Economists generally agree that high rates of inflation and hyperinflation are caused by excessive growth of the money supply. Google releasing millions of dollars worth of coupons is much the same, conceptually, as a government printing money backed by nothing (see also: The Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe). It causes inflation to occur and the value of everyone’s ‘dollar’ to diminish. The inflation caused by Google’s injection of what amounts to millions of dollars of “free money” into the Adwords economy predictably has an inflationary effect on bid prices. Why? Because by and large the holders of vouchers bid without really caring about what they’re doing–it’s all free money anyways; there’s no risk of loss.

They’ve also created a thriving secondary market for the vouchers. Just take a look at these Google Adwords voucher listings on eBay. We’ve also heard of people running scams whereby vouchers combined with disposable credit cards are used to purchase thousands of dollars worth of nearly-free advertising.

So why does Google do it? They do it to recruit new advertisers, which in turn creates more competition for terms, thus artificially pushing up bid prices. Google banks on a small percentage of the people who create new Adwords accounts using the vouchers retaining the accounts after the voucher money has been used up, and continuing to purchase Adwords advertising from Google.

The winners in this scenario are clearly the voucher-users (free money) and Google (new advertisers). The losers are the old advertisers, who are getting their bid costs ramped up by people for whom there is zero real cost to their purchase.

A similar problem once existed on eBay because they gave away so much free credit for their banner ads–$50 per new account to spend on banners. The consequence of this was that nobody ever bought “real” ads–it was always too expensive to bid on them. all the ‘free money’ in the system made bids on advertising space beyond the capacity of people looking for ROI.

People defending Google’s behaviour might say that, for example, what’s wrong with a restaurant owner giving away free desserts or a software developer giving free apps to certain people? Google is a private company and has the responsibility (within the law) to do whatever it thinks is best for Google’s business. If this makes bidding too expensive for advertisers, well, don’t buy any more ads? The problem with this argument is that Google’s actions are alienating their advertisers’ goodwill. When 95%+ of your income is conditional on your advertisers’ goodwill it seems like something Google should be making more of an effort to cultivate.

Not wanting to have this article seem to be a Google beat-up, we contacted Google’s press department and put the following question to them:

“What provision has Google made with its voucher program to ensure that its current advertisers are not disadvantaged by the injection of “free money” into the Adwords economy? Specifically, to insure that bid prices are not artificially inflated by people who are paying for ads with vouchers, and therefore have no particular incentive to constrain their bids for ROI or other, related reasons.”

Their spokesperson replied:

“We have many efforts in place to reach out to businesses that haven’t yet discovered that online advertising can be a powerful, measurable and cost-effective way for them to find customers. From time to time, we offer promotional coupons to new AdWords advertisers through various means, including via email, U.S. mail, industry events, etc. Anyone who needs assistance is able to contact us through our AdWords Help Center.”

Which I think you’ll agree is so non-responsive as to not even qualify as a “dodge”.

What do you all think? Is Google’s “print money” approach completely legitimate and fair to current Adwords advertisers? Do you think it’ll pay off for Google in the long term? Most importantly, is it at odds with Google’s professed philosophy of “not being evil”? Look forward to your comments.

Back in August, the Adventory crew took a trip to Affiliate Summit East in New York. We thought it might be useful to post and briefly let you know what our “takeaways” from each seminar were. You can check out the slideshows for the seminars here, or click the link above each summary to go straight to the relevant presentation. Video possibly to come later. Consider this a “living” post, as it’ll be getting updated and reworked as more information and resources come to hand.

Enjoy!

How to Eliminate Affiliate Fraud 100%
-Watch the transaction, rebill, card decline, chargeback, and refund approval ratios.
-Watch customer complaints.
-Check that customers verify transactions that have been placed in real time.

Info Product Co-creation Formula
-Work with your audience/list to build the product.
-Preselling–sell the product before it exists.
-Create back-and-forth with audience. Start with survey, they respond, identify core need, they confirm or deny, you give away free report, they read and respond, then presell–they buy.
-ccp + ein + is +s = $$$ (co-creation plot, early investor narrative, insider status–create status indicators, scarcity)
-Step 1: survey your users (survey, blog comments, twitter feeds) three questions:
-What free information product would you like for me to create just for you?
-What is your biggest fear or frustration?
-What is your ideal perfect outcome and how do you think you’ll attain it?
-Give away cool stuff. Don’t spend more than 2-3 days on the free product. Create a free report or video like top 10 tips related to your customers top need.
-Paid product just go deeper into what you gave away in your free stuff.
-Feedback will help you create the info product. Respond to all customer feedback.

Strategies for Marketing to Women
-Women spend more money online than men and control more generally 85% of all consumer purchases.
-Women prefer benefits to features, how products make them feel, authenticity.
-Women are extremely active on social networking sites.
-50% of women have purchased something because they heard about it on a social networking site.
-Women Want to Hear …From REAL women. From other women LIKE THEM. From other women that have the same products/brands.
-Specific stories about the product/brand. The truth. The whole Truth, and nothing but the truth.

Implementing a Successful Coupon Strategy
-Coupons appeal to deal seekers and improve conversions.
-Successful coupon programs are exclusive and involve close monitoring.
-Be careful about upsetting affiliates, using old coupons, phone operators offering them to everyone, and the percentage of sales that end up being coupon sales.

Processes for Building Profitable Affiliate Websites
-Most good ideas fail–this is part of the process.
-Predefine success metrics, accelerate failure.
-Process: brainstorm->implement basic idea->test site->check metrics against success metrics->if site might meet metrics, continue, otherwise abandon and try a new idea.
-Accelerate failure: recognise failure quickly, learn from mistakes, communicate what you have learned.

Uncovering Advanced Paid Search Strategies
-Worth expanding into search networks outside the big 3, as:
-additional reach-lower CPC
-superior customer service
-Questions to ask when considering other networks: How long have you been in business?
-Traffic estimates for my queries?
-What kind of toolset do you offer? What features?
-What kind of filtering for invalid traffic do you do?
-What kind of customer support/account management, and payment options do you have?

