If you don’t, you should.  And here’s why.

Web 2.0 is loved by Google. Google sees Web 2.0 sites as being genuine user-generated content. Therefore, Google gives it  alot of authority. Many Web 2.0 platforms have very high page ranks (5 and higher).

These sites have millions of users who publish their own content, creating a monster network of fresh content that the search engine spiders devour every day, adding thousands and thousands of new pages to the web each hour of the day.

So here’s the deal, without wasting a lot of time on fluff or filler here.

Web 2.0, when implemented properly, will increase your quality scores on your Google PPC campaigns. I know this for a fact. I;m not just reiterating some other guru’s stuff here.

When setting up a PPC campaign on Google, take the time to create 4 or 5 Web 2.0 pages (Wordpress, Hubpages, Squidoo, etc.). Place some good, solid content on these 5 sites. Don’t try to sell anything… just give good content. Do this for a few days, and then on the 4th or 5th day, make some new posts and place a link back to your PPC landing page, using good anchor text for the link.

Watch your Google QS go through the roof… and smile all the way to the bank.

Now go make some money!

Because of some tracking problems with one of my PPC campaigns, I paused the campaign on Google for less than 12 hours.

Before pausing this campaign, it had been generating several hundred clicks per day and some adgroups had CTR of up to 12%, with none of them dropping below 1.5%.

Quality scores for all of my keywords were either Good or Great.

After having the campaign paused for several hours, I logged back into Google and turned it back on. No big deal, right?

Wrong. Checking my stats a few minutes ago I noticed that I had ZERO leads from this particular campaign. I knew right away something was wrong, so I went to Google and logged in only to find every single keyword slapped with $10 minimum bids.

What the heck is this? What kind of stupid reasons can they come up with for doing this?

This was not a bridge page or a so-called thin affiliate site. This was a professionally-designed review-style site. It had product comparisons, extra info about the niche, privacy policy, about us, contact us, etc. It had everything Google usually wants. But nothing is good enough for Google anymore, except huge corporate-style sites that are there for no other reason than to create a presence and give people information.

Don’t bother trying to sell anything on Google. You will eventually lose and be out of the game.

Google is clueless.

Let me clarify for you. If you are an affiliate for company XYZ, marketing that company’s Red Widget, Google says that you cannot have a single page with the sole purpose of getting people to buy red widgets from you, instead of buying them directly from Company XYZ. It’s OK for Company XYZ to have a single-page site for the sole purpose of selling red widgets, because they own those widgets. You don’t, therefore, you can’t.

With Google, they claim it’s all about a good user experience. What they fail to take into consideration and fail to put into their equation when calculating the quality of a user experience, is that some people are just plain looking for red widgets and don’t care if they buy them from you or from Company XYZ. Google’s logic is seriously flawed, but there’s no changing their minds about any of it. They are Google, which is just another way of spelling “arrogant”. Oh, and you might want to try to fit “stupid” in there too.

If john doe surfer is searching for blue shoes to buy and your ad says that you have blue shoes for sale, then what’s not a good user experience about you selling John blue shoes?

According to Google, you need to give John lots of relevant information about blue shoes. You need to tell John all about the history of blue shoes. You also need to do some market comparisons of different brands of blue shoes. And, while you’re at it, you might as well tell him how to lace up and tie those blue shoes. Then, and only then, will Google begin to think that you’re giving their precious users a good experience.

Here’s how Google defined it to me on the phone and in an email.

A user should want to visit your site even if they are not buying something. If a user visits your site and you give them something of value, such as information, then the user will be happy and Google says that this is a good user experience.

Information is good, but not everyone is looking for information!! HELLO Google…

Have you forgotten that a good number of people today use the web to shop? Or is that not good for their experience.. to buy something without reading through 5 pages of other crap first????

OK.. end of rant (I think).

Like it or not, we have to learn to deal with Google or we will eventually be driven out of marketing on Google. As marketers, we are being forced to build complete, informative sites in order to market as affiliates. It’s sad, but it’s true. The days of one-page sites are coming to a close.

You may have some really nice, really profitable one-page sites out there. Enjoy them while they last, because sooner or later Google will see your page and shut your ads down until you comply with their wishes and build out pages of useless information, which will only serve to lower your conversion rates.

Remember, Google is the search engine god and they like to flaunt that to everyone. Maybe they should flaunt it to their stock holders now that their stock is only worth half what it was a few months ago.

Someday… maybe someday Google will get a glimpse of reality and learn to bend a bit, instead of trying to rule with an iron fist and drive completely legitimate marketers away.

Anyway, go and make some money!

Be blessed,

Curt

p.s. If you have ads or keywords that get rejected by Google, don’t call or email them to ask why. This will only draw their attention to your site and might give them cause to look more closely and then disable your campaign for using a bridge page. Quietly delete the rejected ads or keywords and move on… Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell.

Let’s turn the tables for a minute now. Let’s say someone else is doing market research and keyword research, and they click YOUR ad? Hmm.. seems like a little bigger deal now, doesn’t it?? That random click just cost you money, just like it cost the other marketer money when you clicked on their ad!

What to do??

First of all, when doing research, NEVER click on the ads of another marketer. You wouldn’t like it if they did it to you, so don’t do it to them. What goes around, comes around… right?

Just as importantly, let me tell you how to do research without even racking up impressions on your ads… or anyone else’s ads.

Instead of going to Google.com to do market research or ad testing, go here: Adwords WW

Using this tool will allow you to search and do research, without causing anyone to accrue impressions on their keywords and ads, thereby not hurting anyone’s CTR. This is an awesome way to check to see where your own ads are showing for any given keyword too, again without racking up impressions and hurting your CTR.

