1. Profiting With Facebook 101
Great writeup for newbs looking for a little insight into getting started with Facebook advertising.

2. What you can learn from the late great Billy Mays
Several good nuggets in the article, including choosing the right product, solving a problem, and making the pitch sell!

3. Using Twittoratti to do trend research
I point out this post because you shouldn’t just rely on google, yahoo, bing for your trend research but think outside the box for your research as some tools you have never heard of can bring you some great insight.

4. Ways to Reduce Unsubscribers
I pointed out this article only because i would recommend you not do this. In all honesty i would much rather make my unsubscribe upfront and in there face because them unsubscribing from the newsletter is 10xs better than them hitting the spam button. So my reason for pointing this out is, do the opposite make sure people can find it easily how to unsubscribe.

5. Win Tickets to Affiliate Summit East 2009 in NYC
Why pay for your affiliate summit east ticket when you can get it for free!

3 Step PPC Management:
1. If a keyword isn’t profiting – why? Is it being pulled into off topic searches because of broad match? If Yes i put it on Exact match then see how it performs or put in negative words to narrow it down. Do i need to add more keywords, have i gotten both short and long tails covered?

2. Bid management – Am i maximizing my profit. notice i didn’t say revenue as it isn’t a game of revenue but profit. If i increase bids does my profit increase? Sometimes there are cycles of new advertisers and you just have to ride those out, especially on campaigns i have dialed in.

3. Ad Management – Have i tested any new ads lately if i haven’t i would throw in a couple new ads just to see how they perform you never know… even try some goofy things you will be surprised what works sometimes. If ads are under performing pause those and let the ones performing well continue.

Those the 3 main steps i use in my PPC Management. this if for the management of my ppc not the startup of it. and doesn’t take into account landing page management cause if your page sucks you are out of the game anyways. I hope this post helps you increase your ROI in PPC.

1. You never become all you can be in one niche and are only mediocre at several.
2. You have so man campaigns going trying to narrow things down becomes a pain.
3. You can’t stay focused to make a homerun on any of your campaigns.
4. You just keep having multiple failures.
5. You budget gets depleated before you get any real results.

I want to explain a little more about the things i have listed above. I am not saying only stick to one niche. What i am saying is become all you can be in 1 niche then move on to the next one. Don’t try to make a fortune on 20 offers at once make a small forturne (or a big one depending on the success) on one offer then move on to another. Rarely do i start off with an affiliate offer and out the shoot i am profiting (I have on occasion but i count that up to experience and a little luck.) Plan at first not to profit but use that data, try things, change wording or ads, change images you will be surprised what small changes make a big difference. BUT if you are focusing on 10 offers to be successfull and struggling try focusing on one you will find yourself much more successful at that one, then move on to others. So the answer is Yes you could rule every affiliate niche, just dont try to rule them all at the same time!

1. Don’t email your affiliates every other day with same offers or same useless information. Provide some good insight, provide a highlight of a good offer. An email stating here is top performing offers doesn’t cut it (when those same 10 offers are there week in week out).

2. Don’t Pester your affiliates asking why they aren’t running offers with you. While i agree with the email asking me hey i noticed you dropped revenue or hey i see you have promoted anything with us in a while and open dialogue. But don’t blast me email as say hey Acai is rocking right now you should be promoting it… DUH even my Grandma knows this… try to pull me back in with usefull information. Offer me a top payout or access to exclusive offer to get me going…

3. You Network only rehashes other offers. Meaning you don’t have any exclusives and i can find all your offers at better payouts elsewhere. This one kills me as i get pestered by new networks all the time… Signup we have best payout only to get there offers and they are half what i get now.

4. Ignore your affiliates. In affiliate marketing we move at 100 miles per hour daily… take the time to reach out to us, ask us how things are going and if there is anything you can do to help get some revenue going. IF i say no i am busy leave it at that… don’t contact me again the next day wait a week or two.

5. Do not send an email stating you haven’t been active lately with our program so we are going to cancel you unless you drive some revenue. While i understand cleaning house and getting read of dead weight affiliates. But maybe i am ramping up promotions and right before i blast it out i get dropped… this is poor in my opinion. Instead they should send out an email we are cleaning house and notice you haven’t done and revenue, do you plan to do any revenue with us soon? Is there anything we can do to help get revenue going? Not drive revenue or we will drop you. Give them reason to communicate back with you. As keeping my name and email on file can’t be bogging them down.

