Affiliate marketing is such a lone wolf career, we all keep our cards close to the chest.  In this industry, the common thought with affiliates is to not share what you are doing or working on. While people can succeed using these tactics, most success is very short lived.

Click here for more!

http://www.shoemoney.com/2011/08/02/what-internet-marketers-can-learn-from-harry-potter/

Lets assume you are struggling promoting your Celebrity Screensaver sites. You could now put common misspellings of those names somewhere neat on each page.

Read the full article here:

https://www.syndk8.com/blog/how-to-build-a-better-keyword-list-these-5-mind-blowing-ways-0002639.html

If a visitor to your website never comes back, they will not likely result in a sale or increased advertising revenue for you…

For the full article click here:

http://www.trishalyn.com/2011/08/five-strategies-for-return-traffic/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+trishalyn+%28Trishalyn.com%29

Most of the affiliate networks provide data feeds with all product details you need in various formats that you can easily import on your website. This way, you can be sure…

Click here to read more!

http://blog.avangate.com/5-actions-affiliates-2011/

HubSpot, an inbound marketing company, has purchased Performable, a “middle of the funnel” company whose approach increases the likelihood that visitors will turn into leads. HubSpot decided to pursue the Performable acquisition to…

Here’s the link to read more!

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2080034/Search-Industry-Roundup-Whos-Bought-Who-Edition-June-20-2011?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

“Affiliate marketing” is a term that means different things to different people.  For many publishers, forum owners, and entrepreneurs, affiliate marketing has served as a primary source of their monthly income.

Others aren’t quite sure what it entails or whether it’s applicable to their site.  Those that do understand the mechanics but opt not to participate often do so because of misconceptions about affiliate marketing.

As a result, a large group of site owners assume that ad options like Google AdSense and/or banner sales are the only ways to monetize their site.  In reality, this is simply untrue…

Click here for more!

http://zacjohnson.com/three-affiliate-marketing-myths/

Google AdWords is the biggest pay per click advertising network in the world, yet many businesses try it and quickly come to the conclusion that it doesn’t work for them.

However, closer to the truth is that most businesses who believe that Google AdWords won’t work for them have probably made some of these common Google AdWords advertising mistakes…

Here’s the full article here:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2081638/Google-AdWords-Interests-Graduates?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

Click here to read more:

http://www.ppchero.com/the-strategy-behind-display-network-exclusions/

The digital media world continues to move toward a “paid media” world where the lines and metrics around both search and display get gray….

Read the full article here:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2081997/Google-Display-Network-Continues-Evolution-With-4-New-Features?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

If the regurgitated advice about ‘get rich quick’, link wheels and guaranteed ‘systems’ is getting you nowhere – STOP…..

Read the full article here:

http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/3965/affiliate-business-sucks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AffiliateMarketingBlogsSeoBlogs+%285+Star+Affiliate+Blogs+and+SEO+Blogs%29

You could calculate your own monthly budget after setting up a daily budget campaign and you could find out if there’s a critical billing issue in your account without some of these updates, but they will certainly make life that much easier….

Read the full article here:

http://www.ppchero.com/microsoft-adcenter-gets-an-upgrade/

PLR is an affordable content tool that is now available in a variety of formats for website and blog content, infoproducts to sell or give away, and many other uses….

Read the full article here:

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/private-label-rights-plr-content-more-than-articles-and-ebooks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SearchEnginePeople+%28Search+Engine+People%29

The study from Marin Software takes into account the company’s 800 clients, which spend a total of $2.1 billion annually….

For the full article click here:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2092677/Google-AdWords-CTR-Improves-Yahoo-Bing-Both-See-PPC-Spending-Increase?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

Not much is known regarding the extent of the agreement, but we can confirm that Bing results will be intermingled within the Baidu results of English language searches…..

Read the full article:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2084287/Bing-and-Baidu-Team-Up-for-English-Search-Results?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

Having been a victim to this trap in the past, I learned the hard way that its not always a great idea to allow you ads to show up all over the place. Impressions are great if you have a client that is concerned about branding and visibility. But for most of us its the conversion we’re looking for. It’s pretty simple; better traffic tends to come from better search engines. Not always, but generally this is the case.

We noticed a few months after the msn/yahoo merger that some programs we were getting a lot of conversion from were spending a lot more/getting a lot more clicks when compared to the 2 engines running separately. Since the merger effectively took away our ability to simply turn off yahoo or msn search results I took a dive into campaign setting to see what our options were. They are as follows:

-All Bing and Yahoo! search networks and syndicated search partners

-Only Bing and Yahoo! websites

-Only Bing and Yahoo! syndicated search partners

Pretty self explanatory. Since we can no longer choose Bing or Yahoo to fly solo, we cut out the search partners on some… it helped get our stats back to normal and cut out a bit of the junk clicks we were getting.

If you have good tracking I would suggest diving into this setting and checking out your sub id’s. You may find the search partners work for certain programs (we did!) you may also find the opposite in that you get too many clicks on the main search pages and want to scale back to just the partner pages. Of course, most of our programs remain on the “all” setting. Use your judgment and don’t be afraid to test, test, test!

IT would be nice if it happened though. I think most PPC marketers would like to rely on google less. What do you think?

Here is an article on the subject from Search Engine Watch

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641841?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/manage-adwords-quality-score.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SearchEnginePeople+%28Search+Engine+People%29

It’s a process for sure and one worth doing if you are working on a client contract. For someone that only does affiliate SEM I would say approach with caution. I KNOW lots of people make money with the content network, Just don’t ask me how!

Perhaps PPC Hero can help you:

http://www.ppchero.com/finding-success-on-the-google-content-network/

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641823?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

For more information on the changes to display url’s: http://www.thesmartestsearch.com/2011/03/google-adwords-display-url-changes-boon-or-bust/

For more information on the Ad preview tool head over to Jumpfly: http://blog.jumpfly.com/public/item/google-announces-new-and-improved-ad-preview-tool-02207

I didn’t see much activity going on with regards to job postings, but it looks like the posts would live in the forum. In this industry you should be going to events and networking all the time. Should you find yourself out of work call your buddies. Then go to more traditional methods.

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/submit-free-affiliate-marketing-job-listings/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AffiliatetipcomBlog+%28AffiliateTip.com+Blog%29

IF you have been reading our blog with some frequency you may have noticed I talk a lot about re-targeting:

http://www.thesmartestsearch.com/2010/11/retargeting-%E2%80%93-the-next-big-thing-in-display-advertising/

RE-targeting is a hot topic among educated consumers, savvy internet users, Conspiracy theorists and those in the industry. The issues mainly stem from privacy concerns. Consumers/users are concerned about the amount of data being consumer and archived by web programs, browsers, search engines, social networks, portals, etc they use everyday.

As someone with a good deal of knowledge on how these re-targeting systems work I don’t see the big deal. When I think about internet privacy, it’s not about who’s trying to sell me goods. In my opinion these types of technologies make my advertising more personalized and therefore less annoying.

Think about your amazon account. If you buy goods from them regularly they probably have a really good idea of what items to show you. This type of system works great because all the information is based on the items you have viewed and purchased. Re-targeting for the most part is based around the websites you have visited. So after you leave the site (merchant 1) you may notice ads for Merchant 1 on other pages you visit throughout the day/week/month.

***Recently, browsers are allowing you to turn of the ability for re-targeting. I don’t know much about this yet as I haven’t had time to research or test these new features. I’ll be sure to post my findings when I do.***

For now check out PPC hero’s wrap-up that has 2 articles about re-targeting in it.

http://www.ppchero.com/ppc-news-roundup-for-january-28-2011/

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641794?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

The Microsoft/Yahoo platform has been preforming quite well for us for a number of reasons. For starters they seem happy to have us as customers. In fact we actually speak to an account rep that personally handles our account. Even further on that path, they extended us a huge line of credit to ease our billing situation. Granted we spend a ton of money with them but Google’s threshold for a LOC is MUCH higher. Google likes to disapprove ads, suspend accounts and a whole host of other annoying procedures. We don’t experience that too much with MSN/Yahoo.

Now there are obvious flaws like the interface. How come I can’t view ALL my adgroups regardless of campaign? Ad Words allows you to easily take stock of the entire account on an adgroup or keyword level. This is an easy fix and an obvious oversight. Another flaw is that you can’t search the elements of “live” links and find out who is running them. Sometimes I like to check that my ad is showing up and I can’t do more than compare the ad copy and hope no one else stole ours and out seated us.

If you haven’t started putting more money into Bing you are missing out.

Found a nice article for supplemental reading on the subject. PPC Hero talked about the differences in the targeting of the two engines.

http://www.ppchero.com/google-vs-bing-targeting-features/

The other day I was looking for one of my ads “in the wild” and I thought it was someone else in first place. I didn’t recognize my ad because it had put the first line of my ad together with the title. Because the ad was written as a 2 line sentence it looks strange the have the first 1/2 in the title and then the sentence continues below in a normal non-hyper-linked font.

In the end I think that this is a good change but it either needs to be universal or allow for a default ad to be created and set aside for this format. While I haven’t seen a decrease in my ctr or conversions I know it’s not optimized.

Search Engine World took a look at the impact in the article below:

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641776?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

http://www.ppchero.com/ppc-hero-video-blog-2-ad-text-best-practices/

One of my issues with re-targeting is that it needs to get smarter. Rather than just focusing on where a viewer has been recently it should also take into consideration where they are seeing the follow up ad. The advertisers should also be aware when they have a product or service that probably won’t lend itself to a follow up. I’ve been getting followed by a company that makes stand up arcade games for home/office over a month now. I looked at a similar product once and now I am being bombarded by something that most people can’t afford and probably just checked out for fun. I see it in my emails, my rss reader and a bunch of other places.

Anyway I always post anything I see about re-targeting. This article from search engine world speaks to the intellegence factor of current re-targeting technology.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641740?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

Personally I often leave these words out at first. Once I have some success I’ll usually add them back into the mix. However if you really feel that the keyword makes sense for your campaign, leave it in! It shouldn’t really effect your quality score too much if at all.

More insights from PPC Hero:

http://www.ppchero.com/the-what-why-and-how-on-low-search-volume-keywords/

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641744?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

Traditional models need to be re-examined and re-evaluated. Just because you make a killing on search engines, doesn’t mean the same process will work on mobile. It’s too early to tell where this model is going, and what is working.

Search Engine World had a good article on the subject last month:

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641732?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

These keywords are important to both parties for the same reason. They convert really well.

