Not too long ago, I started testing out Ian Fernando’s Social Sniper (formerly known as Twit Sniper). This tool was first introduced on Wickedfire and received an avalanche of positive reviews and thumbs up. From the moment you start playing around with this tool - you will quickly begin to see the potential.

Now before I go on - let me post a disclaimer..

Social Sniper can be a very powerful tool whether you use it for right or wrong. It should not be abused and overused though. Make sure you take a look at Twitter’s official terms on Spam and Abuse before you think about raising hell. Some reasons Twitter will suspend you for are:

- If you have followed a large amount of users in a short amount of time
- If you have followed and unfollowed people in a short time period
- If you repeatedly follow and unfollow people
- If you have a small number of followers compared to the amount of people you are following
- If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates

So don’t go out creating dozens of Twitter accounts, mass-follow (or unfollow) thousands of people in a few days, or mass-message people with your spammy links at random. You get the point.

However - DO use Social Sniper to find people or businesses who are interested in your topics. Tweeters you can follow - who in return may follow you back.

Ok, let’s get the hard facts and features out of the way first:

• What is it?
  A targeted auto-follower and mass-messaging tool for Twitter
• What can it do?
  Find and follow large numbers of people on Twitter based on topics (keywords) you specify. This in turn results in some of those people wanting to follow you back - resulting in an increase in followers.
• Why would you want it?
  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the more Twitter followers you have for a given niche, the more you can turn that base of followers into something useful. Build up your own brand or domain, get targeted visitors to your website, gather recognition for your band/blog/forum/product/organization/whatever.
• How much does it cost?
  $27.97/month, backed by a 60-day money back guarantee
• Does it work?
  Yes, it sure does.

As soon as you sign up, you get access to all the tutorial videos and the forum that teaches you how it all works. All parts of the tool are very easy to use. Ian also told me they are adding some new features soon that will really improve the tool even further.

Twitter allows a certain ratio of following vs. followers. What this means is that if your account is following 2000 people, but only 20 people are following you - that looks suspicious, and Twitter might flag you for a ban. Like any other new social platform, they hate seeing Twitter used as a free-for-all spam anarchy and they are aware that tools such as Social Sniper exists.

And this is why I started the post with my disclaimer. Always keep within the bounds and limits suggested to you by Social Sniper. The tool will let you know if you are trying to follow too many people and you don’t have enough followers yet. Take the time to clean out your “following” list once in a while. (Many of the accounts you find will be basically worthless bots or spammers anyway) so that you can keep growing your follow base off of real people continually.

Now, every aspiring online entrepreneur knows that automation is one of the keys to scaling success. By automating your tasks, you save time. Social Sniper lets you schedule your follow routines while you’re asleep or away, and in ways that are within the terms of Twitter (unless you specifically ignore that and blast your account onto the ban boat).

I mentioned targeted visitors earlier too. How targeted? How about down to geographic locations (such as only finding followers from a city or zip-code), or using the advanced keyword selector to pinpoint exactly those words you do or don’t want to find in people’s tweets. You can even find tweets only mentioning certain tweeters, or within certain timeframes (such as people talking about gift ideas, but only during Christmas season).

And…you can follow the followers of a certain person if you like as well. For example, you know of a few authority bloggers in a niche who already have a good-sized following. Social Sniper can attempt to follow those same followers, so that your account can trigger interest from those people as well. Pretty cool!

There is no limit to how many basic or advanced keywords you can add. Social Sniper eventually goes through them all and finds anyone triggering your search, and you can watch this happening in real-time, or walk away while it does its job.

Overall, this tool does its job well. I’ve used it to launch some side project hobby sites I have, and within a short time increased visitors, readers, and comments on my new sites. Within a week or two - you can easily create lots of interest (and permanent readers) to your new blog or site that you literally started from scratch with no SEO or paid traffic.

You can then use that momentum to either build up your site’s traffic further, or monetize your site however you would like. In this way, Social Sniper quickly pays for itself. Plus - there is no limit to the number of accounts you use this with.

Here is how most affiliate marketers approach targeting a new audience:

1. they discover a new target market/niche (through their AM or word of mouth)
2. find out what the ‘hottest’ offers are and take a quick glance at their landing pages
3. Maybe do some quick ‘research’ on keywords and then check out the core demographic at Quantcast
4. They throw together some ads and landing page copy based on what they assume will work for their core demographic.  Perhaps they get some ads and landing page suggestions from their buddies or affiliate managers who are already doing ok with them.
5. Launch
6. Get low or mediocre click-through and conversion rates on ads and landing pages, and be like “Wtf?!?”

Sounds familiar? If you have done this, you have fallen for the mistake of thinking that you “know” who your buyer is. Or assuming you know enough about them to sell to them. Most of the time, this isn’t the case.

Most of the time - we as affiliate marketers are selling products to people to whom we truly cannot relate. Case in point: offers for women (diet, teeth whitening, clothing coupons, dating). Most affiliate marketers are men and we run campaigns to those offers guesstimating what will “probably” work best. This is where our creativity most often limits to checking out what others are doing, replicate, and hope for the best.

But there is better way to get around this. A way to become more creative with your creatives. What you need to do is sit down and try to BECOME your average target buyer. And I don’t mean dressing like them or getting fat just for the sake of it. I mean - try to envision what sorts of desires and fears this person has.

You may already be familiar with the concept of user personas (or “buyer personas”).  Our old friend Wikipedia describes a persona as:

A persona, in the word everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. This is an Italian word that derives from the Latin for “mask” or “character”, derived from the Etruscan word “phersu”, with the same meaning. Popular etymology derives the word from Latin “per” meaning “through” and “sonare” meaning “to sound”, meaning something in the vein of “that through which the actor speaks”, i.e. a mask (early Greek actors wore masks).

Note the words actor and mask. If you can grasp the underlying meaning of this in the context of identifying with your sales prospects (your landing page visitors) - you are already ahead of the crowd.

For every product out there - there are potential customers wanting to be served. Your job is to hunt them down and serve them exactly what they want. And I’m not just talking about giving them the “lowest price” or the “most bang for your buck” either. I’m talking about giving them what they deeply desire within. All people want to improve their lives to some extent. Whether you’re living in cardboard box - or in a mansion. You’re still gonna want change and newness in your life.

- Fat people wanna get thinner. But it’s not about losing X number of pounds or being healthy. On a deeper level, it’s mostly about acceptance and respect from other people. For improved life quality. Feeling attractive and wanted. Not the opposite.

- People with money trouble want more just than the money. It’s not about amounts or high-figure incomes - but rather about having freedom from stress and feeling tied down. Money in itself is just a “thing” and numbers are just numbers. But money so tremendously affect our quality of life.  It dictates what people can or cannot do with their life.

- Teenagers love “personality tests” (like IQ/Crush offers, etc). Why? Because they are often insecure about who they are and how people perceive them. It’s really about reassurance and feeling adequate. Not about the “tests” themselves.

You may notice a pattern here… On the surface, we think or talk about what we want in tangible / measurable terms. But what we want cannot be measured. Sometimes not even expressed in words.

So instead, consider this WAY more efficient approach to targeting.

1. Based on what you know about the niche and offer(s), identify your target market and do some elite research before-hand.
2. With the data you gathered on demographics, sit down and write down a description (a miniature biography if you will) on the most typical buyer of this product.