Turbocharge your business
-3 minute plan. Write down your three priorities for the day.
-Take regular breaks away from the computer.
-Use the end of the day to set yourself up for tomorrow.
-Use the mornings to work on major tasks.
-Success = direction + speed + luck

Curation. Can you Filter Free Content?
-You can run sites which aggregate other content and add value in that way.
-Create content, solicit for contributions, and collect content (aggregate and filter).
-Don’t steal value or remove ads from content.
-Abide by relevant copyright legislation and best practice.
-Have a voice on the site. Be transparent and honest.

Affiliate Freakonomics: Market Quirks at Work
-Outclicks, every time a click leaves you site value if created.
-Affiliate market is worth 3.3 billion.
-CPA 5% of money made is returned to affiliates versus 11% to search marketing campaigns.
-Create content around monetization.
-Readers != money.
-Focus matters, small forums + blogs can do great, e.g. knows a site on shaving that does wonderfully.
-Trust matters, be transparent, disclosure of monetized links leads to 2x better conversions.

Jim Kukral Keynote
-Success steps:

1) Say what you do
2) Solve problems
3) Know your customer
4) Be the alternative
5) Make it easy

-Doers get what they want, the rest get what they get.
-If you want to be remarkable you have to do something remarkable.

Android Affiliate Mobile Marketing
-Mobile ad market is big and will be huge.
-Google backs android and wants to advance the mobile web experience.
-Mobile users are more about finding than searching.
-Smartphone use lead by 24-35 Males earning over 100k/year.
-Click to call and location-based ads do best.

Using Social Media For SEO
-Use Social Media To Build Links.
-Leverage Existing Users.
-Find New Users.
-Establish Best Practices.
-Yearly Events Retain Same URL.
-Don’t over complicate. Pick 2-3 Services.
-Bit.ly works exceptionally well.
-Wordpress has worked in built in functionality for short[er] links.
-Once a URL has been used, 301 it out elsewhere.
-Go around your site and make a list of “social opportunities.”
-Incentivize. “Show us you made a tweet about us and get 30% off” (Another great outsource project)
-Use Google Analytics URL Builder for tracking.
-Affiliate Programs.
-Considering using GET variables. http://Josh.com/?product=123&aff=45
-Create artificial status.
-Photo galleries, “Check ins”, activities, scavenger hunts.
-Leverage the “Gotta catch them all!” mentality.
-Use artificial status to create social opportunities. Forum referrals, badges, points, tweets, etc
-Always try to use a real URL.
-Try to match ratios of “influential profiles”.
-Retweet good links, hope others follow suit.
-Build a nice link profile for your Twitter page.
-Use hash tags on Twitter to get aggregated.
-YouTube Channel – 1 Way Followed.
-Google Profiles – 1 Way Do Follow Links To Your Sites.
-UrbanSpoon, Yelp, et al – Most are Followed.
-Yahoo Answers.
-Facebook Profile – 1 Way Followed.

Link Building Victories and Failures
-Authority links can fail you because they get so buried so quickly, gave example of site with nytimes.com, cosmo.com, oprah.com links that didn’t perform.
-Reciprocate, do stuff for other people those who are interested in your content
-Follow up-and-comers; retweet their stuff, build up your karma bank.
-Use a Greasemonkey script that puts twitter search in the top of Google search results.
-Great SEO book by @GarrettFrench
-Make real relationships.
-Use Majestic SEO, compare against competitors and reverse engineer, look at % anchor text, domain age, delicious tags.
-Make sure your % of anchor text isn’t too different from those in the results i.e. don’t an unnatural link profile.
-Use SeoMoz’s Open Site Explorer; export the SeoMoz data to .xls compare competitors.
-Look at competitor sites, use a firefox pluging to search similar sites for broken links (go through directories, yahoo, dmoz, delicious). If there’s a broken link, find out what the content was, duplicate it or update if possible then let site with broken link know that their site has a broken link and suggest an updated alternative.
-Go to page 10+ of Google results for term you want, plug into OSE, often people who’ve given up on optimisation.

Crowdsource Your Success
-Averaged opinion is better than the average individual’s opinion.
-Crowdsourced Adwords companies exist which work well.
-Quirky.com, crowd-sourced product development/refinement.
-Crowdsource your naming and brand, designs, product ideas, landing page design.
-5 principles

1) You reap what you sow
2) Tight deadlines work
3) Keep it simple
4) Don’t be Scrooge
5) Don’t be a douchebag

Facebook Advertising
-Facebook’s product is you.
-Be patient.
-Start off cpc.
-Tweak text.
-Try tons of images.
-Rinse and repeat.
-Do day parting; stop ads when no one is clicking.
-Flip to CPM once you have it dialed in.

Turn Website and Social Media Traffic Into Gold
-Use a Welcome page on facebook page that indicates people should click the “like” button.
-Info product launches are a great way to monetise social media platforms.
-Build your list, help people, follow people with similar interests.
-Monetise content through paid subscriptions.
-Bloggers: investigate payperpost, sponsored tweets.
-Use YouTube.
-Create a community.

Affiliate Marketing in a Digital World
-Strong growth in sales of all digital product categories.
-Promote cross-selling and upselling to make up for lower average price of digital goods.
-Advertise physical version alongside digital version.
-Use social media to promote digital products.
-Add digital samples to content promotion.

Why Q4 is the Year Long Season
-A lot more money spent during the Q4 holiday season, worth targeting.
-Strategy:

Jan-Mar: Evaluate and Get Organized.
Apr-Jun: Let the Communication Begin.
Jul-Sep: Negotiate and Implement.
Oct-Dec: Evaluate and Get Organized.

