My foray into Microsoft adCenter has been challenging at first but I definitely feel now I’m starting to get the hang of it. My conversions are up and my traffic is steady.

One of my campaigns that I’m running was getting an average cost per click of 30 cents on Adwords and when I first ran it on adCenter it was getting 50 cents per click!

But for some odd reason after a month or so the clicks suddenly dipped down to 7 cents per click. Pretty sweet. Not sure why but my guess is that my account now has a history.

Its pretty awesome that Microsoft gives its advertisers access to a wealth of highly targeted demographic tools. But I’ll have to admit that I’m currently not trying it at the moment.

I’ll let my campaigns run for a while and then I’ll run some reports. I’m sure I’ll get more accurate data there for my own demographic targeting. Time will tell.

The adCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing merger is right around the corner. Seems like it’ll be more a challenge for Yahoo advertisers to do the transition since now it’ll all be run at adCenter. I just hope it doesn’t screw up any of my campaigns.

After much deliberating I have come the conclusion if that if you follow the methods that Amit Mehta teaches in PPC Classroom then its very likely that you will get your Google Adwords account banned.

I’m not saying that the material is bad. Just needs to be updated. In fact I have to give much credit to Amit’s PPC Classroom course for teaching me the ins and out of PPC marketing. I’m pretty sure without this course I’d be lost and broke trying to figure it out myself.

Your taught to test out an offer by direct linking first which is a great idea. Only problem is that sometimes you won’t know if an affiliate landing page has gotten slapped until you’ve promoted the offer. By then its too late.

I’m not just talking about landing pages that have very little content and no privacy policy, contact us, etc. I’m talking about landing pages that have good content the whole works and then turns out they’ve been slapped.

It wont be long before you wake up one day to find your Adwords account suspended.

Amit goes over a temporary method of using iframe redirects as a way of getting around the 1 url rule to test out an offer but it should also work for getting away with accidentally testing offers that have had their landing pages slapped. Believe it or not you can get your Adwords account reinstated. I’ll talk more about that in a future blog post.

I’ve actually been testing out Glenn Livingston’s Hyper Response club and I truly believe his methods will be the best way to get you on the ground running and profitable. Unlike PPC Classroom where you’ll lose money first before you become profitable, which of course isn’t a bad thing if your breaking even.

Mind you the Hyper Response club isn’t for beginners. They wont go over how to use Adwords and PPC marketing. You should be well versed in this before even joining the program. If not then stick with PPC Classroom before you start on this one.

Understand however that I’m not bashing on PPC Classroom. I just think they need to update their module on direct linking to test out offers because more than likely it’ll get your account banned.

For the past week I’ve been advertising on Microsoft’s adCenter. From what I’ve been told you can expect lower cost per click, less traffic and 6 times more conversions than on Google Adwords. Here’s a quick review of my findings so far.

Conversion tracking is as unreliable as Adwords. AdCenter has the annoying tendency to record more conversions then you’ve actually made.

I talked to a adCenter rep, yes you can call them, about this issue and they mentioned the reason behind this is that if a customer makes  a purchase and then comes back to the thank you page later then it’ll also record that as a conversion. If the customer refreshes that same page it’ll also count as a conversion. Yea, pretty unreliable.

Billing is pretty confusing as well. They have an invisible threshold that once you reach then they’ll automatically charge you. I’m still waiting for answers on this one.

Pausing your campaign doesn’t erase all the history you’ve built up like on Adwords. So you can easily resume a campaign anytime you want and the history stays intact. Pretty nice.

One annoynce I have with this however is that lets say you’ve set your  budget at $20 daily. When the $20 budget is met then adCenter automatically pauses your campaign for the day, however for some stupid reason it doesn’t pause completely. So expect it to run till at least $40. Manually pausing it yourself seems to do a better job of stopping the campaign.

Why can’t you view all keywords and all ad copy together? You have to individually go into an adgroup to see them.

AdCenter also has a desktop software like Adwords editor so its a pretty nice software to have if your uploading a big campaign. However as of this moment the the latest adCenter desktop updates are pretty buggy.

Its not all negative however. One powerful aspect of adCenter is the awesome targeting. They’ve got many tools that you can use to precisely target your customers and set incremental bidding. I’m still testing this out to see how reliable it is.