Target persona: Jenny, a white female, 26 years old, living in her 2-bedroom apartment and working as a sales representative at a major marketing firm. Jenny is single, but she’s goes out on the weekends to clubs with her friends in hopes of finding the prince of her dreams to settle down with. She still enjoys her single life though, and want to take it all in for a few more years before she sees herself settling down to start a family. She is well-versed on the internet, having profiles on all the social networks and reads all the major celebrity blogs and gossip sites daily. Jenny is also used to shopping online.

Becoming Jenny: What is it that makes her ‘tick’ from day to day? How does she want her friends and family to see her? Again, think not in terms of physical attributes - but rather what she wants them to THINK about her when they are around her. She wants to impress, to glow, and to feel like a girl in every sense.

Girls like her love to shop, but it isn’t just for the sake of shopping. It is a means to stay on top, up to date, and not to say the least: up to par. With a female audience, there is often the element of competition. Women are very competitive by nature. We’ve all heard of girls wanting to bring a not-so-hot girlfriend with her to a club - just so that she herself can look even hotter in comparison.  Buying things like this purse for herself will make her feel “up to par” with her competition. Jenny wants the other girls at the mall to be at least a bit jealeous, as if she is saying to them “now you girls stand a lesser chance than me of getting a date…just check out my new competitive advantage!”

Your approach: Jenny comes across your ad on one of the places you’re running traffic. She sees your media buy banner, your ppv popup, your ppc text ad, or whatever. In those ads - the initial approach is still A.I.D.A: Get her attention and interest first and foremost. It’s ok to use more measurable terms here. The ads can mention price (if it’s a selling point), free shipping (if applicable), offer end date, etc. - all tangibles. And all “surface” factors, like neon-lights to attract her eye.

Ok, so you reeled her in and she is now ready to check out what your landing page has to offer. As you should already know - you now only have just a few seconds to grab onto her attention and hold on to it. You have already done your homework on a good landing page design, and so your headline works well transitioning her from seeing the ad to telling her what this offer is all about.

And now to the ‘meat and potatoes’… Knowing Jenny’s inner reasonings for interest in your ad, your landing page copy should attempt to connect to her senses, and convince her that there is no reason why she should not be ordering. Your copy connects with her feelings and emotions. Your copy is only moderately focused on the features of the purse. Because although her logic side of the brain wants to justify the tangible value of this purse, her emotional brain loves a good flirt. Her emotional brain already knows how good Jenny would feel strutting this purse, and it only needs enough conviction to owerpower her logical sense.

So, knowing Jenny’s persona, you write almost as if you are selling directly to her:

“with this very feminine new handbag by Coach, prepare to have heads turn the next time you go down to the mall”

“..it looks and feels exclusive. Pamper yourself! When was the last time you did that anyway? It’s a known fact that men are very attracted to women who glow with confidence and appeal. You can surely find a cheaper handbag at Sears, but will it make you feel like a proud woman?”

And don’t forget your images. The lazy approach is to slap a catalog photo of the purse and hope for the best. But if you wanna up your game - think about your persona again. Brighten things up! Use images that express benefits and not features. Feelings. Not facts.

Think about it - why are fashion models used to display (wear) clothing and accessories? If it wasn’t for the people’s need to identify with and imagine how they would feel like wearing them, we could just have pictures of the items by themselves and models would be replaced by dummy mannequins. Celebs always work well too..

Maintain your ‘connection’ with Jenny throughout your copy. Walk away from it for a while and then read it again with your Jenny mask still on. Try to force yourself not to think like a marketer when you look it over.

It’s tempting to ask yourself;
- will this paragraph convert better if I do this?
- do I mention the keywords enough times?
- I wonder how that headline will affect my click through rate?

But step out of your marketer for a moment and as Jenny would, ask:
- how would this purse look matched with my beige boots?
- will my friends become bitter with jealeousy, or proudly envious?
- will Steve give me an extra look next time I see him at the coffee shop?

Target persona: Clark Wagenheim, a mid-level manager at a manufacturing plant. Clark is 46 years old and lives in a typical suburb with his wife, three kids, and two dogs. He lives for his family but is often too occupied with his job. He hopes some day to retire before normal retirement age, but his main dilemma is lack of time to appreciate time off. If he could only supplement his income enough to afford some real vacations or get rid of that damn mortgage.

Becoming Clark: As is the case with most people for one reason or another - fear of something is what controls Clark’s life. Fear of having his best years with kids while they’re still kids slip away from him. Fear of losing momentum towards his financial future. How will his next 10 years look like? Will they need to downsize their home in order to afford their lifestyle? If so, what would be the consequences for his wife and kids? Is his wife really proud of him deep down? These things are always in the back of Clark’s mind. As the provider and man of the house, Clark has fears he wants to convert into security and worry-free comfort. He knows he should put his money into investments. Some of his friends already have.

Your approach: As in the previous example, you set up ads like normal and following those same principles. It’s on the landing page we got our chance to connect and ‘talk’ to Clark. Our mission is to gap the bridge between fear and a solution. He came here in the first place because he wants to end or resolve his fears. Only on the surface does he care about how many dollars he can expect to earn per month, or what the return rates are on average. As with Jenny above - facts and features still play a role, but in order to convert better we need to first get to the bottom of Clark’s issues.

Clark’s mind wants deep down to have security. We will speak to his business-oriented and logical mind in numbers. And of possibilities for what the numbers can do for his bottom line with time and family. Make him associate and relate to others in his shoes.

“our mutual fund offerings are most popular with investors like you - people who want to take charge of their personal life and provide a stable return for years to come. If this is your first time spending some of your income on investing, we understand that it can seem a bit complicated at first. But we can also assure you that any question you may have are already answered in our help section and among our large and growing member base of satisfied men, women, and families.

It is up to you to decide how you spend your new investment earnings. For example; How many years has it been since you took your friends or loved ones on a well-deserved vacation? Playing the lottery or hoping for a raise at your job is the least likely way of getting there. Follow your heart, and achieve more freedom with the safest method to secure your family’s financial future - through our high-return, low-risk investments.”

Remember all the way through your copy that Clark has the family at stake here, and that he does have something to lose (Unlike Jenny up there who is young, single and only out $199 if she regrets her purchase). So being deceptive is not going to do you or Clark any good. Instead focus on reflecting the sincere nature and legitimacy that Clark demands. Instill trust and identify with his most inner “wants”.

Identifying and developing visitor personas is worth the time when you are creating landing pages, auto-responders, or other material that demand more time from the reader.

Unless you have totally misjudged your audience, and if you’ve done your homework, you should be hitting the nail way closer than most of your competitors right from the start. There will still be room for split-testing and optimization of course, but you can waste less money and time on finding out what works in your ads and copy. Money saved is money made. Most of this might read like common sense to you already, but are you actually practicing it? Think of it as a short-cut to higher ROIs.

But in my defense - I am glad I have a hoarder mentality when it comes to the digital world. Storing files and data doesn’t really take up more room, and storage is cheap. And over the years, since I started using the internet in 1992 - I have gathered quite a collection of all kinds of stuff I’ve found around the ‘net; Pictures, videos, articles, website designs, audio files, fonts, logos, clipart, vector images, you name it.

Being an internet marketer, this collection has become very valuable. Because not only have I collected tons of media type files, but also actual content and IDEAS for content, such as ad banners, headlines, selling copy, cool design ideas (like the one below), and more. All of this info encompasses my swipe file.

