Goyami

Automating Content for Better Search Results

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:04:27 -0500

Is it possible to automate the deliver of content to you website in order to get better organic search results in the search engines?

Honestly, I am skeptical that it's possible, but that doesn't stop creative developers, like Scott Trimble, creator of the Affiliate Marketing PHD and some very interesting tools like, StoreStacker, The Content Club, BlogSolution, RSS Evolution, ContentSolution, and RSSMagician, from creating a new tool that promises to promises to combine affiliate marketing and blogging to create an automated site around specific topics and themes.

I took BlogProfitz for a test run, to create Shopping-Today.com you can read more about my experience on my Wiseaff.com post.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Are these types of tools just content spam, and asking for search engines to penalize your sites, or are there ways that you have found to put them to good use?

Shoemoney Tools

Wed, 27 May 2009 09:45:01 -0500

Has anyone tried the Shoemoney Tools? I would be interested in hearing your opinions on the new tools.

If you haven't tried them, I found this $3.95 trial:

Shoemoney Tools 3.95 Trial

What are your thoughts?

Search Agencies vs Search Affiliates

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:48:03 -0500

Vinny Lingham posted the following article on Revenuews in August of 2006, I was looking for it on Revenews but it was missing. I found it on Archive.org and am reposting it here, because I think it is just as relevant today as it was in 2006 (if not more)

The question is : Do either agencies or search affiliates you cover every possible keyword relating to an online business? Probably not! So in that case, shouldn't you use both?! This post deals primarily with Paid Search Affiliates that direct link to the site, and use display URL's, something that all the larger advertisers allow, but smaller, more insecure ones, don't.

For any large business selling more than a few hundred products, it’s virtually impossible for anyone to cover all variations and misspellings of keywords that you could be bidding on in the search engines. Most (not all!) Search Marketing Agencies focus on spending a lot of money on branded keywords and 1,2 & 3 keyword combinations, as their systems cannot cope with volumes lower down in the tail (4,5,6 keyword combination). Companies like eBay, Expedia & Amazon have some of the most advanced search platforms, and even they realize that they cannot cover everything and utilize paid search affiliates to assist them in growing their business – one of the reasons why they are so ubiquitous in search.

I’m often asked whether or not utilizing paid search affiliates (Performance Marketers) will conflict with existing campaigns run by search agencies and the resounding answer from the data we have is NO!

The key differences between PPC Performance Marketers & typical (not all!) Search Agencies are:

You have to ask yourself at some point – what are you paying for?

Many argue that it’s more cost effective to use an Agency, as you cut out the middle man (the affiliate), but this is simply not true. The reason that performance marketers can make money is that they are able to scale their systems, sift out and analyze keywords better, and get the same clicks cheaper through the search engines, like Google, by obtaining high yields and better conversion rates. There is no additional charge to use performance marketers.

Gone are the days of 1-man affiliates sitting at home trying to manage campaigns using spreadsheets, Clicks2Customers, as an example, consists of about 40 full time employees – half engineers, half campaign managers. These are professionals in the marketing space who can manage brands, build traffic volumes and deploy world class search marketing campaigns. Clicks2Customers manages their multi-million keyword campaigns through over a dozen high end servers and generates over $100m/annum for their clients in sales and over $10m in annual revenues – all on a performance marketing basis, in the belief that this model is more linked to success, and not % of spend!

If you’re paying an effective $20 CPA to Google, and you offer an affiliate the same $20 CPA to acquire customers through Google, how is this a conflict, even if they use the same display URL – Google ranks the BEST ad, not the worse! If the affiliate is able to acquire customers cheaper than what your or your agency can, then realistically, they are entitled to the difference in margin for having a better campaign. I would obviously advise not to approach any old affiliate off the street, but as long as you work with reputable companies, you cannot lose.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some very forward thinking agencies, (NetExponent comes to mind), that understand that Search is the channel and if the client benefits by having more traffic and sales overall at the right target CPA, then it doesn’t matter whether you pay the search engine directly, use an intermediary or a combination of both (which is what I advise).

Affiliate and Agencies can work side by side, share data and grow their campaigns independently – the issue really comes in when Agencies, who right now tend to have a lot more leverage, given that many of the companies that outsource to agencies do not understand this space, place their trust in the agency who, as a defensive reaction – prevent affiliates from competing with them, due to fears that they will “look bad” in front of the clients. In that case, Agencies should not take business that cannot deliver on.

In my mind it’s just a question of ethics – Agencies need to advise their clients on what’s best for the client in terms of sales and exposure, not trying to protect their profits from search – a very well known agency in the UK actually admitted that their reason for advising their clients not to use affiliates, was fear of looking bad and losing revenue! On the other side of the coin, Affiliates need to focus on building real value, not just brand bidding, in order to demonstrate that they can provide large amounts of supplemental and quality traffic from the very long tail of search.