Remember… as with anything else, even in the marketing world, what you give is what you get.

Now, go make some money!

Be blessed,

Curt

It used to be that when you used the Google keyword tools, the results would never show you actual search volume, but a bar graph, instead, showing relative search volume.

Now, instead of a plain bar graph, you get to see actual search volume numbers.

This is a HUGE breakthrough, in my opinion, because you no longer have to guess about search volume for a given keyword.

Let me explain. Because the old bar graphs showed their height based on relative volume, a tall bar graph might look exciting, but didn’t necessarily mean that there was, in fact, high search volume for that keyword or phrase.

Now, with actual search volume numbers right in front of you, it isn’t hard to see if the numbers are what you’re looking for or not.

Thanks, Google, for finally making a change that is definitely in the marketer’s favor.

First of all, some of the networks should be ashamed of themselves for even making you have to ask, and then some of those same networks should be even more ashamed for giving you your increase in little tiny pieces, like $.10 at a time, while they skim more profit from you than they deserve, and then make you ask for another increase over and over again. This is just plain stupidity and greed.

Anyway, let’s get back on track here. Let’s take a look at a hypothetical example of what a payout increase (a “bump”) can do for your bottom line.

Let’s use a good set of numbers so you can see how this really adds up over time. We’ll use a Free Trial offer that pays out $15 as our example.

So let’s say that you’re generating an average of 30 leads per day on this $15 offer. This makes your gross revenue $450 per day. OK, so now let’s say that your clicks are costing you $225 per day, for a 50% gross  margin. You’re making a dollar profit for every dollar you spend.

OK… not looking too bad are we?

So now let’s say that you’re running this offer for a few months and have built a good, solid foundation, creating that average of 30 leads per day. Now it’s time to ask for an increase.

Let’s just say that your affiliate manager goes to bat for you (which a GOOD affiliate manager should do) and he/she gets you a good increase of $5 per lead! Wow.. good increase!

OK.. now let’s do some math and see how this all adds up over the course of a year. Now, remember, this additional income isn’t going to cost you any extra money to make, so it’s 100% pure profit.

Now you’re getting $20 per lead, and at 30 leads per day, thats an extra $150 per day of pure profit!! Wow

So let’s take it a step further. Let’s see what that adds up to in a year. You ready for this? $150 per day, multiplied by 365 days equals how much?? $54,750.

Now how’s that for a pay raise?

Is it sinking in now? Can you see the power of the CPA pay increase? I hope so.

So now that you can see this in black and white, you have no reason not to ask for a CPA pay increase. In fact, you’re hurting yourself if you don’t ask for one, especially if you have been working hard and making money for the CPA network and the advertiser. They owe it to you… period.

Ask your affiliate manager for an increase, take your traffic elsewhere or ask for a new manager. Remember, your affiliate manager is supposed to be working for you, not over you.

Build a good relationship with your affiliate manager and you should have no problems with getting increases. Be sure, also, to scan several network and check their payouts, because many of the offers are available on several networks, and the payouts can vary as much as $10 from one network to another! Unbelievable, isn’t it??

Believe it or not, this short little piece of info can increase your annual pay by tens of thousands of dollars in a year’s time.

By the way, if you want to know which networks pay the most, based on my own personal experiences, here they are:

CPA Empire – Affiliate Manager Doug Davis

Clickbooth – Affiliate Manager Harald Anderson

Incentaclick (CX Digital) – Affiliate Manager Waseem Khan

Now, go and make some money.

Be blessed,

Curt

This is the result of having tried to learn PPC marketing on their own, with no teaching or mentoring.

The internet actually has everything you need to learn pay per click marketing and it can all be found absolutely free. The problem, though, is the time that would be involved to find it all and compile all that knowledge into something meaningful and usable.

A little over a year ago, I found someone who had taken his years of PPC marketing experiences and stuffed it all into a home-study course for people who want to learn PPC marketing on their own.
The author of this course, Gauher Chaudhry, is a successful marketer, who makes 6 figures per month, every month. He is not full of hype or loud-mouthed about his accomplishments. In fact, he is quite the opposite.

Gauher took what he knows and assembled it into a meaningful, easy-to-understand course that can be used and learned at the pace of the student, in the privacy of your own home, and when it is convenient for you.

The course is not cheap ($797), but it packs a wallop with the info it contains and will have you well on your way to a better understanding of the PPC landscape. I bought the course last March and it paid for itself in less than 60 days. The foundation that I established using Pay Per Click Formula launched my career in PPC Marketing and allowed me to sell my full-time computer repair business and do PPC Marketing full time.

As with anything, this course will not make the money for you. You have to put effort into it too. But Pay Per Click Formula will give you the knowledge you need to make money on the internet as long as you apply yourself.

Check it out at PayPerClickFormula.net

The things I learned in this course changed my life and it can change yours too.

Be blessed,

Curt

This doesn’t appear to be aimed so much at the quality of the landing page, but more toward making sure that your keywords and ads are related.

This puts an end to the days of throwing a few hundred (or even a few thousand) keywords into one or two loose adgroups and launching your campaign.

Yahoo! wants advertisers to create ads that are tightly-related to the keywords that are being used in the campaign… nothing more and nothing less.

I have already heard rumblings of people losing entire profitable campaigns to this new policy. What isn’t so obvious to some marketers is that their campaigns aren’t necessarily lost, they just need to be tweaked and adjusted to meet the new quality score guidelines.

These next few weeks will be interesting as marketers wrestle with this newest change in the ever-changing world of PPC advertising.

Be blessed,

Curt