What on earth is a swipe file? It’s not one actual file, but rather a term used for a collection of stuff you have “swiped” (collected) - that you intend to use for creative inspiration in the future. Whenever I enter a new niche and need to capture the attention of a new audience, I turn to my swipe file. In there, I often find cool ideas for banners or some funny headline that would probably work good for my new ad group. Or I can dig up some old ads I had found and saved ages ago that was of no use then - but now is JUST what the doctor ordered!

So I encourage you to start your own swipe file today. Organize it into a folder with subfolders on your computer. Like, “Banners_DiethHealth”, “Banners_BizOp”, “Headlines.txt”, etc.

And - make a habit of quickly saving stuff you come across while surfing. Install the Firefox Screengrab addon, and start saving the ads you see. You will be glad you did later.

Many of my readers will already be familiar with who Ryan Eagle, a.k.a. The Birdman, is. At his relatively young age, he has accomplished more than many older internet marketers twice his age can dream of. Ryan is one of those people with a constant drive to reach for the skies.

Within a fairly short time, he has gone from being a guy some people didn’t take too seriously - to becoming a well-respected player on the field,  as well as owner of an outstanding private affiliate network, EWA Network. If there’s one thing Ryan knows, it’s how to turn hard work and persistence into piles of cold hard cash.

In this interview, he tells me how he keeps it all rolling, where he came from, and where he’s headed.
Now - go on and read it!

Has made the majority of online income from:
Internal Affiliate Marketing and EWA Network. Most of our affiliate marketing comes from media buys, but we also get substancial traffic from social sources (like MyAds and Facebook Ads) and PPV (using TrafficVance).

How old were you when you got your first taste of making monies online, and what were your sources of inspiration / what got you into this?
I started making websites when I was 14 years old, mainly started forums and gaming related websites. I learned about SEO and built that into the forums that I owned, then started earning passive income from them. When I turned around 16, I built a “network” of sites containing interests that I enjoyed to increase the passive income that I generated.

I just hit a new trend early, the entire MySpace Resource sites phase and several of my sites got ranked in Google and nearly overnight I became successful…. and that’s just the beginning of the Ryan Eagle Empire.

Did you sacrifice school and studies for internet marketing, and if so - how did your family feel about your online pursuits?
I completed highschool and went to college for a little over a year, but decided to drop out due to company profits. My Mother was upset, but my Father was all for it. He saw my statements and was managing my money from the beginning so I made responsible decisions. I moved home and bought a house when I was 19, worked double-full time from home since then.

Many aspiring internet marketers today are young - often teenagers not even 18 years old. Getting started that young could be hard considering it’s hard to get a credit card, hard to get approved to networks, etc. My kids are now 9 and 11 but I have a feeling they’re gonna want to sign up to your network in the next couple of years, lol. What advice would you tell the young guys who are trying to get into this?
Get a credit card or some sort of loan (from a family member, friend, investor) and get in the trenches. The best learning tool is losing money, and actually doing the advertising. I see too many people stick on the “reading” or “learning” phase - the best teacher is hands on experience.

When you first started seeing some stable profits, what obstacles (if any) did you encounter to largely scale your revenue from there?
Stable profits? I wish! Campaigns come and campaigns go, you need to keep innovating to keep your level of income in this game high. Diversification among multiple different niches and traffic sources was my key to the riches. I’m always looking for new traffic sources, trying new landing pages, and optimizing / scaling existing campaigns.

Is there particular forum, person, course, book, whatever that you would give credit to for teaching you or upping your IM game?
I don’t read. I learn by losing money - like I said, experience is the best way to become profitable. I commonly write guides and share them with EWA affiliates.

Every one of us had to start somewhere, and like most guys starting out I’m sure you also had your ups and downs in the beginning. What was the key motivating factor for you to stay determined to succeed?
Truthfully I think my best motivation is rap music. From wakeup to sleep, I have rap music playing - and the songs motivate me to get more of what I like: money, hoes, cars and clothes. I set short term, mid-term, and long-term goals for myself and I work until I reach everything on my list. I usually refresh my list semi-annually.

What industry events do you usually attend, and which is your favorite?
I attend most of the affiliate conferences: AdTech, Affiliate Summit, and PubCon. The next planned conference for the EWA crew is AdTech New York in November.

How did you meet Harrison Gervitz, and what made you guys decide to partner up to create your own network?
I’ve known Harrison for years, right when he started in the internet industry. We both owned MySpace resource sites and while I was doing networking (to build links), I met Harrison and we became friends. Over the years we kept running into eachother doing the same thing. We started doing business together about a year ago (before EWA) and I met him for the first time last AdTech New York. We hit it off and started doing joint ventures together.

Anyone I have talked to who run a network have stated that they work their ass off, but enjoy their work too. Each to their own of course, and for one guy this can be different than the next. For you personally, what do you find the most rewarding - and what do you find most challenging in day to day business?
Time management - really don’t have enough time in my days to do everything. Now I’m working on scaling out our internal team to distribute work so I can ease my days and stay more on the creative / administrative end of things.

And btw - how high are you really stackin’ that paper these days?
Higher than skyscrapers.

Give us the rundown of what a typical day in your life looks like..
Work, sex, work, work, gambling, sex, work, work, work, work.

Having worked with you for some time myself, I know how you guys personally strive to give your pubs the best service and help you can. This is obviously one benefit of EWA being a private network with a limited number of affiliates you can dedicate time to. Will you ever go public with your network in order to gain more volume of publishers, and if so - do you think you would be able to maintain the level of one-on-one dedication you provide today?
We will never go public, but we will allow more people in. We are a referral-only network (to maintain quality traffic and affiliates) - but the word keeps spreading. When we can accept more affiliates, we ask our existing team to refer people that they are friends with and we get a flow of new people. Our affiliates really enjoy their experience with EWA.

EWA now has you, Harrison, and Jared working as affiliate managers for your pubs. I’m sure each guy has his own strengths when it comes to experience in traffic sources, methods, etc. Could you briefly tell us who’s the “go-to-guy” in their various fields of expertise?
We share our team - but Harrison mainly handles business development, I oversee affiliate operations, and Jared helps me with all affiliate operations. We are all affiliates still so we know what works where and how to promote it.

Even though you guys stay in close touch with your affiliates to help them succeed, what mistakes do you commonly see them making - hindering their success?
Reading too much - too many forums, too many blogs, too many eBooks. The best lesson is experience.

Choice of traffic sources can sometimes be the biggest hurdle for new affiliates. N00bs are often told to start out on MSN/Bing or Facebook to get their feet wet. But is there also other traffic sources you would recommend that new guys check out other than the obvious?
I almost always suggest new affiliates to start off, and I provide them with guides and personalized help to start them off, build profits, turn to a CPM model, then branch out into more traffic sources. If you follow our guides and help - you WILL make money as an affiliate.

Where do you see EWA going in the next 12 months? We’re all aware that this industry changes quickly, but perhaps you have a set vision or goal you want to take your network to?
I won’t settle for anything less than 1st place - and I will work day and night until I achieve it. I see more employees, more affiliates, new trends, and more money all around for everyone. The affiliate marketing business model works - and we are here to make affiliates and advertisers the most money possible.

Acai, bizopps, and other rebills are still going strong at the moment - but some question the future of shady rebills, and chances are they could come to an end soon (at least in their current incarnation), thanks to the FTC/Google/Oprah crackdown. What is your thought on the longevity of these offers? Do you think we will see a shift in how merchant/advertisers promote these products, and maybe even a whole new type of CPA offers coming out of the woodwork?
I don’t concern myself with all the hype. Scared affiliates don’t make money - and if they are scared there are several other niches they can switch into that have been around and still are making immense amounts of money. A good affiliate can work in several totally different niches - not just rebills.