So far I haven’t seen 6 times more conversions and my cost per click is actually higher than it was on Google Adwords. However it seems like my average cost per click is dropping pretty fast. My conversions actually seem pretty normal as well.

I’ll let this run for another week and see how it performs. Be on the lookout for the continuation of this review.

I jotted these notes down recently while listening to Glen Livingston’s Adwords webinar on negative keywords. Its totally amazing how much negative keywords can have an impact on your Adwords campaign.

Enjoy!

THE WHAT AND WHY OF NEGATIVE KEYWORDS

• Keywords added at the ad group or campaign level that prevent impressions
• For search queries containing negative keyword term.
• Phrase and broad matches need negatives (exact keywords don’t)
• Negative keywords add control to your campaign.
• Exact match keyword’s CTR factors more into Quality Score than broad and phrase.

MATCH TYPES FOR NEGATIVES

Negative Broad – Default negative match type, usually just called “Negative Keywords” or sometimes “standard Negative keywords.” All individual words in
the negative keyword must be present in the search query for the negative
keyword to be activated as a filter. Google says it won’t prevent ads from
showing on variations of these terms, however we find that negative broad match
DOES cover misspellings.

Negative Phrase Match – The rule of phrase match apply to the search query for
the negative keyword to be activated as a filter.

Negative Exact Match – The keyword needs to appear exactly in the search query for the negative keyword to be activated as a filter.

• Example: [barbeque]. If someone types in barbeque then your ad won’t show up however if your keyword was “barbeque equipment” then it would show up.
• Best Practice: Apply Negatives as Broadly as You Confidently Can

A SPECIAL USE FOR NEGATIVE EXACT MATCH

If your CTR is high enough for a broad match keyword, Google will drop individual words out of your query.

If this generalization doesn’t work in your favor, counter it with a negative exact match.

• Example: You make a lot of conversions on the keyword security guard uniforms and your successful ad has a high CTR. Google broad match will start showing you for the more general search terms such as “security guard” which no longer is relevant to your keywords and ad copy.

• Solution: Add security guard and security guards as a negative exact match keywords in your adgroup, i.e.,  -[security guard], -[security guards]

3 CATEGORIES OF NEGATIVE KEYWORDS

1. Filtering for Ambiguity – The keyword has more than one meaning & I don’t want traffic that isn’t applicable.

• Example: I sell Baseball caps and don’t want traffic from nutritional supplements because of the keyword caps. U would then put the following keywords into negative: capsule, liquidcap, prohormone, veterinary

• Example: I sell baseball caps and don’t want traffic from pop cap because of the keyword caps. U would then put the following keywords into negative: bejeweled, tutorial, game, flash

• Example: I sell Baseball caps and don’t want traffic from bottle cap because of the keyword caps. U would then put the following keywords into negative: recycle, collection, price guide, crown cap

• Bottom Line: Filtering for ambiguity stop unprofitable traffic.

• Where to find: Dictionary definitions, wiki entries, titles ofunrelated books, songs, movies, TV shows, words related to online gaming, and monitoring your existing traffic.

2. Filtering for Relevancy – It’s the right definition for the keyword, but the particular keyword though related to the general subject matter is not relevant to my business.

• Example: Caps. If I sell baseball caps, but I don’t sell Baltimore Orioles Caps. You would then negative the following keywords: oriole, orioles, Baltimore, os caps.

• If I sell baseball caps, but I don’t sell Collectible Caps. You would then negative the following keywords: signed, autographed, autograph, ichiro

• If I sell baseball caps, but I only sell active teams. You would then negative the following keywords: senators, pilots, expos, colt 45s

• Bottom Line: Filtering for relevancy stops unprofitable traffic.

While it’s possible someone looking to buy a Washington Senators cap (team no longer exists) also happens to want a baseball cap from an active team (after all, the searcher is interested in baseball), it’s extremely unlikely you can turn a profit on these words.

Why?

Because you can’t fill the need in the “inner conversation” of the searcher.

• Put into Practice: Find as many of these negatives as you can. Maintain a list of common ones, i.e., image, free, lyrics, mp3 and jpg.

