The Secret To Getting Killer CTR

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Josh Todd

Let’s face it: Click Through Rate (CTR) can either make or break your campaign. Whether you are doing PPC, PPV, or especially with CPM & Media Buys, your CTR is often the determining factor in whether you make money or not. Since this is the case, it never ceases to amaze me how many affiliates (myself included) forget to put hard work and thought into the #1 thing that affects your CTR: your ad copy.

Putting together a campaign usually goes something like this:

Spend several hours doing niche research
Spend a couple of hours finding the best keywords
Spend a few more hours creating your landing page
Ready to launch!
Oh wait, I have to put some ads up here… I’ll just copy & paste what the other guys or doing, or just throw in some text off the top of my head

And then you wonder why nobody is clicking through to see your awesomely designed landing page and your super-targeted offer… Guess what? Ad copy has a massively huge part to play in your campaign’s success. Coming up with consistently killer ad copy and images is probably the most important skill you can have as a marketer. If you can’t do that, then what can you really do? Copy campaigns? Put tracking together? Load keywords into Google? That’s great, but that could all be outsourced to a monkey.

The real value that affiliates bring to the table is in our creative approach to campaigns and ad copy. You think that the company whose service or product you are promoting hasn’t tried direct-linking their website on the major search engines for their primary keywords? They have. They either have that on lock and therefore have those keywords blacklisted from you, or it doesn’t work and they turned to CPA Networks and Affiliates to think outside the box and get them leads from sources that they don’t know about or don’t understand well enough to do themselves.

Take some time to educate yourself on the basics of sales, marketing and advertising. All of the knowledge you can get from studying the fundamentals will go straight to your ad copy, and your CTR. Even if some of the principles were created for print advertising, it still applies online. I don’t care if it seems like homework. If you want this to be a serious business for you then you need to treat it like one. Read some books on marketing & advertising. There are literally thousands of them written. You will not regret the time you put into bettering yourself as a marketer.

Here are a few of my favorites to get you started (not affiliate links):

Read These Books

Google Launches YouTube Video Targeting Ads

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Josh Todd

Google has just launched a brand new type of ad unit for AdWords that is now in Beta, called the YouTube Video Targeting Tool. Every time there is a new ad marketplace that opens up, there is a massive displacement that can be taken advantage of by savvy marketers. The people that jump in early are going to have a definite advantage in this game.

One of the coolest things about the new YouTube Video Targeting Tool is that you can get very specific with your targeting, right down to selecting individual videos. You can also target by demographics, channels, and some other methods.

You can choose from two different ad units, InVideo Overlay and In-Stream Video. The InVideo Overlay can be setup as Text Ads or 468×60 image ads. The In-Stream Videos are a “15/30 second in-stream video + image companion”. I’m not exactly sure what that boils down to, since I haven’t had the chance to actually put any ads live yet.

People have been marketing via YouTube for quite a while now, especially in the Ringtones space. The tried-and-true method is to rip the music video of your favorite artist, put a watermark on it with your Domain leading to the Ringtone offer, and try to get as many views as possible through both natural and artificial means. This method has become less and less effective as YouTube has been getting wise and closing some of the loopholes used to inflate views to videos and game the rankings. This new Video Targeting marketplace could be a game-changer for people that have been looking for a way to have a sustainable business model on YouTube without worrying about the impending Account Bans and Video Bans that come with the old method.

The only odd thing I noticed when playing with the interface is that when I searched for some of the YouTube mega-hit videos like the “JK Wedding Dance” and the infamous “Leroy Jenkins” video, they didn’t appear in the list. Also, most of the videos that were in the list seemed to have relatively low view counts. I’m assuming that this is because the program is in Beta still, and hopefully the big videos will be fair game once the program has the kinks worked out.

So what are you waiting for? Head over to http://google.com/videotargeting and check it out!

Real Money On Twitter?

Posted on June 20, 2009 by Josh Todd

I was able to sit in on a few of the panel discussions at the first Affiliate Convention in Denver this week, and one of the things that came up over and over again was the power of Twitter. By now, pretty much everyone in the Internet Marketing world has a Twitter account, but how many people are really making money off of it?

Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker was quite adamant that there is an “imbalance” right now in the realm of monetizing Twitter. Similar to Facebook and some other new ad platforms when they opened up, he feels like there is a lot of inventory to be had for cheap that can be arbitraged very effectively. That being said, action needs to be taken now because this won”t last forever!