Check out PPC hero’s blog on the subject:

http://www.ppchero.com/navigating-ppc-trademark-rules/

You’ll begin to notice that the display url’s will no longer separate words with capitals. Big deal? I don’t think it will impact much, but it really goes against everything I know.

http://blog.brandverity.com/553/adwords-to-make-all-display-urls-lowercase/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Brandverity+(BrandVerity)

I found another article with some good tips from Search Engine World:

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641724?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

I must say that 1 thing to look out for is competition. Huge companies like to use image ads to promote sale items. The one I encounter most often is Target. They love image ads and have a huge budget… but you can beat them for the #1 spot if you’re not afraid to enter a high bid.

PPC Hero had a good how-to blog on it last month:

http://www.ppchero.com/creating-image-ads-with-the-adwords-display-ad-builder/

One of his main points is that other marketers are NOT doing it…. Be careful with that. If nobody else is doing it, there is probably a reason.  The theory is sound, but remember that the broader you get the more likely you are to get a wasteful click.

Take a look:

http://ppcblog.com/broad-keywords/

If you use Microsoft AdCenter you’ll notice that the new billing system is much more straight forward than the old system and much deeper than Yahoo’s old system. While Yahoo still technically handles the billing process you can view all your billing data through the adcenter interface.

If you can, try to get on the deferred payment plan. This will give you a 30-day lag to pay up. If your budget is small than I would suggest doing small deposits of 1 or 2 hundred dollars at a time, but be careful not to let your budget run out!

Below is a link to the adcenter blog about new billing:

http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2011/01/05/an-introduction-to-adcenter-billing.aspx

Search Engine World had a great article with more than just a few tips on how to set up a quality account structure.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641674?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

This article from PPC hero hit on a few good points but one in particular rings true with me. “Cut Out The Junk” and “Exercise (Judgement) Regularly“
Every month I comb through anything that made a profit of $5 or less (including those that lost $$) and make a decision on the ads fate. Sometimes it leads to writing new ad copy, other times it means cutting a program.

A good idea for programs you find are on the borderline is to set some type of alarm/reminder to check back in after 10-15 days. Re-evaluate the program at this point and make  a decision on cutting or fixing the ad.

Check out the full article from PPC hero below:

http://www.ppchero.com/ppc-new-years-resolution/

This article from search engine world has some good tips on using the keyword tools to find the right fit.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641672?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/quality-scores.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SearchEnginePeople+(Search+Engine+People)

Search engine world had an article that summed up iProspect’s analysis:

“Mobile search has become a mainstream behavior in Asia with China, Thailand, India, and South Korea leading the region, according to a recent report by search marketing firm iProspect.”

Read the full article by clicking the link below:

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641652?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

This system is going to take a while to perfect and if it doesn’t catch on, this idea could go away pretty quickly.  Also, I don’t know how everyone else feels about letting google see EVERYTHING I do and have access to all of my files, etc…

Hub spot writer Chris Haddad got to beta test one of these machines. See what he had to say:

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/7631/Marketing-Lessons-from-Google-s-Chrome-OS-Beta.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+HubSpot+(HubSpot)

A lot of the tips are super basic, but if you’re having a problem with QS then this may offer some insight on how to correct the issues.

Read the full article by clicking the link below:

http://www.ppchero.com/case-study-improving-low-quality-score-accounts/

Our good friend Jason Rubacky from ShareaSale has started a campaign to raise money for his ailing mother’s medical bills.

His mom suffers from a number of illnesses such as:

Scleroderma: a chronic systemic autoimmune disease characterized by fibrosis (or hardening), vascular alterations, and autoantibodies.

Pulmonary Hypertension: an increase in blood pressure in the pulmonary artery, pulmonary vein, or pulmonary capillaries, together known as the lung vasculature, leading to shortness of breath, dizziness, fainting, and other symptoms, all of which are exacerbated by exertion. Pulmonary hypertension can be a severe disease with a markedly decreased exercise tolerance and heart failure.

Interstitial Lung Disease: also known as diffuse parenchymal lung disease (DPLD), refers to a group of lung diseases affecting the interstitium (the tissue and space around the air sacs of the lungs). It concerns alveolar epithelium, pulmonary capillary endothelium, basement membrane, perivascular and perilymphatic tissues.

Thus far he has managed to raise  $6165 – as of 2/1/2011

Please Help Jason save his mother and finance the care and treatment of others suffering from Scleroderma

-Just about a month ago Geekcast.fm had an interview with Jason Rubacky from ShareaSale. Jason has helped us build a strong relationship with SAS and is always a blast to hang with at the industry events. SAS is a HUGE network with a lot of smaller merchants, it really helps having someone that pays attention to our skill set and tries to make proper relationships.

It’s a long audio clip but the article hits the key points.

http://geekcast.fm/archives/inside-internet-marketing-7-jason-rubacky/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+geekcast/podcast+(GeekCast.fm)

Read the full article by clicking the link below:

http://www.ppchero.com/account-level-quality-score-what-about-it/

If you aren’t using them yet, get on board and watch your conversions and CTR rise.

PPC hero always comes with the goods and in this article they explain the uses of the new tools:

Read the full article by clicking the link below:

http://www.ppchero.com/adwords-ad-extensions-an-overview/

Wired.com had a preview of the new features last month.

Read the full article by clicking the link below:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/bing-google-differences/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/science/space+(Wired:+Science+-+Space)

This article from Search engine land goes deep into what the new Yahoo Clues tool can do. Personally I don’t think they can compete with Google insights based solely on the fact that Google’s data goes back to 2004 and Yahoo’s is only a 30 day snapshot. Regardless, there has to be unique value in this tool.

Read the full article by clicking the link below:

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/yahoo-clues.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SearchEnginePeople+(Search+Engine+People)

“Advertisers can now schedule automatic changes on the Campaign, Ad Group, Ad and Keyword level without having to manually log into their AdWords account.  Automated Rules has been designed to help save advertisers time by allowing them to manage their AdWords account more efficiently.”

Read the full article through the link below:

http://blog.jumpfly.com/public/item/google-adwords-rules-02181

“While one way of cashing in on web hosting is as an affiliate marketer, another way involves more traditional, B2B referral programs. Each has its pros and cons, but the point is that nearly any web professional can make commissions by selling someone else’s hosting.”

Read the full article by clicking the link below:

http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/3924/affiliates-web-hosting-referrals.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AffiliateMarketingBlogsSeoBlogs+(5+Star+Affiliate+Blogs+and+SEO+Blogs)

Just because potential user can understand your ads and view the websites promoted, doesn’t mean they can purchase from the merchant. Even more damaging to your bottom line, the network or merchant may restrict the countries you are allowed to promote in. This could result in accusations of fraud and damage your relationships with merchants and/or networks.

So let’s look at how to double check these variables so that we can avoid wasting media spend and possibly ruining a relationship in 3 simple steps:

1) Check the offers targeting restrictions: Pretty straight forward here. Most networks clearly display where each offer is allowed to be promoted. If there is any doubt contact your affiliate manager or the merchant directly.

2) Investigate the shipping capabilities of the merchant: This task can be a little more difficult to complete. However most of the time you can find a link on the merchant page that brings you to an F.A.Q. or a specific page about “shipping information” or something similar.

-Pay attention to price as well as availability. A smart customer will realize that the shipping cost will raise the cost of their item drastically in many cases and find somewhere else to purchase.

-Another hard to spot catch comes up with UK shipping. Look for “UK mainland delivery” and realize that this applies to a limited are of the UK. While it is a large portion, outlying areas are subject to additional shipping charges and can impact the decision to purchase.

-Other merchants just simply cannot or will not ship outside of their stated area. I have found numerous publishers spending money on ads for a website the end user can’t even order from. It seems logical now that we’re talking about it but can easily be overlooked.

*A while back we had a virtual assistant look at our top 100 merchants and investigate if they shipped internationally. Needless to say we were able to find some Great opertunities to expand highly profitable programs. YOU KNOW the program works, so pitch it to everyone you can!

3) Asses the new competition: As you expand into a new territory it is important that you take into account your new competitors. They may vary from the US players and have different strategies.
-Be aware that not every publisher takes as much care to ensure they are targeting an eligable area. Jsut because another publisher is running an ad in the UK doesn’t mean he went through all the steps above.
-If you did follow the above steps then spotting another publisher running an international ad is a great sign that you can have success in that region. If someone else is spending money on it, you are normally safe to assume they are making a profit.

Now that you’ve verified the rules and shipping to be applicable it’s time to expand that program. If possible you may want to use different accounts (if using adwords, adcenter, etc..) and create different campaigns so you can tweak both independently. Allowing you to keep the successful US campaign and monitor the UK stats for a better analysis. Along with this you should amend a different SUBID or SUBID format to distinguish the targeting.

Remember that just because a product is popular in America does not mean it will be over seas. Each region has unique tastes and buying habits. Keep an eye on the new expansion and treat it like a new campaign, with a little give due to the fact you know it to be successful elsewhere.

Below is a link to an article by PPC hero that talks about using google voice with adwords:

http://www.ppchero.com/google-voice-and-adwords-combine/

Think about the way you shop. We’re all savvy web shoppers. You do a broad search, find out information on the type of product you want and usually have a few options jotted down to do more research on. Chances are the notes are BRAND names of the product you were looking into purchasing. SO what do you do? You search the brand name… Get it?

Check out SEW’s article on this scenario:

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641538?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

It all comes down to the product/service you are going to provide. Remember that Facebook targeting is done by demographics and not keywords. This works very well for a variety of different programs, but def. goes against normal PPC mindsets.

If you find you have something that works in Facebook, you might want to try your hand at adServers like AdBrite. They use similar demographics, though I have no clue how they determine such statistics.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641525?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

There is a nice slideshare with this article.

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/7026/Why-Social-Media-is-BS.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+HubSpot+(HubSpot)

It’s a long video so I suggest watching the slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/ppc-super-affiliate-strategies-you-must-know

If you are just starting out or just starting to turn a profit, he offers some ideas on growing your business.

Full article/video below:

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/ppc-super-affiliate-strategies-you-must-know-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AffiliatetipcomBlog+(AffiliateTip.com+Blog)

It is very similar to the process I use and if you don’t do something like this…. good luck.

http://www.ppchero.com/analyzing-your-ppc-account/

read the full article below:

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641554?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641508?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

As always PPC Hero was on top of the subject.

http://www.ppchero.com/the-ppc-audit-rewards-for-a-critical-eye/

This 7search.com blog speaks about the use of re-targeting through display networks. How long before there is a self contained retargeting tool in google?

http://7search.com/newsletter/2010november/ppc.html

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641491?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

If you have more questions on this subject or are experiencing something similar and need help feel free to contact us for additional info. For obvious reason I don’t want to share with the world the “attack” method.  Of course if you’ve been in the game for a while, you’re well aware of it’s dangers.

