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You are having success with a CPA offer now what?

5 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on April 24, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, PPC  

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

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

So there are a few questions and thoughts to get you going and moving on to making more with CPA offers.

Good Adwords Quality Score Doesn’t Equal High Traffic

4 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on April 17, 2007 in Google Adwords, PPC  

I received a question concerning Google Adwords Quality Score and that they have good QS but don’t get any impressions. I am going to address this issue in todays post but first here is the email i received:

When running campaigns on adwords I sometimes notice that I have a quality score
of ok or better for all my keywords however only 1 or 2 of them get any real
amount of impressions. I know these keywords have a good search volume as they
are either quality keywords or I can verify it through google/wordtracker/yahoo.
Is their a way to tell adwords to give all my keywords equal impressions?

Right now I have a campaign with about 200 keywords for the finance market. Out of
all of them only one is showing any real amount of impressions and its probably the
most obscure one out of my list. I’d love to get more impressions out of the others
to see which ones can convert.

First off congrats on getting Good or Great Quality score many people have trouble even accomlishing that. I noticed you said you have a campaign that is in the finance market. Well the finance market can be pricey which is why even though you have Good Quality Score you are not getting any impressions especially if you are bidding the bear minimum to keep the keyword active. This would make perfect sense as to why your obscure phrase is getting impressions as many people are probably not bidding on that single phrase. The solution to get more impressions is bid more, just because google gives you a good quality score and says your minimum bid can be .05 that doesnt mean that bid you will get impressions. OR try to gather up more obscure keywords and bid directly on them for cheaper. This all depends on how much your spend VS return formula comes out as you don’t want to bid so much that you are not making a profit. I will say this though, many times i have had to bid a little more knowing that over time (not always but usually if your CTR is good and QS is good)  you payout per click will decrease even though your bid is higher as Googles system starts recognizing your site for those searches as a better match than other bidders.

Lastly, don’t limit yourself to just Google Adwords look to other sources of Search Engine Traffic. Even though most people stick with the top 3; MSN, Yahoo, and Google, you can get return from other search engines out there.

How to Track Keywords & Tell Which Keywords Convert

49 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on April 12, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, Keywords, PPC  

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

How do I know which KeyWord is converting the best? 

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

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

Place this code in between your head tags:

<?php ob_start();

if(isset($_REQUEST['kw']))    

    {    

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

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

    }    

    else    

    {    

       $k1w = NULL;  

    } 

?>

Place this code where you want the Keyword to appear in your Subid:

<? echo ( ( strlen( $k1w ) <6 ) ? “Default Text” : “$k1w\n” ) ; ?>

The Reason for the <6 is if the string is less than 6 characters the “Default Text” will be put in instead of Keyword brought in, u can change this number.

Now your Affiliate Link in your page will be like this:

“http://www.CPANETWORK.com/12345?subid=<? echo “$k1w\n”; ?>”

Now in Google or MSN you can Append your destination links with the Keyword Dynamically. So your destination Url will be:

http://www.somesite.com/?kw={Keyword}

Now once you Make thos changes your Keywords will be appearing in your Subid output in your CPA network. So you can see what keywords are producing leads and which ones aren’t.  No you know which ones are producing leads you can delete keywords that aren’t producing leads. Do make sure you give enough time to see if the keywords really perform or dont perform. As in you don’t want to delete a keyword that only has one click but didn’t convert you want to look more at higher volume keywords that don’t convert, because the smaller volume the next click could be a lead.

CPA Affiliate News You Can Use, Google CPA / PPA, Profit Margins, and Volume Traffic

2 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on March 26, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, Google, PPC  

At CPA Affiliates we try to provide up-to-date information and news you can use. This week I will discuss a little about Google’s CPA or Google’s PPA whichever you want to refer to it as, Profit Margins on PPC to CPA Campaigns, and discuss What to do when Volume traffic isn’t there.

First on to Google’s CPA / PPA. If you haven’t heard yet you must be under a rock but Google have officially announced their PPA (Pay Per Action, basically same and CPA Cost Per Action) model for their advertising system. I think this is a good move fore google and an opportunity for advertisers but don’t think this will kill off all (if any) the CPA networks out there. There are MANY reasons why it won’t kill them off and honestly Shoemoney (Jeremy Schoemaker) made a great post adressing 6 reasons why Google’s model isn’t going to knock out CPA Networks.  No reason for me to reiterate what he said so check out his post.

