Archive for July, 2007

Pay-Per click fraud dates back even from the time when Overture was still Goto.com. Only, it wasn’t as serious as it is lately since the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is becoming very popular for getting highly targeted traffic as well as making an affiliate-based commission.

So, what’s pay-per click fraud?

In an ideal world, you and I will pay a fee to a site that offers PPC program and hosts our ads whenever those ads are being clicked by a visitor. The visitor then examines our site and eventually makes a purchase. We make money.

In click-fraud-world as it is nowadays, those clicks that you and I pay for are not coming from potential customers. But from scam artists, automated scripts known as “hitbots”, underhanded competitors, and even affiliates that just click on our ads in order to earn commission offered by the PPC providers. We lose money.

Fraudulent clicks or “click spam” can be defined as any kind of click that occurs with zero possibility for a conversion to occur, or a website visit not being originated by a legitimate user. Fraudulent clicks happen on a regular basis – even more than what we could possibly imagine.

Indiatimes published a shocking article about a mother who gets down to work every evening while holding a baby in her lap. She is clicking on PPC advertisements. She doesn’t care about the ads, but diligently keeps count – it’s $0.18 to $0.25 per click.

“The trend is catching up in India,” – says Goutam Rakshit, chairman, Advertising Council of India – “It’s a numbers game as far as media buying is concerned. And anybody who can manipulate numbers gets the edge. This is unethical, and needs to be curbed.”

John Squire, the vice president for product marketing for Coremetrics, estimated that his company’s clients are spending approximately $10 million a year on fraudulent clicks. They are spending about $10 million on consumers that don’t exist.

How much are you paying for customers that don’t exist?

If you think your PPC campaign funds are depleting due to a fraudulent click activity, affiliate-generated fraudulent activity, or if you are simply suspicious of the traffic that occurs without any increase in sales – then perhaps you need to start getting tougher with your PPC analysis.

You can always ask for refund from the PPC provider running your campaign if you have suspected a fraudulent click activity. But, you won’t get the refund unless you have hard core facts to prove it.

And now, let’s get down to the facts.

1a. On a less technical note, define a unique URL for the sales page that will go through the PPC program. Clone your sales page and save it under a different URL.

If your page is selling vitamins for an example, and lets say your URL is www.hotvitamins.com, save it as www.hotvitamins.com/power. Or, create a sub-domain, such as http://power.hotvitamins.com.

Then, use this “cloned” sales page for your PPC campaign. That way, the only traffic coming to that page is from the PPC website. Only, do not link this new URL to any other website. You want to have 100% pure PPC traffic so you can keep an eye on it.

1b. For more technical people, you can assign unique session id to each of your URLs within your PPC campaigns. I’m seeing both techniques being used.

2. Use a basic log analyzer program to begin to investigate the data on the received clicks, including date, time, referrer, page views, URL, IP, etc. Your webhost should already provide you with a log analyzer program or a “Site Statistics Tool.”

If not, maybe it’s time for you to change your webhost, or you have to install log analyzer software yourself.

What you want to do at this stage is look for anything suspicious. Based on how comprehensive your “Site Statistics Tool” is, at the end of the day you want to be able to capture the IP address from each click.

Then, look at the quantity of the clicks from each IP address, click behavior and click timing. Run a “reverse IP address lookup” to see who is making those clicks.

Basically, you want to be able to gather as many details as possible for each and every click. Whether you will depend on the tool your webhost is providing you, or you will install a software yourself, or you will contract it out, make sure you have the capability of capturing the IP address.

If the IP address was not captured, or cookies were not generated, that’s an indication of clicks being generated by automated scripts known as “hitbots.”

3. Start tracking the conversion ratio. You can choose to track conversions either by using your own conversion tracking system, or by using a third-party conversion tracking tool. There are plenty of low-cost conversion tracking solutions.

In some cases, the services offering to track your clicks will have a sales conversion option available for you. That’s a service you definitely want to get if you don’t want to deal with it yourself.

But, if your sales ratio is very low or even zero, your chances are very high that you’re being bullied by someone. It could as well be the low demand of your product or a high competition, but if you’re getting high amount of traffic from your PPC campaign and low to zero sales, the chances are very high that you could be a victim of click-fraud.

So, what do you do if you suspect that you’re receiving fraudulent clicks on your PPC campaign?

4. Be meticulous – very thorough. Make sure you have data that points to questionable traffic. You have to have evidence of the suspicious clicks. Ensure that you have a legitimate case even if you have to double check your records. The PPC provider will ask you for facts and not an opinion.

5. Carefully document your traffic analysis during your PPC campaign. Document anything related to the campaign – handwritten notes, email exchanges, scribbles, reports, screen shots, etc.

6. Be sure to record every one of the clicks, whether they’re from your server logs or from a third party processor that you might be contracting for this purpose.

7. Document all relevant competitor positioning. Ever since Google changed its policy on PPC ads, there have been various reports on competitors of a same product manipulating Google’s new system.

It’s the people with more technical knowledge manipulating the system for their own good while killing the campaigns of the people with no technical knowledge. They’re not breaking Google’s rules, but they know when to pause their campaign (knowingly) and when to reactivate it again.

8. On the other note, you might want to contact your competitors to see if they’re experiencing click fraud. Your PPC campaign might not be the only one experiencing these fake clicks. Two victims’ cases presented to the PPC provider will make a stronger case.

9. When feeling highly confident that you have a strong case and clear facts that you’ve been a victim of click fraud, contact your PPC account representative and submit your data with a request for refund. Their investigations can, and do take time.

10. Meantime, continue to monitor your click activity and record any additional data.

It’s unfortunate that we have to be so much involved to protect ourselves. We pay for advertising so we can free up our time and let someone else do it. But with the seriousness of PPC “click spam” nowadays …….. you snooze – you lose.