Social Media Marketing for Affiliates
-Value == exposure, links, increase value of content, branding, traffic, conversion.
-Get in front of influencers.
-Don’t engage in a community unless you’re sure they have value to your business.
-digg == make more mutual friends.
-When you create accounts on social pull in contacts from other accounts.
-Be natural on social sites. See what the awesome people do and do the same.
-stumbleupon campaigns show you what tags are used and by how many people if you sign up to their ads, can use that info to decide what tags you use.
-On all social sites, share other people’s content as well as your own.
-Investigate using fark.com. Titles in fark.com are everything.
-Content: People love lists. Don’t use 10, choose a random number.
-Memes: meme mashups are popular.
-Top lists targeting nostalgia.
-How to/instructional. Illustrate it. Things people WANT to know. Keep it simple.
-Current events: you won’t be first. But when you can see something about to happen you can make an article that takes and angle and run it as soon as the story breaks. Don’t out-news the news sources. Play off the news that is in your niche.
-Infographics: source it and allow others to embed it. Give them an embed code with a linkback.
-Strange/offbeat works, hyperbole (-est) works.
-Know who your audience is. Choose the right topic/format for your readers. Don’t ridicule your readers. Know what you want to rank for.
-Be pithy, funny, and smart.
-Outsourcing: odesk, elance, virtual employee, guru (odesk lets you monitor employee)
-Hire individuals through odesk not agencies.
-Give bonuses rather than raises.
-Audition people: hire 2-3 times as many people as you need for one week then fire everyone who sucks.
-Prices: researcher $1-2/hr, writers $3-5/hr.

Master of Your Domain
-Right to domain name has foundation in trademark law.
-Attach a [TM] to anything, (R) means you’ve officially registered it.
-UDRP is completely online.
-Have to prove that they’re using your domain name in bad faith.
-Bad faith: cybersquatting; block TM owner; disrupt competitor; confuse web users.
-Remedies in UDRP can be a transfer or a cancellation of the registration.
-”X sucks” sites are usually impregnable.

Leveraging Profits Through Social Media Connections
-Establish yourself as an expert.
-Read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini.
-Law of reciprocity, people will buy from you because they know you, like you or trust you.
-People like comments on their websites.
-Watch the 16 minute video at validation.tv.
-People treat books with respect, people buy books they don’t read.
-Scribe (WordPress plugin) is good for content analysis.

Fast Track Your Business with Outsourcing
-Use Elance.
-Do what you do best, outsource the rest.
-Don’t assume outsourcing will be too expensive.
-Use escrow.
-Set milestones and negotiate on price..
-Pay and respond to messages quickly
-Work on your business, not in it.

Innovate! New Exciting Applications of Affiliate Marketing
-Innovation products are new, better quality, for a new market, or use new production/packaging.
-Growth in voucher/content/reward marketing, PPC affiliate marketing in decline.
-Social media integration.
-Retargeting-advertising products visitors have already viewed or placed in carts.
-Mashup datafeeds with apps to add value.
-Link to products from within images.
-Micropayments, social media dominance, real-time data.

Supercharging WordPress for SEO
-Thesis is a good theme for SEO.
-Use plugins to set up your site for stats and search bots.
-Permalinks: use post name only.
-Use caching, speed is a factor.
-Use plugins to improve accessibility.
-Cloak affiliate links.
-Plugins to autopublish to social networks.

The New Lead Generation Model: Social – Mobile – Viral
-Social marketing: sell to pleasure; not to pain.
-Customers are the best affiliates.
-Love travels faster than pain.
-Email is cool again.
-Use facebook email notifications to market to your fans… people like receiving email from social networks.
-BUILD. YOUR. LIST.
-Shift to mobile is coming… move away from desktop.
-Uses games/treasure hunts/play a game. Have fun with your audience.
-Two-step marketing: make friends with your audience first.
-Micropayments through mobile. Use mp3 (not video) to sell.
-Make your brand a star.
-Little picture + little text works for mobile ads.
-Click to web/click to call/click to video/click to sms/click to local/click to buy/click to storyboard.
-Video doesn’t have to be you in front of a camera (you can hire an actor).
-Be real to engage people.
-Top mobile sells: games, retail, financial services, automobile info/services, coupons for food.
-Get to know your audience by asking questions. Don’t ask too many questions. Keep them simple.
-Men don’t pass things on like women do.
-Always ask yourself: “Why would my audience want to pass this on?”
-Use social networks to create consumption, but don’t do it up front.
-First two weeks critical for autoresponder sequence.
-Ad/click -> community of like-minded people -> tell them what to do.
-Funnel for mobile is really mobile to email. mp3 rocks for mobile.
-Goal on social/mobile is to get them to remember you.
-Customer ecstasy is your purpose.

Affiliate Tactics, Opportunities and Traffic Comparisons
-Shop around networks for best affiliate offers.
-Have a call to action in ads
-Branding, even if your ad isn’t getting clickthroughs the impressions can lead to a large number of visitors.
-In ads include information about the person that you’ve deduced from demographics.
-People bid in 5 cent increments, beat them by a cent and you’ll be by yourself
-Ugly POF ads do great.
-Ads burnout quickly, keep them fresh.
-Track ads carefully, have a lot of options, text, images etc.

Podcasting 101
-Podcasting is easy and cheap to get into.
-Promote your podcast on podcasting networks, similar podcasts, and social networks.
-Have guests interact on forums, iTunes.

Building Niche Affiliate Sites That Produce Revenue
-Do it fast: use wordpress, plugins, product feeds.
-Build traffic via frequent posting, chasing the long tail, syndicated feeds, social bookmarking, socialising the content, commenting, article submission, and joining related forums.
-Capitalize on traffic.
-Work hard on your relationships with advertisers.

More Money Same Traffic
-Collect data with your jump pages.
-Big FREE on display ads doubles clickthroughs.
-BMI page to get email addresses.
-icontact (best), aweber, bronto mail constant contact.
-Seed your data with email addresses that come to you.
-SMS offers http://b2mobile.com/.

Avoiding the Google Slap
-Quality score is largely automated, user complaints will generate a closer look though.
-CTR is important.
-Having thin landing pages is a poor user experience and penalised.
-Direct linking is fine, preferred, although affiliate programs less pleased with this.
-Look at the bounce rates of your pages, if this sucks it’s something you should work on.
-Very long copy tends to be the sort of pages that make dubious claims and therefore trigger QS penalties and/or slappage.
-Stuff with automatic or monthly payments are dubious.
-Any kind of dubious business practice likely to be closely scrutinized.
-If new campaign triggers Adwords alarms, older campaigns likely to be re-reviewed.
-Affiliates should explore Google Display Network, not as competitive yet.

