AdWord Mania

AdWord Mania Make a Fortune Writing Google AdWords! ! ! " # # $ % & ! ' + ( ) ( * . , - / 01 2 2 3 4 4 5 7 6 % 7 Congratulations! Welcome to the exiting world of Internet Marketing! It is our distinct pleasure to introduce you to the power, possibilities, and profits available to anyone with drive and vision enough to seize the opportunity. We are going to give you the tools and training to make your dreams a reality. Before we get too far into the topic, you are going to need a few things. • • • Do you have a computer with Internet access? This is a must for this program. Most everything we are going to do is online. Do you have a credit card? You will need one to begin bidding on Google AdWords. You can start with as little as $20. Do you have a bank account? You will need someplace to deposit your earnings! That’s it. The only other ingredient is your time. To allow this text to progress at a reasonable pace, we are assuming that you are somewhat familiar with the operation of your computer and the Internet. You will see a number of links to useful sites throughout this guide. These sites can be visited by either clicking the links or pasting them into your web browser. If you are unfamiliar with either of these tactics, you would be well advised to check with a friend or computer support technician before moving on. You will also want to be connected to the Internet while going through this guide; the links are very important. Only a couple of final thoughts before we begin. First, print out a copy of this text. You never know when inspiration will strike. Your margins will be full of notes before we are through. Secondly, patience is a virtue. We understand that this is all very exciting, but wait until you have worked through the entire guide before setting off on your own campaigns. The big picture is a must for the successful student. Once again, congratulations on taking the first step in separating yourself from the masses. And welcome to the exciting world of Google AdWords! Sincerely, Jake Kennedy How Does It Work? The Internet is a market unlike like any other. In fact, most people have no idea exactly how things are marketed and sold online. In a nutshell, the key to understanding Internet sales is Affiliate Marketing. Large companies on the web are constantly trying to attract new customers. This is no easy task given the number of competitors and websites online. Companies needed online evangelists, if you will. Someone to put in the work and spread the word. These corporate evangelists were dubbed Affiliates. While every company has a slightly different program, affiliates are richly rewarded for their efforts. You may be paid for every click you can drive to a site, or new sale you can generate, or new subscriber you can get to sign up for a newsletter. It really depends on what the company needs you to do. You help them meet their goals, and they are more than happy to pay you for it. Becoming an affiliate is surprisingly simple. Entire companies exist for no other reason than to help Affiliates find the program that is right for them. These Affiliate Clearinghouses may have hundreds or thousands of affiliate programs to choose from. It is their job to track your Affiliate performance and make sure you get paid. Naturally, you will find yourself very fond of the Affiliate Clearinghouses and the checks they send you. For each Affiliate program you select to participate in, you are generally given a personalized link. The Affiliate Clearinghouse tracks your performance through your links. If a customer coming through your links performs the required action, you are compensated. Joining an Affiliate Clearinghouse involves an application and approval process. There is no cost to you. The companies promoting their affiliate program cover their expenses. The Affiliate Clearinghouses and the sponsoring companies would love nothing better to send you a very large check every month. The largest Affiliate Clearinghouses are Clickbank, Linkshare, Performics, Commission Junction, and BeFree. These Affiliate Clearinghouses track billions of clicks monthly, and represent such reputable companies as Wal-Mart, Western Union, Disney, and Nordstrom. Make no mistake; Affiliate Marketing is very lucrative and absolutely legitimate. So what have we come up with? Clearly, Affiliate Marketing is a very good thing. We don’t need to carry inventory. We don’t have to ship anything. We don’t actually have to sell anything. All we have to do is drive the right kind of traffic to the right companies. We do that, and we are in for a very nice payday. Google AdWords, The Right Kind of Traffic The Google network is visited an average of 200 million times a day. This powerful search engine remains one of the most popular and profitable web properties. We, however, are specifically interested in the Google AdWords program. Let’s go look at it now at http://www.google.com Go ahead and run a search for “Printers”. On the left, you see the standard search results. On the right, you see the green boxes with summaries and links. These ads are called “Google AdWords”. They AdWords appear on Google, AskJeeves, Earthlink, Sympatico, and AOL and many others. AdWords give us opportunities to make money! With Google AdWords, you are in control of your ads. You pick the keywords that trigger the ad. In our example, the ads you saw were triggered by the keyword “Printers”. You decide on the wording and links. And, most importantly, you are only charged when someone clicks on your ad. The program has real-time reporting of your ad’s performance. Daily spending limits can be capped, and the ad can be improved or removed instantly. You may be wondering about how the order of these ads is decided. The top spot is not necessarily guaranteed to the advertiser willing to pay the most per click. It is actually the ad that is going to make the most money for Google. Basically, that means the ad that not only pays well for each click, but one that is appealing enough to generate a high number of clicks. The moral is that well written ads can bump you above advertisers willing to pay a higher rate. Skill is more important than your bankroll. The process goes something like this. You find a promising Company that is willing to pay you a commission on sales you send to their site. (Don’t worry; we will give you 5 Top Products to start with) The companies that pay you a commission on your sales set up tracking called are Affiliate Tracking. You compose a Google AdWords ad that you think is customers will click on. The link in the ad is a personalized tracking link from your Affiliate Tracking. Clicking the link takes the customer to the company’s site. When the customer makes the purchase, signs up for the newsletter, etc., you receive credit and a commission. It’s just that easy! The days are gone when you had to have a shop, inventory, and employees to turn a profit. AdWords allows you to make money from your own home. Here is the path we follow when constructing a new AdWords campaign. Each point in the process will be explored in more detail in the remainder of this text. • Find a company that you think has a great product or service. • • • • • See