files via FTP and monitor site uptime.

As far as its core SEO features, WebCEO delivers all the basics: Checking Search Engine Rankings, Search Engine submission, Finding similar sites for link exchanges, Managing PPC campaigns, Checking backlinks, Analytics & optimization strategies with their “HitLens” service. Additionally, their “Auditor” tool helps check your site for errors and warnings, helping seal up any leaks due to broken links or misstyped URL.

It’s a bit of a different workspace compared to SEOElite (more of a full-featured desktop application than a widget), but it’s definitely not a bad thing. If I were to mention anything I’d like to see in a future version, at least from a surface level, it would be making the app a little faster & crash a little less overall (trying to access some of the functionality seemed to cause it to soft-lock on me).

Otherwise, if you’re looking for a little extra help in the SEO department, it’s worth a look.

Link: WebCEO SEO Software

Well, I might be a bit late to the party on this one, but today I ran across the new Search-Based Keyword Tool (SKT)that Google implemented back in November. (If you’ve already discovered & used it, please feel free to leave a comment telling me any fabulous tricks you’ve come across with it!)

So…My first thought was, “Neat, but how does it differ from the existing Adwords Keyword Tool (AKT)?” Considering you can use both to find real search phrases based on your site… I was curious to find some differences.

Well, according to Google,

“The main difference between the Search-based Keyword Tool and the Keyword Tool currently in AdWords is that the former generates keyword ideas based on your website, and identifies those currently not being used in your AdWords account. Additionally, the Search-based Keyword Tool provides more detailed data for each keyword, such as category information, suggested bid that may place the ad in the top three spots of a search results page, and ad/search share.”

Ultimately, what they’ve done here is to give Adwords/CPC advertisers an easy way to grab some more relevant keywords for campaigns, landing pages, etc and easily stick them into Adwords campaigns. Of course, this is a nice financial win for Google (more keywords = more ads displayed = more money) but if the keywords it recommends bring in more conversions for marketers’ campaigns, it’s a win for them too.

Back to Google’s description of the differences between the two tools…. as you’re likely aware already, the Adwords Keyword tool can also pretty easily generate keyword ideas based on your website by using the “website content” button instead of the “Descriptive words or Phrases button”.

However, the SKT presents it more efficiently and distinctively than the AKT… instead of a hodgepodge of keywords assorted by keyword relevance, the SKT nicely displays not only the general category for the keywords but also the specific page on your site that it forumulated the keywords from.

Not that you couldn’t do it on a page-by-page basis with the AKT… but that would take far too long to be of much use.

Instead, the SKT makes it much faster & easier, even allowing you to group the keywords it generates based on the page they were generated from, allowing you to find out just what Google thinks every single page in your site is about…. very helpful for SEO, relevance & PPC testing, and so much more.

Additionally… the SKT seems to have more refined estimates as far as the Cost Per Click (CPC) prices go.

One of the main columns presents the predicted cost to get you into the top 1-3 ad positions on a page. In the AKT however, all you get is the “estimated average CPC”, which from my experience can vary widely.

This is not to say that your real-world CPC is always going to match the SKT prediction, but chances are it will be a lot closer… especially if you have a good Quality Score (QS), meaning your Ad headling, Ad text, Ad grouping, and landing page (among other factors) are all highly relevant to each other.

Finally, the SKT adds some fantastic filtering options for marketers really looking for certain kinds of keywords to add.

For instance, looking for more keywords for your “Improve your Golf Game” niche that have at least 12,000 searches a month, low-medium competition, with a suggested top-3 bid of $0.40-$0.70 where the URL contains “Golf Game”? Well, now you can find those keywords - and add them to your Adwords account and begin seeing results quickly.

So, while the SKT may not redefine the Keyword Research process, it does allow you to “see your site” through Google’s relevancy eyes, looking for extra profitable keywords that you may have missed - and extra places to tighten up your overall relevancy. And sometimes, that’s really all there is between a wildly successful campaign, and one that just ends up costing you money.

Link (tool): Google Search-Based Keyword Tool

While we as affiliates often spend a lot of time reading up on the right way to do things, we sometimes overlook the opposite perspective - what NOT to do.

In the case of PPC, it’s easy to make a lot of mistakes, and the reality is that without knowing what went wrong, it’s hard to correct mistakes & really be successful.

Anik & Amit over at PPC Classroom recently came out with a report aimed at helping to overcome some of the major issues newer folks have with PPC, and after reading it, I figured it was worth putting it up, since it’s free.

Let me know what you think - do you see yourself making any of these ‘big 5′ mistakes in your PPC campaigns?