If the PPC providers don’t solve this problem, perhaps there are other ways of bringing highly targeted traffic with less stress.

Steve Dimeck. Author and Publisher. To receive more quality articles such as the one you just read, sign up for Steve’s [TSM] Bulletin at: http://tsmbulletin.ogdteam.com Your next issue of the [TSM] Bulletin is just one click away.

Google’s AdSense program is probably the best affiliate program on the internet today. With it’s content scanning algorithm to adjust advertising and the fact it takes in to account the users location as best as it can, it has proven to be one of the highest converting click through programs to date.

In this article, I hope to help you maximize your revenue earning potential with Google’s AdSense by teaching you about how to display your ads, creative effective ads, and how maximize your click through rates.

Color Scheme

There is a couple different ways to handle your advertising color schemes. Some webmasters believe that they should keep the advertising as low-key as possible, these webmasters normally make the background and border on the ads to the same as their website. Often they do this in hopes that the user will not realize it is an advertisement. The other thought is to try and use colors to draw the users eye and force them to look at the advertising. I’ve read quite a few websites that analyze colors in advertising and how people react to different colors, they believe by selecting certain colors you can influence the click rate. I personally run several sets of advertising on my website, and it has been my experience that more colorful advertising seems to convert better. However there is many more factors involved, such as location of the advertising.

Location of AdSense Advertising

Almost every webmaster will agree that you can maximize your revenue and click through rate by the location of your advertising. Google’s AdSense website suggests that you keep your advertising, “above the fold.” Above the fold, means it doesn’t require the user to use their scroll bar to see the advertising.

Keeping the advertising to the left of the page, such as in the navigation bar can also be a very important factor in converting those users. People read from left to right and you want the first thing they see to be your advertising.

The final tip for article location is inline advertising, ones that are integrated in to lists, and content. Many websites have bulleted lists or link farms, with the Google AdSense advertisings at the top of that list. This can often fool the user in to thinking it is part of your list, but may anger some users. I personally like to put a block of advertising in the middle of my articles, or near the end, so the user must read around or beside the advertising. This makes it more noticeable, and much harder to ignore.

Text or Graphical Advertising?

AdSense offers you the ability to put graphical ads, text ads, or a mixture of the two. Graphical advertising in general seem to yield far worse click through rates, I believe that users are used to viewing banners for so many years, that it is ingrained in internet society just to ignore them now. AdSense seems to have far fewer advertisers using graphical ads also, which may lead to empty advertising space on your website, if a graphic can’t be provided.

Importance of Content

Making money on AdSense can only be done with content. If you don’t have quality content, you aren’t going anywhere. When you post the AdSense advertising code on your website, when it is viewed, the Google MediaPartners bot comes to your website, scans the website, then creates advertisements based on the content it scanned. Content reigns supreme when it comes to AdSense, the better your content, the more it will pay off! If you can have an average page of 300-500 words with a very specific subject you are going to do well on AdSense, try to keep your subject very tight and don’t expand on too many subjects on one single page. This will keep targeted advertising on your pages, which should convert far better for a user that is looking for a specific subject!

Try to keep your articles under two pages in length, if you have longer articles, break them apart and make two pages. This will help by giving the website more advertising space, and hopefully if you have a user reading, twice the exposure!

Keywords , Relevant and Targeted Advertising

Sometimes no matter how hard you work at keeping a nice subject based article, you just can’t get the keywords picked up for the kind of advertising you want to see. A prime example of this is with my own name! My name is Ken Dennis, often due to my last name, a page will return AdSense advertising about “Dennis the Menace” and though I am a bit of a menace, so are those kind of advertisings! There are two ways to handle advertising that doesn’t match your content. The first way is to change your article, or add more keywords that will sway the advertisements in a different direction. The second way is to go in to the AdSense website and ban the websites that you don’t want to see. Ad Filtering can be very helpful, and taking out ads you don’t like or support can help increase your click through rates.

Google AdSense Search Engine

AdSense let’s you install a Google search engine on your website, this allows users to search the world wide web, or just your website. This is an excellent way to help your users find the information they want inside your website, and it provides you with even more advertisings based on the keywords the search for. Even when they leave to do a search, all the advertisements if clicked are credited towards you! So not only does the search engine provide you with functionality, it provides you with one more revenue source, with targeted advertisements based on EXACTLY what the user searches for!

Ken Dennis http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/

Pay per click search engines are a great way to get targeted traffic quickly. The only problem is that as the search terms get more popular, the price of each click through rises.

It is very sad to watch your top ranking fall off the first page into obscurity as the cost per click rises out of your budget.

One way to get around this is to team up with a few of the “competitors” you find bidding on the same term. The idea is that if 10 people agree to cooperate to create a new page listing their ten web sites prominently, sort of like another search results page (which you can call a directory of top 10 sites in your topic), you can pool your resources and pay to get this page listed as the top search result for your desired keyword.

This will price the top ranking spot out of the budget of other bidders for the keyword and ensure a top ranking for this page.

Provided you make the description of the new page interesting, most surfers will definitely click on the top ranked listings in each search and see all ten of your links.

So while you have to share the top ranking with 9 other webmasters, you are assured that you won’t be squeezed of the top search results page by the thousands of other people trying to bid for the same keyword.

Cooperate with some competitors for an unfair advantage over the rest.

About The Author

Terence Tan is the founder of HugeAffiliates.com, a website dedicated towards the development of Multi Level Affiliate Programs as an alternative system of business. Visit http://hugeaffiliates.com to learn how MLAPs can multiply your affiliate referral commissions.