Do you think we will be seeing more adult and gambling related offers on regular CPA networks? These two markets have traditionally remained on their own dedicated networks, but is there a reason why they couldn’t have offers available for more mainstream networks as well? Porn is obviously an always massive market, and there is talk that online gambling in the US could be seeing a reneissance soon.
You’ll see a lot more on EWA, that’s for sure. We’re trying to consolidate everything from international mobile to gambling to adult to pharmaceutical on one network - with the best payouts and the quickest pay terms.

International affiliate marketing is growing by the day and more US affiliates are starting to run campaigns in non-English speaking countries. Tell us a bit about the growth you’re seeing internally here. Perhaps you have some tips to the guys who are skeptical of running anything non-English.
I’ve been running internationally (in both English speaking and non-English speaking countries) for about 3 years now and I will never go back. You should immediately scale campaigns that work in the US to all the English speaking countries, even if an offer is not out yet for them. An advertiser will react and you will be the first in that market while others are reacting. As a network owner, I’ve seen huge growth in our international offers and I almost always push affiliates to use them.

You’re known for your love of cigars and the good life in general. But what hobbies or interest’s do you pursue in your spare time? What makes you tick?
I love cars. I love driving. I love gambling. I love spending time with my girl. I love traveling. But above all - I love business. Most of my “free” time is spend developing my business, as lame as that sounds. It’s my passion in life.

Do you invest (or save) your earnings in stocks, funds, gold, real estate, etc?
Yes, the vast majority of my money is saved into a diversified portfolio developed by my father, Tom Eagle, and my financial planner. The goal is for the long term riches.

If the internet was not around, what would you be doing for a living?
Selling drugs, probably.

Ten years from now - what does Ryan Eagle do, where does he live, and what car(s) sit in his garage?
I’d be flying my private jet to my private island in the Caribbean. Cars? I’ve already reached every goal besides getting my Rolls Royce. That would be the dream baby.

Time for shameless promotion… Feel free to blatantly plug anything you want.
Being modest, EWA Network is the best out there - and it’s private for a reason. We will beat any payout any network offers you, pay you weekly from day one, provide dedicated one on one coaching and support. Our staff will not only suggest to you the top campaigns, but we will help you optimize your campaigns, give you traffic sources, and scale existing campaigns.

I hope to have the next posts on campaign research up and ready soon, so stay tuned!

Summer flew by and I have been busier than ever. Don’t worry though - I promise you guys I will have more posts up very soon, including the next post in my series on research. Also coming up very, very soon is a special interview with a well-known guy in the industry.. So, stay tuned!

That being said, my first post back now that summer’s over has nothing to do with internet marketing. In fact, this is one of the few posts I have that go into the “Personal” category but I just had to post this.

Anyway - on September 26th, I made one of my long time dreams come true: I got to meet my favorite band of all time; Dream Theater, in person! You guys who know me from Wickedfire know that I’m a hardcore fan of this band, and that their music truly means something special to me.

So I got myself a “VIP Meet and Greet” ticket for their recent concert here in Norway. Got my picture taken with them, and had them all sign the ever so epic album Images And Words. I wasn’t the only fan there of course, but I did get to thank them in person for the music they have made and for the impression they have left in my life.

All the guys in the band were really cool and down to earth. I will definitely be doing this the next time I get a chance to!

So - have any of you had a chance to meet your favorite bands, artists, actors, whatever?

The guys behind this tool has received a healthy mix of both good and bad press. Some of it they deserve - some not so much. Let me get the negative out of the way first; When you’re a member of PPC Bully - you WILL get lots of what is basically spam from them. I understand that it’s a another way for the owners to earn extra income from their member base, but in my opinion they would gather a whole lot more respect from members (and non-members) if they stuck to sending out a quality newsletter with just useful tips and tutorials. Or at the very least - don’t insult the intelligence of their own marketer audience.

Instead, their membership newsletter consists of several emails weekly (sometimes daily) like “HURRY… MUST SEE VIDEO…” , “LAST CHANCE FOR THIS ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY to join the secret mega billionaire super marketing club”…. “You MUST see this free report NOW or else”… You get the drift.

Basically - if you sign up for PPC Bully (which I still think you should, and I will tell you why shortly) be prepared for a bunch of annoying email spam. I just have Outlook filter it all to my junk folder though, lol.

Anyway… enough criticism aside. I DO find PPCBully useful. People have criticized it for being what it is - a competitor/niche spy tool. Critics argue that the data gathered by the tool isn’t useful for beating the competition or for basing new, winning campaigns upon. To some extent they are right. But they are also wrong. You see, it all comes down to HOW you use the data PPC Bully gives you. If your frame of mind works around just blindly duplicating what you see other people do and hope to turn a buck from it - the PPC Bully data isn’t gonna help you.

But using PPC Bully as part of your research, as a supplement to other methods and findings, is what makes the difference.

Sneaking in Line

Ok, so PPC Bully is a “competitor spy” tool. It’s main features focus on finding out the how’s and what’s of your competition’s ppc search campaigns. You give it a set of keywords, and leave it working over time. The longer you wait to gather data, the better the results. I leave mine running for at least a month before I check back on them.

Here are some of the things you can find out about other advertisers bidding on those keywords;

• The various ad copies they use
• The style, theme, and type of landing pages (and variations) they use
• The offers they are promoting, and how
• The ad positioning that seems to work best for them
• Their ad scheduling, revealing when their ads appear more often

That may not seem like much at first, but a closer look at all of these variables can give you a good head start in your campaign research. Especially if you’re testing out a new niche that you know little or nothing about. Questions will come to mind like “what type of landing page should I be developing for this niche?” and “what kinds of ads should I start out with?”.

Let’s break it up a little to see what PPC Bully can give you;

Ad Copy - Don’t Copy. Get Inspired.

The thing about ad copy in search is that it’s highly sensitive to the keywords you are targeting for that ad. First off, each keyword determines the mindset and persona you are trying to bring in with it. Secondly, the user seeing that ad will “expect” ads that their mind subconciously deems appealing. If you have loaded up PPC Bully with a good number of keywords that you intend on using, you will be able to now see what appears to be working for the competition.

After all - that is what PPC Bully is all about: to find what appears to be working in a niche. And if you have gathered your data over a period of a month or more, chances are pretty good that the campaign is profitable for the advertiser. Those ads are still there for a reason! I’ve let some PPC Bully projects run for almost a year and over time seen competitors come and go from the niche. But then I also see clearly which ones remain. They MUST be doing something right.

Here’s a tip:
Try grouping your keywords into themes and make separate projects in PPC Bully for them. One for buying-keywords, one for shopper/researcher-keywords, and one for general/broader keywords.

So back to the ads… You have collected some ads for each keyword that appear to be the “killer” ads. Now to the important part: DON’t just blatantly copy them! Doing this will only hurt yourself as it wouldn’t separate you from the competition - but rather blend in with the rest and lower your CTR.

Instead - try to observe WHAT defines these ads and understand WHY they are working in the first place.

• do they bring in keywords into the ad? (this is great in many cases, but less beneficial in others)
• are they using keyword insertion wisely and with relevance?
• do they use a certain tone of language, slang, jargon?
• do they use numbers dominantly in the title or description (or not at all?)
• do they use symbols or eye-catching text-formatting?
• do they use “vanity” destionation URLs with relevant terms in the domain or path? (or not?)
• are they focused on being curious, pushing a sale, pushing a benefit? Are they being specific about the product or not?

