If you’ve been in the affiliate space for awhile you know that these ads have been all over the place, I’ve seen them mostly connected with Acai & resveratrol type offers.

From the articles … “The products at the center of the lawsuit are said to include cosmetics, such as anti-wrinkle creams, diet supplements, and tooth-whitening kits.” Colon cleansing also seems to be targeted.

I’m curious if they are going after just the companies that make these products or the affiliates as well?? Either way, with Google cracking down on people selling google kits, and now this, as an affiliate you should stay away from beefing up your landing page with questionable endorsements & false claims.

So, what do you guys think about this, as an affiliate you are definitely not out of reach of being sued, if not directly, then the company itself being sued may turn on its affiliates for false advertisement.

Lots of sources, here are 3:
Wall Street Journal Article
Yahoo News
TMZ

How easy it would be if I could say, a doctor, lawyer, engineer, IT consultant, architect, etc … but working as an affiliate is kind of vague isn’t it? When explaining it, I usually refer to amazon, as they were one of the pioneers of affiliate programs. I explain to them when they are surfing the web and they see an amazon book on a website, well if they click on that book it leads them to amazon, and if they buy, the website owner gets a commission etc… If that doesn’t work, then I will talk about one of the myriad of offline referral type companies and referral commissions, refer a friend to your bank = get $25, car insurance referral = get a free gas card, etc…

That being said, I still have to answer the question, What I do for a living. I’ve used the following in describing my profession:

• I’m an affiliate marketer
• I sell things online
• I manage websites
• I own an online media company
• I own a home business
• I’m an entrepreneur
• I own an internet business

I’m ready for a new one now, so if you have any ideas, share.
(and no not a spammer )

In relation to the last post, google credited my account, THANK YOU!

Kudos to them for being swift to address this and hopefully get it resolved. If they wouldn’t have sent an email, I probably would have been scratching my head come next month when the bill was due wondering why I spent so much. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up for those that still use Google (there seems to be a lot of banning going on lately). You might want to check your CC.

It’s simple to use, just enter your core keywords into digg and hit search. The most popular headlines that match your phrase come up. This is definitely not an exact science and is not a piece of software that will spit out perfect ads for you every time, but it will definitely get your juices flowing and make you more creative. Feel free to play around with the advanced search features as well.

For example take ‘weight loss’, below are 7 of the top 10 results given:

Notice anything special? 6 of these seven all have numbers in their headlines … Hmmm that must be important. Anyways, just wanted to throw this out there. I’m sure some of you can use this. You may also want to check out my post Ad copy: rational vs. emotional.

I know there are a handful of other tools on the web that are similar to help you out with ad copy, feel free to share if you have any.

It is human tendency to see an action as more appropriate or acceptable when they see others doing it

The idea of this herd behavior or social proof is very powerful and is often used in business and marketing. ‘Social proofing’ your campaigns can give the end user that little extra push to take action, hit the buy button, or fill out a form. It is very simple to incorporate this into your affiliate campaigns, and there are 2 primary ways of doing this: testimonials and taglines or sub headings.

Testimonials

Most people would agree, sprinkling your landing page with testimonials can only help your conversions. The idea of social proof is when someone is in a situation not knowing what to do, they look to others for guidance. Seeing and reading other people using the product and taking action makes them more comfortable.

Taglines and Sub Headings

Taglines are a great way to social proof your landing page. There have been many studies done that people really do read taglines and sub headings. The best places to put them are directly under your main heading or just under your call to action button or hero shot/main image. People will read them.
Here are some samples that I’m sure you have seen before on other people’s landers:

• Join 5,267 other members …
• Over 100,000 sold …
• Amaze your friends …
• Over 1 million downloads
• etc …

Don’t think this works? Take a look at the tagline below:

The most notable ways it can affect your bottom line is: inflated impressions this can lower your CTR, which lowers your quality score and can raise your CPC. Not good. Another way is directly getting a lot of clicks, which will drain your budget. Enter negative keywords. Crafting a well developed negative keyword list can bring your campaign back in sync and give you a better ROI.

Below are 7 tips to help you in your negative keyword research:

1. Use the Search Engines

Take some time to search in google/yahoo/msn your core keywords and skim the results. Sometimes you will find sights that have different themes than what you are after. If it doesn’t match your product or service you might consider adding it as a negative keyword. For example search abs in google. Most people immediately think of 6 pack abs. But skim the results and you will find the organization of American Bureau of Shipping, site on anti-lock braking system, as well as ABS being a type of plastic … who knew?