Samuel Morse Birthday

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:54:45 -0500

On April 27, 1791, a great american inventor was born, Samuel Morse. Morse is credited with creating the single wire telegraph system and Morse code.

Today Google honored his birthday with the following logo:

Happy Birthday Samuel Morse!

• — — • • • — — —

Saint Patrick's Day Logos

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:48:18 -0500

The search engines got into the Saint Patrick's day spirit this year with a lot of clovers, only a few had 4 leaves though!

Interesting thoughts and links

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:58:38 -0500

Interesting New Sites:
Sandlas Resorts & Beaches Resorts on Tripzam.com

Dealzam.com - Deals, Coupons, Deal Search & RSS Feeds

The Affiliate Twitter List

Signs of the Tough Economic Times:

AARP Supplemental HealthInsurance

Online Credit Counseling

PC Credit Card Processing

Morgage Lender Networks

Fixed Rate Home Equity Loans

Broad Matching and Unintentional Trademark Abuse

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:32:33 -0500

Lori Weiman does a good job laying out an important issue that many search markerters have fallen trap to in her blog post on Search Engine Land called "Does Auto-Matching Cause Unintentional Trademark Abuse?"

"Google and Yahoo, by way of the auto-matching feature, can show your ads on keywords that you did not intend to sponsor."

At imwave we have run into this a number of times. With Google they will take your broad match terms and display the ads on competitive trademarks you didn't ask for or know they were going to choose. Running a broad match term like "sneakers" doesn't mean you will only show up under terms like "basketball sneakers" and "tennis sneakers", but they may match your ad up to shoes, boots, sandals, or terms like nike, adidas, etc... At Yahoo the situation gets even worse! Not only will they start displaying your ad under these brand terms, they will actually sometimes adjust your ad copy (without telling you) to include these keywords in headlines so that they get higher click through rates!!! This can be very annoying when you have agreed to follow strict brand guidelines, and then Yahoo decides they know better!

What is the solution? You can stop running broad and advanced matching, but that is going to leave A LOT of opportunity on the table. The only other solution I know of is to work with your clients to establish a good list of negative keywords that you know you don't want your ads to appear on.

I'd love to hear your experiences with this issue.

Imwave Acquires Move Marketing

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:44:19 -0500

Imwave announed today that they have acquired move marketing, like imwave, focused on performance paid search marketing efforts. You can read more about the deal at the following urls:

The Press Release - http://blog.imwave.com/2008/11/imwave-acquires.html

The Wiseaff Article - http://www.wiseaff.com/2008/11/big-news-at-imw.html

The Revenews Article - http://www.revenews.com/adamviener/imwave-acquires-move-marketing/

Running Your Home Based Search Business

Tue, 20 May 2008 15:18:34 -0500

Search Engine Marketing businesses are great because you have lots of flexibility and if you work hard you can make quite a bit of money, but running your business out of our home can be challenging, especially when you have computer problems.

Now, I am fairly technical and can fix most software issues that arise, but lately I have been having some hardware issues with several computers at home.

I have had two laptops with broken powerjack issues (no way to charge them up), and another where the USB ports have decided to quit on me.

So I went to the number 1 organic listing in Google for "Laptop Powerjack Repair in Reston Virginia" (onCall258.com), gave them a call, and they came out to my home, picked up the laptops and fixed them up for me (actually the USB problem ended up being larger than I wanted to fix, so I kept that one with the broken USBs).

Score one, for local search engine marketing and search engine optimization efforts for onCall258!

Now I have my own local tech support team, cool!

If you can't find a local computer repair shop in Google, check out Angie's List, they have been life savers for me as well.

Google Hacks?

Thu, 08 May 2008 07:21:31 -0500

Are your sites save? The how to hack Google video on this page shows some interesting ways that people can use Google's advanced search techniques to find things that you thought were protected. Very interesting!

Take a look!

PepperjamNetwork Site Review - Affiliate Marketing 2.0?

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:55:50 -0500

The following is a paid review of the PepperjamNetwork Site that came in via ReviewMe.com. I signed up for ReviewMe sometime ago to see what it was all about, but this is the first review request that has come through.

----

The PepperjamNetwork Site: (www.pepperjamnetwork.com)

I have had a chance to browse through the site and offering of Pepperjam's new affiliate network, and on the surface it sounds interesting. Certainly Pepperjam has been very visible in the affiliate world having been both a publisher and an outsourced program management company. Kris Jones has been a public and vocal member of the community,

The company was founded in 1999, and according to Inc magazine had revenues of $3.4 million in 2006 (up 460.4% from 2005) with 26 employees at the time. This earned them the 293rd spot in Inc Magazine's top 500 small growing companies.