And last but not least - from all of the above it will be obvious whether or not your competition has done their homework. It often surprises me to see that in some fairly high competitive niches - advertisers aren’t doing all what they should be. Many ignore being relevant in their ad but rather re-use the same generic ads for each keyword. You will see this for even big budget, corporate advertisers.

You can (and will) use this to your advantage. Be more relevant! Be better at catching the attention away from the competing ads, and right to yours!

To compete with the remaining ads that are actually good - dare to be different. Borrow IDEAS from the best ads, and improve on them!

What Type of Landing Page Should I Use?

Let’s talk landing pages. You’ve seen the most prominent ads that your competitors have been using over time. Now we’ll take a look at what they’re sending their visitors to. Chances are, what they’re doing is working well and their landing pages have likely gone through some split-testing and optimization already.

Let me stress again though that you can’t obviously trust this assumption 100%. Don’t go ripping off page ideas blindly. The idea here is to get a *vision* of what likely works and why.

So anyway… start checking out some of the longest performing ads in your PPC Bully project. Visit their landing pages and start taking notes. I like to take screenshots of landing pages for reference (using the Screengrab! addon for Firefox). This way I can quickly look at them again whenever I want. You could also print them out on paper for side-by-side comparison.

Whatever you do, try to take written or visual notes of:

• are they affiliate sites or merchant/direct sale sites?
• the style of landing page used (1-product review, multi-review, comparison, blog, flog, farticle-style, ecommerce-style, etc.)
• the use of colors and graphical theme (is there a recurring trend across competitors?)
• their strong points and weak points (look for both their flaws and things you can derive inspiration from)

Gather all of this, and start visualizing how you could combine the best aspects of them all - and blend it into your own variations. It’s ok to borrow layouts, themes, style, and colors. Just don’t be a douche and steal images and text as you see it. Don’t imitate. Learn from the best - and innovate!
PPC Bully allows for you to get further ahead in your launch. For me - this means reducing my testing budget and being closer to breaking even on a new campaign right from the start. Using all this intel, combined with my Keyword Rockstar findings, I’m miles ahead of the dude next door entering into the same niche without it.

I mentioned in my Keyword Rockstar review that it also can spy on competitors and and landing pages like PPC Bully can. This still holds true, but the key difference is that PPC Bully allows a more automated approach to competition ad and landing page spy research. You can gather the same data with Keyword Rockstar, but it means you need to manually gather this data with each run, say once a day or once a week. PPC Bully works 24/7 on the server while you sleep - and this is its biggest strength.

And this brings me to another advantage PPC Bully monitoring gives you - spying on other advertisers’ ad scheduling AND positioning. Since PPC Bully tracks so much data over time - it is also very usable for finding out the times of day, or the days of the week, when conversions (and ROI) is probably running higher. Take a look at the top advertisers for a set of keywords.

Does it seem like they are bidding for higher ad positioning on fridays and saturdays? Perhaps none of them run ads on sundays? Their ads are showing much more frequently between 5pm and 11pm? For many niches - you will quickly see a pattern here. Because your competitors have already found out through tedious testing that those dates and times yield better ROI for their ad campaigns. And now - you have an idea of how to start out your own scheduling.

What’s On Offer?

Ok, so what else can we learn from our “been-running-campaigns-for-a-while” competitors? Well - choice of offers of course. Now this one is more vague than the other stuff like ads and landing pages. And that because there are so many offers to choose from in all verticals these days.

And.. offers come and go, their conversions can be unpredictable, or your competitor may have various reasons for choosing to run what might be a crappy offer for you. So - I rarely pay too much attention to the exact offers being ran. I prefer checking with my affiliate managers what the current top offers are in the niche. Then split-test between the best ones.

Now - using PPC Bully to see what offers others are running isn’t entirely useless. You could at least get a better picture of what KINDS of offers are being promoted the most. Is it mostly Clickbank/info products? Mostly physical real items? Or perhaps brief lead forms? If you’re clueless about what to do in the niche, try asking your affiliate managers about those offers, how they convert on their networks - or if they can provide them to you on request.

The PPC Bully guys also just released a new browser toolbar, combining easy access to all their services and useful links in one place.

So… how do you YOU use PPC Bully? Or, if you haven’t used it, what methods or other tools do you use to gather knowledge from competitors in the field? Leave your comments below!

Comprehensive Research with Keyword Rockstar

Here is something I hear all the time; “The best keyword research tool is your brain“. Alright…yes, our brains are awesome. And we can think up tons of good and unusual ideas that no tool out there is gonna give you.

But when it comes down to it - our brains can only help to a certain extent with the creative side of keyword research. To really prepare well for a solid campaign, you will benefit from some help…

The best free keyword tool out there is still the one and only Google Adwords Keyword Tool. I still use it every week, but it still doesn’t meet all my needs when I wanna do some serious keyword research. Besides, it can get time-consuming to use if you wanna do several iterations of searches based on prior results.

So what do I do? I use a new and powerful tool called Keyword Rockstar.

The first version came out not too long ago, but it is already my favorite keyword tool for research.

Keyword Rockstar is…
- part keyword research (based on the Google Adwords tool)
- part campaign builder (kinda like “Speed PPC”, but for both search and content)
- part content placement finder (kinda like “Content Bully” but better)
- part competition landing page and ad analysis tool (kinda like “PPC Bully”)
- part competition keyword analysis tool (kinda like “KeywordSpy”)
- part image / banner ad generator (like nothing else out there!)

I’m not saying Keyword Rockstar will replace all those tools entirely (with the exception of “Content Bully”, lol). But if you don’t wanna fork out the money for a bunch of other tools - you will have most of your research needs covered, and then some, with this one.

Features

First, let’s take a bird’s eye overview of the Keyword Rockstar features. Now let it be said that this isn’t just your average keyword tool that simply gives you a bunch of keywords and their monthly volume.

• Always fresh keyword data. Not based on outdated sources or estimates.
• Advanced placement finder for content network or media buy campaigns
• Deep keyword research based on a set of root keywords, or a list of competitor URLs
• Built-in, multiple-format, image ad generator for content network campaigns
• Adwords Content network campaign builder
• View competitors’ ads for each keyword found
• Advanced filtering, sorting, and keyword grouping engine
• Proxy support with country filtering
• Extensive reporting system, allowing export to multiple formats including PDF, Excel, CSV, TXT and more.

One of the things that separates Keyword Rockstar from many well-known competitors, is that it’s NOT based on outdated databases or “estimates” from 2nd or 3rd tier search engines like so many other keyword tools. Keyword Rockstar gathers all its data in real-time from the best source available: the Google Adwords Keyword Tool itself.

Note: More data sources are planned for future releases, but Google is the default choice as of now.

What also separates it from the rest is that it obviously can do so much more (as you can see listed above).

Installation, Usability and Interface

Unlike many other keyword tools, Keyword Rockstar installs on your pc (or will run fine through VMware if you own a Mac). The installation procedure is easy, but slow. According to the developers, this is something they are working on and future versions are promised to install much faster.

When you first start up the program, you are welcomed with a screen showing the latest version/bugfix updates as well as a “Feature suggestion” feedback box. I really think more apps should have this as it’s a nice and quick way for you to tell the developers something you’d like to see changed or added.

The overall interface and navigation feels intuitive enough. Nothing jaw-dropping, but it doesn’t need to be either. It’s a keyword tool! Well, I take that back… there is one really awesome part of the user interface that I find very, very clever. More on that later though - in the section about their filtering and grouping engine.