How Bloggers Can Successfully Connect with Audiences
-Interview people.
-Let others be featured.
-Meet people.
-Give then get.
-Be more personal.
-Respond to every comment on facebook, flickr, blog, draw people back to the main site.
-Your audience engages with you across sites, maintain a profile on other sites.
-Encourage comments by starting and closing blog posts with a question, then ask the question on twitter.
-For advertising paid blog posts get best prices.
-Encourage sharing, make the share button more ‘call to actiony’.
-Guest post, just send the guest post to bloggers and they’ll often just use it, minimal friction. Too many steps to wait for a reply etc.
-Build up a newsletter, list. Use a popup lightbox leads to 3x more signups. It’s ugly but it works, and means you don’t become too dependent on Google for traffic.

Search Engine Marketing Reviews
-Business name should be at the end of title tags.
-Keep meta descriptions short and sweet.
-Place all code in external files and call them… compress HTML.
-Don’t use duplicate meta descriptions.
-Use the variable excerpt in wordpress for the meta description.
-Do 301 direct from www. to non-www, or vice versa.
-H1 tags are ridiculously important.
-Navigation links should include relevant keywords.
-Avoid category drop-downs (UI).
-If running campaigns for your site don’t use your homepage as your landing page.
-Use facebook landing page and get people to “like” you then market to people through your facebook page.
-Consider social networks (especially niche sites/forums) outside facebook/twitter.
-Tweetdeck is awesome.

Affiliate platforming: building and keeping an audience
-Marketing is not a task. It’s any time you interact with any audience.
-Make people know like and trust you.
-Your newsletters should have content.
-People spread AWESOME.
-Try living on twitter for a while.
-”Don’t say or do or post anything that you don’t want to see on a billboard”.
-Build a relationship in Social Media, and take the business somewhere else.
-Haters love you.
-Friends rule.

First, some background.

When we’re not busy writing articles for this blog, one of the things the Adventory.com team do to make ends meet and keep body and soul together is to run PPC advertising campaigns on Google AdWords. We’d been running a geo-targeted campaign for a few years on an offer that targets  people living in France when earlier this year, we decided to start doing our own geo tracking on the traffic Google AdWords was sending to the campaign.

Now, just to back up a little bit here. Within AdWords’ management interface, when you start a campaign and choose to geo target it to a country or countries (in our example, France), here’s what it looks like on your screen when you select your targets:

Now, wouldn’t you think when you were selecting geo-targeted traffic from “France (Country)” there, and Google AdWords was showing you a big-ass map of France, that the traffic you were going to get to the campaign was going to be, you know, from France? We think you would. We sure did. But guess what? That’s not what it means. At all.

After tracking the traffic that Google AdWords was sending to our France-targeted campaign for a little while and doing our own geo-checking on it (using MaxMind’s excellent GeoIP software) we discovered something downright sinister. Here’s a breakdown by country of traffic to our “France” traffic AdWords campaign for March 2009.

+--------------------+------+
| country            | cnt  |
+--------------------+------+
| France             | 4422 |
| Algeria            |  941 |
| Morocco            |  668 |
| Tunisia            |  540 |
| Belgium            |   49 |
| Senegal            |   43 |
| Switzerland        |   24 |
| Côte D’Ivoire      |   18 |
| Réunion            |   15 |
| Satellite Provider |   11 |
+--------------------+------+

As you can see, AdWords had been sending our “France” campaign traffic from a variety of French-speaking countries. This non-France French-speaking traffic was about 35% of the total. And Google were cheerfully charging us for it as though it were premium, first-world French traffic. From FRANCE. Perhaps the following map might be of assistance to Google?

Once we discovered we’d actually been spending years pissing money down the drain buying traffic from the likes of Senegal and Tunisia, we freaked.

We tried opting out of the countries we didn’t want, but discovered that you can’t opt-out of geo targeted countries you haven’t opted INto in the first place (though apparently opting into countries you haven’t opted into is no problem!) We tried opting into the third-world countries just to see if opting out of them later would stop the traffic flow from those countries, but no such luck.

In the end we did figure out a (kind of hacky) solution to ensure that we only got traffic from France, which we’ll explain in detail a bit later on.  But we had a pressing problem to deal with now. Google had been taking our money for what we thought was 3-Michelin-star French traffic for a few years now (to the tune of $93,885), and delivering us McDonalds takeaways traffic in a trash bag. It was surprising in retrospect that we were making any profit on the campaign at all.

And now we were mad. Mad enough to let Google AdWords know how we felt. And so we embarked upon a long and ultimately infuriating exchange of emails, which after numerous attempts at blaming us, evasion, and obfuscation finally ended with AdWords support saying, essentially, “Yeah, that’s how it works. Selecting traffic from ‘France’ actually means you’re selecting traffic from google.fr, whatever the source of the traffic may be.”

That’s right, kids. ANY geo-targeted traffic purchased through AdWords meant “traffic that runs through the google site using that country’s ccTLD (google.de, google.es, google. mx, etc.) and NOT “traffic from this country I just selected”.

And that was that. After responding to their final “come clean” email, we never heard from AdWords again. No response, and certainly no materialization of the promised “credit [applied] to [our] account for the inconvenience caused”.

We later discovered that all of our geo-targeted campaigns had similar issues. The France one was the worst, but (for example) our geo targeted “UK” campaign included plenty of traffic from India, Pakistan, Turkey, etcetera.

We considered fighting on and taking it further, but in the end decided to just forget about it and chalk it up to a (very expensive and painful lesson) learned. But we thought we’d at least share the whole sad saga on this blog so that, hopefully, other AdWords users can find out about Google’s  “rook the suckers and bury the truth” policy and avoid having the same thing happen to them.

What we think about Google AdWords’ Behaviour

To be completely fair, Google do have documentation in existence that explains that this is how their geo targeting system works, such as the below, which can be found buried deep within the GAP study material.

* UPDATE: Google have pulled the above paragraph from the GAP documentation, but you can see that it was once there by hitting this search.

But in our opinion this buried information exists mostly to create an “out” for them; something they can point to with a knowing smirk when they’re called out on their essentially deceptive practice.

The fact is that unless an AdWords user has studied diligently to become a GAP (and the overwhelming majority of AdWords users don’t, as Google well knows) he is not likely to ever uncover the truth. And Google takes pains to supply plenty of information elsewhere that contradicts the information presented in the GAP documentation (or at least strongly implies that the truth is otherwise, like the selection interface shown earlier.)

