Have you written Google ads that haven’t produced the results that you wanted?

Many of us have received Google Adwords credit either from their hosting company or from Google directly. Often times, we take that amount, create an ad in less than a few minutes and cross our fingers. Sure, you might get lucky but the reality is that writing really effective ads take years of practice. There’s a reason why people go to school for marketing and hone their skills for many years.

I believe in Pareto’s Law, which many of you know as the 80/20 rule. In this example, I believe I can get you 80% of the way to writing effective Google ads in 20% of the time. In the long run, to be really good (practicing and learning that remaining 20%), it will take time and a lot of trial and error.

So let’s focus on starting that 80% right now.

The secret to writing better ads immediately

The biggest problem with many untrained marketers is that they fail to place themselves into the shoes of the target audience. Once you determine the keywords you want your ad, before you even start writing, take a moment to wear the hat of your target. Literally, I want you to “become” that person.

Let’s say you have a website that sells natural soaps. You decide that the keywords you’d want this particular ad to appear for is ‘goat milk soap’. So when someone types ‘goat milk soap’, what do you think they are looking for?

So if you are thinking like the target, are you looking to buy it or make it? Do you want to learn about its benefits or adverse reactions?

You decide that you are typically looking to learn about benefits and then acquire the product. Now what type of ad would draw you in?

Secrets of Goat Milk Soap

10 reasons people switch to

look and feel healthier and younger!

www.PureNSimpleSoap.com

If you typed ‘goat milk soap’ would that ad make you want to click it? If not, start tweaking. Keep going until you can answer with a definitive yes. Before you butcher the ad, I have several business degrees and have many years of marketing under my belt and I still won’t claim that my first pass at an ad for goat milk soap is perfect.

However, even if you think you have the perfect ad, you must monitor the ad and fine tune it. But at least now you have a great starting point to work from!

Those of you who have played with Google ads, what are some ads that have worked for you?

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Do you know when search engines pick up on your blog updates? What if I told you that there is a way to manually ping over 20 top search engines in less than 1 second? Would you believe me?

Welcome to Ping-O-Matic! A free service by the WordPress Foundation, this tool lets you ping your selected search engines with a single click. Every time you publish an article, all you have to do is literally go to the site and click the ‘Send Pings’ button.

With me, I simply leave the Ping-O-Matic site up in one of my tabs and with every update of my blog, I click on the tab, click the button, and I’m done. No exaggeration, the entire process takes me a fraction of a second.

One great feature is if your blog update has recently been recognized by search engines, Ping-O-Matic will let you know and won’t actually push the ping.

If I only earned a penny for every question I see about when search engines ping your blog, I could probably buy every visitor I ever had a beer. The good news is that moving forward, you’ll always know since you’re the one doing it.

Oh, and BTW, no disclosure on this since I’m not an affiliate. Why? Because it’s FREE! No catch, just enjoy.

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I love this guest post topic! Although my experience is slightly different from Brad’s, who runs canadiantechblogger.com, his perspective is enlightening and I agree with his point of view for the most part.

Although things may seem the same initially, sometimes it pays to look closer...

First up what is a traffic exchange: a traffic exchange is a website where you view other people’s sites. As a thank you, you get a hit back (or cash).

What is a auto surf: it is basically a traffic exchange on automatic no user involvement needed.

This is why I call both just a fluff for your blog.

The manual version you basically sit there wait for a page to load and wait 10-20s to get your credit. It’s not worth it because you usually get marketer videos. Some traffic exchanges even have bad websites in their service (although most check ahead of time). It’s pointless since you are not really interested in a site but rather the viewing credit.

Auto surfers are worse since they do that automatically. As such no one is viewing your site but rather just fluffing your page views.

While you can add banners, and text links, and pay for hits they’re not worth it. Most large ad networks (adsense, adbrite, etc) DO NOT allow you to use traffic exchanges while their ads show since it’s basically invalid impressions.

So pretty much keep clear of them…unless you want to waste your time or fluff your page views.

Brad from canadiantechblogger.com is one of my long time contributors to this site. He writes about all things related to technology on his blog.

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In my last post, affiliate marketing – the nutshell version, I stated that I would provide details on the various types of affiliate marketing. Of course I always keep my promises so here goes.

There are basically four different methods of getting paid as an affiliate. Some are more common than others and depending on what you’re trying to promote on your site, some types may work better than others. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to choose your affiliate partners.

Alternatively, you could choose to go with a strictly passive approach like using Google AdSense straight out of the box. In that case, Google will control what ads to bring onto your site and you’ll end up with mixed bag. As you learn more about the different ways to leverage affiliate marketing, there’s no reason why you can’t start with Google Adsense and integrate your own affiliate ads as you grow.

Four types of affiliate marketing

Pay Per Sale

Probably the most common methods of affiliating, Pay Per Sale is pretty self-explanatory. You only paid when your ad brings in actual results, usually in the form of money being passed through.

Cost Per Click (CPC)/Pay Per Click (PPC)

One of the more well-known affiliate types, CPC pays you every time a visitor clicks on the ad. Although this seems like a surefire way to get paid by simply abusing the ads, the top search engines have technology to prevent this from happening.

Cost Per Mil. (CPM)

For every 1000 page views, you get paid a certain amount. Also abused in the past, CPM is now protected through the top search engines.