(Please feel free to to freely reproduce and distribute this article, so long as it is reproduced in full, including the hyperlinks, and no modification is made).

terence@hugevoice.com

Paid Search Advertising (also Pay-Per-Click, PPC) has gained a significant influence in the search engine industry over past couple of years. Whilst a traditional search engine optimisation still remains the online marketing strategy number one, more and more e-marketers discovering the potential of online advertising campaigns. Properly designed and managed, PPC campaign can deliver highly qualified visitors to your online shop.

1. Quick Overview

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engines are built on the similar principle as auctions. The difference is that you bid on keywords — terms people use when they search for stuff on the internet.

The concept of PPC bidding is rather simple: you buy (= bid on) keywords that relate to your product. The highest bidder gets placed at the top of the search results, the second highest bidder gets the next listing and so on. Every time someone clicks through to your website, you pay the amount you bid on that particular search term.

Advertising with PPC search engines basically gives you three key advantages:

? Cheap and Highly Targeted Traffic

With bidding on keywords that relates to your product or service, you actually pre-qualify the type of visitors you wish to attract. You determine how much you are willing to pay (bid) for the click and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This implies that PPC search engines can cheaply direct qualified visitors to your website.

? Fast Exposure, Immediate Profits

Traditional search engines usually take few weeks (sometimes even months) to list your website. If you are having problems to get your website indexed by search engines or if you would like to get a quick results from the search engines then PPC is the best alternative. Most of PPC search engines will set your website live within a couple of hours (maximum few days) and the impact on your site traffic and sales is practically immediate.

? Guaranteed Top Position

Search engine optimisation is the classic method of getting your website on the top of search results for free. Simply said, the process of optimisation involves choosing keywords that are directly related to your website and placing them meaningfully within your pages. However, as easy as this sounds, for an average webmaster this is usually a quite daunting task without any guarantee on the success. This again brings me to PPC as the best solution to gain high rankings on the search result list. Often, by spending just few cents per click, your website can get to the top three positions within 24 hours!

The best-known and most popular PPC Search Engines are Google AdWords (www.google.com/ads) and Overture (www.overture.com). Advertising with those two industry leaders will get your website lots of exposure and traffic. Furthermore, top 3 listings in Google AdWords and Overture appear on an extensive network of sites (including Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, Excite, and many others) so you can reach up to 80% of all active Internet users. However, at the same time be prepared that their top listings tend to be rather expensive and you need to pay quite a bit.

Generally, the more popular keyword you choose for bidding the higher is the price. You can start your bid from 1 cent per click and finish paying $5.00 (or more) for very competitive keywords.

2. Designing Successful PPC Campaigns

The golden rule of PPC bidding is: “Attract highly qualified buyers and keep your bids as low as possible”. Since you are paying for each single visitor landing on your website obviously you wish to maximize the effectiveness of your PPC campaign. Let’s take a look at some basic guidelines to help you optimise your campaign and ensure your ROI:

? Determine your bid cost

The calculation of the bid cost (also cost per click) requires a rather complicated formula. For the purpose of this article I mention just a baseline that helps determine how much you can afford to bid:

* Firstly, you need to know the conversion rate of your web site. That means how many unique visitors you need to close one sale. For example, if you need 50 visitors (= clicks) to close 1 sale then your conversion rate is 2%. If your bid is 10 cents per click than one sale has $5 of bidding cost.

* Secondly, you need to know your profit margin. If your profit margin is high enough to justify the cost you can consider increasing the bid and getting a higher position for your ad. This way you may increase the number of clicks through your website and acquire more sales.

* Finally, calculate if the extra sales justify the extra cost and adjust the bid accordingly.

? Focus on highly targeted keywords

As mentioned earlier, PPC Advertising can deliver cheap and highly targeted traffic to your website. To use this advantage to your benefit it is important to choose wisely the keywords you wish to bid on. The key is to be specific. For example, instead of bidding on “skin care” you can consider bid on “anti ageing herbal treatments”. More targeted keywords attract more qualified buyers. It is easier to convert them into paying customers because they found exactly what they were looking for. This strategy is also a big money saver — more specific keywords tend to be less expensive than the general ones everybody is biding on.

? Customize your advertisements

You will attract more attention from qualified buyers by writing ads specifically for each of keywords you bid on. Speak directly to the type of visitor you want to serve. For example, instead of writing an ad for “pies” you can write “home made meat pies”.

When tailoring your ads to a specific audience, be also sure that you direct your visitors to a page on your website where it’s easy for them to buy these items.

? Use less popular PPC search engines

Overture and Google AdWords are clearly the PPC market leaders. However you can still benefit from the less popular ones such as:

* FindWhat http://www.findwhat.com

* Espotting http://www.espotting.com, (biggest PPC engine in UK and European market)

* 7search.com http://www.7search.com

* Kanoodle.com http://www.kanoodle.com

* Enhance Interactive http://www.enhance.com

* Sprinks http://www.sprinks.com

Bids on these less popular PPC search engines are much cheaper and you can purchase your listings for as little as one cent per visitor. Even though you may not get the same exposure as you would get with Overture and Google, you still generate a decent amount of traffic. And while you only pay for actual clicks to your website, you never waste your money.

? Choose the best position for your advertisement

To be listed first on the search results is not always a smart move. It certainly helps to attract lots of visitors, but may cost you lots of money at the same time. People usually visit first 5 top listings before making a final decision about their purchase. Therefore, it is more profitable to have lower ranking for highly competitive keywords.

3. Managing PPC Advertising Campaign

You have designed a killer selling ad copy, chosen highly targeted keywords, calculated the maximum you can afford to bid on each of search terms and determined which spot on the search results you wish to secure. Yet, there is no guarantee that your ad always remains on your desired position.

The key to managing the desired position is to adjust your bids correctly in accordance to the PPC market conditions. It’s like monitoring shares on the share market — to get the best deal you need to constantly watch prices and react immediately to any change.

