Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Google AdWords Tips: Best Resources for PPC Advertising
I promised yesterday that I'd share my favorite AdWords resources. I'll start with the free ones:

Dr.Glenn Livingston free training package -- I haven't met many people I would unhesitatingly call a genius. Dr. Glenn Livingston is one of those few. I met Glenn at a seminar and he wowwed me with his grasp of how to discover your market's hot buttons.

He is also a whiz at AdWords, and he combines his knowledge of both on a free giveaway that he agreed to let me offer you. He provides 17 free AdWords cheat sheets, MP3s, and videos to show how to find and convert the customers who have the greatest value to you.

It's a whale of an offer and one you don't want to pass up.

Perry Marshall free adwords cheet sheet and ecourse -- I met Perry at the same seminar. He was hosting it, and he is considered by many the leading expert on Google AdWords.

His Definitive Guide to Google AdWords is pretty much what the title says: the most complete training you'll find on the ins and outs of succeeding with AdWords.

I'll tell you more about "The Definitive Guide" later, but first I want to point your attention to what he gives away for free. He has a 1-page cheat sheet on AdWords that he gives away as part of his free "5 Days to Success with Google AdWords" ecourse.

Sign up for his ecourse and you'll get his five-day course and his cheat sheet.

Perry Marshall Definitive Guide to Google AdWords -- If you like what you see with Perry's free training, don't hesitate to get "The Definitive Guide." Like I said before, it's the most complete treatment of AdWords I've ever seen. And Perry has kept it right up to date, so it never contains any outdated material.

As a matter of fact, he has expanded it to provide more specific tips to marketers with special needs when it comes to AdWords. These extra modules are available on a buffet basis. Pick and choose which modules you want and pay only for them.

It's a great approach that I wish more online marketing teachers would use. If you like what he offers with his free ecourse, check out "The Definitive Guide." You won't find a more complete resource for learning PPC.

PPC Kahuna -- Finally, I'll recommend a resource that gives you a hands-on approach to learning. PPC Kahuna helps you learn how to do AdWords as you actually do it, using some pretty effective proprietary tools.

This has the advantage of getting you going the fastest of any the resources I recommended. Instead of learning and then doing, you learn while doing.

The software you get helps remove the risk of AdWords draining your bank account while you learn how to find the sweet spots in your market. The tools find the sweet spots for you.

It helps you select the best keywords. It helps you optimize your ads. It actually can help you in more stages of your business than just AdWords.

It's geared mainly for affiliate marketers, so if you don't do affiliate marketing, you might find some of its tools don't apply to you. You'll find plenty that do apply, though, to make PPC Kahuna worth your while.

PPC Kahuna is not without downside, though. It isn't always open for new members. It operates under a strict membership limit and, when they reach that limit, they close the doors until space is available again.

On the bright side, they do have a waiting list. You can sign up and be notified as soon as they have space for you. It's worth waiting for.

Perry Marshall 3-Day Maui AdWords Workshop -- For some comprehensive AdWords training, AdWords master Perry Marshall plans to open a big window into his AdWords skills at the beginning of next month. He is preparing an intensive 3-day workshop in Maui with some of his best students. He will go into depth with all his strategies for winning the AdWords wars. And he plans to stream and record the vast majority of it.

He's offering a stream of the entire workshop and the DVD recordings for a limited time discount. You won't get the sunny beaches and the surfers, but you'll get pretty much everything else. If peeking over the shoulder of the best AdWords guy in the business for an entire workshop appeals to you, I encourage you to check out Perry's Maui AdWords Workshop.
Jeff

Labels: Google AdWords, pay-per-click advertising, Perry Marshall

Google AdWords Tips: Deciding What to Do with PPC Advertising
Before you decide to venture into PPC marketing, consider these questions carefully:

• Are you confident enough of your sales funnel to commit hundreds of dollars a month to PPC ads? Or, can you absorb a short-term loss while you get your ads, and your site, performing profitably?
• Do you have enough time to invest on testing and tracking and tweaking your ads so they bring you a profit?

If you answer "yes" to both questions, start learning PPC marketing. Don't go into it cold. This is NOT something for you to learn by trial and error while money is pouring out of your bank account.

Check back tomorrow for my recommended resources to help you avoid the mistakes that cost you dearly. Or check out some of the PPC resources on my website. Start knowledgeably right from the start and you'll take most of the risk out of PPC.

And for some comprehensive AdWords training, AdWords master Perry Marshall plans to open a big window into his AdWords skills at the beginning of next month. He is preparing an intensive 3-day workshop in Maui with some of his best students. He will go into depth with all his strategies for winning the AdWords wars. And he plans to stream and record the vast majority of it.