Working with Keyword Rockstar

But let’s move on to the fun, shall we? Alright - so the first thing you wanna do is create a new project. Keyword Rockstar is project-based, which means you can create and work on several research projects simultaneously whenever you want.

For each new project, you tell the program what to (and what not to) search for, and what sort of data you want to gather for all of your results.

As input to the program, you can specify either of these or both:

• A seed list of root keywords
  For example, “weightloss, losing weight, fat loss diet, acai berry, lose weight fast”. Your seed list doesn’t need to be long but I usually input 10-15 words. These are the words Keyword Rockstar will go out and retrieve other relevant keywords for (for both broad, phrase and match)
• A seed list of URLs
  This is the equivalent of entering a URL in the Google Keyword Tool. The program will query Google’s tool with these URLs and return relevant keywords. This is great for getting an idea of what your competitors could be ranking for or bidding on. Google’s results aren’t always accurate of course, but like I said - this will give you tons of more ideas.

Now we need to specify what we want Keyword Rockstar to return for each keyword. This is done under a pane called “Stats to Collect”. The options here are pretty impressive. Remember; you can gather all these stats for EACH keyword…

• Adwords stats
  Such as approx. avg. search volume, level of advertiser competition, estimated average cpc, estimated ad position, estimated clicks per day, search volume trends, and highest volume month.
• Current 1st Page Ads & Total Ad Count
  Pretty self explanatory.. It will retrieve the number of competing ads AND the ads themselves! This is really neat, as you can copy/paste from these later to get ideas for your own variations (hey - don’t be a douche and blatantly copy ads word for word, lol).
• Placements Available
  Awesome if you ask me. This feature alone adds a lot of value to Keyword Rockstar in my opinion. In fact, this feature does what “Content Bully” does (a paid tool from the PPC Bully guys). So why pay for Content Bully, when you can use Keyword Rockstar’s built-in functionality?
• Competing Page Count
  This is particularly helpful if you’re doing SEO research as well. It basically returns the number of indexed pages for the keyword / keyphrase in question.
• AllInTitle Count
  Another useful SEO statistic. Anyone with basic SEO knowledge will tell you the importance of keywords contained in a page title tag. With this , you can get a full overview of this number for all the words in your list.
• Online Commercial Intent
  One of my favorites! This data is gathered from MSN Adlab’s excellent tool. It will give you an idea of how commercially viable each keyword possibly is. TIP: By sorting or grouping the list by this data later on, you have a great way of grouping your keywords - perfect for dividing your list to different visitors and their buying modes. In other words: Perfect for the stuff I was talking about here.
• PPC & SEO Rockstar rank
  This is their own proprietary score given to each keyword based on the variables above. To be honest, I have yet to use this option so I can’t tell you too much about it.

It’s up to you if you want to gather all the detailed data upfront, if you don’t want or need too many details, or if you wanna get the basics first and then come back to the project later to get the deep details just for the keywords you need. I usually do the latter.

I find that running a heavily detailed search initially slows down processing time tremendously. This because Keyword Rockstar will then retrieve all kinds of details from different sources - for EACH keyword in your list (even iteratively on its own results if you let it). This obviously can become an ambitious task.

So I prefer to first only gather relevant keywords along with search volumes, and then later filter the results. From the resulting list, I then start up a new data collection process on only the keywords I found interesting.

Performance and Proxy Support

The last (optional) step you can do before you tell Keyword Rockstar to start retrieval, is to specify any proxies you want to use. The main benefit to using proxies is increased retrieval speed. Without proxies, you can only retrieve results at a certain pace. (You can actually tell the program to retrieve faster - but you you will then quickly run into temporary IP bans from Google or MSN). So the lack of proxy use can sometimes mean having to type in captchas every once in a while.

(For some strange reason, they don’t like it when people try to scrape thousands of keyword data from their tools in a short time….dunno why..

So my recommendation is to use proxies. As a member of Keyword Rockstar, you also get access to updated proxy lists that you can copy and paste right into the tool. I sometimes get my own proxy lists around the web, but it doesn’t hurt to have this option.

Adding these to the project setting is a breeze. You can also filter them based on the country you want to retrieve keyword data for.

With proxies in place, retrieveal can be set to move faster. There is a speedometer-looking dial that you can move with your mouse to set the speed. I’ve never pushed it to the max but let it run on around 50%. For a medium-sized project (15-30 root keywords), expect Keyword Rockstar to be working for a good couple of hours.

I sometimes leave it sitting overnight while I sleep, as retrieval time can stretch out for many hours if you have or want lots of data.

Interpreting the Results

You can stop retrieval at any time of course, or wait for it to be done (which I recommend) on its own. Results are presented in their own tab window named (surprise!)….”Results” . Here is where you will be spending most of your time checking out all the information Keyword Rockstar found for you.

If you selected additional data to gather before you started, you will now have all that available here as well. Things like competitors’ ads, content network placements, etc, etc. Everything is laid out pretty logical. This is also where you can view the ads & placements for a keyword by clicking a small “+” plus-sign next to the keyword:

Competitor PPC Ads (for a given keyword)

(I blurred out URLs in this screenshot as not to be outing anyone’s landing pages. )

Content Network Placements (for a given keyword)

For each different project, you can customize the view and what columns you’re interested in for the time being:

Now remember I mentioned earlier how I really liked one part of the user interface? I was referring to the way you can sort and filter your keyword list. Sorting is self-explanatory. Clicking on a column header alternates between ascending/descending sort.

Filtering works sort of like filters in Excel and if you like advanced control, you can even build out your own custom filtering using the built-in Filter Builder. Pretty cool!

Not to mention how you can group or theme all the thousands of keywords together in more logical subsets..

For example - let’s say I wanna break the entire list up into groups depending on commercial intent (think visitor buying mode). The benefit to this is obvious: to be able to create different adgroups (and landing pages) for different sets of my keywords.

So I simply drag the “Commercial Intent Value” column up to the main header of the result screen, and voila - Keyword Rockstar has now grouped the list based on this value instantly. Any of the data columns can be dragged and dropped this way - and moved around in any grouping order:

All of this makes keyword research a lot more manageable. Can you do all this using Notepad and a spreadsheet app like Excel? Sure - but it would take you way, way more time to accomplish the same structured and usable lists for use in your campaigns.

Keyword Rockstar as a Campaign Builder

Speaking of which… Ever seen a keyword research tool with a built-in, full-fledged campaign builder?

Keyword Rockstar will generate your campaigns for you, ready to import into the Google Adwords Editor (or ready to convert to MSN and Yahoo by using Export202).

I’d have to say that this is another area where Keyword Rockstar really shines. It actually gives Speed PPC a run for its money (or this free ppc campaign builder for that matter). And to boot it has the best content and placement campaign builder I have seen. Speed PPC on the other hand is only search-focused.

Basically, you start by selecting multiple (or all) keywords from your main results list, and right-clicking the mouse. This brings up the contextual menu:

From here you simply choose what sort of campaign you want to generate; Search, Placement, or Content.

I’m not gonna go into all the details on how you use the campaign creator because it’s fairly self-explanatory - especially if you have used campaign builders before.