Now on to PPC to CPA profit margins. I get asked all the time what profit margin should i shoot for. Well the best answer is the highest you can get. BUT with that said sometimes there is SOOOOooo much competition their isn’t a whole lot of margins out there. This is the key though. If you have the money profit is profit no matter how you look at it. But if you want most bang for your buck and have limited budget you want to go after bigger return items. There are many offers out there that you can get 3:1 4:1 2:1 and 1:1 returns. The  key is trial and error. Some campaigns i am happy to making 50% profit for what i spend while other campaigns i want 200% profit for what i spend. But to be honest if you got the money, i have a few on autopilot that i on get 10% return on it (better than any bank would give you for your money) but I leave it run because i have the spare cash and it doesn’t stop me from promoting other things or trying new projects.

Lastly I want to talk about volume traffic. This one is a kicker as people will contact me and say I got this campaign running I am getting good return but the traffic isn’t there i am only getting 1 or 2 or 3 leads a day. First off i tell them congrats on turning a profit some people go a month or two without much of any profit. Then I ask them what are you targeting and how many keywords are you using, usually the answer tha comes back is they are going after less than 100 keywords. Well there is the reason you aren’t getting volume. But many times by adding more keyowrds etc.. your return goes down and doesn’t make it worth while. But most importantly try adding more keywords targetting keywords that are a littl out of the box for what you are targeting sometimes you will be surprised with the converts, other times you won’t. Here is the real KEY if you can’t get volume and increase return stick with the low volume but try to replicate it with another offer. 10 dollars a day profit times 100 offers is 1K profit a day.

CPA Affiliate News You Can Use, Reasons For Landing Pages, Auction Ads, Yahoo Search Marketing

6 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on March 15, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, PPC, Yahoo Search Marketing  

At CPA Affiliates we try to provide up-to-date information and news you can use. This week has had a few interesting happenings in the world of CPA networks and tips for your promotions.

First, Many people ask why do you need to use a landing page? Well instead of rehashing it here on my blog I am going to point you over to Shoemoney.com as he recently made a post titled When to Make an Landing Page – Affiliate FAQ. In that post he points on the best reasons for making a landing page which include Stats, Geotargeting, Targeting the Offer to specific audiences, and of course to boost Quality Score. You can read all the details in his post.

Auction Ads another option for Marketers to make a buck! Basically instead of having to signup for CJ, then signup for Ebay, then go to Ebay to setup your ad etc… bascially just go to Auction Ads Signup and once approved choose the keywords for Ebay auctions you want to target, choose colors of your ad etc.. then click get code, paste it into your site then watch the money roll in. What makes Auction Ads so good? The main thing is they make it EASY to customize the look and feel of the Ebay Ads. This is great as before you had to be a good programmer or just live with Ebays templates. What website couldn’t make money from this as you can target any niche, group for stuff on ebay. If your interested click here to Signup for Auction Ads. (if you scroll down on the right I have put up an example of auction ads with it targeting laptops)

Yahoo Search Marketing is a blessing and a curse. They keep updating their system to make it look/feel better but it appears they are just more blindly following Google. I wanted to gives those running in YSM a tip as it states when you input keywords to only put 50, what they don’t tell you is you can do up to 500 and it will accept them. If you put in over 500 you will get a message. So you don’t have to take hours to upload your keywords only half hours. I wish they would implement an easier way to bulk upload besides emailing them and asking them to upload the keywords (which they will do). But for now stick 500 in at a time.

I am Giving Away Keywords for PPC Campaigns

36 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on March 11, 2007 in Keywords, PPC  

So many people have given to me through knowledge, emails, posts, advice etc.. I feel like giving a little back this week. So I am going to give away some keywords for PPC campaigns. All you have to do to get some keywords is leave a comment with the topic you want keywords for, I will choose alteast one comment maybe two or three depending on the time i have and email them with a keyword list. The keyword list will be emailed in Excel to the email that the comment was left with. I will not be filtering the keyword list or fine tuning it as thats where the work comes in for you but for someone having a problem compiling keywords here is your opportunity to get some for free. I will use all the tools and programs to compile keywords just like I would as if I was going to run a campaign.

Please note, do not ask for Ringtone keywords or any Adult Oriented Keywords other than that all requests are fair game.

No more comments. I have already selected the two lucky ones. Weight loss and online dvd rental. If i have time i will try to do another one or two.  

What NOT to do with a New PPC Campaign

13 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on March 1, 2007 in Affiliate Tips, Google Adwords, PPC  

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

This is VERY simple thing to do but you would be surprised how many new people contact me saying they burnt their budget in an hour. I know, I know where is the rocket science post that tells you how to make millions… well this isn’t it but if this post helps one newb not to blow their budget within hours on a new campaign and lose money this post is worth it.

Here is a second tip free of charge. Double Check your URLS!!!! About a year ago i was helping a friend over aim getting a campaign going in a high volume market and he had accidentally made a typo in his urls and was sending traffic to someone elses site the good news is he had only wasted 50 bucks before he noticed it.

Tell us about a mistake you made in PPC or CPA promotions by leaving a comment.

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