He's offering a stream of the entire workshop and the DVD recordings for a limited time discount. You won't get the sunny beaches and the surfers, but you'll get pretty much everything else. If peeking over the shoulder of the best AdWords guy in the business for an entire workshop appeals to you, I encourage you to check out Perry's Maui AdWords Workshop, too.
Jeff

Labels: Google AdWords, pay-per-click advertising, Perry Marshall

Google AdWords Tips: Avoiding the Killer Mistake that Most Advertisers Make
Always keep track of your results when you do any type of PPC advertising. All good PPC sites offer tools that help you track visitors from your ads and determine how many buy.

It's also a good idea to add a bit of tracking code to the end of the URL that you send your PPC visitors to. This involves adding a little tag that allows you to identify your PPC traffic from the rest of your traffic.

Adding tracking code to the end of your URL is as simple as adding six characters to the end of the URL that you tell your PPC provider to send that ad's traffic to. I suggest adding "?ref=g" (without the quotation marks) to identify Google ads, "?ref=y" (again, without the quotation marks) to identify Yahoo! ads, and "?ref=b" (without quotation marks) to identify Bing ads.

You can actually go well beyond just a single letter to create even more specific referrer codes. For now, though, we'll stick to simply identifying the PPC provider who sends a particular visitor.

Don't worry, either, about the referrer code "breaking" your link. The code has no effect on people being able to find your page. It merely enables your tracking software to identify which ad referred that visitor.


If you're interested in some advanced tips on Google AdWords, AdWords master Perry Marshall is holding a free teleseminar Thursday, February 11, at 3 PM EST, 2 PM CST, and noon PST. He plans to unveil a new, "Bionic" method writing AdWords ads that he says has dramatically boosted AdWords traffic while cutting the cost per click for everyone he has had use it.

This is a great opportunity to learn from the best and to do it for free. I encourage you to check it out!

Perry plans to open another window into his AdWords skills, too. He is preparing an intensive 3-day workshop in Maui with some of his best students. He will go into depth with all his strategies for winning the AdWords wars. And he plans to stream and record the vast majority of it.

He's offering a stream of the entire workshop and the DVD recordings for a limited time discount. You won't get the sunny beaches and the surfers, but you'll get pretty much everything else. If you think peeking over the shoulder of the best AdWords guy in the business for an entire workshop appeals to you, I encourage you to check out Perry's Maui AdWords Workshop, too.
Jeff

Labels: Google AdWords, pay-per-click advertising, Perry Marshall

Google AdWords Tips: Three Basic Rules for PPC Advertising
Here are three basic rules to follow when writing PPC ads.

Put the specific keyword you are targeting in the title of your ad
You want your ad to jump out at the people who see it. The best way is to have your keyword in the title. When your ad appears for a search, any keywords the searcher used will appear in bold. This draws more attention to your ad than to other ads that don't have those exact keywords.

Take the searcher to the exact page that deals with the topic of her search
Most marketers, amazingly, don't follow this simple, but essential, rule.

They funnel ALL traffic to their home page and expect their searchers to hunt their way through the site to find what they're looking for. WRONG!

All you accomplish by dumping everyone on your home page is to irritate your searcher into clicking back to the search page to find another site.

Despite the fact that you lost the customer, you still pay for the click. In other words, you get charged for ticking a potential customer off and sending them to your competition. Not smart.

So how to you avoid this costly mistake? Link directly to the page that continues the conversation that your ad started.

Always lead your searcher DIRECTLY to the page that their search term demonstrates that they want to find.

Bid only on keywords that directly apply to your site
It does you no good to bid on slightly related terms in the hope that someone, when they see your product, will be so smitten by it that he will abandon what he was searching for and buy.

That isn't realistic. Sure, some circumstances exist where you want to expose your product to people who don't necessarily know about it. When you're paying for each click is not the time to reach out to the curious, though.

Follow these simple rules and you can have potential buyers to your site within hours.


If you're interested in some advanced tips on Google AdWords, AdWords master Perry Marshall is holding a free teleseminar Thursday, February 11, at 3 PM EST, 2 PM CST, and noon PST. He plans to unveil a new, "Bionic" method writing AdWords ads that he says has dramatically boosted AdWords traffic while cutting the cost per click for everyone he has had use it.

This is a great opportunity to learn from the best and to do it for free. I encourage you to check it out!
Jeff

Labels: Google AdWords, pay-per-click advertising, Perry Marshall

Google AdWords Tips: Best Sources of PPC Traffic
I'll focus mainly on Google AdWords. Most of my experience with PPC has come on AdWords and Yahoo! Sponsored Search.

The third of the Big 3 advertising sites is Bing. I've found AdWords more profitable, for me, than Yahoo! Sponsored Search. I've also found it much easier to use. Although Bing is intriguing, I'll have to admit I still haven't tried it for PPC. I just haven't gotten around to it.