Additionally, I was spurned to talk about this by an article I read last week claiming that click fraud is way down (which it is.) Read the full article below for some current stats on click fraud.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641494?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/quality-score-faq.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SearchEnginePeople+(Search+Engine+People)

The search engines are still the best in my opinion. However, when I buy other media I keep that in mind. 7Search for example works a lot like search engines, and in fact fills in for bigger guys when they are lacking ads.

I recently read an article by Search Engine Watch and while, I don’t personally like their suggestions for alternative ad networks the idea is right, and these strategies will work from some.

1 more personal note… be careful with YouTube. I find it to be a very low CTR and a lot of ways to loose a potential customer. Our video was great, perhaps too professional. I feel like YouTube is great if your goal is branding, but if you’re trying to convert sales, make sure that this delivery method matches your product(s).

Read the article below:

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641484?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

Just because a keyword is related to your product, doesn’t mean it’s a good placement. As a side note, when using content networks check your placements often and make sure you’re not ending up on poorly translated sites. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an ad sitting on a page that is mainly in Chinese.

The ads in this post from search engine people are extreme, but perfect examples of why you need to watch where your ads are showing.

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/google-ads-fail.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SearchEnginePeople+(Search+Engine+People)

Check out the full article below:

http://www.ppchero.com/google-adwords-reporting-an-update-since-summer-changes/

It’s a pretty long video but I suggest watching some:

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/compliance-its-more-than-a-buzz-word-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AffiliatetipcomBlog+(AffiliateTip.com+Blog)

Sharing analytics and other data can help build upon things that are working and expose strategies that are coming up short of goals. Search Engine Watch had a post the other day that gave a lot of good reasons for working together.

Read the Article after the link:

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641480?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sew+(Search+Engine+Watch)

Perhaps the most valuable (at least for my business) is harnessing the power of the big search engines; who are grabbing search results from Twitter and Facebook and placing them VERY HIGH on the first page. Use social media correctly and you can essentially get a free placement on the first page. Of course, the key is keeping the content fresh. These results update many times in a minute.

Search Engine People had a great article that got me thinking about this again. I may revisit some of the strategies we tried when the social results started showing up in natural search. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Anyhow, here is the link to the article: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/bing-google-social.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SearchEnginePeople+(Search+Engine+People)

Search Engine People has a quick checklist you should look over if considering such a hire.

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/social-media-hire.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SearchEnginePeople+(Search+Engine+People)

Billing is a top priority! If you have a line of credit with either, or deferred payments of some sort you’ll want to make sure that will carry over. SEM publishers put out lots of money and don’t see it all back overnight. Losing a line of credit  or having to pay up front could severely cripple your budget so make sure you’ve secured your finances. Not to mention that if your budget runs out your ads will stop running.

Lastly I have included 2 articles that should answer any questions about the merger and give you more insight to the billing matter.

http://blog.jumpfly.com/public/item/yahoo-and-msn-and-a-billing-nightmare-02138

http://www.ppchero.com/yahoo-to-microsoft-transition-survival-guide/

Now Re-Targeting is cool if you own a well branded website. For publishers who don’t host shopping on their own sites, well there isn’t a lot you can do with this new technology… Affiliate marketers are if anything losing out on this.  Allow me to give an example:

“SEM Publisher 1 sends Visitor 1A through a google link directly to Merchant A.

Visitor1A leaves  the site but is attached to SEM Publisher 1’s cookie.

Merchant A Uses a Re-Targeting tool and follows Visitor1A until they finally click an ad for Merchant A’s website.

Merchant A’s cookie replaces SEM Publsiher 1’s”

So even though the SEM Publisher initially sent the customer to the site, they may not get credit (or full credit) for it.

I don’t think this is a bad thing. Merchant A has to spend the $ on TAGMAN or another re-targeting company for the ability to follow users. I’m not sure if most systems would allow for both the publisher and the re-targeting service to get credit for the sale. From what I gathered during meetings with a re-targeting company they have a hard enough time making sure they get credit for the sale, I doubt they care about the traffic’s original source.

This method is still young and has a lot of maturing to do, but make no mistake, Big Brands are already capitalizing off this smart technology. If you feel like you’re being stalked by an ad no matter where you go… Your paranoia may be warranted, but don’t be alarmed it’s just technology at work.

Here is an article about the process in general from Search Marketing Gurus:

http://www.searchmarketinggurus.com/search_marketing_gurus/2010/10/retargeting-the-new-behavioral-ads.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+typepad/storyspinner/search_marketing_gurus+(Search+Marketing+Gurus)

Internet marketing is a different animal than traditional outlets. But remember this, Everything is trackable! Try new things, and always check on your ROI down to single keywords, locations, etc… You’ll find out where you’re having success and where your cash is being wasted.

Karl has some deeper insight on this topic. Read more on his post:

http://www.searchmarketinggurus.com/search_marketing_gurus/paid_search/

John spells out a number of issues surrounding Quality Score… I’ll make it real simple Your clicks will cost more if your QS is low! Google still places an enormous amount of weight on quality score. Check your keywords, ads and landing pages often.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641454#http://searchenginewatch.com/3641454

I’m thinking I may write my own on this subject, with a little twist. stay tuned!

http://ppcblog.com/how-to-pitch-ppc-services/#http://ppcblog.com/how-to-pitch-ppc-services/

Some of the Points I agree with:

PPC engines effectiveness can vary depending on your niche.

Watch to see if your clicks stay relevant. Sometimes they will start throwing junk traffic in there.

Don’t spend a lot of time/$ on any of these networks. If the traffic isn’t converting, move on.

Conversion Rates WILL be lower than Google PPC traffic.

Social media advertising doesn’t convert for many verticals. Gaming is one that DOES work but good luck!

This video has tons of info and John Hasson has interesting views on what he “believes” ad networks are doing. lol Entertaining!

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/which-ppc-search-engines-work-and-how/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AffiliatetipcomBlog+(AffiliateTip.com+Blog)

The commercials blaring at night are not not an urban myth. This is a time-tested practice still in use to the point that it is finally being outlawed next year.

So when you’re laying in bed not being disturbed by super loud commercials think of ways to be more diverse. Who knows what type of regulations could put a big hurt on your business.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/fcc-quiet-blaring-tv-ads/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/techbiz+(Wired:+Tech+Biz)

Offering yourself as an exclusive to 1 network can help your relationship with that network and make them want to work harder on your offer. Going with 1 strong network for anything retail is probably best. If you are having success and want a larger publisher base then consider expanding into a second or third.

There are instances like “as seen on tv”  or “get rich” offers where expanding into a dozen networks can make sense. Still, I think the lesson here is quality over quantity. Simple but stands the test of time.

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/how-many-affiliate-networks-for-an-offer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AffiliatetipcomBlog+(AffiliateTip.com+Blog)

As I expected, not a whole lot different. Any changes you can point to are counter-pointed by another stat. You also have to take in to consideration the monthly flux in anyone’s business.

We’ll have a better idea 5 months from now if it has an impact. Worth Reading though!

http://www.affiliate.com/blog/?p=2456

http://www.ppchero.com/adwords-vs-adsense-whats-the-difference/

If you haven’t listened to the Affiliate Juice Podcast yet, I recommend giving it a whirl. They highlight an affiliate program that is relatively new or about to launch. Very helpful for Advertisers looking to start an affiliate program.

I’m sending you through GeekCast.fm because they have tons of cool industry podcasts in their network that may interest you. Enjoy.

http://geekcast.fm/archives/affiliate-juice-podcast-episode-2-eyeglasses123-com-review/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+geekcast/podcast+(GeekCast.fm)

“Let’s face it, without an e-mail marketing list, you are reducing the potential you have for driving traffic, building your brand and increase your profits. This is one of the biggest mistakes I made when I first started out; I didn’t realize the true value of a list and didn’t have list building techniques in place from day one.”

http://zacjohnson.com/5-mind-blowing-list-building-techniques/

First let’s discuss this practice in general. Large Search Firms often run hundreds of new programs every month in search of some that work. Creating all those ads is taxing so most of them implement a software that takes info from the website being promoted and populates an ad that should have a high quality score. This is achieved by placing keywords into the ad copy that match the destination url and keywords associated with that website.

The Marketers end up with a high quality score ad that often makes little sense but will outrank competitors due to the quality score and large daily budgets. Which is great for the affiliate but hurts the advertiser’s branding. Sloppy Affiliate ads can actually drive potential customers away by turning them off to the brand when they see the lame duck ad on top of the results page. Not to mention hurting the affiliates chances for a click through and thus lessening the chance of a conversion and an overall successful campaign.

In the above example you can see that the top placed ad is really gross. Formats like this scream the use of an automatic system or at least a method of creating ads that are irrelevant to users but excellent for quality score. There is no call to action, no explanation of products/services available and repeated keywords everywhere.

Search Marketers bidding on brand terms are often scrutinized for hurting brands and this is one of the main reasons why. No advertiser would pay an affiliate 5,10,15% commission to run ads like this, and I can’t blame them!

In an ongoing effort to educate the industry on the importance of proper SEM tactics we urge advertisers with affiliates running weak ads like this to contact their affiliates and ask them to use relevant ad copy. Especially if you are allowing TM bidding, it is critical that the ads appearing for your branded keywords are showcasing your company properly.

There are plenty of ways to get higher quality scores without sacrificing the usefulness of your ad. Experienced SEM publishers know the difference and what tactics truly drive results.

Poor ad quality is just another example of why you need a trustworthy SEM partner protecting your brand and increasing your sales!

We all enjoy a “good” viral video. Here’s 10 of the best from a marketing standpoint:

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6649/10-Examples-of-Amazing-Viral-Marketing-Videos.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+HubSpot+(HubSpot)

93 million. This number is the combined total of views for the 10 videos listed in the post below. That is nearly the number of people who watch the Super Bowl!

These 10 videos provide great examples of what it takes to make a video that can capture the attention of millions and market your product in the process. Take a look at each of these videos. They are all very different and invoke different emotions in order to capture attention. These videos prove that it doesn’t matter if your company is B2B or B2C; anyone can create a video that goes viral.

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6649/10-Examples-of-Amazing-Viral-Marketing-Videos.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+HubSpot+(HubSpot)#ixzz118t2JlJn

I listed the intro and 6 tips here, but I suggest reading the whole article at the link below:

http://www.ppchero.com/6-steps-to-raise-your-quality-score/

Quality score is a vital component of your pay-per-click account because it influences ad position and keywords’ minimum bid.  What is the quality score’s purpose? Google assigns a quality score to ensure that it only shows relevant ads to users.