The main factor influencing the price of the bids and your position are your competitors. Let’s make few examples of bidding strategies you can consider using in your PPC campaign: assuming, your maximum cost per click is $1.00 and your goal is to secure position #3 at the most effective cost.

(a) Maintain Target Position

Your aim is to target the position #3 however your ad appears on the position #10. Knowing that the current holder of the position #3 pays $0.51 per click you can improve your position and take over his place by bidding $0.52. This strategy sometimes tends to drive up the keyword prices so be aware you don’t cross the limit of spending $1.00 per click.

(b) Remove Bid Gaps

Overture defines the bid gap as “the difference between the amount you are currently paying for a click and the minimum you could be paying to still remain above your next highest competitor in the search results.”

For example: You pay $0.70 per click and your next highest competitor pays $0.60 per click. You can pay just $0.61 per click and still be placed above your competitor. By closing this bid gap you save $0.09 per click which in 1,000 clicks is saving of $90!

(c) Control your Maximum Cost per Click

As mentioned earlier in this article, the calculation of your maximum bid cost (cost per click) requires you to collect a list of statistics about your website. Based on our assumption, you are willing to pay maximum of $1.00 per click. Therefore you should not pursue any positions where the bids are over your $1.00 limit. Wait till the price falls under $1.00 to prevent any possible losses.

To get the most accurate bidding results without having to baby-sit your advertising campaign, I would recommend relying on one of the automated bid management software available on the market today. In general, those tools constantly check your bids and adjust them accordingly to maintain your desired position so that you don’t have to be alert 24/7.

The more sophisticated tools allow you to set your daily budget to prevent spending more than it is efficient for your business. Below I have listed the main features you should be looking for when choosing the bid management software for your campaign:

* The ability to create and identify targeted keywords and phrases that convert leads in sales.

* The ability to set the maximum amount your want to bid.

* The ability to fix bid gaps so you don’t pay more money than is necessary

* The ability to set your desired position.

* the ability to compile comprehensive reports on your keywords, bidding cost, bid position and current bid for each keywords.

* The ability to monitor competitor’s activity by checking competitors ranking and current bids.

If you would like to download a demo version of bid management software, there is one available for free at website http://www.keywordbidmaximizer.com/bidmaximizer. It will help you to better understand the whole process of designing and maintaining PPC campaigns so you always manage to cost-effectively allocate your budgets and increase your revenue.

Paid Search Advertising presents an excellent opportunity to immediately address your offers to the proper online audience. Focus on identifying highly targeted keywords that convert for your website. Calculate your bids so your sales justify the cost. This way you will maximize your return on investment and ensure your website’s success with PPC advertising.

About The Author

Ivana Giardi is Marketing Director at Apex Pacific, developer of smart internet marketing solutions to help companies increase sales and profitability online. If you would like to learn more about Paid Search Advertising, visit Apex Pacific at www.apexpacific.com or email Ivana at marketing@apexpacific.com.

When you purchase visitors or “clicks” from a search engine, this is called “pay-per-click” (PPC) search engine advertising (or PPCSE). Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising allows you to quickly get top search engine placement by “bidding” (paying) for keywords related to your product or service.

“Organic” or “Natural” search engine optimization (SEO) is accomplished by optimizing your web pages and by increasing your “link popularity” by acquiring or paying for links that point to your web site. This gives you high rankings at the Search Engines for your chosen search terms.

In this article, we will explore the strengths and weaknesses of both methods of search engine marketing.

“Natural” Search Engine Optimization

Today, there is a big myth that natural search engine optimization is inexpensive and easy. For example, if you wanted your web site to rank high for the keyword phrase “life insurance” or “debt consolidation” you’re going to need to budget a minimum of $50,000-100,000 a year!

Yet still, natural search engine optimization usually gives you a much higher return on investment than pay per click. This is true for two main reasons:

1. More searchers click the natural search engine results versus the pay per click ads, so you’ll get much more traffic for less.

2. One of the biggest factors to improving your rankings with natural search engine optimization is by boosting your “Link Popularity” by acquiring or paying for links that point to your web site. These links give you lasting results by giving you top rankings and traffic from the search engines. Plus, the links themselves will provide a significant boost in long term traffic.

With that said, the biggest weakness of natural search engine optimization is the time required to generate links and “tweak” your web pages and keywords to get those prized high rankings you so desire. It can literally take 3 months or more to finally enjoy the benefits of your search engine optimization campaign.

Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising

The biggest benefit of pay per click is the fact that it will provide you with an immediate boost of qualified visitors, lead and sales giving you fast results within just hours or days. In fact, a pay per click advertising program is your best option if you seek fast results and a good return on investment while you are waiting for your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program to “ramp up.”

Depending on your traffic goals, you can budget $100 or $100,000. PPCSEs also give you the added benefits of being able to quickly test your web site and track your conversion rates (leads, opt-ins, and sales) and turning keywords (visitors) on and off easily.

So, as a short term strategy pay per click gives you the clear advantage over SEO. But, the disadvantage is the cost involved. Depending on the market demand for your keywords and clicks, your PPCSE campaign can generate tons of traffic and can cost hundreds, even thousands per day. With various optimization strategies you can lower your costs, but over the long term natural search engine optimization will give you a higher return on your marketing dollar.

In Conclusion

The golden rule in marketing is that you should constantly strive for maximum results and ROI for your budget. In other words, if your marketing is making you a profit – even if it’s a thin profit – it’s worth it. By this model, pay per click is worth doing, but overall pay per click will leave you with thinner margins.

The reason for conducting a natural search engine optimization campaign is to significantly increase your margins over the long term.

About The Author

Matt Hockin is President of Interactive Marketing, Inc., a small business marketing consulting company and the editor of the Interactive Marketing newsletter, one of the Internet’s leading free small business marketing newsletters. Subscribe now at http://www.interactivemarketinginc.com.