Here’s one example:

Really, Google? Geo-targeted ads will appear ONLY to users located in the selected areas AND who have selected one of those languages as their preferences? Sounds great; it’s a shame that it’s a GIGANTIC LIE. A lie which Google doesn’t seem to have any qualms about leaving in the AdWords help documentation.

What we think is really happening here is that Google knowingly, sneakily, and dishonestly is attempting to monetize third-world clicked traffic by passing it off as first-world traffic. The technology is readily available for them to provide traffic only to the geographic locations that their advertisers are selecting, and they’re not doing it.

What they do do, instead, is erect a confusing maze of smoke and mirrors around the functioning of their geo targeting, as much as accuse their advertisers of lying when they call them on their bullshit, and do a deflective tapdance of misdirection, stonewalling, and shoulder-shrugging when presented with the unpleasant consequences of their devious enterprise. And we think that makes it a scam. And we think it sucks balls.

How many AdWords advertisers out there right now are paying for traffic from “France” that’s actually from Senegal? Traffic from the United Kingdom that’s actually from Turkey? I’d guess thousands. And Google knows it, and they know that most of their advertisers don’t.

Solution: how to avoid Google’s scam

As promised, here’s how to avoid getting “French” traffic from Algeria and Morocco and whereverthefuck. Apologies in advance: it’s hacky and tedious, but it does work. And it’s the only way to do actual geo targeting with Google AdWords.

1. Go to the section of your AdWords campaign interface where you choose your geo targeted location:

2. Select the “Custom” interface.

3.  Select “Custom shape”.

4. Draw polygons over France (or whatever country.)
Make sure you completely cover it and don’t select any other countries. You’ll usually have to create multiple polygons, as AdWords limits your polygons to a side length of “no greater than 400km”.

5. Save your campaign and exit.

And that’s it. That’s how you do it. Hacky, ugly, and a huge time-consuming nightmare if you have a lot of geo targeted campaigns, but  the only way you can get actual geo targeted traffic from Google AdWords.

What do you think about this practice?  Would you have felt deceived if it had been your campaign? Particularly keen to hear from any AdWords advertisers who didn’t know that this was how it worked:  we’re sure there are plenty of you out there!

Copywriting for the Internet is different in that the more technical aspects of production and presentation, such as choosing the right keywords, knowledge of HTML/CSS, and meta tags, often take precedence over mastery of the written language. Considering this, I will try to come up with the fundamental elements of effective web copy. The copy that works is the copy that keep these basic ideas in mind.

Headlines

The sole purpose of a headline is to stimulate the reader. The reason a headline exists is to compel someone who comes across your copy want to keep on reading it to the very last word. Although the “meat” of the copy is in the content, the role that the headline plays is extremely important—perhaps of paramount importance. If it fails to attract and engage the reader’s attention, there is not much that the entire body of the text can do, no matter how well-written and eloquent it may be.

So what makes a good headline? Nothing sparks more attention than telling somebody else’s story. There is a reason diaries often come with a lock and key. People are interested in what goes on in somebody else’s life. Everybody wants to uncover secrets. If possible, ensure your headline speaks to this very human desire.

The choice of words is just as important. For search engine optimization (SEO) reasons it is imperative that you put the most relevant keyword or keyword phrase within the first four words of your headline. To touch briefly on keywords generally, let me say that copy need not be riddled with the keywords you’re targeting to get the job done. Use them in moderation unless you want your article to get tagged as spam and buried in search results. Also, choose simple but directly relevant words of the sort that you would likely type in a search engine’s “search” field if you were the person looking for your article.

For instance, if I am writing copy for an anti-aging cream, my headline may read “Fight Premature Aging Signs. Let Lisa Tell You How” or “I Put a Stop to Premature Aging. You Can Too.” Note that I avoided using figurative speech in the headline, such as “Discovered: The Modern-day Fountain of Youth.” Figurative speech is fine for poetry or literature, but is death to SEO.

For more hints and tips about crafting headlines check out our article devoted to the topic from September, “An Introduction to Crafting Headlines”.

Content and style

When writing copy, I personally like to take the approach of storyteller. I usually start by choosing someone who actually uses the product, and then I present him or her in the most authentic way possible–as a real person that my target audience can relate to.

Whenever I use this approach, I like to give the person at least a first name. Not only does this add to the credibility of the story, but it also helps readers identify more easily with the person.

There are a variety of styles and strategies that can be used when telling a story, but one of my favorite techniques is to write about the person’s routine (describing his or her lifestyle), his or her goals (to set up an explanation of how my product helped him or her achieve these objectives), and how his or her life has changed for the better since using the product to achieve these goals. Of course, at this stage we’re assuming I already know my target audience and market. The more your readers can relate to the person in the story you have written, the better your chance of making a sale.

Have you ever gone home after watching a feel-good movie or listening to a great motivational speaker and felt like you can do just about anything? Well, it turns out that it’s in our essential nature to feel a rush of enthusiasm after learning of a moving success story, and it is important to take advantage of that short window of enthusiasm to encourage readers to buy your product and experience the same change for themselves.

Perks

No writing technique or style can match the pull of an irresistible offer. By contrast, well-written copy with a so-so offer parses as just another ad. The only way I can guarantee or extensively explain the advantages you can get from the product that I’m promoting is for me to know my product by using it. Different people have different considerations when buying a product, but as long as you are aware of the needs of your target audience you can present your product in a way that will persuade those people to buy it. A very good copywriter can create demand with his or her words.

Becoming a good salesperson

As would be expected of any good salesperson, the first thing I had to do when I was learning the ropes of copywriting was to get to know the product that I would be selling and the market I would be selling it to.  When I say “knowing,” it goes beyond merely gaining a basic familiarity.

Why?  A basic principle of consumerism and marketing is that in order to sell, you need to know your product-—and know it well.

Let’s say that I’m selling a brand of shampoo.  If all I know about my product is that it is meant for cleansing the hair, then I would have little to say about the benefits you can get from using it. If this were the case, my income will be solely dependent on luck; the chance, perhaps, that a thousand people with dirty hair will come across my website.