I've tried some of the smaller PPC providers. I won't even mention them because, in my opinion, they aren't worth the effort. They've never produced anywhere near what AdWords, or even Yahoo!, have.

So, as I said, I'll focus mainly on the one with which I am most familiar, Google AdWords. Google Adwords is set up to let you split-test ads for each set of keywords you target. That lets you run two, slightly different, ads for the same keyword. Google then splits the number of times each one appears so you can see which one does better.

That way you can learn as you go how to make your ads more effective. As a matter of fact, don't run PPC ads unless you're tracking and testing them. Setting up ads by guesswork and then letting them draw money out of your account has been the downfall of many new PPC marketers.

I can't stress enough. Always keep testing your ads. Always keep improving them. That's the formula for PPC success.


If you're interested in some advanced tips on Google AdWords, AdWords master Perry Marshall is holding a free teleseminar Thursday, February 11, at 3 PM EST, 2 PM CST, and noon PST. He plans to unveil a new, "Bionic" method writing AdWords ads that he says has dramatically boosted AdWords traffic while cutting the cost per click for everyone he has had use it.

This is a great opportunity to learn from the best and to do it for free. I encourage you to check it out!
Jeff

Labels: Google AdWords, pay-per-click advertising, Perry Marshall

Google AdWords Tips: When You Want Traffic FAST!
Getting targeted traffic is always on every business owner's mind. So we'll take this week to look at the absolute quickest way of bringing visitors to your site, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Of course, that speed in attracting visitors comes at a price. You can't do PPC marketing without spending any money. You pay for every visitor you receive through these ads.

This strategy, therefore, is not for you if you have no money to invest in promotion. It is not for you if you're starting your business on a shoestring and need strategies that rely on investing your time instead of your money.

That said, though, it is almost impossible to beat when it comes to how quickly it can generate traffic. Set up an account in the morning and you can be seeing visitors from it by noon.

That's why it's the strategy of choice for many established marketers when they enter a new market. I'll give this warning, though. It can also be an enormous money drain if you go into it blind and don't consistently track and improve your ads. You have to approach AdWord intelligently.

Over the rest of the week, I'll share tips about using PPC profitably. I'll share:

• The best sources of PPC traffic
• The three key rules for keeping your PPC advertising profitable
• An absolute must for PPC advertising that almost all beginners overlook
• The essential questions to ask yourself before starting PPC advertising
• My favorite resources for PPC marketing
  

Admittedly, this week will be a basic-to-intermediate look at PPC advertising in general and Google AdWords specifically. I won't go all the way back to ground zero and explain, "This is what Google is," or "This is what an ad is."

I'll assume you know enough to set up your ads without me walking you through the basic steps. This will be more along the lines of what to do to keep your bank account from being drained by common AdWords mistakes.

I won't go into advanced strategies, though. If you're already fairly advanced in Google AdWords and want to step up to play with the AdWords big boys, you might want to check out a very special event that is starting soon.

One of my mentors, Perry Marshall, is teaming with copywriting legend John Carlton to hold an eight-week, online workshop called Adwords Copywriting Intensive that starts next week.

This workshop will apply all of John Carlton's copywriting genius to Google ads, opt-in pages, sales letters and email followup (the killer "sales funnel" developed by Perry that STILL is the top producing formula online).

WARNING: this workshop is NOT for beginners. But if you think you have what it takes to boost your AdWords skills to the upper echelon, by all means check it out!
Jeff

Labels: Google AdWords, John Carlton, pay-per-click advertising, Perry Marshall

Are You Giving Up Too Soon?
Here's a favorite quote from H. Ross Perot:

"Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown."

How true this is! We've grown up with instant this and instant that. We've come to expect instant success.

If we don't achieve business success on the first try, we give up. We complain about our "bad luck." We complain that the "system" is holding us back.

Or we assume that the fault lies with us. Something is lacking in us that "successful people" have.

In reality, most of our "failures" are simply a case of giving up too soon. We try something to promote our business and don't get instant results. So we abandon that and try something else.

Or we wait until our backs are against the wall and we need that success RIGHT NOW just to survive. We look for the easy switch to turn on success. Then when we find that there's no switch for us to turn on, we find ourselves with no resources left to keep us going what we get our business going.

The key is to choose a direction and then follow it through to success. Build momentum. Give it time to grow.

You don't plant an acorn in the ground and expect a 40 foot oak tree to be there the next morning. You watch it grow at its own rate.

The same thing goes with businesses. You don't cut them off because they're only shoot and haven't grown into a tree yet.

Hang in there! Keep moving forward. Learn from your mistakes when momentum slows. But DON'T GIVE UP!
Jeff

Labels: inspirational quotes