If you are using pay per click advertising, I don’t need to tell you that it can get very expensive if you have a lot of unnecessary click throughs. In this article I will explain how to screen your visitors and how to apply it to your pay per click advertising campaign, so that you can screen your visitors before they click through.

How It Works

To minimize the amount of unnecessary click throughs, we are going to talk about a screening technique that is used in copywriting. A good copywriter has the ablity to screen the serious individuals from the test pilots, before the sale is initially made.

By using this screening technique you will dramatically decrease the amount of refunds that you could be receiving. In this case, you need to be specific about your product or service without giving too many details, this will eliminate unnecessary click throughs.

When it comes time to develop an ad that best describes your offer, you need to use precise wording. If you use any ambiguous words, phrases or statements in your ads, you will confuse the viewer, making them either click through or leave. You need to keep in mind that every click through is costing you money, so you need to make sure that you are targeting your market and that each of your visitors are qualified.

Applying The Headline

When placing a pay per click advertisement there are two things that you need to pay attention to, the headline and the description. The headline is used to grab their attention, build their curiousity and force them to read on. The difficult part is that the pay per click ads only allow you a limited amount of characters, usually up to 50. Your attention grabbing headline will end up being only three or four words. You need to make your headline jump out at the viewer, but at the same time, you need to be specific.

One of the biggest mistakes I often see, is that people use their business name for the headline of their pay per click advertisement. A business name is not going to grab their attention or motivate them to read the description. For example, let me ask you which headline would grab your attention and motivate you to read the description, “Elites Marketing” or “Earn $47 – $270 Per Sale”. Do you see the difference between the two headlines and how specific the second one was?

Applying The Description

As far as the description goes, you have a little more to work with, unless you are using Google’s Adwords. Google’s Adwords gives you two lines and each line only allows up to 35 characters. You will need to be as specific and descriptive as you can. The description is very crucial, and it will determine whether or not your visitor will initially click through.

Let me give you another example, now which description is precise in wording and is descriptive enough to screen your visitor, “You can join our Two Tier Associate Program at no cost or obligation”, or “Snowball in cash by promoting info-marketing products. Join for Free!” I hope you picked the second description!

The first description, “You can join our Two Tier Associate Program at no cost or obligation” is vague and wide open. This description does not describe what kind of product or service they would be promoting or kind of associate program I am offering is, pay per lead, pay per click, pay per sale, or two tier. You don’t want to use a description that is too vague, that is how you get a lot of unnecessary click throughs.

On the other hand, the second description, “Snowball in cash by promoting marketing info-products. Join for Free!” is very clear and concise. Even though the description did not say what kind of associate program it was, in the headline it was clear. It said, “Earn $47 – $270 Per Sale.” Moreover, I was able to tell my visitor that they’d be promoting information marketing products and was free to participate. I was also able to hit them with a couple psychological triggers, “Snowball” and “Cash”.

To screen your visitors more effectively, you need to choose keywords that are relevant to your product or service and that target your market. If you select keywords or phrases that are too general, you will still have a lot of unnecessary click throughs. You can only screen so much, so don’t select inappropriate keywords or phrases when starting your pay per click advertisement campaign. Take your time and brainstorm for the appropriate keywords and phrases that best desribes your product or service.

About The Author

Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of http://www.ElitesMarketing.com. You can start earning cash today by joining our FREE Two Tier Associate Program and make $45 – $270 per sale http://www.ElitesMarketing.com/assoc/.

Web marketing has taken on many different shapes during the last 5 years. It has gone from banner advertising to e-mail campaigns, and now we are in the age of pay-per-click systems like Overture and Google Adwords. While everybody may not agree about the effectiveness of using pay-per-clicks advertising, the one thing nobody can take away from them is their ability to drive traffic to a website.

We all know that the traffic that pay-per-clicks drive is only effective when the traffic is made up of targeted customers. What would you do if I told you there was another benefit to the traffic that pay-per-clicks produced? That’s right, even the non-targeted traffic that doesn’t help your bottom line is slowly helping you move up the ranks in the search engines. How? As search engines become more saturated with websites that contain very similar content they are searching for alternative methods to rank websites effectively. Both websites link rankings and traffic rankings have become popular in many search engines including the large sites like Google. The link ranking is the number of sites that link to your website.

This ranking depends on the number of links, how relevant the sites are, and how popular the sites are. On the other hand the traffic ranking is the total number of visitors who are visiting your site each month. Search engines figure if a website is generating 100,000 visitors each day while another is generating 5 this must mean something. And while it’s usually never the first thing search engines use to determine rankings it can be a deciding factor later on down the road.

So what did we learn today? When you want to start moving your website up the search engine rankings you can use pay-per-click systems to help you. While it’s always a good idea to make sure you are getting a good return on your investment (ROI) with any marketing plan, you need to know that your return may come later down the road when your site starts getting listed the natural way in search engines. By generating traffic using pay-per-click ads, you are placing your website just a single step up above your competition. And when it comes to search engine placement a single step might be all that is needed to turn a website into a successful venture.

About The Author

Craig Neidel has worked for NetSource Communications Inc. (a web development company) for 6 years and has experience in web development and web marketing. www.ntsource.com

Pay per click (PPC) advertising can be a dream come true. You can get traffic almost immediately from some PPC search engines. And it can be mighty cheap too. Next to joint ventures, PPC search engines have been responsible for most of my online income. I’ve gotten some great returns on PPC campaigns. And I know other people who have too.

Right now, I have one PPC campaign that’s making me $56.69 for every $1 I spend. I know, that’s pretty incredible. And it’s not typical. But I have another that’s making me $8.84 for every $1 I spend. Yet another makes $7.73 for every $1.

But I have other campaigns that have lost me money. Making money, instead of losing it, with pay per click search engines involves wise management. There are many different factors that decide whether you’ll be in the red or in the black. And you need to be aware of what these are.