Think of it this way, Google makes money off of the ads that it shows to the users.  Google is by far the most popular search engine because it is dependable and generally the most accurate as far as search engines go.  If Google was not the most accurate, it would begin to lose users and thus lose money.  That’s where quality score comes into play.  Google uses quality score to ensure that each user sees results most relevant to their search query. Although quality score continually shifts and adjusts in response to factors in any given ad campaign, there are ways to optimize your account’s quality score.

Looking to boost your quality score?  Focus on completing this checklist:

1. Put keywords in your ad copy.  The easiest way for Google to determine the ad as being relevant is to have the keyword included in the ad.  This is actually a double dip, because if the search query is in the ad, it’s more likely to be clicked – thereby increasing your click through rate!
2. Create organized, tightly themed ad groups.  Restructure when necessary; for more detailed information about restructuring, see Jen’s article about account structure best practices.
3. Put keywords on the landing pages.  This is another good reason to have tightly themed ad groups – so that you can use most, if not all of the keywords in the landing page.
4. Create separate landing pages per ad group.  At Hanapin Marketing, we try to create separate landing pages for each ad group, using the top performing keywords from each.
5. Put misspelled keywords in their own ad group.  Misspelled words will generally have a low quality score because you won’t use them in ads or landing pages.  Put these keywords in their own ad group so that they won’t harm the quality score of ad groups with otherwise strong quality scores.
6. Pay attention to all match types, including negatives, because they influence click through rate, which influences quality score

http://www.ppchero.com/6-steps-to-raise-your-quality-score/

The Podcast focuses on showcasing new affiliate programs in an attempt to educate merchants on how to better launch their programs and for publishers to get a sneak peek at a new program.

Coming from a radio background I have to say that The Podcast sounds really nice. Professional intros and outros, decant sound quality, good format and the hosts are enjoyable.

We have done some work with Greg and he is an awesome OPM so go learn something from him!

http://www.affiliate-juice.com/

Marketing your product in a trusted environment translates into utter success for businesses. No wonder companies rush to populate different social networks in an attempt to dominate the most credible one.

But which channel do marketers themselves trust the most for referrals and product reviews? That would be Facebook, a recent HubSpot poll showed.

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6609/Marketers-Gravitate-to-Facebook-As-Most-Trusted-Referral-Source.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+HubSpot+(HubSpot)#ixzz10wl3KmLz

See the Full article for illustration on how to better configure your PPC accounts.

http://www.ppchero.com/account-structure-set-up-and-best-practices/

This Blog from Affiliate tip by Shawn Collins showcases a company that is interested in funding our endeavors.

Are you willing to give a piece of your commissions in exchange for cash flow?

Media Funding Corporation, a funding source for direct response campaigns in TV, radio, print, voice broadcast, mail and email, is now in the affiliate marketing space…

Check out the full article:

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/third-party-funding-for-affiliate-campaigns/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AffiliatetipcomBlog+(AffiliateTip.com+Blog)

Users of Symbian-powered phones, which are mostly made by Nokia, were the most likely to click on ads, followed by users of “regular” mobile phones with internet access. Uers of Apple iOS devices were nearly exactly average in their ad-clicking rates. In contrast, Android, Microsoft and Blackberry users were all ad-clicking laggards.

That’s according to stats for August compiled by Smaato, a mobile-ad service that helps show more than 16 billion mobile ads monthly for more than 7,000 mobile apps and websites. Rather than selling ads itself, the company helps app developers pull ads from multiple ad networks around the world in real time, rather than just signing up for a single one.

Harald Neidhardt, co-founder of Smaato, says he can only speculate on why the rates differ for different OSes.

“Symbian click-through rates could be something about the displays or maybe their demographic is drawn to coupons or incentives,” he suggested.

As for Android’s fall from its high click-through rates in January?

“Maybe it’s because Android was new and you had users more excited because they had switched from a feature phone,” Neidhardt ventured. (A feature phone is industry lingo for a non-smartphone, even if it has internet access).

How are mobile apps and mobile websites doing at getting enough ads, known as their fill-rate?

The stats show that different ad networks vary enormously in being able to provide ads — with the top network serving up ads 41 percent of the time the network is queried by an app using Smaato. Others clock in as low as a measly 5 percent, though this includes fledgling networks around the world.

As for response times of its more than 50 ad networks, they range from a blazing fast 20ms to more than 616ms (more than a half-second). Smaato’s system figures out the most likely profitable ad network, queries it, and then, if the answer is no and time remains, it can ask additional networks for an ad.

Oddly, click-through rates also vary significantly when comparing the United States to Europe. European users of Windows Mobile-powered phones are far more likely to click on ads than their U.S. counterparts. But on either side of the Atlantic, iPhone and Touch users are above-average ad clickers.

I strongly suggest reading the full, original blog with the graphs at:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/mobile-ads/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/techbiz+(Wired:+Tech+Biz)

Paid priority access “was fully contemplated” and even “expressly contemplated” by the IETF decades ago, the telco has told the Federal Communications Commission, and is “fully consistent” with that body’s standards-making discussions.

Baloney, insists the IETF’s current chairman. “AT&T’s characterization is misleading,” Russ Housley told National Journal several days later. “IETF prioritization technology is geared toward letting network users indicate how they want network providers to handle their traffic, and there is no implication in the IETF about payment based on any prioritization.”

Obviously this is a hot historical debate, given that limiting content prioritization is central to the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules, as well as the Google/Verizon open Internet manifesto. AT&T and various reform groups have been going at it for weeks over the issue.

So who is right here? And what is this DiffServ talk anyway?

One protocol to rule them all

When most people think of inventing, they usually conjure up big corporate labs with lots of equipment or, in earlier times, tinkerers at their basement tables. One of the more interesting aspects of internet history is how much of the ‘Net was invented at meetings — literally people in nice little rooms sitting around talking, with someone taking notes.

By 1973, some of the creators of the ARPANET held one of these gatherings at Stanford University, and they were worried. There were already 15 “nodes” in the network, mostly university based extensions. Each was busy experimenting with their own little terminal computer offshoot subnetworks. How would this ever-expanding octopus retain a single, coherent nervous system?

The answer they came up with was TCP—Transfer Control Protocol. The P-word is borrowed from diplomacy. Protocols are basically agreed upon standards for how information will be exchanged. TCP would be the master — adopted by all ARPANET connectors.

As summarized by internet historian Janet Abbate, TCP “did much more than just set up a connection between two hosts: it verified the safe arrival of packets using acknowledgments, compensated for errors by re-transmitting lost or damaged packets, and” — pay attention — “controlled the rate of data flow between the hosts by limiting the number of packets in transit.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/paid-prioritized-traffic/all/1#ixzz10lXSlghg

As a Search Marketing Publisher you have to be careful what terms you are bidding on. Even when you are using [Exact Match] the terms of the program can change and if you miss the notification (or never received one) you could do a great deal of damage to your reputation, company and risk losing commissions and/or termination from the program.

Here are a few simple things you can do to make sure you avoid infringement:
Take Screen Shots of everything!
When you join a program take a Screen shot of the program terms! This will protect you in case terms are changed without notification. Screen shots are hard to dispute; I usually name them with the program name and date.
Make sure you receive the emails.
Almost every Network has a similar auto email system that will notify each affiliate currently in the program. Due to the nature of these auto emails they often get lost in a spam folder or blocked if you have intense filters setup.
A good tactic is to set up folders specific to each network you deal with. Save common emails and mark them as acceptable. (Also a good idea to add these people to your chat)
Check Your Dashboard
Many networks have a spot on your homepage where they make announcements and/or notify you of invalid links generated. Invalid links are a good sign the program has ended, moved or otherwise unavailable to you from this network.
Communicate with your managers.
Keeping in contact with your Affiliate manager or OPM on the program will often give you a second reminder that something is changing. Most AM’s will send out a monthly newsletter containing any changes, additions and so forth for the month.
Keeping in touch with your managers is a good practice besides this use. They can often give you advance notice of new programs coming out, terms changing and often can help setup special rules or promotions for you.
Reassure your mangers
In an instance where you were allowed to run Branded keywords and the terms have now changed, I strongly suggest you reach out to the responsible party and discuss the situation. The Manager can often explain the change if you have questions. More importantly, this lets the manger know that you are planning on following the rules.
After a change in terms the trend is that responsible SEM publishers will back off and all the “black-hat” guys will finally get traction on the ad they’ve had waiting for this moment. It happens ALL THE TIME and drives AM’s and OPM’s crazy!
Sometimes a merchant will close off branded terms in writing, but will allow one or a small group of Search publishers to use the now restricted terms. Since you read my blog and responded to the change promptly, you may be considered for such special treatment. (If you do get approved for special terms, make sure to get them in writing and take a screenshot!)
Respond to accusations
It is not uncommon for a keyword you no longer run to record sales through cookie customers that you generated from a now banned term. If you followed my other suggestions, you’re probably fine and the manager understands. However, especially in cases of a program managed “in-house” by the merchant, they get really angry when they see the sale came from a now banned term and will try to accuse you of continuing to bid innappropiatley.
Explain yourself clearly and ask for a screen shot! If you are not running the ad you should not be penalized for converting a sale through a cookie. It’s a tough spot, but I find just play nice and they usually understand and give you the benefit of the doubt. Don’t get angry right away, find out what happened and approach the situation with the data on your side.
Finding a Replacement
So you’ve lost an advertiser that had good ROI for you. Now what?
1) Find it somewhere else. Sometimes programs are just changing networks, sometimes they have SEM terms in 1 network but not another. It’s always a good idea to look around for a good program on multiple networks. Sometimes a network will offer a higher commission (not all that common) or a different Landing page that might convert better. A-B test the offers to see which converts more often.
2) Talk to you AM and they will probably have some suggestions of programs to replace the one you just lost. They want you to succeed, so take their advice and then apply it to your own ideas.

In closing, Be vigilant and proactive. There is no penalty for asking questions and developing a relationship with your AM or an OPM is an easy, free way to help improve your business and stay out of trouble.

As Always, feel free to comment, add or repost with proper credit given.

Additionally I would like to thank Joe Magennis and Greg Hoffman, whose new podcast gave me the spark to write this up today. Give it a listen at: http://www.affiliate-juice.com/

“Searching is one of the core utilities of the internet. Most websites today have a search function, and we all spend a lot of time searching. On Google, for example, 34,000 searches occur each second. For many internet users, Google has become the default search engine in web browsers and mobile devices; however, Google isn’t always the best search engine for the job. When Google isn’t getting the job done, give one of these other search engines a chance. For the marketers reading this post, though Google has the majority of the search engine market share it isn’t the only option for paid and organic search engine marketing..”