Some of the features:

• Full fledged token system (e.g. {Keyword}for capitalized keyword insertion)
• Grouping by keyword / final mix / expansion
• Individual bids for broad/phrase/match
• Option to specify a pairing keyword list to pair with root words (instead of mix)
• Database with lots of words for prefix / postfix expansions*
• Text ad generator
• Option to limit the # of keywords per adgroup, and the # of adgroups per campaign
• Tracking support, including T202 or Tracking202 Pro query string support

* This includes quite the selection of various action words, US/Canada/UK/Germany city names, states, regions, buy words, colors, descriptive words, price keywords, car models, pet breeds, brand names, and more.

For content campaigns, you can even choose how you want to break up your image ads and text ads. Do you want them all in separate campaigns (recommended), same campaigns but different adgroups, or same campaigns and adgroups?

Note: Keep in mind which keywords you select for a content network campaign. Preferably, your content campaign should be set up like I discussed in this post. Just apply those tips and use some common sense when you pick your keywords here.

Text ad generator

Straightforward stuff. Works just like in Speed PPC or Derek Beau’s free ppc campaign builder:

Image ad generator

I love this part. Keyword Rockstar is the first image ad generator I have seen that can generate image ads for all 9 standard Adwords formats AND is integrated with a campaign builder.

Now granted, the version I have been using (up and until June 21st) only has a limited style of banner design. It’s basically based on one template - one that looks like a text ad, but has “hand drawn” red arrows and circles on it. So the ads will look something like this:

However - I contacted the developers about this, and was told that they are actually working in more templates in upcoming versions. Even a template builder is in the works, so that you can blend in your own style of graphics, layout, and colors. Can’t wait to see what they will come up with!

Seriously…this image ad generator is pretty damn powerful. I have spent countless hours in the past creating image ads manually and it can be an extremely time-consuming task with all the formats needed. Not to mention if you want different ad descriptions written into each image.

You could outsource this job of course - but it still means it’s gonna take some guy or gal a few days of work to deliver all the ads you request. Keyword Rockstar’s image ad generator is a HUGE time-saver. Especially if you wanna get an image ad campaign up and running quickly to test out a new offer.

Of course - you can also choose to include any other image ads or network creatives you may have. I never use the default affiliate network creatives by the way because I think they usually suck, lol. Traditionally I have made my own creatives using Adobe Photoshop but I can save that for another “How To…” blog post.

Other Features

Time to wrap this review up. Before I finish, I should mention that you also have a few more functions available in Keyword Rockstar’s right-click context menu. I showed you this earlier, but here it is again:

As you can see, there’s immediate access to do quick lookup on more data for your keyword:

• View Google Trends (opens a new window showing the volume and geographical trends from Google)
• Keyword Spy lookup
• SpyFu lookup
• View the given keyword’s 1st page search results in the 3 major search engines
• Domain checker (e.g. if you wanna see if the longtail www.iwannamakemoniesonlineinmyboxers.com is available)

It’s nice to have access to some of these handy. I have also been told more lookup otions will be added here in the future.

Lastly - you can export your findings as reports into formats like Excel (csv or xls), Rich Text Format (RTF), HTML, PDF, Text, print, or as images. The PDF and HTML I would imagine would really only be useful if you’re doing reporting for company SEM work. I have really only found the TXT and CSV export useful myself but - each to their own.

Price, Support and Conclusion

At the current price of $97/month, Keyword Rockstar is not a free tool - but honestly it shouldn’t be either. The guys behind it have put a lot of work into making this a quality product. It still has some minor flaws (being somewhat system resource heavy) but these are being ironed out.

Response time from contacting support has been excellent for me. The founder of Keyword Rockstar, Jon Shugart, has been an affiliate for a long time himself and seem to know exactly what we as affiliate marketers need and want in a tool that can contribute more towards a profitable business.

I recommend this program to both beginners and experienced affiliate marketers. The newbies will find it useful for getting new niches researched quickly and get campaigns up and running for testing offers. The seasoned guys will love it for its deep research abilities and image ad builder for massive campaigns.

PROS:
- Lots of them.
- Efficient keyword research NOT based around months-old data. Uses Google Adwords Keyword Tool for iterative retrieval
- A very good keyword grouping engine allowing you to theme your campaigns, ads and landing pages much more in tune to what each visitor would want to see
- Proxy support for heavy duty mass retrieval
- Competitor research on ads and landing pages. Granted, it does NOT do analysis over time (like PPC Bully does) and so what you see is not necessarily competitors’ profitable ads or landing pages. Just what is currently found.
- Solid campaign builder rivaling other tools that cost way more
- Overall a great money- and time-saving “jack of all trades and master of a few” tool
- The price

CONS:
- Somewhat slow installation time (this is being worked on according to developers)
- Occasionally slows down my system (my desktop pc is also 5 years old so that could be my problem, lol)
- Image ad generator still limited to one template (but lots more templates as well as a custom template builder is being worked on for an upcoming release).

You can read more about it on their official website by clicking here. And yes, that is obviously my affiliate link but if you rather not sign up under me just go to KeyworRockstar.com

Aahh yeah, this business is awesome.

But to be doing well, you of course need to do your “homework” and make sure you have a revenue stream to keep those sweet weekly payout wires from all the networks coming in. This simply means staying on top of things and diversifying.

I’m always on the lookout for new markets and verticals to try out. And the one phase you can’t avoid, is research. Research is crucial from the moment you think of trying out a new offer or niche. If you do a half-assed job during this stage, you can (and will) be losing out on a LOT of potential income. Even worse - you may end up failing the niche altogether and decide to drop it completely, based on the negative ROI you ended up with and go “meh…that niche just didn’t work out for me and I don’t understand how people are making money with it“.

I always do thorough research when I enter a new vertical I’m unfamiliar with. Not so much when I just wanna test out a low-paying lead based offer of course - but more so for higher-paying CPA/rebill or sale offers where I’m gonna build out a landing site.

This may sound like a lot of work at first, but with the right tools - it really isn’t!
I always research;

The Keywords
- What is the core set of obvious, short-tail keywords for the niche? (usually a root set of 10-50 words to start with)
- What common long-tail keywords are found off of each of these? (100 - 1000++ keywords)
- What other keywords are used by my competitors that I may have missed?
- What are the different “buckets” or groups/themes that these words could be categorized into?

The Offer / Product & Market
- Is there a potential for good traffic volume and revenue from this offer?
- Who is the average customer or core demographic? (ages, gender, level of education, etc.)

The Competition
- Who are the top 3-5 big players in the niche?
- How are they promoting it? (ad styles, landing page styles, copy style, targeting)
- Which offers are they promoting?
- Where are they promoting it the most? (ppc search or content, media buys, ppv, social media)
- When are they promoting it? (finding a common dayparting pattern among the competitors, seasonality)

In the next few posts, I’m gonna take a look at a few research tools that I personally use. Some are free and some are not. But they all make this job a WHOLE lot easier. Not to mention more profitable.

First up: My Keyword Rockstar Review. Stay tuned!

Every so many months, a new network pops up on the horizon. The last year and a half we have seen the emergence of great new networks ran by former affiliates, such as Convert2Media, Ads4Dough and Firelead. I’m a publisher with all of them, and they take very good care of their affiliates! Along with YEP Revenue, those guys are among my top favorite CPA networks to deal with.

But today I would like to bring attention to a lesser known network: Profit Kings Media.

This network really goes the extra mile to make sure you’re making bank:

• Weekly payouts regardless of volume (where else can you get that?)
• Seriously good payouts (yeah yeah, I know what you’re thinking - all the networks have “the best payouts”. These guys really can beat pretty much any payout)
• Affiliate Managers devoted to making you cash
• Running only converting offers that are tested in-house for ROI before they’re made available (quality vs. quantity)

My affiliate manager Yousif has shown me the utmost dedication to help with anything I need. And I’m not just talking about getting me offers or payout increases. They’re still a fairly new network but I think we will be hearing a lot more buzz about Profit Kings Media in the time to come.