In fact, there are times that even the best management of your PPC campaign won’t save it. Some of them will be losers and there’s nothing you can do about it. But you need to know when to decide that you have a loser on your hands. At what point should you bury it and move on?

There are a number of different factors to consider. There’s no simple answer. I can’t tell you to simply abandon your PPC campaign after 200 clicks without a sale. Or to quit after you’ve lost $50.

First of all, you need to know how much your profit will be on each sale (before advertising costs). For example, if you’re selling your own product for $47 through Clickbank, then you’ll make $42.48 on each sale after Clickbank takes their fees.

But if you sell someone else’s product for $47 through Clickbank, and you get a 50% commission on each sale, then you’d only get $21.24.

But you need to know even more than that. You also need to decide how much of that $42.48 (or $21.24) you’re willing to spend on advertising. In other words, what’s the least you’re willing to earn on each sale? This will determine how much you can afford to spend on advertising.

Let’s assume you make $42.48 per sale. If you decide that you’d be happy with a $20 profit, then you can spend as much as $22.48 to make each sale.

So now you know what your advertising budget is. Next, estimate what your conversion rate will be. If this is a brand new product you’re promoting, then you may have no idea. In those cases, I tend to use 1% as a rule of thumb. That means that 1 out of every 100 people that visit the site will buy. Let’s use 1% for our example here.

So if you’re willing to spend $22.48 to make each sale, and you expect to make one sale out of every 100 visitors, then you can afford to spend 22 cents to get each visitor to the site. This means that you can afford to bid 22 cents on each keyword on the PPC search engines (max).

At this point, you can go ahead and set up your PPC campaigns. Find your keywords. Place bids. I won’t cover these issues right now because they’re off the topic. The purpose here is to know when to drop your campaign because it’s a loser.

Now, just because you *can* bid 22 cents on each keyword, it doesn’t mean you should. You should bid as low as you can to get good traffic (whatever you consider *good* to be).

In our example, let’s fast forward. Imagine you’ve already gotten 150 clicks, and your average bid has been 22 cents a click. So you’ve spent $33, and you haven’t made a sale yet. Should you ditch this campaign?

No. *On average* you can spend $22 per sale. But that’s an average. Which means that sometimes you’ll spend more, and sometimes less. And if your conversion rate is 1%, then that’s also an *average*. So don’t freak out if you haven’t made a sale after 150 clicks.

When you decide to drop a campaign though, make the decision based on how much you’re spending on it. Not the conversion rate.

When I first start a campaign, I’ll often wait until I spend at least double my advertising budget with no sales before I consider dropping it. Maybe even triple my budget if I’m emotionally attached to it.

But if I haven’t made any sales by then, I’ll usually stop the campaign. However, you may want to wait longer if you’re willing to spend more money to see if it works. I think I’m probably more of a conservative.

At any rate, I *rarely* end a campaign before I get 300 clicks. 300 is typically the minimum number of clicks before I feel I can judge whether a campaign will pay off. And I will generally only end it then if I’ve had *zero* sales.

Sometimes, though, you’ll make a quick sale and get excited. But then you see few or no sales after that. If you find that you’re consistently spending more than your budget for the first few sales, then get ready to end it if you don’t figure out how to make it better.

I want you to realize, too, that when you bid less on your keywords, you can afford to live with a lower conversion rate. But when you bid more, your conversion rate has to be higher to provide you with the profit you want.

I’ve only talked about *starting* a PPC campaign so far. But sometimes, you may have a PPC campaign that’s paying off, and then it starts choking and gasping for air after a while.

In that case, you need to decide when to pull the plug and retire it. Otherwise, it may eat up all the profits you’ve already made.

I’ll usually be more lenient in this case. Since the campaign has made me money in the past, I’m more likely to give it the benefit of the doubt and keep it running. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not. But sometimes, it’s just hard to say goodbye to an old friend. After all, maybe it’s just a temporary downturn.

But you still have to cut it off at some point. If I find myself breaking even (or even losing money) on each sale for any length of time, then I’ll start thinking about ending the campaign.

In our example here, if you notice that you’ve been spending $45 per sale lately, then start thinking about the future of this campaign. Try to figure out what’s changed and see if you can fix it.

How long should you wait before you abandon it? Two weeks? A month? Ten sales? A hundred sales?

It’s completely dependent on your situation. If you make 20 sales a day, then obviously worrying after only 20 sales is unwarranted. On the other hand, if it takes you 4 months to make 20 sales, then maybe you shouldn’t wait quite that long. Listen to your gut.

In the end, be aware that PPC management is not a rigid science. You have to use a certain amount of judgment. But try not to be emotionally attached. If a little voice in the back of your head is telling you that you’re spending too much for too little, then listen to it.

What I’ve given you here are guidelines based on my own practices. I’m sure there are other people who do it differently and are also successful. But these strategies work for me. And I’m sure you can adapt them to work for you.

About The Author

Dave Brown is a self-taught marketer and software developer. He also publishes the uncommon and uniquely original newsletter on making the most of your life – A Fresh Perspective. You can learn more at http://www.dave-brown.com.

dave@dave-brown.com

What are Website Conversion Strategies?

Website conversion strategies are marketing and technology efforts focused on increasing your website’s efficiency with turning visitors into prospects or customers. The majority of website conversion strategies involve redesigning your current website and re-writing your website’s copy. However, to build an effective paid search campaign, conversion efforts must also be allocated outside your website and on selecting keywords, re-writing paid ad copy and considering the paid search engines’ user demographic and psychographic profiles.

The process of converting visitors into prospects or customers through a paid search channel starts the moment a person sparks a thought, launches a browser to search and selects a keyword. At that moment, the potential visitor has developed a preconceived expectation to what they are looking for and what they are planning to find. As a marketer, by choosing the right keywords, you begin the process of pulling a qualified search user to your product or service.