• Where to Find: Mine the search query reports within Adwords, explore what people often Google related to your high traffic keywords, i.e.,  if you’re in retail, find related products that u don’t sell, as often those make good negatives.

• Competitor names are almost always negatives of this sort, too.

3. Filtering for Profit – It’s the right definition for the keyword and it’s relevant to what I sell, but I can’t be profitable with it.

Filtering for profit with negatives is a measure of last resort. Monitor and test!

Bid management, landing page adjustments, ad copy changes, Perry Marshall’s peel and stick, and adding negatives based on relevancy and ambiguity should be tried first.

Let traffic and potential revenue and proximity to profit determine when to try harder on a keyword or deploy this tactic instead.

• Example: Caps. If I sell baseball caps including Yankee caps, but there are so many competitors selling Yankee caps, I can’t get traffic at a profitable cost per accusation. You would then negative out: New York, Yankee, New York, Yankees

• Bottom Line: Now Enough of the traffic these negative keywords stop is profitable traffic. You wouldn’t turn away this business, but you’re better off not advertising for it.

• Put Into Practice: If you give up on a specific term because you can’t make that keyword profitable, consider making it a negative keyword. This works with words that represent specific products or services, not general keywords.

• Example: If the specific term flexi kit baseball cap rarely converted but costed money, turn it off and and see if you’re better off with it as a negative.

• Example: If the general term baseball dragged in lots of clicks but very low conversions, you wouldn’t make that a negative because it would eliminate lots of profitable traffic.

• Sometimes even general keywords make sense to use as negatives, e.g., Rob’s window repair example.

WHERE TO FIND NEGATIVE KEYWORDS

1. “That’s SO NOT what I meant”

Use these tools to filter for ambiguity BEFORE you launch campaigns.

• Wikipedia: Disambiguation
• Use amazon.com in the music category, books, etc
• iTunes store search
• Emusic
• Library of congress
• Megavideo
• YouTube
• idmb
• World of warcraft

2. “Own the language around your business”

Use these tools to know the keyword traffic around your advertising.

Google Web Search/Keyword Tools:

• Google adwords search query report
• Google.com, .uk, .ca, .au, etc.
• Google keyword tool (also use the url keyword search)
• Google search based keyword tool
• Google Insights for search
• Google  sponsored links

Beyond Google:

• Trellian
• AdIntelligence
• Reference.com
• Affiliate Elite
• Keycompete
• Ispionage
• Compete.com

Blogs and Tweets:

• Google blog searh
• Technorai
• Google Reader
• Search twitter
• Tweetgrid

Analytics Tracking Systems:

• Google Analytics
• Web trends
• Omniture
• Web analytics
• Propriety back end software

Hopefully you guys find my notes as useful as I did. Let me know what you guys think.

Some quick notes on Peter Dunbars own twist on Perry Marshall’s peel and stick strategy.

1) Take high performing keywords and put them into their own Adwords campaign.
- improves impression share
- campaign starts out with a great history

2) Keep old campaign running.

3) Enter the keywords you’ve “peeled and sticked” as exact negative keywords in the old adgroup so that it doesn’t trigger that ad group.

4) keep match types separate. One adgroup will contain just broad, another just phrase and another just exact. Only one keyword per adgroup.

5) Use broad and phrase keywords as a breeding ground for highly relevant match
keywords.

6) Example in Peter’s own words: “If I have a broad match keyword “cocker spaniel collar” and a phrase match “cocker spaniel collar” and pulled a search query report, and saw I received a conversion on “blue cocker spaniel collar” I would add [blue cocker spaniel collar] to my exact match campaign, and add -[blue cocker spaniel collar] to both the phrase and broad at the adgroup level.”

I’ve heard of this method before from some of the other PPC gurus so I’ll definitely have to try it soon.

Here’s the original blog post if anyone wants to check it out:

Peter Dunbar – Peel and Stick

My apologies.

It’s been quite a while since I posted anything up. I’ve been pretty much focusing 100% of my efforts on Adwords campaigns.

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve created several posts recently and have made them only visible to myself. However I am considering making them visible to everyone so that we can all benefit from the trials and errors that I’m putting myself through.

It’s been a very expensive learning experience. There have been many ups and downs but at the end of the day your always one step closer to the ultimate goal.