But if I am well-informed with regard to the ingredients used as well as the people I am targeting to sell my shampoo, I can make recommendations, such as which one is best for those with oily scalps or which variants work best with certain hair types.  What significance does this have?  I have a better chance of turning even “No, thanks” into an “Okay, maybe I’ll take one.”

For me—-and almost every other person will agree—-there is no better way of knowing a product than using it myself.  Beyond sales ethics, I think that marketing a product you have not even tried will make the work seem more complicated than it really is.  Companies do product tests and restaurants do taste tests before releasing their goods into the market. And why shouldn’t you do the same thing and check the product out before telling the whole blogosphere about it?

When I do use a product, I don’t expect to discover every little thing about it, but I always try to keep my perspective the same as that of any consumer.  The first time I tried this approach, I created a checklist of basic questions about the product that I, as a consumer, felt that I should find the answers to.  The list I came up with contained the following questions:

• What is it for?
• How does it work?
• What benefit will I get from it?
• Will it work?
• What makes it different from other products/brands?
• How much does it cost?
• What options are there for payment and delivery?
• Is there a money-back guarantee?
• How do I get in touch with Customer Support?

I often realize that the more I see myself as the buyer, the more questions I can think of.  Returning to my role as the promoter/seller, I try to answer all the questions based on my personal experience of using the product.  In some cases, I try to research the product over the Internet.  This is especially helpful when I have no means of contacting my client for any information other than what is written on the copywriting job description.  In particular, I look for blogs or forums where people may have written what they like or don’t like about the product.  This way, I’ll know how to highlight the product’s strengths.

Having good product knowledge is crucial in building a copywriter’s credibility and confidence.  However, without knowing how to connect to your target audience or market, product mastery will seem unimportant.

Before I can establish rapport with my market, I have to know who they are. In sales and marketing, demographics are important.  To come up with a good target market profile, your questions should include the following:

• Who is the target market?
• What age, gender, and income group are they?
• Who will benefit most from it? Why and how?

From the profile created through answering these questions I can figure out how important the price factor is in closing a sale and how much time these people can possibly spare in reading copy.  Knowing your market means identifying their lifestyle needs, so you will know what approach to use.  Remember: people will hardly give you the time of day, unless you can tell them right away what’s in it for them.

When I use the inverted pyramid style of writing, I group my article into three main parts: the main point, details, and the least important information.  It is a commonly-used template for news articles and press releases, memos, articles, and essays, but you can also use this template when making your sales letter or any other kind of web marketing copy.

This style of writing is useful in writing meta descriptions, a good example of which is Google Snippets, since Google displays meta descriptions verbatim according to how they are written in the meta description tag.  The pyramid approach helps website owners like me increase traffic to their sites apart from writing convincing sales copies to promote or sell products online.

Why the inverted pyramid works

The main reason this style of copywriting is effective is because most people using the Internet as their source of information do not have time to read through page-long descriptions of products.  Putting all the important information–the what, where, when and the who-—in the first paragraph is enough to give them an overview of what the entire article or sales letter is about.  As long as you make the first few sentences interesting enough, you can use it to lure the reader into finishing the whole article.  Even if the reader has no intention from the outset of finishing my article, I make sure that they will at least walk away with the most important information it contains by placing such information at the top.

Pros and cons of using the inverted pyramid

While the inverted pyramid is considered the best writing style for giving all the facts in one quick serving, it also has its share of critics.  Some say that it is outdated, boring, and an artless form of writing.  Most authors say that the pyramid is the anti-story, and it deprives the reader of an exciting climax and a satisfying conclusion because it does not follow the traditional beginning, middle, and end sequence of traditional storytelling.  In short, the inverted pyramid strips the story to the bare bones and robs it of the emotional dynamic  that most people look for in a story or an essay.

However, most readers, I believe, appreciate the concise nature of the inverted pyramid. Why? Because online readers are not online to read.  In most cases, they are online to browse or shop, and only a rare few are there to read anything lengthy down to the very last letter.  Few online readers ever scroll down below the fold.  In most cases, they read only the top of the page, which makes the inverted pyramid style the perfect choice for Internet users.  Its structure also makes it perfect for online news articles that are laid out according to the classic method seen in traditional printed newspapers.  It also helps writers avoid writing overly-long articles.

The inverted pyramid and marketing copy

If you are making copy for your product, it is easy to use this template as the base.  The simplest way would be to start with the most important feature about your product or service, followed by an explanation of the benefits of the product.  Follow this up with the second most important feature of your product, its benefits, and so on.  Another alternative would be to state all the important features in the first paragraph and elaborate on these as you go down.  Usually background facts are placed on the last portion of the article.

How to avoid boring copy using the inverted pyramid

While being criticized as an artless form of writing devoid of emotion, you can avoid writing boring copy using such techniques as:

• using exclamation points to drive home the intended message
• using different fonts and sizes to make the sales copy more interesting to read
• use shorter lines to make the copy more readable
• avoiding long paragraphs and
• using only everyday words–avoid jargon

When it comes to using the inverted pyramid for copywriting, you have the advantage of being able to stop anywhere because all the important information has already been shared at the start of the article. However, this does not mean that you can do away with good description and explanation.  If you want to produce good copy, providing all the needed information along with thorough and clear description is always important.

What makes a good testimonial?

Many testimonials are good in themselves but lose their effectiveness due to poor placement in the article, the webpage, or the sales letter. A good testimonial must hit the sweet spot in terms of placement and good use of language or grammar without sounding contrived or obviously fake. Based on experience, I can say that the best testimonials are those that come with pictures of the writer and possibly an email address or a website through which the maker of the testimonial can be contacted for more information. You can’t expect potential customers to rely on your word alone or just believe something positive that has been said about your service. Some will actually verify claims, and if the claims turn out to be false the knock-on effect can be very negative and damaging.

How can I get testimonials?

If you have a good online social network, whether through your blog or your website, you can get testimonials from loyal followers or from customers with whom you have done business in the past. You can ask for a testimonial in exchange for links or a reciprocal testimonial from yourself, especially from customers who trust you with their business.