Read Full Article : here

“Google has unveiled a new feature called Google Instant Search on Wednesday. It is designed to help users access search results more quickly and easily than before. For those not in the know here are 3 things you need to know about Google Instant Search:..”

Read Full Story : here

“Keyword research is the foundation of every search engine optimization (SEO) program. Everything that you do within your SEO program will build upon the keywords you’ve selected to target. Yet, time and time again I see people not spending enough time choosing the right words to target on their site…”

Read Full Article : here

“You just got a new PPC client or maybe you are starting an account for a new brand or division of your company – what are you going to do first? Keyword research? Write ads? Before you dive in head first, take a step back and develop a plan. Ask some key questions, research the competitive landscape and think through things to make sure you set the account on the right path from the beginning..”

Read FUll Article : here

“Let’s face it: PPC management is an ever-changing business. Managers and agencies come and go, accounts expand and shrink, and before you know it seven different people have had a hand in the evolution of an account. How many of the accounts that you currently manage did you begin? How many of your little PPC babies, whose campaigns and ad groups and keywords you lovingly crafted with your own hands, have gone off to make their own way in the world? The situation is, we all have different campaign structure ideas and management practices. It’s okay! One of the fun things about PPC management is that a lot of techniques work, and inheriting accounts can expand your understanding of others’ strategies. However, account inheritance can also lead to lots of confusion, which is why we’ve written previously about how to intelligently transition PPC accounts.”

Read Full Article : here

Read Full Article : here

“We all know it’s coming. Some of us are excited while some of us wish it weren’t so. It’s certainly the biggest news in PPC marketing since…I dunno…AdWords? It’s tough to finally say it, but Yahoo and Bing are combining in, what they’re calling, “the Yahoo! And Microsoft Search Alliance.” I guess that wasn’t as scary as I thought. As they say, admitting is the first step. The real question is, what’s the next step and when should I get started? To answer those questions bluntly, the next step is to transition your yahoo account into MSN and you should get started (at least in educating yourself) now if you haven’t already. I realize that answer doesn’t help get the job done but I’m treating this article mostly as a resource center but partially as a classroom to help. There is simply too much information to summarize in one or even several blog posts but at least I can get the ball rolling, point you in the right direction, and ease some concerns you might have.”

Read Full Article : here

Read Full Article : here

Managing Your Affiliate Manager presentation from Affiliate Summit West 2008, which took place February 24-26, 2008 in Las Vegas, NV.

• Dan Murray, Internet Marketing Strategist, RavenwoodMarketing.com
• Steve Schaffer, Founder & CEO, Vertive, Inc

Watch Presentation   : here

“Forty to fifty years ago, musicians relied on mass advertising channels (like print, television, and radio) to get the message of their mere existence out to the general public. Segmenting the overall market into niches, or target markets, was out of the question – if people were talking about you, then you were doing something right…”

Read Full Article : here

“Affiliate marketing has so many facet and techniques, that often times it’s easy to find yourself involved with a scam or being taken advantage of. Everyone can be at risk, including the consumer, merchant and affiliates. So how can we truly prevent wide-spread fraud that tricky people think they can get away with? Easy…”

Read Full Article : here

“Specificmedia, one of the net’s largest ad-serving and tracking companies, has been hit with a federal lawsuit accusing the company of violating computer intrusion laws by secretly re-creating cookies deleted by users…”

Read Full Article : here

“Affiliate marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to make money on the Internet, but it can be a complex and confusing endeavor. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could streamline the process, if only a little?..”

Read Full Article : here

“If you have a Google AdWords account, you likely know the role Quality Score plays in the success of your account.

Generally speaking, the higher your keywords’ Quality Scores, the more Google will like you. And the more Google likes you, the less it’ll charge you for your ads to appear in strong positions in the SERPs…”

Read Full Article : here

“Exciting news from Google this past week – they announced changes in their ranking algorithm that makes it easier for users to find a larger number of results from a single site or domain…”

Read Full Article : here

“As the Bing/Yahoo merger nears, I thought it might be beneficial to talk about Bing.  If you are anything like us here at Hanapin, you have been working for the past two months (if not more) to make sure all of your ducks are in a row before the merger takes place.  Its not that Bing didn’t matter before, it did, but now it matters more.  In order to prepare for the traffic surge that we could see anytime within the next few months, I thought it would be best to shed light on some useful Bing tips, namely dynamic insertion…”

Read Full Article : here

“PPC ads are like a first impression for your company or product. How you do want to come across – cheap, smart, desperate?  A potential customer sees your ads first and if they are interested beyond the “hand-shake”, will click to find out more.  Going along with this analogy, your landing page could then be called the first date – the customer has expressed some interest but wants to get to know you a little better before they commit to anything more. Help yourself get the first date by taking a look at your ads; you might be coming across the wrong way…”

Read Full Article : here

“That’s right, changing your bids isn’t something you want to spend a lot of time on, and if your goal is to reach a certain CPA (or CPL, CPS, CPO, etc.) it doesn’t have to take you much more than a couple of minutes, even for large accounts…”

Read Full Article : here

“The Google Adwords interface continues to become more and more user friendly. There is a section on the light grey bar under the main tabs within your account called Segment, and within that section there are multiple report views that can help you manage your accounts more effectively..”

Read Full Article : here

“DirecTV and Google announced an ad sales partnership which allows Google to directly sell TV ads on channels such as Bloomberg, Fox Business, and TV Guide…”

Read Full Article : here

“After the ECJ’s favorable opinion in the Google cases, I’ve been wondering if Google would liberalize its trademark policy in Europe. It took Google 4 months to parse the ECJ’s inscrutable opinion and make a call, but it finally decided that the opinion was favorable enough to support liberalization…”

Read Full Article : here

“Last week Google announced two significant changes to its trademark policies:

The largest change will allow competitors to purchase trademarked terms in most of the European countries that were excluded in the May 2009 change. It brings the trademark policies in most European countries into alignment with its policy in 190 countries.”

Read Full Article : here

“According to ICrossing.co.uk, September 14th is the day when Google changes their trademark policies in the UK, Ireland, and Canada, to reflect that in the U.S. and possibly permit other companies to mention your trademarked terms in their Google Adwords/AdSense ad copy…”

Read Full Article : here

“Disclaimer: [hand on heart] I do not encourage the practice of buying links in order to inflate Google PageRank™. Links should only be purchased for advertising purposes and should always be identified as such via the nofollow link attribute…”

Read Full Article : here

“When I was starting out, I very stupidly thought you already had to be driving volume in order to ask for more commission.  Upon reflection, that’s patently ridiculous and I was a bloody idiot…”

Read Full Article : here

“With new applications launching daily and “experts” promoting the next big thing in social media marketing, it is a fast changing and confusing industry for marketers. It doesn’t need to be complicated, but it is important for marketers to think about the larger communication trends that these applications belong to and then decide if the trends are relevant enough to test in their marketing strategy. Many of the “hot” new social media…”

Read Full Article : here

“The end of June, I wrote about the new experiment settings in Google AdWords allowing you to test different elements in your account to see if the changes really do improve performance. For instance, you can choose to lower your bids by 30% and then see if you can still maintain the same level clicks at the lower bid. Since this isn’t yet available for everyone, I thought I would follow up my original post with some additional tips I learned along the way as well as my results.”

Read Full Article : here

Read Full Article : here

“With the rise in popularity of social media and its use for marketing, there has been some debate about whether email is dying in the face of social media.  In fact, Ben & Jerry’s recently decided to drop email marketing in favor of social media in the UK…”

Read Full Article : here

“Facebook recently passed 500 million users and now is adding an important new feature to its platform. Today, the social networking platform released Facebook Questions…”

Read Full Article : here

“The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events…”

Read Full Article : here

“In the past, we have talked about Inheriting Accounts from other Agencies, but what about internal accounts? As we adapt to the changes around us, we have developed a list of best practices for internal account transitions. Below are some tips and suggestions for how to smoothly transition an account to a new manager in a way that may even render new ideas and improved performance…”

Read Full Article : here

Are you using video in your affiliate marketing?

Read Full Article : here

“At HubSpot, we always stress the importance of creating valuable content to strengthen presence on search engines and generate high-quality website traffic. The importance of organic search, however, does not imply that paid search is entirely valueless. Paid search may target audiences different from those drawn from organic search and thus maximize your reach to potential customers. In addition, paid search can serve as testing stone for keywords to optimize for organic search. If your website is new to search engine optimization and you don’t know which keywords will draw higher conversion rates, you can quickly test the popularity of different keyword phrases using Google AdWords campaign and later specialize in more popular ones for organic search…”
.

Read Full Article : here

“Starting Tuesday, the search site that refuses to die is re-reinventing itself as a question-answering service. This time Ask.com is adding a Web 2.0 twist on its origins as a site that promised to understand what you were asking and provide the one right answer…”

Read Full Article  : here

Listen to the Podcast : here

“Have you ever considered advertising your website with an ad network?

Of course, with the New York Times reporting over 200 ad networks, it is increasingly difficult for agencies and marketers to make sense of this very crowded marketplace. So how can you be sure of which one will work for you?..”

Read Full Article : here

“Smart phones, tablets, laptops and mobile broadband cards have all changed the way we access the internet. According to Pew Research Center, 59% of adult Americans go online wirelessly.  With the proliferation of wireless connectivity and devices, online marketers have many more screens to worry about than just the standard computer screen….”

Read Full Article : here

“Sophisticated URL hijackers seem to have settled on a set of tactics designed to minimize the discoverability of their affiliate ID. They’ve learned that their ads are discoverable and have been investing in steps to prevent detection of their affiliate ID. While we have seen a wide range of skills, the use of disposable URLs and “front” websites has come to represent “best practice,” used by the most sophisticated hijackers…”

Read Full Article : here

“We have a number of affiliate marketing websites. These are a hangover from when we first came into affiliate marketing when we felt that having more websites meant making more money. If we were starting out now we would only have a couple as it is so much more manageable. But having lots of websites means we have lots of product reviews and we realized early on that if we were going to keep track of where sales were coming from that we needed to start using Amazon tracking ids….”

Read Full Article : here

“part-time and with flexible schedules focused on projects that they like and choose.”