I’ll also be posting up a lot of other non-Adwords notes that I’ve been jotting down since last year as well. Consider these the cliff notes of internet marketing.

Stay tuned…

Hitler finally comes to grips with the reality of being an affiliate. This ones the best one yet!

FYI: This is an ultra late review of Cell Phone Cash that came out last year around the 4th quarter of 2010. I meant to get this out after Cell Phone Cash released but got sucked into other internet marketing programs. Anyway on to the review!

Cell Phone Cash is a brand new make money program from Mack Michaels, the founder of the ultra successful Maverick Money Makers. Membership to this program costs $67 monthly.

No it’s not about selling cell phones or mobile plans. Cell Phone Cash is about you direct linking affiliate products via Admob, an ad network similar to Adwords, but instead of advertising on internet search engines like Google you actually promote products via cell phones with internet browsing capabilities like Apple’s iPhone or Verizon’s Droid.

In the member’s area the layout of Cell Phone Cash is very well thought out and simple to use. Unfortunately access to a community forum is only available if you join the Maverick Money Makers program which of course isn’t free.

Cell Phone Cash is broken up into an 8 week course. First weeks training course consists of eight high definition videos which I quickly gobbled up in an hour. Turns out you can’t continue to the next week’s videos until the following week.

Doh!

Oddly you’ll get a feeling that the last video of the very first course was actually the real meat and potatoes of the whole program. Everything else seems like filler material to justify people paying and using the program. However for those new to internet marketing it’ll definitely prove helpful.

As of right now the average bid prices on Admob are super low at 3 cents! These are unheard of bidding prices that only existed years ago when Google’s Adwords was still brand new to the scene. Yes its still possible to get 3 cent bids on Adwords but that’s a whole different topic I wont go into.

One of my pet peeves was that your ad getting approved on Admob can take anywhere from 24 hours to several days. Although, a few of my campaigns was approved immediately after I complained in the Admob community forums.

It’s simply crazy as to how much traffic there is on the mobile search engines. With Admob you have to add funds into your account with $50 being the minimum. A few of my campaigns went from $50 to zero within only a few hours of it going live! The average impressions I got were around 190,000 with 1,600 clicks.

Simply amazing.

A serious flaw to Admob is that you don’t have control over the keyword bidding so your ads end up being shown to everyone regardless if they have any interest in your product. This increases the amount low quality clicks.

One of the oddest things happened a few days into the course. Mack Michaels released a statement on the Cell Phone Cash website indicating that they don’t recommend Cell Phone Cash users to promote money-making programs on cell phones due to the nature of most people not interested in reading a long sales letter and then pulling out their credit card to make a purchase.

It begs the question then why did they mentioned in the training videos in the first place that they recommended make-money products because it was profitable on cell phones?

Of course after this statement was released I did lose all faith in the program. It was obvious they were promoting a product they themselves never used.

I’ll have to be honest. Even with the huge impressions and clicks ninety percent of my campaigns were not profitable. The only one that generated sales was, not surprisingly, my iTunes campaign which produced about 50 sales with a net profit of $3.50.

With an investment of $50 I made $3.50 back. Yay!

Summary

The damaging aspect of the statement that was released by Mack Michaels hurts this programs credibility. However marketing on cell phones still has huge potential but at this early of a stage it proves too risky since you have no control where your ads will be shown.

Pros

• Huge untapped potential for marketing on cell phones
• Costs extra to access community forums
• Training videos make the learning process very easy
• 60 day money back guarantee

Cons

• Lots of filler material so for experienced marketers there’s nothing new here except for the module on marketing on cell phones.
• Statement released by Mack Michaels proves very damaging to the credibility of this program.
• You have no control over keyword bidding with Admob so your ads are shown everywhere.
• Its hard to justify $67 a month for a program that you can complete in a day.

Important: “All of the reviews on my website are REAL reviews of programs that I have tried myself and paid good money for. Just like you I got fed up with reading fake review websites where the author had actually never tried the program. You won’t get any of that BS here. This is the read deal.

I’d also like to note that my reviews will include scary affiliate links so essentially I’ll make a few bucks if you decide to check out the program yourself. Yay! Thanks for the support!”

~ Phong Khang

Founder of HeroicBlogger.com

"Oh great here he comes..."