As most consumers tend to trust testimonials they know they can verify, you will gain more credibility points if your testimonials contain pictures and contact addresses. You will need to ask for permission from the maker of the testimonial for these, but most will usually oblige, especially if you offer to do the same for them.

How can you use testimonials effectively?

There are several factors to consider and test when attempting to maximize the effectiveness of your testimonials, from finding the most strategically effective locations to use them in your page or sales letter to using the right size, font, and color to grab maximum attention.

First though, make sure your testimonials sound professional and give off no scent of being contrived or manufactured. If you are asking for testimonials from a select group of clients, the best thing to do is use the testimonials in the way they came in, without doing any editing, whether it concerns grammar or the content of the testimonial. Testimonials coming from genuine customers usually sound natural and “unprocessed.”

I daresay that more is not necessarily better when it comes to testimonials. Choose the testimonial that sounds most natural and position it in an optimal location on your webpage or blog. In most cases, you can place the best testimonial on top of the sales page, in a larger font than the rest to grab more attention easily. I usually spread out several other testimonials in between paragraphs to break up the monotony.

An effective technique is to write the testimonials in a larger font than the rest of the paragraph so that they stand out, even though they are embedded in the paragraph. The reason you should only choose the best ones to post in your sales page or website is that online most customers only skim the tops of pages and refrain from reading the smaller print.

Another good way to make portions of the testimonials stand out is to underline the important parts or use boldface. A common example is writing slashed-off prices or special offers in bold, larger, or red letters while keeping the rest in standard black in a generic font. The big, bold, and red letters can easily grab keep readers’ attention if what you are offering is interesting enough.

If you want to show off the rest of the testimonials from loyal customers, you can place them in one corner of your page. However, reserve your best testimonials for your sales pages and your headers.

Should you fake testimonials?

One drawback to using testimonials is that they can easily be faked. It is easy to write a testimonial singing the praises to your product, attach a fictional name, and post it on your site or slap it on your sales letter. But if you want to develop a reputation as an honest online merchant, refrain from using fake testimonials and instead rely on goodwill contributions from customers who really like you. If you have no testimonials to speak of, this is one thing you can use to motivate yourself into giving the best quality service you can provide so that you can easily ask your customers to spread a good word or two about you and your service. All it really takes is one confirmation that your testimonials are fake for all your customers to lose respect for you, and decide to take their business somewhere else.

Why write in a conversational tone?

Extensive and intensive research bears out the truth of the statement that online readers prefer a conversational tone to a formal one. When it comes to web marketing and creating engaging copy, writing as if you’re personally talking to your customer is therefore essential. Writing in a conversational tone makes the writer or the seller appear casual and approachable. A conversational tone will make it easier for you to build rapport with your online customers.

A piece that is written in an informal and conversational tone helps readers to feel at ease and relaxed, making them able to focus more on what they are reading. Very few people revel at the sight of a well-written academic paper–the rest of us usually cringe and move on to look for lighter fare. A conversational piece is easy on the eyes and the brain, and we can be sure that it will accommodate the short attention spans for which the inhabitants of the web are notorious.

Writing as you speak is especially important if you are trying to convince someone to buy a product or avail of a service. When the
reader is at ease and feels like he or she has found a good buddy in you, it makes selling your goods to him or her easier.

Have you ever noticed that you remember more of the details of a book or a movie that you really liked and were emotionally engaged in, compared to the information contained in that History reading assignment which you desperately tried to memorize? This is because you focused your attention only on the book, instead of on the act of memorizing details.

The basics of writing conversationally

There are a few handy things to remember when writing conversational pieces for online publishing. If you are a newbie to writing for the web, start by reading blogs and other websites that are written in a conversational tone. Magazine articles and newspaper columns that use this style of writing are also good general sources of ideas and positive examples of how to write in a conversational style.

Use contractions

When writing for the web, I suggest using contractions. Contractions are a no-no in academic and formal papers, but are a familiar feature of everyday conversation.

Bend some rules of grammar

Formal pieces require a strict and proper use of grammar in order to be acceptable. One can sometimes bend some grammatical rules when writing conversational pieces. No one pays much attention to grammar when talking to a neighbor or a friend. For example, ending sentences with prepositions and starting sentences with words such as “but” and “and” are acceptable in conversational writing, because this is how people usually talk in casual settings.

Talk to your reader directly

A good tip is to write while imagining that you are talking to someone you know. Most writers think of an “ideal” reader as they write, so they can write a piece that can be read by the reader in mind. When it comes to writing conversational pieces, I imagine that I am talking to my friends, my sister, anyone whom I see every day. I use the same tone of voice in the piece I am writing. This approach will help you develop a strong conversational voice and avoid you “accidentally” coming up with a formal piece. No one ever uses a formal style of writing when talking to a best friend or a family member.

Read your piece aloud

Reading your piece out loud is a good way to listen to it and get a feel for the “flow” of words from one paragraph to the next. If you can read your article and hear yourself talking to someone you know in an informal and casual way, then you are good to go. Reading a portion out loud is a good tip, especially if you are not sure if that portion captures the conversational tone of voice that you want.

Edit as necessary

Mozart aside, no piece is perfect on the first try. After reading your piece out loud, edit any sections that sounds stiff or unnatural. Editing is important not only when you’re trying to capture a certain tone in an article, but also generally in terms of establishing a professional image for yourself online. Sharp and well-written articles will help you to appear reliable, competent, and like someone whom anyone can feel safe doing business with.

A technique that works

This method has been proven to work in web copy written for products ranging from video tutorials and software to e-books and diet programs. By using a question that strikes directly at the thoughts and the emotions of readers, you are able to steal a few seconds of their time which you can use to expound on the benefits of the product.

When you ask an intriguing question, your readers’ minds will feel compelled to find the answer to that question. Why? Because we as human beings have been hard-wired to respond in this way. It is believed that when a person is asked a question, it opens a “loop” in the brain that can only be closed by finding the answer. If left open, the person feels a form of mental (and sometimes even physical) discomfort. You’ve probably experienced this when you’re trying hard to remember something that you know you once knew—say the name of that Japanese restaurant you took your business partners to five years ago.