5 PPC Mistakes You’re Probably Making.

As you probably know, Frank Kern launched (and as of now, 11pm on Tues. night) & is sold out of his famous (or infamous) Mass Control 2.0 earlier today… and just about every marketing also guru simultaneously launched a promotion for it with their own bonuses.

Since this type of “<Big Product> Just Launched, Get It And My Bonuses” email flurry seems to happen every time a major Internet Marketing product releases, and since a deciding factor about who to buy it from depends on the bonuses they’re offering, I figured I’d do a review of all the bonuses I’ve heard about from the guru’s who’ve emailed me about it.

Since Frank’s website currently says that he’s planning to put Mass Control 2.0 back up once more copies become available, I figured I’d do a rundown of all the people with a bonus for you if you buy it through them (If you’re an affiliate & have a bonus but don’t see your name on the list, let me know here). The bold bullet point under the Free Bonuses denotes this blogger’s personal favorite bonus of the set.

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The Affiliate: Rich Schefren

The Free  Bonus(es):

• Invite-Only call with Rich & Frank
• MP3 Call transcript with Rich & Dr. Robert Cialdini discussing a broad range of marketing tactics
• MP3 Call transcript with Rich & Dan Ariely discussing cutting edge techniques to understand your prospects’ behavior
• Access to Strategic Profits Social Media experts’ insiders call discussing the step-by-step process to constructing a profit-winning social marketing network
• Access to interview with Mark Earls, author of “Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature”.
• Private access to hang out with Frank, Rich, and several other top gurus at Frank’s invite-only marketing summit in March.

The Link: Access Rich’s Mass Control 2.0 Bonus Package Here.

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The Affiliate: Keith Wellman / Gary Ambrose

The Free Bonus(es):

• Complete “Quality Lists” coaching series to help you build a list of qualified prospects very quickly
• A 2-hour, personal one-on-one call with Gary
• Guest Invite status for free to future live events to help improve all of the aspects of your business
• 3 “Diamond Memberships” - “The List Machine”, “Your Lucky List”, “The List Bandit” to help get you access to even more qualified prospects

The Link: Keith Wellman & Gary Ambrose’s bonus package available here.

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The Affiliate: Travis Sago

The Free Bonus(es):

• Personal email/phone/skype access to the master Bum Marketer.
• Personal Niche Selection assistance, helping you pick out a niche to launch into & be successful in it from the get-go
• Personal coaching with Travis and his small ‘mastermind’ group to follow up & give you a virtual ‘kick in the butt’ when you need it most
• Chance to potentially partner/JV with Travis on future affiliate products & daels
• Free Dinner with Travis at the MC Mastermind conference in March
• Some other mysterious/secret bonuses (which are usually pretty good, from my experience).

The Link: Grab Mass Control 2.0 with Travis’s all-star bonus here.

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The Affiliate: Jeff Walker

The Free Bonus(es):

• Super secret day-long affiliate conference with Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, Jeff Johnson, Mike Filsaime, Ed Dale, and Andy Jenkins.

The Link: Get in the know with the secret affiliate summit with Jeff Walker & others here.

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The Affiliate: David Deutsch

The Free Bonus(es):

• Personal launch sales copy review for a product of your choice
  

The Link: Pinpoint the holes in your sales copy with Mass Control 2.0 & David Deutsch here.

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The Affiliate: Eric Rockefeller (”erock”)

The Free Bonus(es):

• PLR (Private Label Rights) to a niche market product Eric’s researched for a hot market…. Includes: Ebook written by expert ghostwriter, expert converting copy, professional marketing graphics
• Resell Rights to another high-converting, ready-to-sell ebook.

The Link: Get Eric’s ready-to-go eBooks & specially designed marketing materials with Mass Control 2.0 here.

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The Affiliate: Amish Shah

The Free Bonus(es):

• 1 Hour of video & 30+ slides revealing Amish’s highest-converting PPC tactics for CPA marketing.
• Full strategy to leverage Mass Control 2.0 through ad copy & landing pages, called “PPC Mastery using Mass Control”
• Insight into Amish’s personal live crowd-control techniques drawn from Mass Control 2.0 & applied to a live audience
• Free Hexatrack Pro account to help pinpoint niches & narrow down the most profitable keywords for your niche.

The Link: Get Amish’s PPC mastery package with Mass Control 2.0 here.

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The Affiliate: Andy Jenkins / StomperNet

The Free Bonus(es):

• 2 Months free StomperNet Elite membership
• 2 Free tickets to any StomperNet Live event of your choice
• Beta Tester access to Don Crowther’s NEW SMARTS 2.0 Social Media Traffic Strategies
• Entry for a chance to win a genuine Frank Kern Surfboard!
• Super secret day-long affiliate conference with Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, Jeff Johnson, Mike Filsaime, Ed Dale, and Andy Jenkins.