6. Don’t Work with your affiliates. So many networks just don’t wheel and deal and this business is all about wheeling and dealing. If i ask for a bump you better come back with SOMETHING even if its a nickel don’t tell me there is no room whatsoever.. to me that says you aren’t looking to build a relationship and aren’t willing to cut into your margins, I would rather you promote with a company that is willing to work.

7. Don’t Pay on time…. Yes this is sad but it happens all the time companies saying they are NEt 30 and i get paid net 60 etc.. while this doesn’t happen anymore as i don’t use them but pay when you say you are going to pay and if for some reason you are behind notify your affiliates and try to make it up to them fedex the check etc.. luckily most networks do Direct deposit now… but even then make sure those transfers are on time whether weekly. bi-weekly or monthly.

8. Don’t encourage affiliates. If you have an affiliate driving serious revenue don’t leave it up to just your rewards program or referal program.. Send them Tshirt, Macbook, flip video… something to show them they are improtant to the network. Some companies get this and some don’t. While affiliates work for the paper they bonuses or extra things are nice and VERY much appreciated.

How Not to Encourage Affiliates to Promote your product – Affiliate Networks. Hopefully companies and Networks will learn from this and in the end we all win!

You want to promote a dating offer that pays out 3.50 per signup. So you start researching via Goodle Adwords Keyword Tool ( https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool ) I put in Dating and single women. as you can see both of these have HIGH competition meaning lots of people are bidding on these keywords. But try putting a city name infornt of dating or single women and you will notice the competition is less. Thus it will cost you less (of course there will be less volume) but you have any opportunity to test your PPC (Pay PEr click) skills. So now you have the keywordsm you create up an ad, and for simplification you direct link and lets say the average bid ends up being .35 per click So you would need 1 in 10 clicks to convert into a signup, this isn’t a bad ratio of course 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 would be better but 1 in 10 isn’t far fetched. But where you get into profit is when you convert lets say 1 in 8 convert into a lead. Since this is profittable you want to spend as much as you can so you build out more keywords and ads to grow this. Lets say you are able to keep your PPC at .35 and get 3000 clicks and your convert ratio is 1 in 8 still this equates to 375 leads ($1312.50) now you have spent $1050 so your profit is 262.50, 25% profit which is a great start.

But you don’t want to stop there. You want to improve your earnings so you should work on Ad variations to see what works to get your CPC down but keeps your conversion ration the same (1 in or it improves it. I usually put in 3 to 8 ads to start to get a good rotation and kill the ones that don’t work. Keeps trying untill you really feel you can’t improve much.

Also in my example you are direct linking to the offer, sometimes this is best but something your want to presell your visitors in those cases you want to create landing pages/sites to help prompt your users/ prepare them to signup or give them extra reason to signup. This is another area where you can make small changes that will make a big difference (i will talk about landing pages in another post).

In general this is being a Pay Per Click Affiliate (PPC Affiliate) you payout for advertising on a per click basis and convert it over to profit , this isn’t limited to just lead offers, this could work with click and sale offers also.

1. Close or put as away on all IM clients.

2. Unplug my phone (i have voicemail they can leave a message)

3. Don’t check email except every 4 hours that day. (and only reply to something if it is truely urgent)

4. Don’t browse the web. this includes facebook, youtube etc..

5. Don’t get sucked into looking thru the new offer in affiliate networks unless this is part of your task (finding new niche or offer to target)  as i find i can spend 30 to hour easy checking out offers etc..

6. Don’t have the TV on.

7. Do have your task ready to go. If you need to do more research before you hit the ground running do that first in the research hunt its easy to get distracted or off on a tangent.

8. Do have plenty of drinks/snacks on hand.

9. Do have an action plan of what your goal is and how long it should take. (Creating ad groups, keywords, ads, landing page/site design, site content)

10. Do have fun doing it. Nothing worse than working on something you hate. which is why i love affiliate marketing go after what you have a passion for and make money at it.

you have a tip? leave a comment.