The right way to ask questions

While asking questions has been discovered to be really effective in creating headlines, it must be done in the right way in order to get the desired response. Here are some suggestions to help guide you to ask the right kind of questions.

Make your questions thought-provoking

“How Did I Turn $1 Into $100?” and “How Do You Know For Sure When Somebody is Hiding Something From You?” are examples of thought-provoking questions. These questions will arouse most readers’ curiosity. The first question has been used to promote an Internet marketing product, while the second has been used in offers for lie detection and investigative services.

By using questions of this kind, you are able to influence readers to stay longer. However, simply keeping them on your page doesn’t guarantee they will take your offer. You have to be sure that the rest of the text on the page is able to sell the benefits of your product effectively so that page views are converted into sales.

Use rhetorical questions

It can be a good idea to use a rhetorical question as a headline. Examples of these kinds of questions include “Would you like to double your monthly income?” “Would you like to lose weight without exercise, diet, or pills?” and “Do you want free information on how you can retire early?” These kinds of rhetorical questions are designed to get a “yes” from the reader who will then read on to find out how these rhetorically-stated goals can be achieved.

Tip: Rhetorical questions are best used to introduce the benefits of a product. Instead of asking, “Do you want to learn how to sell products online?” you should say something like, “Do you want to know how to earn four-figures a week through affiliate marketing?”

Try to appeal to readers’ emotions

Your questions ought to speak to the most common reasons that people actually purchase the product. This is the key to using questions in headlines, especially rhetorical questions.

Another form of emotional questioning that you might use is one that appeals directly to a reader’s fears. The headline “Do You Make These Costly Internet Marketing Mistakes?” will make a reader want to read on so that he or she can learn how to avoid making such mistakes. Such a headline is almost guaranteed to snatch the attention of both neophyte and experienced Internet marketers.

Choose questions that are relevant to the reader

Remember that you have to ask questions that are relevant to your reader. If you ask questions such as “Have you seen our new location?” “Do you know what I use on my face?” or “Have you read our latest blog post?” most readers will not be interested in learning what the answer is, unless perhaps you are some major celebrity. You have given your reader no reason to care about the answer to such questions and “who cares?” will probably be the reply as she clicks the X and leaves your page.

When is asking questions inappropriate?

Although there are many occasions in which “question” headlines may be used, you should be careful not to overuse them.

For example, it is a bad idea to use question headlines to structure your sales page. Instead of, for example, “What are the advantages of this product over another product?” “How much does the program cost?” and “Where is this company located?” it would be better to use subheadings such as “Advantages of this product over product B,” “Program Fees,” and “Company Location.”

If you raise a question, even a rhetorical question, it is also necessary for you to quickly move to answer it in the next portion of your sales page. If you asked, “Do you want to earn $100 in 24 hours?” in your headline, don’t wait long to start explaining to your reader how your program is going to help your reader to achieve that.

Of course, more generally, just about anything in excess isn’t a good idea. But with just the right amount of questioning, you are well on your way to creating a great, effective sales page.

If it were easy, everyone would be able to make money blogging, but the truth is that to make money blogging is not easy. It’s a process that takes time and energy.

But, you CAN make money blogging. I’m doing it and so are plenty of other people. The top 100 bloggers are earning six digit incomes from blogging and most of them are more than happy to share the secrets with you. Just like I am doing now.

Since I started blogging in 2001, I’ve made a lot of money at it. Suffice to say that I’ve paid for my house, paid for travels to more than 20 countries, and made a lot of mistakes.

Here are the ten best lessons I’ve learned:

1. Domains matter. SEO is not so much a science as a lot of guesswork. One thing I’ve learned is that no matter what anyone says, a domain that contains keywords about your topic makes a difference. My domain for this site is not good, in fact, it sucks. To shortcut your way to lots of traffic and pagerank, get a domain that sums up your topic. A unique short word might seem like a good idea but a better idea would be a longer domain full of keywords.

   Not NewsNotion.com but instead BloggerMoneyPro.com, maybe someday I’ll move this, it would be a smart move.

2. Tons of content and rich keywords. Most of the money I’ve made has been through having keywords that advertisers pay for, so while it might seem like a good idea to write about bums, bums don’t have money so a better keyword to use would be luxury watches or real estate investment. You can write these into your posts if you are creative. A solid word combo like asbestos lawyer is much better than something like beer can.
3. Find a theme that suits your site. If you want to look like a circus or a flower shop, you will not have a great personal injury lawyer blog.
4. Maximize your use of plugins. Plugins add functionality to your site, they make it more user friendly, and sometimes they make your site look like garbage…be careful with this one.
5. To make money blogging you need to find a way to make money blogging. Research whether affiliates, contextual ads, or actual product sales are the best way for you to make money. If you have a craft site, you can probably sell craft supplies but you may not do so well with laptops and Kindles.
6. Add new content as often as possible. The more words and pages you have, the more content you have to sell. Each word is a potential big money maker for your blog. To make money blogging you need to be prolific and creative.
7. Bring traffic. No matter what they say about baseball fields, if you build a blog, they may not come. You need to find your readers and bring them to you. Become active in forums, participate on similar blogs by commenting, guest blog, and if you have to, pay someone to bring you traffic through advertising, links, or reviews.
8. To make money blogging you need more than one person. A blog is about the people who write it and the people who read it. Never forget that when you write something you are making an agreement to the reader “I will write things you will enjoy reading, as long as you read it.” Break that agreement and you will lose readers. Period.
9. Blogging is about people. If people want to read a technical manual about social engineering, they probably won’t go to a blog. People go to blog because they are extensions of people. Don’t be scared to share the person you are with your readers.
10. Tricks and scams are short term ways to make money blogging. If you want to make money blogging consistently and for a long period of time, stay away from any sort of tricks and scams. Part of the reason people come to your blog is because they trust you, when you pull bullshit tricks and scams, you violate that trust. If you want to make money blogging, do it in a way you can feel good about. Maybe all those get rich quick schemers make money blogging about bullshit, but let’s face it, they all deserve to eat dirt.

That’s it. Dig around on NewsNotion for more specific tips, but even if you don’t, if you follow these ten easy lessons, you will make money blogging. I’m sure of it.

All the best,

R.W. Jackson

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