One of the tools that has come to my attention this week (and was mentioned at the conference) is RevTwt. One of my friends is a prolific Twitter-holic, and he has played around with putting some RevTwt ads in his feed to make some extra money. They pay out on a CPC basis, similar to Google AdSense. This is all well and good, but I think that the real potential to make money with Twitter is in doing the advertising, not the publishing.

You can sign up for an advertiser account at RevTwt and their clicks start extremely cheap, as low as 8 cents. Any marketer worth his salt should be able to arbitrage that into something that makes much more money. Maybe some of those campaigns that you have paused because clicks got too expensive on Google? A campaign that makes you an average of 60 cents per click is a loser if you are paying a dollar a click, but if you are paying 8 cents then it becomes profitable again very quickly!

The thing I like about RevTwt, or just ads in general on Twitter, is that there is a possibility for implicit trust built in for the end users. If their friends are the ones that are tweeting, they are much more likely to click on the ad because they feel that it is something that was personally recommended. Couple this with those oh-so-popular Flog landing pages, and you”ve got a potential goldmine.

So there you have it, the time is now, I would love to see more people get out there and experiment with advertising on RevTwt and Twitter!

Google AdWords Bidding Explained – Finally!

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Josh Todd

There has always been an element of mystery to bidding for keywords on Google AdWords. Finally, Hal Varian from the mighty Google speaks out on our behalf with this clear and concise video to explain exactly what happens when you bid on a keyword and how the ads are ranked. If you haven’t seen this video yet, you need to take the 9 minutes and 12 seconds it takes to watch it. If you spend any money on Google AdWords at all, it will be worth it.

See, I told you so! Now go make some money.

Can Ringtones Still Make Money On Google?

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Josh Todd

If you are promoting ringtones offers, then you no doubt have been affected by the recent changes to Google’s AdWords policy regarding mobile offers. The question is, how big of a hit is this to the Ringtones vertical? Is it still possible to market Ringtones on Google?

One thing that can be said about affiliate marketers is that they are a creative bunch. Anytime something like this happens in the industry, there is a few days of moaning and gnashing of teeth, but after that everyone gets back to work and decides that it’s just another obstacle to overcome. Some of the big guys might even be glad for changes like this because it knocks the newbies out of the running for a while. It will take some time for the effects to be fully felt, but perhaps the change could even result in lower click costs, due to less competition.

Grants? Nope. Acai? Nope. Ringtones? Hmm...

When you are thrown a curveball from the big G, it’s time to take a look at the variables and see what can be changed to increase conversions. The glory days of 2002 are long gone, there will be no more promotion of ringtones on Google AdWords by telling people that it’s free, when it in fact costs money. Now that you’ve got that ugly “$9.95/month” telling people not to click on your ads, you need to give them some other reason to. Luckily you still have control over some of the most important aspects of your ads, the Headline and the Display URL.

SendMe Mobile recently sent out an alert to their partners pointing out the effect of changing the position of the carrier name in the Display URL has. Most of the ads that you see will put the carrier after the slash, as in “URL.com/Verizon”. SendMe suggests that they have seen an increase in CTR from putting the carrier as a sub-domain at the start of the Display URL as in “verizon.URL.com”.

This makes sense because it appeals to the people looking for a trustworthy source for their ringtones. Now that the pricing is on all the ads, people are going to want to give their money to someone that seems legit, as opposed to “TonsOfFreeTones.com” ($9.95/month).

Of course there is the other alternative, which I’m sure many of you have thought about, which is to get your traffic from somewhere else. I’ve heard more than once that Ringtones have been dead on Google for a long time, and while I disagree, this proves that people are not just relying on Google for 100% of their traffic. It’s time to look at the alternatives, even outside the big 3 search engines. There is lots of 2nd and 3rd tier search engines to be found, and there’s also PPV, not to mention doing specific Media Buys or direct ad placements on websites.

To answer the original question, yes, I think that Ringtones can still make money on Google, but it might be less and less a part of your overall marketing strategy for these offers. It’s time to put on the thinking cap, go back to the drawing board, and get creative.

Now go make some money!

How To Direct Link On Google – Part 2

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Josh Todd

My last post has generated a lot of response and questions from people, so I wanted to discuss a couple of other points about the method that I outlined in Part 1.