Listen to the podcast : here

Read Full Article : here

“Every day I get emails from people asking me how to make money online? It’s an easy question, with a difficult answer. Many people will read blogs from internet marketers and think we are either lucky or just making easy money. The honest truth is, around 90% of people will fail when trying to make money. It takes a lot of time, dedication and persistence to success in this business…

Read Full Article : here

“if you don’t rank on the first page of search engines, chances that people will find you through search are reduced significantly. Data confirms that fewer than 10% of people even get to the second page of search engine results. Other data confirms that ranking #1 leads to four times more visits than even ranking #2…”

Read Full Article : here

“Whether you are just an affiliate, or a blogger, screen capture tools can be one of your best friends. Screen captures are useful for a ton of reasons, the most popular ones being to show a friend something on your screen, tweak an ad copy, or to simply post to your blog or send in an email to show example. In the past I would use the “Print Screen” button on the keyboard, paste the screenshot into Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, then made any necessary edits or changes. I’m sure many of you are still doing the same, and for those of you who still are, I wanted to introduce you to two programs I have been using for a while now….”

Read Full Article : here

“Finding good help: it’s like the great professional field leveler. No matter how good you are at doing what you do, it doesn’t really mean you’re gonna be great at finding someone else who is good at whatever you need them to do- and that’s an issue, because a terrifying percentage of important projects are contingent on everyone doing their business both correctly and intelligently…”

Read Full Article : here

“Adknowledge, a large-ish company in the online marketing space, has just acquired Hydra Network, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days…”

Read Full Article : here

Read Full Article : here

“Phone app developer Jason Ting is letting the world know: In just one day, iAds generated almost $1,400 in revenue for his free iPhone 4 app…”

Read Full Article : here

Read Full Article : here

“Google is pulling store ratings from Google Products and displaying the aggregate rating inline with ads….”

Read Full Article : here

“Affiliates were asked “Do you cloak links (CGI, .htaccess, meta redirect, etc.)?” for the latestAffiliate Summit AffStat Report…”

Read Full Article : here

“

Some highlights from the survey…

• Email marketing continues to bring significant value to businesses with more than 82 percent of respondents planning to increase their email marketing efforts over the next year…”

Read Full Article : here

“Every day, about 200 million people log onto Facebook, spending an average of 14 minutes on the site—adding up to about seven hours per month!..”

Read Full Article : here

“Q: Are you aware of any software or services that keep track of taxes for online affiliates? Also any accountants that work with online affiliates?..”

Read Full Article : here

“For many businesses who have worked hard to optimize their website, create compelling content and set up landing pages to convert visitors, generating leads is the ultimate reward. While generating leads is a great accomplishment marketers need to think about the steps that follow the lead conversion and their impact on customer acquisition…”

Read Full Article : here

“You’ve probably seen the “death of” posts out there.

“It’s all over … doom and gloom.”

Yes, Google has slapped thousands of PPC affiliate marketers and many more will have their account closed never to be reopened..”

Read Full Article : here

“On the web today, things change fast. New applications launch every day and existing applications continue to evolve and add new features. As we all learn about social media and inbound marketing and we teach others about it, having a resource that quickly and clearly explains all of the basic terms and applications is critically important…”

Read Full Article : here

“The Google Mayday update caused quite a stir in the affiliate community. Why? Because it was said by webmasters to be, and was then later confirmed by Google to be, most heavily impacting long tail traffic…”

Read Full Article : here

Watch Video : here

“In order to get the best results from your PPC campaign, it is important to always test new things. Test keywords, ads, settings, budgets, keyword bids, etc. – if it is something you can change, you should test a variation. The trouble is, it is often difficult to determine if the change you made is really a success or if other factors are contributing. For instance, maybe you increased bids and saw an increase in conversions – we can assume the bids are the reason for the boost in conversions, but maybe your competitors pulled back their budgets allowing you to capture more of the market so really your bid adjustments didn’t have anything to do with it. There hasn’t been an easy way to isolate changes and test performance to see if one change really makes a difference, until now…”

Read Full Article : here

“If you don’t already have a Facebook page or your business, go create one. With over 500 million active users, Facebook is a powerful network to tap into to expand the online footprint of your business…”

Read Full Article : here

“Your internet service provider knows where you live, and soon, it will have a way to sell your zip code to advertisers so they can target ads by neighborhood. If your local pizza joint wants to find you, they will have a new way to do that. National advertisers will be able to market directly to neighborhoods with like characteristics across the whole country using demographic data they’ve been gathering for decades…”

Read Full Article : here

“Ahh seems like just yesterday I was sitting in my underwear, refreshing stats, and deciding which new offer I was going to get ready and test. Yes, the good ole days when everything was simple. Fast forward today to Co-Managing an Affiliate Network, handling, managing, and inspiring hundreds of affiliate marketers from all walks of the world, payments going in, payments going out…ahhh I just want to sit back and remember the basics of what it was like when I was an affiliate…”

Read Full Article : here

“When you create a page, Facebook allows you to specify the “type” of page. Some of the most common are pages about movies, TV shows, and books.

Using the half a million pages Facebook grader has data on, I found that not only are “interest” pages the most common type, on average they’re also the most liked. They’re so far above the average in fans that they dwarf every other type. See the chart below? The giant line on the left is interest pages…”

Read Full Article : here

“Affiliates were asked “What is the most important factor in choosing a merchant?” for the latest Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.

There are lots of reasons why affiliates choose a given affiliate program, but the most popular was the payout amount with 30.7% of the vote.”

Read Full Article : here

“Working with an unlimited budget would be wonderful, but since that isn’t the case for anyone I know, I thought I’d share 10 things that we look at when an account is projected to be over budget at the end of the month. By managing your budget throughout the month you’ll be able to stay on top of your spend, and hopefully you won’t be in a situation where you have to completely pause your account…”

Read Full Article : here

“There’s no blanket right or wrong answer on which affiliate search engine marketing policy is right for an organization. Depending on the robustness of in-house search engine marketing, the trustworthiness (and commission) of the affiliates, the competitiveness of the search space in the industry and the trademarks or brand names in question, one policy is likely more suitable and advantageous for an organization than another…”

Read full article : here

“As if the devastating oil spill in the Gulf wasn’t enough, BP might be making matters worse and further damaging its brand image, ironically, in an attempt to fix it.

Critics are accusing BP of manipulating search results on search engines like Google and Yahoo by spending large sums of money on pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, purchasing search terms like “oil spill,” “Gulf of Mexico” and “Deepwater Horizon” in an effort to boost its brand image in response to the major hit it has experienced from the current crisis…”

Read full article : here

“There are a lot of settings to choose from in your Google AdWords account, but how do you know which ones are best? Depending on your objectives, goals and approach you might find one combination works better than another but the key is to test, test, test. What works for one account or campaign, may not work well for another. If you haven’t spent time exploring the settings options, you are likely using the defaults and a few quick changes could bring in additional clicks or conversions. Below is a brief description of many of the settings as well as some recommendations.”

Read full article : here

“As the web becomes more social and an increasingly important part of a marketer’s day, the web browser is turning into one of marketers’ most useful and powerful tools. Browsers are the software that connect us to the web. Browsers are how most of us use social networks like Facebook and Twitter and how we read blogs and news websites. Because browsers are so important, marketers need to understand how to make them more powerful while helping to save time and increase efficiency…”

Read full article : here

“Lately we’ve been working on new ways to generate traffic to our blogs and are starting to try online services that can generate backlinks through placing articles on other sites. You’ve probably seen some of these sites or even tried them – sites like 1WayLinks, Unique Article Wizard, Free Traffic System and so on. We will do a blog post on the various backlinking services available at a later date….”

Read full article : here

“After running a several campaigns on SponsoredTweets and spending a few thousand dollars, it’s time to reflect back upon my results and what I’ve experienced using both Twitter and SponsoredTweets. Being able to compare my CPM results with my CPC results is quite interesting, and will make setting up future campaigns a lot more rewarding. Even with the future of companies like SponsoredTweets and Ad.ly in jeopardy, advertising through Twitter will always be an option which these same principles can be applied.”

Read full article : here

“For those of you who are getting started with social media marketing, here are 12 video tutorials to help you properly setup many important basic functions. This post focuses on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, which are the three networks I reccommend everyone setup for themselves and/or their business. Leave a comment below and let me know if there are other social media outlets you would like to learn more about…”

Read full article: here

“The keyword report from the interface gives you the average CPC, not your max CPC, and the desktop tool doesn’t show you the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you will want to see to base your decisions on, like average position and click-through rate…..”

Read full article : here

Yesterday (June 22nd 2010) We attended the LinkShare Symposium at Chelsea Piers in NY. This is our first experience at this event and WOW it was neat! Normally I wear comfortable dress shoes because I expect to be on my feet all day. However the LinkShare Symposium is a much slower paced, yet exciting event. I’m not going to go crazy into detail but here is a quick recap and a few key points from the days events.

Centered around an award ceremony the event was very scheduled and organized. The day started off with opening remarks and then a Keynote Speaker.

After a short break, we headed into the Trend Watch session featuring a few top advertisers. (Crocs, Drugstore.com, Extrabux, TheFind.com and North Face.) The discussions that caught my attention were on mobile websites and planning for “holiday” trends. Let’s touch on these real quick:

-Converting your site to accept mobile traffic is a topic of great discussion over the last year especially. As mobile shopping grows advertisers are trying to capitalize on the increasing capabilities of our mobile devices. Something to consider is how you want to setup your mobile site. Some companies simply optimize their existing site to read well on hand-held devices. Others redirect mobile users to an “m.sitename.com” version of the site. Either choice is a viable option and depending on your business one may make more sense.

-The Discussion of “holiday” planning was quite interesting. All the advertisers on the panel said they start planning for q4 in q1 or q2. The North Face in particular said she already has a loose plan laid out in January. In fact, she said she begins reaching out to affiliates during the summer to see what they have planned!
Besides the Q4 holiday blitz, they all agreed the only other surge of note was “back to school.” It should be no surprise to even unseasoned marketers that Q4 is big. But Back to school may slip by some due to the idea that they might view it as niche. In reality there is a huge market for this sector and the season lasts from the day kids are let out to about 3 weeks after school starts back up. Most school supplies are on the lower end of cost, but the volume should help even that out. More expensive items to focus on start at backpack (big seller!!!) and go up to new computers. Lots of opportunity here!