The Link: Find out what StomperNet is all about with Andy Jenkins & leverage mass marketing with Mass Control 2.0 here.

———————————-

The Affiliate: John Reese

The Bonus(es):

• Full audio recordings from John’s “2009 Business Accelerator Web Class”
• Choice between: “Reese Report Collection” (900 page / 40 CD internet marketing curriculum covering nearly all areas of internet marketing)   — or — John’s “Internet Marketing Advisor” (internet-marketing targeted sales, includes full digital downloads (PDF’s, etc)

The Link: Leverage John’s internet marketing knowledge & prowess along with Mass Control 2.0 here.

And finally, if for some reason you don’t find reason to take advantage of the incredible affiliate bonuses above, you can grab Mass Control 2.0 directly from Frank when more copies come up for sale here.

I was browsing the forums over at the Wealthy Affiliate the other day and found a really cool thread…

This guy known as “C.” (whose real name is Christopher Dittemore) was very generously offering a PDF eBook called “Not Making Money?” - a complete info Internet Marketer’s startup guide, actually - in return for a small donation to a charity….

… annd wow, after reading it, I’ll definitely say that C. knows his stuff.

It’s totally packed with nuts-and-bolts content… solid stuff that you could pick up & use to market & make money… even if all your previous attempts have fallen flat!

Not only is a terrific primer….

….on how to set up and run a solid, profitable Adwords campaign….

….on how to test and track your ad, landing page, headline, and offer conversion stats…

… about the best ways to do it all quickly and efficiently…

… but most significantly, it lays out for you the marketing mindset you MUST have in order to be successful online. Even if you’ve never made a single dime online, if you have the right mindset you WILL succeed!

Of course, the most fantastic part about this eBook is that it’s 100% free. Just head on over here & pick it up! I know it will be worth your time.

PDF: “Not Making Money?”

Looks like Brad Callen’s decided the old PPC Web Spy look & feel was a bit too.. gloomy!?

Not only that, but he’s fixed a number of bugs in it as well, so if you downloaded it the other day (read my review here, you’ll want to download the new version for free here.)

Lots of the changes are GUI-based… but there’s a few others that are just nice feature upgrades/enhancements. Check it out here.

As I mentioned the other day in my post about Frank Kern’s hands-on way to make money, Frank’s put up the second part of the video.

Check it out here!

In this next installment, Frank does a great job of a few key things:

First, he lays out a concise formula that goes against what old school, ‘traditional’ marketing teaches…the whole “put your pressure on the prospect until they buy” type of deal.

This type of marketing is pretty common - but is really more of a one-way street: the marketer makes the sale… but the customer feels pushed into the deal… I won’t give away his secret… you should probably just watch the video (if you haven’t already!).

Secondly, and throughout the video as well, Frank does a stellar job at showing how important (and easy, once you know how) it is to relate to your market, - and more specifically - your potential customer.

As Frank casually demonstrates, few things are as effective in gaining your prospects allegiance as being able to show that you can identify with them & validate their feelings & frustrations. It makes sense, since we naturally tend to gravitate towards people who have similar points of view as we do… but in marketing, this kind of empathy is pretty uncommon in a marketplace that doesn’t often cater to the individual.

Anyways, it’s definitely worth watching, even if you’re already making it big.

Video: How to build trust with your customer even if your butt’s hanging out

I can’t say I’m a huge Firefox plugin junkie… I usually have a tool bar or two running, and maybe a few other utilities (such as the PPC Webspy tool I reviewed here)… but when something catches my attention because I know it’s going to save me time, I’ll probably check it out.

So tonight, I was browsing around Aaron Wall’s SEOBook (great site for keyword analysis) - & found he’s released a pretty nifty tool called, appropriately, “The SEO Toolbar“.

I installed it, and really like it so far - not only does it include a lot of regular tools (PageRank display, Yahoo & DMOZ directory listings info) but goes beyond that and includes specially-designed IM tools such as Aaron’s special “SEO XRay”,  Search Engine Rank Checker, and even built-in RSS reader to help keep tabs on all the latest IM news from your favorite sites (like this one ).

The Site Compare tool is really handy if you want to see how two sites stack up in terms of pretty much all SEO factors - makes it really easy to see where you might want to make changes your site to rank better with the search engines.

If you’re not doing SEO because you’re doing arbitrage or something else that doesn’t involve putting up a website for any reason, you may decide to pass… but for everyone else, this toolbar is going to save you time when it comes to SEO tasks.