Give PKM a try and I doubt you’ll be disappointed!

Read an interview Yousif did recently over at MadPPC here.

Disclaimer: If you’re making your own landing pages, you need some basic PHP knowledge to do this. If you’re having your landing pages outsourced however, just show this post to your designer and he will know what to do.

The Goal: To create dynamic landing pages that show different images to the visitor depending on what they searched for, what was shown in the ad, or where they come from.

What could we use this for?
The possibilities are endless actually, but here are ideas to get you started:

• A ringtone campaign. You could have many different ads targeted to an artist, or a cellphone brand. Your ringtone landing page would show a picture of that particular artist or a picture of the cellphone you were advertising it with.
• Insurance campaign. Each visitor to your landing page is presented with not only text tailored to his/her whereabouts (like city, zipcode, state) - but also with a small image of their state flag, a clipart state map, or similar. This will make your landing page instantly more appealing to visitors no matter from what city or state they are searching from.
• Dog accessories campaign. One visitor searches for “portable kennel for german shepherd” and is taken to your landing page where there happens to be a picture of a german shepherd right alongside your general content about portable kennels. Another visitor searched for “labrador dog car kennel”and is shown that very same page - only now with a picture of a labrador instead of the german shepherd.

In this post, you will learn:

• Basic php keyword insertion
• Method #1 - Dynamic image insertion using a static image library
• Method #2 - Dynamic image insertion using Yahoo Images

The Basics: Standard keyword insertion

Alright, I’m sure you’re familiar with dynamic keyword insertion on landing pages. Essentially, you can pass along a variable to your PHP landing page, and have that variable inserted anywhere (visible or non-visible) on your page.

This serves two purposes:
1) To get better Quality Score due to increased keyword relevancy
2) To increase visitor interest and conversions

To do this, just insert the following string anywhere in your landing page code where you would like the keyword to appear:

<?php echo ucwords(str_replace("-"," ",$_GET["keyword"])); ?>

So let’s say you have a landing page called lander.php. You would then call the landing page like this:

http://www.example.com/lander.php?keyword=fleshlight-video-tutorial

Now the keyword “Fleshlight Video Tutorial” would show up wherever you wanted it to on the page. Remember, the php string could be placed anywhere in the code. I usually try to include it in a combination of the following:

Meta tags (description, keywords)
Title
Headline
Image alt tags
Href title tags
Within the landing page copy
As a link anchor tag to another internal site page

Use your imagination! And actually - that is what brings me to the core part of this post…

Method #1 - Dynamc image insertion based on a static image library
Now, onto the fun part… Because we can also use the passed variable as part of filenames in the landing page code. On a regular page, you would normally show static images with the HTML img tag like this:
<img src="images/dog.jpg”>

It would result in a page like this:

…and that image would be the same for every visitor, no matter what dog breed or keyword they had searched for.

But instead of that, we wanna spice it up a little and present our visitors with a picture of his/her dog breed. Think that will bring up your conversions and ROI? You bet!

We can then have custom destination URLs from our ads pointing to:
http://www.example.com/kennel.php?keyword=cocker-spaniel
http://www.example.com/kennel.php?keyword=golden-retriever
http://www.example.com/kennel.php?keyword=german-shepherd
(Of course, the ads themselves should also have the keyword in them)

And we can have all kinds of variations of the same landing page:

We accomplish this by simply replacing the static image filename with the keyword string from the URL, like this:
<img src="images/<?php echo $_GET["keyword"]; ?>.jpg">

This obviously also requires you to actually have image files with these names stored in your /images folder. These aren’t hard to come by though. For a small project requiring a dozen or so images, you can get them yourself from Google images (always make sure not to violate copyrights). If you need more - let’s say for a list of 100 dog breeds, you can outsource the image retrieval to someone from eLance, Odesk, or even the Sell&Buy section at Wickedfire.com.

It’s highly recommended to ensure that all the images are the of the same dimension so you don’t risk messing with the page layout. You could do this quickly for a batch of images using a tool like IrfanView. And the filenames should be similar to your expansion keywords. In the example above, we had these images sitting in our images folder:

/images/cocker-spaniel.jpg
/images/golden-retriever.jpg
/images/german-shepherd.jpg

So when the landing page is called, along with the keyword “cocker-spaniel”, the proper filename is chosen because we ask php to grab the keyword and use it as the image filename.

Important note: You need to make sure that the keyword is passed exactly matching the filename for this to work. So if you’re passing along your keywords with dashes (-) between each word, your filenames also must contain that character. To play it safe, you could have duplicate sets of all the images, some with dashes and some without. Or you can play around with the PHP str_replace function to replace spaces with dashes for example.

This may all sound like a lot of work, but it really isn’t once you’ve done it a time or two. For a real powerful campaign, build out your campaign using the free DerekPPC (SpeedPPC clone), and use the expansion keywords to call images. You can still pass along the seed keywords and the final, mixed keywords along to the landing page for other uses.

Method #2 - Dynamc image insertion using Yahoo images
This next method doesn’t rely on having images stored on your server. It’s more suitable if you need a huge variety of images (e.g. for thousands of expansion keywords) and can’t or don’t want to retrieve specific images ahead of time.

It’s also prone to give you some less relevant images since you’re not in direct control of what images will show up. This because we are retrieving images on the fly from Yahoo images through their API. We’re relying on Yahoo to find the most relevant image for us based on a keyword.

The script you will need to do this is here: DOWNLOAD (Right click and Save As…)
Upload the yahooimages.php file to the root of your website.

And for wherever you want to insert an image into your landing page, add this line:
<?php include("yahooimages.php"); ?>

We can use the same destination URL as before to call the page:
http://www.example.com/kennel.php?keyword=german-shepherd

However - the image will now be the first image Yahoo finds relevant enough for our keyword… This could be of a german shepherd dog - or if we’re less lucky: a picture of a german flag - or a shepherd with his sheep.

So the trick to getting this script to achieve accurate images is to append additional words to the keyword. This makes it more likely for the Yahoo API to retrieve what we want. To do this, open the yahooimages.php script in a text editor, go to the 3rd line, and replace the word PICTURE with a short word that would make the image search term more specific.

If we replace the word PICTURE with the word breed, it would make the script call Yahoo for images based on “german shepherd breed”.

Or if our keyword was Madonna, we could replace PICTURE with “album” so that we would get a picture of a Madonna album cover (and not risk getting pictures of the virgin Mary or some Madonna nipslip paparazzi picture)

I’ve used this for ringtone landing pages in the past. Be sure to do some test runs with different keywords from your list to see if the image retrieved is appropriate and relevant. Please note also that the script is set to use a default image size of 125×125. You can change this by editing the width and height in line 9.

Bonus Tip: Geo-targeted Images

In the beginning of this post, I suggested you could have images display based on the visitor’s location. Using a simple geo-targeting script such as this one, we can do just that!

Just like in method #1, we could have a set of state flag images - and call the appropriate flag using this line in the landing page code:

<img src="images/<?php echo $geo_data['geoplugin_region']; ?>.jpg">

Pretty cool?

Are you ready to take your landing pages to the next level of customization? As always, I am interested to hear what sorts of other uses and ideas you may have based on this. Bring on the comments…