First of all, there is the question of whether this method could get you banned from Google AdWords. I would consider this a gray-area technique. It’s not something that is an instant ban, but if you exploit it to a huge degree, then yes, it could lead to your account being terminated.

The reason that I posted this method is that it can be a great way to test out a campaign, but I can’t stress enough that you should be building landing pages for offers that have proven successful with the direct link method. It is very hard to build a long-term, sustainable business on the internet without creating a website.

Second, some people have questioned the ethics of using another site that doesn’t belong to you as the display URL. The easiest response there is, if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, then don’t do it. An alternative to using someone’s website is that you can use a domain that you own as the Display and Destination URL to get your ad approved, then switch the link to your affiliate link with Edit Keyword Settings like I suggested. This way you don’t have to spend the time to build out a full dedicated landing page, but you are still using your own domain so you won’t get any complaints from other webmasters or feel bad about doing it.

I would also like to stress that the tutorials that I publish on this blog are not meant to be the absolute blueprint to success with affiliate marketing. There is no such blueprint. The goal with this blog is to give you, the reader, some good tips & advice to get going with some campaigns and marketing methods, and then you can tweak them and customize them to find what works the best for you.

There is a lot of money to be made in this industry, and it’s not always going to be easy. It’s a lot easier than working 60 hours a week in a job that you hate to bring home just enough to keep the bill collectors at bay though… Anything with the kind of potential that you have as an affiliate marketer is going to take some time to become successful at, but the rewards are definitely worth the effort that you put in.

That being said, I will continue to offer more strategies and tutorials, and I will do my best to answer your questions & comments to steer you in the right direction. So keep reading, and keep the feedback coming!

How To Direct Link On Google

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Josh Todd

Direct linking on Google is a very popular way to test out affiliate offers to see how they convert before you devote the time to building a landing page. To get started, you need to login to your Google AdWords account and start a new campaign. You want to start a New Campaign with Keywords, not Placements.

Be sure to choose the proper country for the offer that you are promoting. Google recently threw a monkey wrench into the works by setting the default countries to “United States and Canada”. A lot of CPA offers will only accept traffic from one or the other, not both. So pick your country and move on.

Creating your first ad will be the next step. An ad consists of a Headline, 2 Description lines, a Display URL, and a Destination URL. Go ahead and create a catchy headline and a descriptive ad containing a call to action, you want to get people to click on your ad now, not next week or next year.

The Display URL is an important step, and this is where we are going to trick Google into thinking that you already have a website built out for your offer. Just do a normal Google search for your main keyword and pick a URL from one of the sites that appears in the organic (non-sponsored) links. Make sure that the URL is not also advertised in the Sponsored Links on the right side of the page, because if it is, this trick won’t work. Copy the URL and paste it into the Display URL box.

Now that you’ve got your Display URL, you want to use the exact same URL for your Destination URL. I know what you are thinking, “But wait, how will I get paid for sending traffic to a site that isn’t mine?”. Fear not, we are going to fix that in the next step. This is just to get Google to approve your ad and hopefully assign you with a decent Quality Score.

So at this point your ad should look something like this:

Next you will choose your Keywords and enter your Daily Budget and CPC (Cost Per Click) bids. Keyword generation and selection is a topic for an entire discussion in itself, so I will just advise you to do your research before hand and have some keywords to get started with before you setup your campaign. Google’s Free Keyword Tool is an excellent place to start.

We are almost done. Go ahead and review everything and hit Save Campaign. Now we need to do the final step to direct the traffic to your affiliate link instead of the website that you are using for your display URL. Once you have saved the campaign, you will be taken to the campaign overview screen. Click on the Keywords tab, and then check the box to select all of your keywords. Once you have them all selected, click the Edit Keyword Settings button.

This will take you to a screen where you can input a new Destination URL for each keyword. Go ahead and put your affiliate link into the first field, then hit the little down arrow button, this should copy the URL into all of the keywords for you. So, for example, if your affiliate link is http://login.tracking101.com/ez/aasldkfjd (not a real link), it should look something like this:

UPDATE: Make sure that you remove the http:// from your affiliate link when you put it into this Destination URL box, because it will give you an Illegal Characters In URL error if you don’t. There is a drop-down box to the left of where you put the link in that lets you select http:// or https:// for a secure affiliate link. It defaults to http:// which is what most networks use.

Then just hit Save Changes, and you are good to go. Congratulations, now you know how to get a direct-linked campaign approved on Google.