Aaron Wall’s Firefox SEO Toolbar: http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar

In my experience, one of the biggest killers of marketing productivity (and just plain ‘getting stuff done’) is that ever present desire to put off until tomorrow what need not be done today.

Ever thought,  “ahhh I should [write that article, line up that JV partner, implement split-testing]… but I’ll do it later”? I have.

It definitely happens to me: so often, if it’s not important or urgent that day, it probably won’t get done.

But as it turns out, there’s actually an easy strategy to use if you want to (seriously)  avoid procrastinating - or to stick with a difficult job when the chance of success seems slim.

In this article discussing the (fascinating) results of some psychological researchers, I was pretty surprised to learn that there’s 4 easy steps to keeping myself on track when it comes to my internet marketing - and that even implementing one of them could make a pretty noticeable difference in how much I’m able to get done each day.

Anyways,  what do you think about these 4 techniques (under the “Summary: how to get things done” section)?

Effective at staving off procrastination? Or just ‘feel-good’ mind tricks? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Article:  “How to Avoid Procrastination: Think Concrete“

Just watched the latest (free) Frank Kern video (part 1) on the secret to creating infinite sales & cashflow for your internet marketing business… and will say I’m impressed.

Like most of his videos, he gets straight to the point & delivers some very valuable advice on the strategy behind your marketing efforts - and who exactly should do the ‘convincing’ to buy your product. He uses a simple strategy to demonstrate how easy it is to create value for others - & ultimately provide you with an endless sales cash flow.

Plus, Frank’s laid back, easygoing style makes it easy to pay attention & really learn from what he has to say. I never knew he had 3 garages full of surfboards!

So, if the gurus’ emails haven’t convinced you to watch his video, I’d highly recommend it. It’s only about 10 minutes long, and you’ll probably wish it was longer by the time it gets over! (@masscontrolkern says the next one should be available early next week)

Frank Kern’s Sales Formula (desire)

While there are a nearly infinite number of ways to make money online, many of them require you to either have a lot of prior experience, or money.

But most of us looking to make some extra money on the side from internet marketing don’t have much of either of these… so we turn to something else we do have - our time.

Likely the best way to turn your spare time into making decent online profits without any startup costs, Travis Sago’s (free) Bum Marketing Method training course is a fantastic guide to article marketing online.

Travis is an all-around outstanding guy, with a passion to provide value insight and training to others, and the Bum Marketing Method is no exception.

This free course probably one of the most straight-forward, no-nonsense training resources out there if you want to learn how to write articles that make you some serious cash.

It’s okay if you’ve never made a dime before on the internet…. haven’t heard of Squidoo…. or aren’t even sure how the whole thing works…. Travis takes you through the whole process, step by step.

Using his simple formula (The “3 Simple Steps to Success: Just Find_____, Type Up____, Give it to_____ & Repeat“), he outlines how even a totally broke bum could realistically start to make a few hundred $/month after following this basic yet clever advice.

Best of all, not only is the course free, but making money the bum marketing way is free too - if you’re willing to just spend some time on the keyboard writing articles.

Having personally used his Bum Marketing Method techniques to make money online, it’s a definitely something I’d recommend to anyone who wants an easy, risk-free way to achieve financial success online.

As internet marketers who work with Google Adwords well know, competition is key. Not only can you use it to judge if a niche market is profitable, you can also use your competition as the template to write your ads from.

If an ad’s been there a few weeks or more, it’s probably successful, and if you’re considering bidding on the keyword that brought it up, you might want to make note of what ad text they’re using.

Recently, Brad Callen sent me an email about his new tool, PPC Web Spy, and after checking it out, I have to say that I’m really impressed.

In a nutshell, PPC Web Spy is a Firefox Plugin that augments your ad research by allowing you to view which keywords your competition is bidding on as well as basic related data like Ad Position, CPC,  and other figures PPC advertisers need to know doing basic keyword research for PPC campaigns.

One of my favorite parts about PPC Web Spy is the fact that it also shows the ad’s destination URL, making it easy to get a feel for the relevancy score between the competition’s ad and their lander, and pick up any tricks or techniques they might be successfully using to drive conversions off their site.

Another very helpful feature about PPC Web Spy it is that it shows only data from advertisers who have been on Adwords for the last 45 days.

Initially, this might seem to be a limitation… but if the competitions been advertising for the last 45 days, chances are they’re making money. Or else not realizing they’re losing it. Either way, you win, and some decent information to factor into your own PPC Adwords campaign.

So, if you’re an Adwords marketer & haven’t checked out PPC Web Spy yet, you should. It will simplify your life while increasing your profits and exposing new keywords to drive traffic from. And as with everything on Pushing the Free Line, it’s free.

Click here for Brad Callen’s PPC Web Spy