After the search user enters their selected keyword, they scan the search engine results page for relevant listings that match their preconceived expectation. By knowing your customers and therefore understanding what potential customers want, your ad copy targets the search user’s expectations and pulls them into a click-through. The click-through transitions a search user to a website visitor.

Your website visitor has followed a “path of consistency” from the keyword they selected to the relevant ad copy they clicked-through. They expect to continue to find equal consistency and relevancy as they land on your website.

For example, let’s imagine a visitor entered the keyword, “silver apple ipod.” They found your “Sponsor Results” ad on Google which stated, “Silver Apple iPod; 32mg, free shipping; $439″ and clicked through to your website.

At this point, the visitor’s expectations have been met with the keyword they selected and the keyword ad copy you displayed in the search results. As they land on your website they expect to find the same consistency and relevancy that led them through the click-through.

Let’s assume you understood the “path of consistency” concept and the visitor landed on your website with a headline stating, “Apple iPod” with clear product specifications including the $439 price, a “silver” color choice option (clearly visible), a free shipping statement (including shipping policy) and other essential e-commerce policies and shopping cart components. The consistency immediately identifiable by the visitor increases their confidence, comfort and commitment to completing their intended action.

Unfortunately, many marketers view paid search as a way to generate traffic versus a way to increase website performance that generates positive financial results. By sending the pay-per-click traffic to a website’s home page, a marketer mistakenly creates a disconnect in the “path of consistency” process.

Using the same example, if a visitor clicks-through an ad stating, “Silver Apple iPod; 32mg, free shipping; $439″ and lands on the home page which promotes hundreds of technology products, the visitor will momentarily feel lost. They expected to find an Apple iPod but now are confronted with the task of searching again for an Apple iPod using the website’s navigational and on-site search architecture. A momentary break in the path of consistency forces the visitor to think, reassess and decide whether to move forward or back-track in search for greater consistency and relevancy from a competing website.

By completing the “path of consistency” from keyword to ad to website the visitor has a greater probability of converting to a customer. As Leonardo Da Vinci stated, “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

This is very similar to the traditional salesmanship strategy of getting the prospect to say “yes” multiple times before asking for the sales close. Your job as a marketer is to get the search user to say, “Yes, that’s what I want” from keyword, to ad copy to website. Then your website’s specific call-to-action asks for the close.

Website conversion occurs when you satisfy a visitor’s preconceived expectation.

The primary strategy for increasing your website conversion is getting to know your customer. By satisfying your customer’s needs first; you will correspondingly satisfy your own. In the book, “The Psychology of Persuasion” author Kevin Hogan describes the Law of Reciprocity which states, “When someone gives you something of perceived value, you immediately respond with the desire to give something back.”

Although effective website conversion is not always as clear-cut as the Law of Reciprocity suggests, the principle applies ? if you give your website visitor what they require such as confidence, comfort, convenience and fair value then they will reciprocate by completing your call-to-action.

Whether you are a B2B or a B2C enterprise, website conversion strategies concentrate on connecting a visitor to what they want in a convenient, clear and consistent manner. Here are some quick website conversion strategies to keep in mind for your website or custom landing pages?

1. Always add your phone number (preferably a 1-800 number) in a prime location on each page of your website – preferably in the header or another prominent position like the upper-right margin of your web page. A phone number not only adds credibility but also provides a convenient communication channel for visitors to contact you if they need assistance.

2. Use customer-benefit copy meaning more “you” and “yours” than “us” and “we.” The principle here is to focus on serving the needs of your visitors. Answer their question, “what’s in it for me?”

3. Offer multiple order or relationship-building contact points. For example, B2C enterprises should provide the means to order products via mail, fax, phone, and online using all major credit cards and even PayPal. For B2B, offer a white paper download, a webinar registration, online brochure or product demonstration in exchange for the visitor’s primary contact information, as well as a phone number and a contact us form. Make it easy for your visitor to start a relationship with your enterprise.

4. Test various calls-to-action, headlines, positioning messages, testimonials, layouts, graphics and other website components under an A/B split-testing format. One of the greatest benefits of paid search and the Internet in general is your ability to quickly test and track results from different website conversion strategies.

5. Implement keyword-specific landing pages for your paid search campaign. Consistency and relevancy are essential and a custom landing page offers the most effective opportunity for completing the “path of consistency.” Coupled with A/B split-testing, custom landing pages have helped increase many of our clients’ results by 60% and greater.

Website conversion is a process and not a destination. By continually identifying and learning new conversion strategies for fulfilling your visitor’s desires, you will increase your website’s performance and generate greater positive financial results in return.

The next and final article of this series will focus on lifetime value of a customer and how it enables you to turn more visitors into prospects and customers regardless of rising paid search costs.

Until next time, get to know your customer and test new website conversion strategies to more effectively satisfy your customer’s needs. Remember the “path of consistency” and implement landing pages for your paid search campaign.

Kevin Gold is a Founder of Enhanced Concepts and a published author. If you’re interested in increasing your leads or sales, get a free copy of “Understanding Your Conversion Rate” and “12 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion” by visiting http://www.enhancedconcepts.com

Although the degree of increase varies among industry resources, a recent survey conducted by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) indicated an average 26% increase in bid prices in 2004.

Statistics aside, all indications show an upward trend in keyword bid prices which means fewer results in 2005 from the same dollar spent on pay-per-click marketing in 2004.

What Has Caused the Increase?

The simple answer is that pay-per-click marketing has proven to be a tremendous measurable and controllable strategy for generating targeted website visitors among small, medium and large enterprises. As demand for pay-per-click marketing flood the keyword supply of top-tiered pay-per-click search engines and as enterprises compete for top ad placement, the bid prices increase accordingly.