Once the discussion panel was finished we headed into the dining room for lunch… Oh my, Lunch was high class and delicious! When we sat down there was a great appetizer with goat cheese, boiled tomato? and a bunch of other goodies, backed by a raspberry tart desert already on the table! Once everyone destroyed their app and many started on their desert, the main course came out. A wonderful stuffed chicken with fresh veggies and beans.
Besides the good food we got to see the award ceremony and all the hilarity around it. Combining lunch with the Golden Link awards; The Upright Citizens Brigade brilliantly hosted the show. Even the bad jokes got laughs because they sold is so well. There were a lot of new categories this year including best OPM agency of the year, which was given to Brooklyn based agency, The Jar Group. Below is the full list of winners:

• Best New Advertiser: The Limited
• Best New Publisher: Deals Woot
• Innovative Advertiser of the Year:Macy’s
• Innovative Publisher of the Year:Clicks2Customers & RingRevenue
• Affiliate Manager of the Year: Gus Brito of Tiger Direct
• OPM/Agency of the Year: The JAR Group
• Advertiser’s Choice: Savings.com
• Publisher’s Choice: CheapOair
• International Advertiser of the Year: ASOS
• Technology Genius Award: Skimlinks
• Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocate: Steve Schaffer of Offers.com

After the awards everyone made their way over to the lighthouse for the deal makers networking session. Here Advertisers got a chance to interact with publishers, agencies and potential partners as well as display their merchandise, explain their services, etc… Unlike many conventions this was nice and small with less than 50 booths from what I could tell. It was well designed to allow the advertisers and services with booths to speak 1 on 1 with potential partners.

If you are active in the LinkShare Network, I would highly recommend this event next time. It’s a great opportunity to meet your account managers, advertisers you work with and hopefully make new connections. Making that personal connection with your partners is a great help in growing your business.

-Dan Spivak

The Smartest Search.com

“Twitter, while simple, is often a confusing social media platform for
marketers and business owners. This post provides a treasure trove of statistics in the form of infographics related to Twitter. This information can empower businesses to better understand and leverage this simple yet powerful platform….”

Read full article : here

“Let me first start out by stating that social media hasn’t historically been a place for corporate commercialization, but if done right, can still be incorporated. Social shopping, is becoming more and more prevalent and integrated within other social media platforms…”

Read full article : here

“Facebook has changed the way as many as 400 million people are engaging with the Web on a regular basis, 200 million of them every day. Users are accessing Facebook to access “their world” on the Web…”

Read full article : here

“was a little surprised that nearly 20% of affiliates are still using affiliate directories to find an affiliate program. When I am searching out relevant affiliate programs, I use search engines to find them…”

Read full article : here

“Hyperlinks are references to resources on the web. They primarly link to other web pages, but can also reference images, documents, audio, or movie files. I often find myself using HTML code directly on blog comments or in forums. Keep this article as a handy reference for hyperlinks and stay tuned for my next post on basic HTML marketers should know about tables..”

Read full article : here

“Twitter plans to have hundreds of advertisers using its new ad system in the fourth quarter as the company ramps up plans to become a self-sustaining, profitable business…”

Read full article : here

“I don’t know about you, but I feel busy: all of the time. I can’t recall the last time I looked around at work and thought, wow, I’m done, I’ll have a Kit Kat. Mostly it’s all right, that’s okay for now, next please….”

Read full article : here

“Back when Twitter announced its own Promoted Tweets plan, COO Dick Costolo hinted it would “prohibit” third-party alternatives. Now it’s making good on the promise…”

Read full article : here

“VPN software lets you join private networks as though you’re sitting at a local computer on that network, giving you access to shared folders and tons more handy stuff. Here’s a look at five of the most popular VPN tools.”

Read full article : here

“Before you can begin to actually build your site you need to know what to call it.  Choosing a domain name is an important exercise because your blog is stuck with it forever, because changing it is a pretty big hassle.”

Read full article : here

“Keyword research is one of the most time consuming parts of the setup process.  Finding all of the keywords that you will be targeting with your site, and seeing how much search volume and competition there are is extremely important.”

Read full article : here

“This is one of the important trends for search and display marketers of 2010. Many may not be using retargeting now (sorry, remarketing as Google calls it), but we’ll look back on 2010 as the year this became a mainstream tactic. This should be the year most paid search and ad serving tool providers rushed to support retargeting, if they didn’t offer it already…”

Read full article : here

“Have you ever heard these complaints?

• “We’re losing control of our brand because of our affiliate marketing channel.”
• “Affiliates are cannibalizing our direct SEM/SEO efforts.”
• “We’re bidding against our affiliates on keywords and it’s driving up our CPCs.”:”

Read full article : here

“So for marketers looking into trying out some PPC experiments, you might be interested to know that Google announced Friday it has released full functionality for its AdWords for mobile interface, initially launched a few weeks ago for the iPhone, Android and Palm Pre devices.  AdWords for mobile…”

Read full article : here

“Over the course of the past several years, many old PPC tactics have become dated and are no longer considered best practice. There have also been many PPC strategies that have been developed bloggers and so-called PPC advertisers without solid evidence of increased ROI and, to no one’s surprise, may damage your account’s profitability rather than help.”

Read full article : here

“While the top three search engines account for over 90% of search traffic, there are hidden deals to be found on price per click hiding among the second tier search networks…”

Read full article : here

“Today’s launch of Google’s Analytics Application Gallery will hopefully make it a little easier. The new gallery offers applications that extend Google Analytics’ reach deeper into specific areas like eCommerce and content management. “

Read full article : here

“Presentations are a great way to consume information and learn about new topics. Unfortunately, we all don’t have the time and money to spend traveling to conferences to see them in-person…”

View post : here

“I’m talking about Google’s AdWords Remarketing feature which is a type of behavioural targeting that allows you to connect with users who have, in the past, performed some pre-defined action on your site…”

read full article: here

“The first 2010 Top 20 ranking of the best performance marketing networks and exchanges comes after a tumultuous six months that have seen some networks driven to the wall and others merged, acquired, refinanced or reorganized….”

Read full article : here

“Facebook is dominating Twitter in usage in the United States, but the two social platforms are nearly equal when it comes to awareness. This is just one of many interesting data nuggets that were uncovered in a new survey conducted by Edison Research. The report is the most recent data from a three year tracking study conducted by Edison and Arbitron Internet and Multimedia research.”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/bxGP0t

“We already know that they care about bid prices and quality score, and I’m pretty sure most of you realize by now that the higher your bid the better, but we also know that you can’t just bid extremely high cause you’ll lose money, thus, just like with the search network side, there are things you can do on the content network side to….”

read full article : http://bit.ly/ao6U2z

I won’t go into the process but you’ll see what’s missing if you try… I would also suggest starting with just a few or maybe only 1 campaign in the new engine. Get comfortable with the system, and make sure you CPC isn’t ruining your bottom line on that campaign.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of your new traffic is essential! Not all campaigns are created equal and you therefore can not expect the same results as the previous engine. Without reaching any further down than Yahoo and MSN your traffic quality should remain decant as long as you had good ad copy and keywords to begin with. So you can expect similar conversion rates, but obviously lower volume.

The Benefits of Running ads in Yahoo and Bing are countless.

The content networks can be a big boost if this is a way you get a lot of your traffic. Yahoo in particular has a HUGE network of sites that your ad can appear on. Millions of Americans use Yahoo!’s start page as their homepage and/or news portal. This can be a great place to get noticed, as well as MSN’s Hotmail which runs your ads at the top much like in Gmail for Google.

PPC Advertising is Trial & Error Based. There is only so much you can do before testing out your ideas. Sometimes you have to take a little risk and invest your money in new places. Expanding into the 2nd and 3rd biggest search engines shouldn’t scare you too much. There is plenty of help to be found and if you do a controlled migration you should ease into your new platforms real quickly. Remember don’t expand for the sake of expanding. Be smart, diligent and increase you return on investment!

Read full article here : http://bit.ly/bokfCl

* Marty Fahncke, President, FawnKey & Associates (Moderator)
* Kevin Lee, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Didit
* David Lewis, CEO & Founder, 77Blue

Read full article : http://bit.ly/c9j7ht

“The Google and Yahoo! Content Networks are great for capturing additional PPC traffic but if not managed, it can quickly spend a lot of money without giving you the results you are looking for. If you haven’t reviewed your network website list recently and added in exclusions, it might be time to take a look.”

Read full aticle : http://bit.ly/bM6JSc

“Tired of having your every move on the web tracked, filed, classified and algorithmically regurgitated as shopping suggestions?

It’s almost impossible to be truly anonymous online, but most of today’s web browsers will let you go incognito whenever you wish, thanks to something called “private browsing.”

Read full article: http://bit.ly/9qmKM1

A video of Michael Jacobs  VP Products & Services, iMarketing LTD presenting at Affiliate Summit West 2007 which took place in Las Vegas, NV posted by Shawn Collins from http://blog.affiliatetip.com.

See video here : http://bit.ly/d5hHuB

“If you’re hiring an agency, you should test for the aptitudes below. Hiring an inbound marketing agency is like hiring an employee, since inbound marketing is NOT a one time thing.”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/9yXyZR

“As it stands now, TM owners can prevent all ads from displaying on trademarked terms in most European countries. In the US anyone can purchase ads on trademarked terms, and many advertisers can even use the trademarks in their ad copy (competitors can’t though).”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/cztj7W

“Apple hopes that marketers will buy ads in hopes of reaching the 50 million iPhone users currently on the market. With iAd, developers can use the platform to serve ads within their applications and will keep 60 percent of the revenue going to Apple for serving and hosting the ads.”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/bgm4xY

“The word is spreading, rumors are going around and the landscape of affiliate marketing may never be the same. The truth is we never know what the next week will hold in the world of affiliate marketing. Unlike traditional jobs where you show up and put time in, you are paid.”

Read full article here : http://bit.ly/bqi1xg

“But the content network isn’t all fun and games. You can discover and sell to new consumer audiences, but guess what? You’re also exposing yourself to new scammer audiences! …”

Read full article :http://bit.ly/aElSYD

“Overall it was a good experience, but here are a few tips that I wish I had known before taking it: 1) Read all of the materials in the learning center for the exam. Even if you’ve been working with Adwords for a while, this could still be useful for the random trivia they throw at you. Especially if there’s a new feature or if one might have been updated…”

Read full article here: http://bit.ly/9RDVs7

r

Think Social Media 60’s style… the dead created their own “social network” and in turn created a whole sub-culture that stemmed from their marketing (logos, phrases, tone)… btw: GD apparel, accessories, etc. still sell like crazy to all types of demographics.

Take a Lesson from the original masters of marketing: The Grateful Dead (article from hubspot.com)

The Original Inbound Marketing Rockstars: The Grateful Dead

Inbound and social media marketing strategies are much older than most people think. They didn’t just appear in recent years. Companies like Dell, Pepsi and other major brands are now adopting strategies and practices that have existed for decades. In fact, inbound marketing existed well before the days of the internet. The internet has merely served as a catalyst to support its growth, scale and reduce cost of entry.