You ever get that feeling that people are secretly avoiding you? More on that in a minute.

You’re never safe at the mall.

At every corner there’s a death trap of salesman or woman just waiting to pounce on their next victim.

They don’t care if you want the product or not. They just want you to buy it.

Luckily their radius of travel is less than 10 feet from their original location.

And then you’re reminded why you never visit the mall anymore.

You finally get home and you think you’re safe. But not so fast. Your nephews already there and he’s already begun pitching about a new vacuum cleaner that has the sucking power of a fighter jet.

It’ll only cost you $2,000!

Of course now you avoid him at all costs as well.

And then you’re online chatting with another marketer whose selling tactics involves stopping people dead on their tracks and then engulfing the poor soul with an in-your-face sales pitch. He actually believed that people didn’t know they wanted it until you showed it to them.

Kind of reminds you of the snakes at the mall and your annoying nephew doesn’t it? But most importantly of all…

Does it remind you of your own cold selling tactics? Are people avoiding you?

This old fashioned way of cold selling no longer works. But honestly did it ever?

Here’s the new and improved approach you should be doing.

Sell only to people who want your product and avoid others like a plague!

Its so common sense isn’t it?

Not only will people like you more but they may also start seeing you as a reliable person they can turn to when they need something.

It also has the nice added effect of increasing your profits because now you’re only selling to those that actually want your product.

Another awesome side bonus is that now you’re stressing less because you’re no longer doing any cold sales.

How awesome is that?

But wait. What if your product is hard to promote and people don’t really want it?

Ditch it.

The effort and time you spend trying to promote it could’ve been used towards promoting a product that people actually want.

Find a pain and provide a solution. Your customers will line up with money in hand.

What’s your experience with cold selling?

Nothing beats knowing your work is getting done while you’re at the beach on a 2 month vacation enjoying a nice cold drink made possible by the wonders of outsourcing.

One of the awesome ways of automating your online business that will produce results instantly is by outsourcing your repetitive tasks or other parts of your business to a virtual assistant from overseas.

In case you haven’t read my review of ReplaceMyself, it’s is where I hired my virtual assistant from the Philippines for a $180 a month for full time work. Another benefit besides the low cost is the fact that most Filipinos from the Philippines are fluent in English.

If your so inclined to you could also do what the owner of ReplaceMyself did and hire a virtual assistant to check your email!

Personally for me I needed a virtual assistant because my online business got to a point where I needed an extra hand to handle the other areas of my online business that I couldn’t get to which were usually repetitive tasks.

If I wanted to I could also hire a virtual assistant who had talent in a specific area that I was lacking in. Never do you want to waste your time learning something new when you can outsource it for so cheap.

Everything in your business that you hand off to your virtual assistant should contain clear written instructions that are simple to read and understand. Make sure you keep these instructions in a folder so that you can use them again down the road when you hire new virtual assistants.

Be sure to go over these instructions with your virtual assistant before you let them loose and make sure they full comprehend it. Our usual meetings took place on Gmail’s glorious chat box.

You could right off the bat hire them when your online business is still new but from my experience it’s very easy to get into a situation where you run out of work for them to do so they end up doing misc tasks that produce nothing for you and costs you money in the end. This is why early planning is essential.

You do have several options however.

You could hire a virtual assistant who has the benefit of a special skill in an area that you may be lacking in such as creating websites. That way they’re building your website while you concentrate on building content. These guys cost a little more but definitely still cheaper than hiring anyone local or in the USA.

You could also hire your virtual assistant on a temporary basis where he only works for you when you actually need him.  Be sure to let them know early one what they’re getting themselves into and how long they can expect to stay hired.

One of the ultimate goals and benefits of hiring and maintaining a relationship with your first virtual assistant is so that eventually when your online business starts taking off you can hire more virtual assistants who are then managed by the first guy you hired thus freeing yourself so that you can concentrate on more important things, like perfecting your sun tan at the beach on a 2 month long vacation.

Hence the term “replace myself.”

There are many positives and benefits to outsourcing your work overseas however don’t rush in until you have a clear plan on how you’re going to use your virtual assistant effectively.

Oh, you haven’t hired a virtual assistant yet? Hop on over to ReplaceMyself via my affiliate link and check’em out.