Also, the competitive nature inherent with a bid auction or even with Google Adwords’ performance auction structure where a combination of maximum bid and click-through rate calculates your bid price causes an increase in bid prices. Just as with an eBay auction, the bid price increases until either a buyer pulls out of the keyword bidding or backs off from shooting for a top position.

What Do YOU Do When Keyword Bid Prices Increase?

This question will be answered over a series of three articles. Each article will address, in detail, each one of the following three strategies:

1. Understand Your Performance Metrics.

2. Maximize Your Website Conversion. (Part Two)

3. Discover the Lifetime Value of a Customer. (Part Three)

Collectively, these three strategies will assist you in managing your pay-per-click marketing regardless of an ever increasing bid pricing environment.

Understanding Your Performance Metrics ? the Foundation

The foundation for managing a performance-based pay-per-click marketing campaign is through understanding your performance metrics. By measuring campaign and keyword performance, you’ll know how to effectively handle the dynamics of a competitive bidding marketplace.

What are Performance Metrics?

Performance metrics are measurable results gathered and calculated from your business’ online systems or in this case, from your pay-per-click marketing campaign.

Referred to also as “key performance indicators”, performance metrics form a dashboard for you to gauge the effectiveness of your pay-per-click marketing. Further, performance metrics help establish a baseline for cost effective bid management supported by your current website performance and your business’ financials. As Business Executive, Thomas S. Monson stated,

“Where performance is measured, performance improves. Where performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.”

Understanding your performance metrics starts with defining at least one value-oriented action such as an opt-in, subscription, registration or sale that you seek a visitor to perform on your website. This action (or your “marketing objective”) is the target for calculating your performance metrics and measuring your campaign’s effectiveness.

Performance metrics vary among individual businesses and their unique marketing objectives; however, two specific performance metrics apply to all pay-per-click marketing campaigns regardless of their objectives. These include:

? Conversion Rate

? Cost per Action

You also need a firm understanding of your business financials and your pay-per-click marketing campaign’s unique traffic statistics including:

? Average Action Value – The average worth generated from the completion of an action.

? Gross Profit Margin – How much you generate on an action, excluding marketing costs.

? # of Unique Visitors – Visitors generated from your pay-per-click marketing efforts.

? Total Pay-per-Click Cost – Cost to generate the visitors.

Conversion Rate

Google defines a conversion rate as “the number of visitors who took a desired action divided by the total number of visitors in a given time period (typically, per month).” A conversion rate represents your website’s ability to turn clicks into actions.

Conversion Rate Calculation: Actions / Total Number of Visitors

For example, if your pay-per-click marketing campaign generated 1,000 visitors to your website and 10 completed your objective (action) then your “conversion rate’ is 1.0%.

Cost per Action (also called “CPA”)

Your “cost per action” (CPA) measures how much it costs for you to generate an action (marketing objective.) In other words, CPA is the dollar amount you need to spend for your pay-per-click marketing campaign to generate one valuable action.

For example, if $100 in your pay-per-click marketing generated 1,400 visitors and 10 completed your marketing objective, your cost per action is $10.00.

Cost per Action Calculation: Total Pay-per-Click Cost / Total Number of Actions

Once you have figured how much it costs for you to generate one action, you can apply it to the value each action is worth.

Here’s an Example?

Imagine you are selling products (product sales is the marketing objective) and your average “sales” value is $100 and your gross profit margin is $65. Historically for every 100 pay-per-click visitors to your website two sales are generated; a sales conversion rate of 2%.

During a particular month, you spend $500 on your pay-per-click campaign. It produces 1,400 visitors at an average cost-per-click of $0.36. Based on your 2% conversion rate, your pay-per-click marketing generated 28 sales. With this data in hand, you can now calculate your CPA.

Cost per Action: Spending of $500 divided by 28 sales = $17.86 per sale.

Discover How to Calculate a Target CPA to Establish a Maximum Bid Price

Using the same example, you can set a maximum bid for your pay-per-click campaign by figuring out what percentage of your gross profit margin you are willing to commit to your pay-per-click marketing budget. Let’s assume you commit 30% of our gross profit margin to your pay-per-click marketing campaign.

With a gross profit margin of $65 and a budget commitment of 30%, your target CPA is $19.50.

Target CPA: Gross Profit Margin ($65) times (30%) budget commitment equals $19.50.

Now take your target CPA of $19.50 and multiply it by your current conversion rate of 2% to find your maximum bid price. In this example your maximum bid price is $0.39 per click.

From these calculations, you now know your average maximum bid price across your pay-per-click marketing campaign must be equal to or less than $0.39 per click to produce your target CPA of $19.50.

Performance Metrics take the Risk Out of Your Bidding Decisions.

As Robert Kiyosaki, author of mutliple New York Times best-seller books including Rich Dad Poor Dad states, “being uneducated is risky.” By knowing your performance metrics, you can determine the constraints of your bid prices against your financial objectives to ensure the achievement of your business goals.

Performance Metrics Pinpoint Areas of Competitive Advantage

Most importantly, knowing your performance metrics enables you to identify and prioritize marketing strategies and website improvements that directly affect the bid price you can bid while remaining profitable.

As shown in the above example, your website’s conversion rate and average sales value has an extraordinary effect on your cost per action. By focusing your efforts on increasing your conversion rate and/or your average sales value, you can bid profitably at higher “per click” amounts.

Competition beware ? when your enterprise is armed with the insight gained through performance metrics you are a powerful force regardless of ever increasing keyword bid prices.

Until next time when we dive into maximizing your website conversion rate?start calculating your performance metrics!

Kevin Gold is a Founder of Enhanced Concepts and a published author. If you’re interested in increasing your leads or sales, get a free copy of “Understanding Your Conversion Rate” and “12 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion” by visiting http://www.enhancedconcepts.com