The new affiliate network offering from Pepperjam, being billed by them as "Affiliate Marketing 2.0", after 8 years of development, aims to address two primary shortcomings of other networks, namely (1) poor, unreliable communication tools and (2) lack of affiliate transparency.

For Advertisers, the site claims:

pepperjamNETWORK is built upon the foundation of empowering advertisers to build successful publisher relationships through exceptional communication technology and enhanced brand protection through full and unfettered publisher transparency.

For Publishers, the site claims: We strongly believe that publishers are the lifeblood of affiliate marketing. Therefore, we provide the necessary resources and educational materials to help publishers become Super Affiliates.

Great, but I have heard all this before. I haven't heard any new "network" claim to offer less communication or transparency.

So how does this new "transparency" work? As a search affiliate that primarily drives traffic directly to merchants via PPC advertising, I am happy if the merchant's know that my traffic comes from Google, Yahoo, or MSN, but I want some level of comfort that my keyword lists are being protected. I have some great concerns with merchants obtaining my hard built list of profitable keywords through analytics data and http referrer's.

So how does Peperjam's new affiliate tracking software work? If you click on Services / Affiliate Marketing / Affiliate Tracking Software, it just point's back to the home page. Apparently there are no current details on the site as to what the software tracks and how it works.

This is even more of a concern as unlike other networks, Pepperjam is an active PPC search publisher for their merchants. So now you have a "network" with clear conflicts of interest with affiliates.

I think it will be interesting to see how they do, but I won't be quick to start sending any significant traffic through their network without a better understanding on how they are tracking affiliates and how they are dealing with these clear conflicts of interest.

It will be nice, once I am activated, to have a chance to login and see what kinds of new innovations they have come up with after 8 years of development and a deep understanding of the market. The industry can always use some more innovation to really bring us into affiilate marketing 2.0.

Wiseaff Launches

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 14:06:25 -0500

I have just launched a new blog called Wiseaff where I will be focused discussing issues and insights in the affiliate marketing industry.

Please visit and let me know what you think!

Adam - the ultimate wiseaff....

--- wiseaff feed ---

Google Acquires Search Marketing Agency and Affiliate Network

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:27:50 -0500

Google recently announced that they have agreed to purchase DoubleClick for 3.1B from two private equity firms. Not a bad return for the private equity firms who took DoubleClick private in April of 2005 for just 1.1B.

DoubleClick is the largest provider of online ad technology. They help advertisers to purchase and track online advertising across the Internet and enable publishers with large amounts of traffic to sell their site's ad inventory and track that as well.

In June of 2004 DoubleClick acquired Performics, an affiliate network and management company and search engine marketing agency in an all cash deal totaling between $58M and $65M.

Now, seemingly in an effort to acquire the DART ad technologies and publisher relationships, Google has also acquired an affiliate network and search engine marketing agency that consequently gets paid by their customers to help them perform better in Google.

Google recently dipped their toes into the affiliate business with the launch of their CPA advertisements through the AdSense network, but clearly the ownership of a search marketing agency could be a huge conflict of interest for the search giant.

So what will happen to Performics? That is going to be the hot question floating around the affiliate community. Will Google integrate the affiliate network and search agency into their business or spin them off?

My guess is that Performics will be spun off or acquired. Perhaps AOL will scuttle their Tradedoubler deal when they see a Gem like Performics on the block.

What do you think? Should Search Engines be allowed to own an SEO and SEM company?

Yahoo Get's Early Jump on Valentines Day

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:33:50 -0500

Yahoo get's an early jump on Valentines Day with their heart logo:

Nice Job Yahoo!

Update:

Today Google and ASK updated their sites as well, here are their logos:

See Google's Prior Year's Logos

And ASK.com adjusted their search button to the following today to get in the Valentines Day Spriit!

Of Course no spriit from MSN Live. Still as bland as ever...

Happy Valentines Day Everyone!

LeReve at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas - Surprisingly Great!

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:34:50 -0500

Wow! When we went to the Affiliate Summit conference in Las Vegas, Karen White, the Affiliate Manager for the Wynn Hotel, was nice enough to get us some complementary tickets to see LeReve at the Wynn. Now I much more of a comedy guy, and when I first read about the show, I was a little skeptical about seeing a show about "Dream Sequences", I thought I might doze off myself, but from the first moment the show opened, I was enthralled with Le Reve and couldn't take my eyes off the action. It's one of those shows that you just have to see to believe. My guess is that's why Karen wanted us to see it for ourselves. Smart move. If you are going to Las Vegas, you just have to see LeReve. It's hard to describe with words, so take a look at the following LeReve preview video if you have a few minutes, you won't be disappointed.

Don't miss LeReve playing at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas!

Thanks Karen!