Pay Per Lead

You get paid every time a lead is provided. This can be in the form of an email, address, or even phone call. There are plenty of technology tools to track any type of lead.

Choosing the right affiliate marketing type for your site

The logical follow up question is: which is the best? The simple answer is that it depends. I know that’s not what you want to hear but there’s no magic formula. A lot of it depends on your niche and your goals.

Even though some methods have worked better for some sites than others, over time, the bloggers who are able to maintain and even increase their revenue are the ones who are able to monitor and adapt. That means changing their affiliate strategies as necessary. Just like anything else in this crazy, fast-paced, tech world that we live in, being able to shift gears at a moment’s notice is key.

Which type of affiliate marketing has worked best for you?

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Often times, especially for people who have been blogging for a while, we make assumptions that everyone knows what we’re talking about. The reality is even the most commonly used terms become black holes for some new folks. Today, let’s review one of the big ones: affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is just a fancy phrase for producing results for a seller and getting paid for it. In some cases, you could look at it like selling a product for a company without having the need to carry inventory or fulfill an order. Not a bad concept!

Here’s one of the ways it could work, in a nutshell:

1. Visitor arrives at your site
2. Visitor clicks on a banner ad on your site and it leads him to your partner’s site
3. Visitor purchases a product from your partner
4. Your partner pays you

Seems like a simple model, right? Well here’s the best part, in many cases, the visitor doesn’t even have to buy anything! Although Pay Per Sale is very common, there are other ways affiliate marketing could work. I’ll describe them in detail in my next post.

One last thing, even though concept has created many affiliate millionaires, it’s actually not all that easy and success won’t come overnight. The part that people don’t realize is that it requires a lot of work to get visitors to your site. There are many resources, especially online resources, that can help you meet your goal. The key really involves combining other people’s lessons learned with a lot of your own trial and error.

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Another guest post today, this time from Cebu Tech Blogger,  Bert Padilla.

Most bloggers are using the very popular webmaster tool called Google Trends. With Google Trends, you can see how frequently a particular topic appeared on Google and what other topics internet users are searching and viewing on the web.

On this article, I will share you something most bloggers (particularly beginners) doesn’t know how to drive organic traffic to their blogs with the use of Google Trends and the proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So here we go…

1. Use a High-Trend but Low-Dense Keywords

When you use a high-trend, but low-dense targeted keywords- you have a great chance to top on the SERP for that particular keyword especially if you have a higher PR than those other blogs with similar targeted keywords as yours. One example of high-trending keyword this year is “Photas”. Take a look at this graph. Now you come to ask, how “Photas” become a less-dense keyword. Well, searching for that particularly keyword only returns few results. When I say few, it doesn’t reach 500K or even 100K results like this.

2. Apply the Proper SEO

There are so many SEO techniques we can apply to optimize blog posts. But what I can suggest when using Google Trends is just to use proper keyword combination and link building. Doing these two optimization techniques would really boost your organic traffic.

For the best keyword combination, you need to research what other keywords are associated with your first keyword identified on no. 1 above. For example, “Photas” has something to do with FB and a computer virus. You can then formulate a title for the blog post. Let’s say, “Facebook Photas is a Virus”.

Remember that the other two keywords on the formulated title are not low-dense. Searching for those keywords individually will return you millions of results. So, your only best shot is to optimize the first identified keyword on no. 1.  Here comes the second SEO technique to use- the Link Building. For the link building, try to get at least 5 back links with your targeted keyword as anchor text. Only five back links as most SEO experts believe that creating many back links with same anchor text is not SE friendly anymore. Don’t use your post title as the anchor text. If you use a combination of two keywords, just make it natural.

I have proven this myself, and it is really working. Just spend some time to try it. I’ll be glad if this will also work for you. – END

Bert Padilla is a 23 year old part-time blogger behind Cebu Tech Blogger. He started blogging in late 2008, and finally put up his main blog in March 2009. He also writes articles for Cebu Bloggers Society, a local group in the Philippines geared toward a civic and social awareness.

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With so many blog “experts” out there, how can you tell the difference between really useful information and dated, irrelevant hype?

There are some of us who have been blogging or running our own sites for years and the best endorsement is what other bloggers have to say about our sites, our content, and our products.

That said, I’ve been a fan of Daniel Scocco from dailyblogtips.com for a while now. I’ve frequented his site regularly and have also participated in his most recent group writing project with my 10 free killer WordPress themes article last year. He successfully runs one of the top blogging/MMO blogs out there (under 5k Alexa ranking!) and there’s a lot we can learn from his experience.

What you may not know is that Daniel wrote a making money with blogs ebook and it’s one of the most useful blogging tools out there. It’s like someone took the vast making money and blogging content from all over cyberspace and created a concise package that can be used by anyone. The best part is that it’s FREE!

Honestly, when I say it can benefit anyone, I mean anyone. Blog beginners will have a field day, saving hundreds of hours by not having to scour the internet for information, much of which isn’t even good. More advanced bloggers will be able to either pick up a few tips and tricks or simply reinforce what they’re currently doing. And if you’re a MMO blogger, you’ll also pick up lots of great ideas for your own content.

So if you haven’t downloaded Daniel’s ebook, what are you waiting for? I did it a many moons ago and I still open it up for a quick read every now and then. I’m sure that you, too, will find it’s a valuable resource in your blogging reference library.

If you’ve already read it, I’d love to see a brief review of what you think.

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