Marketing Tools Review

Linkshare Has A New Affiliate Interface

Hock — Sat, 17 May 2008 06:29:11 -0500

It’s about time too. I’m not a very big user of Linkshare but their affiliate management interface was terrible. That may have been one reason I didn’t use them a lot comapred to CJ. I just logged in today and was pleased to find that they have a new, more useable interface.

Searching for affiliate programs is made easier now that you can view commission rates, return days and program status all on one page.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate networks, LinkShare

XSitePro 2 Is Coming

Hock — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:49:26 -0500

The long awaited version 2.0 of XSitePro is coming out on May 20th. I’m excited to see what major updates are going to be included in this new version!

I’ve used XSitePro for building many of my niche websites.

Technorati Tags: XSitePro 2

Free AdWords Report

Hock — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:48:38 -0500

I’m currently working on the manuscript of my new report titled “Profit Pulling AdWords Strategies”. It will contain all the tips and strategies for creating, maintaining and optimizing AdWords campaigns that you need to be successful. These are strategies that I have learned and implemented over the years. There’s nothing better than learning by doing at least when it comes to PPC.

The best part is that the report will be complimentary. It should be ready in a few days. Of course, my newsletter subscribers will get it first before it’s released to everyone else. So if you’d like an early notification, be sure to sign up for the newsletter over on the sidebar.

Technorati Tags: free report, AdWords tips, PPC

Sponsor: Make Money Blogging - Extra income

AdWords Embedded Match

Hock — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:42:26 -0500

What is AdWords Embedded Match?

If you want to hear it from the horse’s mouth, click here.

Simply put, you can add negative phrase match and exact match terms to your negative keywords list.

Things like…

- “internet marketing gurus”

and

- [Bill Gates]

So if you’re bidding on the broad match - Bill Gates biography - your ads won’t show up when someone searches for the exact term “Bill Gates” but it will show up for “Bill Gates biography”.

Now my question is:

Is it case sensitive?

In other words, is - [Bill Gates] the same as - [bill gates]?

Technorati Tags: AdWords, embedded match, keyword matching, negative keywords

Instant Slideup Installed

Hock — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:15:32 -0500

As I mentioned in my last post, Instant Slideup can be a good tool to grab your website visitor’s attention and compel them to take the action that you want them to take.

I’ve just finished installed it on this site and you can see it in action below. The setup took me about 5 minutes plus a few more minutes to create my own template. It comes with a few different templates but it’s best to make your own to fit the look and feel of your site. If you know Photoshop, this shouldn’t be a problem at all.

All in all, the setup process was simple. You can customize the template to use, the text to include, whether you want to show the slideup every time or just once a visitor (the annoyance factor!), etc.

After you’ve done all that, just add some javascript to the header section of the page where you want the slideup to show and you’re in business! Then you’ll have to test and check your conversions to see if they improve.

Technorati Tags: Instant Slideup, marketing tools, increase conversions

Instant Slideup - Grab Your Visitors’ Attention

Hock — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:13:05 -0500

If you have an offer or opt-in form that you would really like to highlight to your website visitor, Instant Slideup ($67) is a good way to do it. As the name suggests, the script allows you to create a “bar” that slides up from the bottom of your screen to grab your attention. The sales page is a bit cheesy and needs more work but it looks like a useful script for anyone marketing online.

For example, you could use this to highlight an offer to your visitors. It could be a free report, a special coupon code, an opt-in form or whatever. This may increase the conversion rate of your visitors. Similar scripts out there include Peel Away Ads ($37) which shows up like a corner of a page being peeled off.

Peel Away Ads has been around for some time but I have only recently seen Instant Slideup used on a few websites. After some time, all these kinds of attention grabbers start to lose their appeal as more and more sites start using them. Remember pop ups, pop unders, and drop ins?

Technorati Tags: Instant Slideup, Peel Away Ads

Poll Factory: Results Update

Hock — Sat, 03 May 2008 09:11:24 -0500

Several people have asked me about my results of using Poll Factory so I’d like to make a quick post to let you know how I’m faring.

I’ve been testing the script since April 29. As of May 2, one of my campaigns is showing a consistent profit. For this campaign, I’ve only used AdWords as my source of PPC traffic and using mainly the search network.

Results after 4 days:

Income $91.25
Ad Spend $68.14

Profit $23.11

Not bad for about 20 minutes of work.

Okay, now for the disclaimers. I happen to hit on a profitable campaign on the first try. After this one, I’ve set up several others (about 5-6) which are duds so far. That’s not to say that they won’t be turning a profit in the future. There’s still tweaking and testing to be done.

But the main point is that using Poll Factory saves me a lot of time in the creation of the landing page and lets me focus on marketing, i.e. thinking of new campaigns, keywords, finding CPA offers, etc.

The successful campaign is in the entertainment niche, in case you’re wondering. I’m sending the traffic to an offer from NeverBlueAds. It’s a seasonal market and I don’t expect it to last much more that a month beyond this. In the mean time, I can learn from what makes this particular campaign successful and look for other topics that I can target.

Technorati Tags: Poll Factory, landing pages, PPC, CPA