2. Check out Google Suggest/Keyword Tool

Google suggest and their keyword tool are excellent ways to uncover phrases you’d never think of. You may also want to do a quick search in google news to make sure nothing current relates to your offer.

3. Thesaurus

Use this to get your brain juices flowing. It can also be a good tool to expand your keyword list and add parallel themes to your campaign.

4. Run a Search Query Report

Few people utilize the reports section in Google. Don’t be one of them. A search query lets you know the exact keywords being searched for in your campaigns. It does have an annoying category of other unique queries. Most tracking software can flesh these out …

5. Other Keyword Tools

There are a handful of keyword tools out there, some paid others not.

• WordTracker
• Keyword Discovery
• KW Map

6. Ebay!

Ebay sells anything and everything. If you’re doing retail type products, this is a good way to see if other product descriptions are similar to yours. Take for example “Maximizer” which is the product of a popular CRM (Customer Relationship Management – these things are very pricey) software. however a quick search in Ebay will also show curling irons, vitamins, indoor tanning lotion, audio plug-ins, pool cues etc…

7. Don’t forget your brain

This is your #1 tool hands down. We all want some fancy software where we type in a few keywords and *bam* it spits out everything we want. If you just take the time for a few hours to sit and think and brainstorm, both your keyword list and negative keywords will be much more accurate and worthwhile. Don’t be lazy!

Got another way of getting negative keywords? Share it with us ..

I guess having a big tax bill is a good problem, but what is the government going to do with my money but throw it away after some failing company or how about into the black hole of social security. That is one good thing though, about having your own entity as a business instead of self-employed. You can save a lot on social security taxes. (Here are some standard deductions for small businesses)

I have an S Corp., and the way it works is, say you drew a $50k salary throughout the year from your company while your business made $200k in profits. That 200k flows through to you ultimately but is not taxed on social security which is about 15%+. So you just saved about 30 grand on taxes because you had a business entity setup. Same with the LLC I believe.

If you are heading into the realm of doing this full time or are starting to make decent money with affiliate marketing, it can only help to setup a business entity. Choosing an LLC or S Corp. is up to you, but the benefits are mostly equal.

(Disclaimer: I am not an accountant and know nothing about taxes so do your own due diligence)

Interesting to say the least. If you have a list of your own, own a product, or are thinking of creating your own product, you should really check out this video. I’ve had a chance to look at some of his material and it’s pretty solid. Just wanted to throw this out there for you guys who are going down this path. Watch the video here

I have some plans to develop my own product …. someday, it’s just that I got a million other things to do before that

Well, I woke up this morning to find out I was over $700 in the hole! In my rush to finish I forgot to disable the search network as this was suppose to be a content only campaign. That little check box cost me a pretty penny. I hate to lose money, so any amount is not fun.

Yeah I could have had a lower budget, but content is usually slower to be approved so I figured by the time I wake up it would have just got going. Unlike search where it is usually pretty fast for me.

Moral of the story is don’t get sloppy when launching campaigns. I think I’m going to write up a pre-launch checklist just because of this as there are a handful of things that should be checked.

Ever wonder how some affiliate are able to dynamically insert the searched keywords on their landing pages? I remember for the longest time, I was always baffled by it, since I’m not much of a programmer or developer. Once I learned I felt kind of dumb since it is extremely simple with just a few lines of code added on your page. I’m sure there are a handful of ways to do this, but here’s how I do it:

Step 1

There is just 1 simple change on your destination URL’s in adwords. Just add
?kw={Keyword} to the end of your destination URL and you are done. For example if your destination URL is http://www.lander.com then the new URL would be http://www.lander.com/?kw={Keyword}

Step 2

Next at the top of your landing page insert this snippet of code

<?php
if(isset($_GET['kw']))
$key=$_GET['kw'];
else
$key=’Everything Else’;
?>

This picks up the value of the keyword being searched with an alternative text of “Everything Else”.

Step 3

Now every where you want your keyword to appear in your landing page just insert this piece of code
<?php echo $key;?> and your done! It is as simple as that.

Here are 3 examples:
http://www.ppcfool.com/keyword-insertion.php?kw=Whats up?
http://www.ppcfool.com/keyword-insertion.php?kw=Anyone Can Do This
http://www.ppcfool.com/keyword-insertion.php?kw=Sign-up for my RSS Now!

Why this is important?

Adding the searched keyword can help your conversions. Anything on your landing page that the searcher is familiar with boosts your credibility and relevancy. How many times have you searched for something, landed on a page and thought ‘this has nothing to do with want I’m looking for?’

Dynamic keyword insertion will give your page more relevancy which will help conversions

Want more landing page tips? Check out my 10 day series on landing pages!