If inbound marketing has been around for decades, who is an example of a pre-internet pioneer? How about the Grateful Dead?

You may not realize it from the music industry of today, but in the 1960s the Grateful Dead pioneered many social media and inbound marketing concepts that businesses in all industries use today on the web.

How did a group of musicians from San Francisco transform marketing and become social media pioneers?

The Dead made a series of important choices to separate themselves from everyone in their industry, making difficult and unpopular decisions such as allowing fans to tape concerts and creating special tickets and access for fans.

The Dead Marketing Funnel

Chris Anderson wrote an entire book about an an emerging economy based on a “free” pricing model. The concept of the freemium model is to give away valuable information for free to attract a larger base of prospective customers with a percentage of them willing to pay for a premium product or service. This approach is at the core of inbound marketing and describes the evolving marketing funnel for many businesses today.

The Dead pioneered this approach. They allowed concert attendees to tape shows and distribute them to other fans for free, and it worked. The Dead, one of the most iconic and successful rock bands of its era, achieved elite success with only one top 10 song, which didn’t come until the 1980s.

They succeeded by building a word-of-mouth network of fans powered by free music. The Dead understood that it was about the experience that the music provided instead of strictly the music itself.

Fast forward to today. Successful inbound marketers have a content strategy and marketing funnel that is similar to that of the Dead. Companies who have achieved successful results have shifted focus away from products and features and have created a demand at the top of the funnel through a content strategy that puts the problems and needs of customers ahead of constant interruption caused by outbound marketing.

FULL ARTICLE:

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5797/The-Original-Inbound-Marketing-Rockstars-The-Grateful-Dead.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+HubSpot+(HubSpot)

This guy was preaching a lot of the principle we launched our company with and still believe in today.

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/search-affiliates-partners-or-parasites/

“If you were wondering exactly what Apple had in mind with its acquisition of Quattro Wireless a few months back, the picture gets a little clearer today with the announcement of the iAd mobile ad platform alongside iPhone OS 4.0 today with the company saying that iPhone devs have a billion “ad opportunities” per day.”

Read full article here: http://bit.ly/dC2UbQ

“As time spent on social networking sites increases, advertisers are funneling more ad dollars into campaigns targeting users on those platforms”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/bVQjd3

Without a doubt, without business interests helping an incoming agency to take over an account that you previously managed would be a whole lot easier.  But with business interests in mind, why does this support not happen?

Read the full article here:
http://bit.ly/9Rs3Qa

Hydra Networks has announced that with immediate effect it has terminated the accounts of over 15,000 publishers. The news comes as part of a new push by Hydra to attract mainstream brand advertisers and set themselves apart from “ad networks peddling nutraceutical diet remedies, cash grant opportunities, tooth whiteners and other non-branded campaigns of low consumer value.”

This rush to quality on the part of one of the biggest networks around can be seen as a new stratification of the performance marketing industry. At the high end we are likely to see more big, invitation-only networks focusing on serving major brands. At the lower end we are going to see a bunch of CPA networks scrabbling to sell the slew of new make-money-online products from various online marketing gurus as publishers and networks look to make up for lost rebill income.

Rebill offers provided many with massive returns for little effort, but have been followed by a matching contraction in the marketplace as the credit card companies and the FTC have clamped down. It’s no secret that many of the CPA networks that sprang up in the last 12 months are now in trouble.

The offers they were running last year became commoditized with the result that the networks had to chase traffic volume via ever-increasing publisher payouts. Margins got squeezed, more networks entered the fray, and then the FTC came calling. For some, the last few months have been a great time to catch up on their tan in Costa Rica while waiting for the fuss to die down.

But Hydra is making a clear statement that they want to be seen as the leaders at the other end of the market. Our view is that this is the right approach for the industry. You may remember Jason Calacanis upsetting a few people at the Affiliate Summit a couple of years back with his statement that affiliate marketers needed to stop thinking small.

He’s been proved right. The industry made a few quick bucks, but many of those gains have been lost again.

Now though, as the economy recovers, big brands and their agencies – and their absolutely enormous budgets – will be looking for real ROI from their marketing. The performance marketing industry needs to grow up, put away the childish toys, and make some real money by delivering that ROI to them.

“As the Web has become an increasingly social place, businesses have been tinkering with new strategies to interact with customers online and promote themselves. While Facebook and Twitter top the list of usual suspects, a new research study has found that many firms are broadening their reach to other, lesser known platforms.”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/c30I52

“An announcement could come as soon as next month’s South by Southwest conference, where CEO Evan Williams is scheduled to keynote. A source tells Gigaom that Twitter is “working with several major partners for the launch.””

Read full Article : http://bit.ly/dmWJHE

“Real-time search with a social flavor takes another step forward with MySpace updates, blogs and other content now appearing on Google’s up-to-the-second search results section.”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/dB9Cfh

Read full article : http://bit.ly/9019Bp

Read full article : http://bit.ly/bwmbdH

“If you are like most pay-per-click managers, your YSM account is probably a cloned export of your Google AdWords account (excluding the content network campaigns of course). Assuming your AdWords account has a strong structure, duplication across search engines is still a good practice. However, with Yahoo’s new features, can take your campaigns to the next level. It is time to revisit your Yahoo campaign structure to get the most out of the network distribution features.”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/advARN

Read out about the various types of tweets written by Bob Nunn from searchenginepeople.com

Read full article : http://bit.ly/9TXaIM

“Some of us have multiple Twitter accounts that we need to manage. We have an account for work and an account for personal use. In that case, switching between usernames can be a pain. Luckily, there’s an easy way to manage multiple Twitter accounts with some basic apps.”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/crxtUt

“The following have specific iPhone application advertising solutions for those that have created iPhone applications and wish to earn revenue by placing advertising in their iPhone application. Some of the following advertising networks are exclusively iPhone applications and others have programs for iPhone applications as well as other publisher solutions.”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/boZXZq

“I have formed strong assumptions based on “What I think”, or “How exactly it works”. These assumptions were based off of my experience and countless hours of trial and error to form my conclusions. Still, there was always that random slap, quality score decrease, or ad variation denial that never made sense to me…. Until now…”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/dy5ulv

“If you buy cheap books at bookstores or if you just want to get rid of your old textbooks and novels you’ve already read, then do it on Facebook.”

Read full article : http://bit.ly/9tbxgQ

“LinkTrust recently announced numerous new features and updates with a big emphasis on helping advertisers, networks and affiliate managers fight affiliate fraud.”

Read full article here : http://bit.ly/bEIoDo

Multiple passports, moving assets, lock-picking, escape and evasion, foraging, even how to cross borders without detection (one preferred location: McAllen, Texas, page 390)–it’s a veritable encyclopedia of for those who want to disappear or become lawsuit-proof global citizens…

Read full article – http://bit.ly/1143Dq

Nobody seems to know for sure how many there are now but a guess of over 500 active networks, and several thousand in total, is probably correct. It is easier than ever for someone – anyone – to set up a network and start brokering offers. It’s almost become a standard career path for successful affiliates to start their own CPA network.

read the full article here -> http://bit.ly/99pcYU

Affiliate marketing can be a very exciting and lucrative job, if done correctly.  From our experience, here are some simple tips that can help your affiliate marketing campaigns be more successful.

1. Understand Your Audience. Knowing who it is that comes to your site will help you create a campaign that is more desirable to them.  Think about what it is that they are looking for when they land on your page.  By keeping your affiliate links relevant to the content on your page, you are much more likely to get conversions.  People that are coming to your page to read about the latest electronics are much more likely to be interested in ads about electronics than ads about swimsuits.

2. Try to be Helpful to Your Readers. People can recognize an affiliate link when they see one.  Approach affiliate marketing in a very natural way.  Once you know who your readers are and what your content is, you will realize what these people are looking for.  Then choose programs that would honestly help them further get to what they are looking for.  This will help build their trust in you as well.  Take the time to really provide people with extra resources that are of value to them.

3. Choose Your Programs Carefully. Affiliate marketing isn’t a ‘get rich quick’ solution.  It takes time.  So take the time to go through all the different program options you have and select the ones that make the most sense for your readers.  Programs differ in many ways so use that to your advantage.  Change up the ads and the text and graphics to see which ones are most effective for you.

4. Experiment with Different Programs. Don’t just pick the programs with the highest pay out rate. Stay relevant to what your site is about.  You can try out those programs with the highest pay out, but don’t be afraid to switch it up.  It won’t take long to tell if a program isn’t working for you.  One of the good things about affiliate marketing is that there is so much to choose from.  Products, services and pay out structures can vary; find those that work for you.

5. Be Patient. Success in affiliate marketing doesn’t happen overnight.  It takes time for your revenue and user base to grow.  People tend to want to get familiar with you and your content and build a trusting relationship with you before purchasing.  Remember though that this could turn into people returning to your site again and again.

There are many different tips on affiliate marketing that you can find online.  These are just a few of the basics that may help your affiliate marketing experience be more beneficial to you!!

The good news is that, in many cases, advertising policies aren’t as rigid as they seem. There is usually a loophole, and with a little digging you’ll often find a way to play by the rules even if it seems like you have to bend them a little to do so.

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/google’s-tobacco-advertising-policy-smoke-and-mirrors/2010/01/07/

I’ve been an intern at The Smartest Search for 3 months now and it has been very exhilarating. I got to play around with various API’s like twitter and tinyurl to develop an auto tweeter for affiliate marketing. Developing it was quite fun and challenging because we were dealing with the hottest social network out there.

I also got to develop a few text manipulation tools which were used to clean and trim large amount of data to be uploaded to different affiliate networks and Ad Servers. Apart from the developmental projects , I got the opportunity to design a few websites for The Smartest Search. The last three months has just flown by is a blur. Thanks to The Smartest Search, I have learned a lot not only about web development/design but also the affiliate marketing industry.

Being successful in affiliate marketing doesn’t come cheap.  You have to spend money to make money so you better ask yourself, what are the benefits of affiliate marketing? Here are a few reasons why it can be totally worth it:

1. It’s Free! – For publishers anyway.  For the merchant who runs their program through a network, there will be a monthly fee. (Smartest Search Merchants can use our Network http://www.squirtgunmedia.com to get fee free conversion tracking and network support!)  For publishers though, membership is free and they can then choose which merchants to promote.  Being a publisher means promoting another website on your own website and any sales generated from your site would earn you a certain commission