is the company has an Affiliate program and sign up! Assemble a set of key words likely to be commonly searched for online when looking for the product or service that you have chosen. Write great ads to promote the program through Google AdWords. Get your ad running on Google AdWords and monitor your performance. Collect your commissions and laugh all the way to the bank. It sounds simple because it is simple. Now it is just a matter of going through the steps. In The Beginning… It has been our experience that you can seldom go wrong with a checklist. This one will help us get things rolling. _ Start a file. You are going to have a number of accounts, passwords, sites and files to keep track of. Getting a handle on the organization now is only going to help you down the road. Create a digital folder on your desktop and start a paper file folder to keep in a safe place at home. We would also suggest printing out important files. You never know when a nasty virus could wipe out your digital files. _ We mentioned at the beginning that you would need a credit card and a bank account. If you would like to keep this project separate from your personal finances, this would be the time to set up a new bank account and get a new credit card. Once these are in place, they can be difficult to change. _ Decide on a mailing address for the project. You will be getting checks. If you would prefer not to disclose your home address, a PO Box will work equally well. _ If you don’t have an email address, go ahead and sign up for one. http://mail.yahoo.com has an excellent free service that can be accessed online or with the popular Microsoft Outlook programs. A separate account just for this project can keep your personal email account from becoming overwhelmed. _ Let’s go ahead and join the Affiliate Clearinghouses. Everyone has their favorite, but you’ll want to have access to all of the larger players. The only one that may bear some explanation is Clickbank. They specialize entirely in downloadable products. This is a more narrow, and highly lucrative market. Clickbank affiliate programs pay up to 70% of the sale price in commissions. Keep this in mind when we discuss selecting appropriate campaigns. The companies you will want to sign up for are: o o Clickbank – http://www.clickbank.com Commission Junction – http://cj.com/ o o o o AdReporting – www.adreporting.com LinkShare - http://linkshare.com/ Performics - http://www.performics.com BeFree – http://www.befree.com That covers the basics, and you’re doing great. We’re ready to move on to the next step. Picking The Right Products It is no exaggeration when we say that there are thousands products with Affiliate Programs on the web eager for your participation. Clearly, some of these are going to contribute more to your bottom line than others. Another checklist of issues to consider when selecting programs is in order: _ Higher payouts are a good thing. Either way, your costs to drive traffic are the same. If everything is equal, why take a $10 commission when you could get $20? _ Bearing the previous point in mind, does the site convert well? For example, it does you not good to drive 100 people to the $20 site if no one purchases and earns you a commission. At times, the $10 program may be the better choice if their site is better able to turn shoppers into buyers. Only experience and testing will uncover these cases. It’s generally advisable to try the program with the higher payout first. _ How often will you be paid? Checks may be sent weekly, monthly, or even quarterly. Always check this out when you sign up. Long payment periods can become quite frustrating. _ Is there an affiliate referral bounty? Some programs reward you for recruiting additional affiliates Not only might you receive a bounty payment, but many programs offer you percentage of your recruits’ earnings. _ What are the program’s payment conditions? Does the user have to buy something, enroll in a program, join a newsletter, or any number of other actions? The more difficult the action the user must take, the less likely you are to earn a commission. Now that we have some understanding of the issues facing us, we’re ready to pick our programs. The following are the tactics we use in our own campaigns. You Don’t Have To Reinvent The Wheel Nothing says you need to reinvent the wheel or even have a particularly original idea. What we lack in creativity we make up for in thoroughness. The trick is to find someone running a successful affiliate campaign and muscle in on the action. We may not make any friends, but checks can be surprisingly comforting. So how do we find out who is running a successful campaign? Overture is a good indicator. Affiliates bid on what they are willing to pay for a click when displayed with a particular search term. You can see the current bids for a particular term using the Overture Maxbid Tool at http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/USm/search/tools/bidtool/ Affiliates making very high bids must be converting well to be able to pay so much per click. Paying $1 and up per click means that the Affiliate is making much more per visitor over the long run. These are the affiliates you want to emulate. Click the links, and the site you end up on is the advertiser. Now it’s simply a matter of finding the Affiliate program for this advertiser. This can usually be found in the form of an “Affiliates” or “Webmasters” link on the bottom of the advertiser’s page. You may also want to hunt for them in the large Affiliate Clearinghouses you’ve already joined. What has been overlooked? For some reason, highly searched terms are often overlooked. This is the proverbial goldmine. People are interested, and the lack of competing AdWords affiliates keeps the click price low. It doesn’t get much better than that. A great tool for locating these gaps is the WordTracker Tool. It isn’t free, but certainly a worthy investment. It is available at http://wordtracker.com/ Not only does it reveal the number of times a term has been searched for, but also how many sites are competing with that term. The information is invaluable. What’s flying off the shelves? It is always a good idea to understand your market. Watch the news. Read the paper. Spend some time at the mall. If a product looks like it is going to be hot, jump on it. You can find an affiliate program for just about anything. If nothing else, Amazon sells everything under the sun and pays Affiliates a nice percentage of every sale. Get in on the ground floor of this year’s fad, and you will be handsomely rewarded. Watch the Affiliate Clearinghouses We cannot express the importance of the first mover advantage strongly enough. Keep an eye on the clearinghouses for new programs. Catch a program early enough, and you will be the only player in the game. When it comes to promoting affiliate programs, first come is definitely first served. Don’t be afraid to be a category player Some types of programs have traditionally higher payout levels. These include: Software downloads and eBooks like this one. Home loan companies Gambling and off track betting Ink refillers and office suppliers Dating sites While it is not everyone’s cup of tea, adult sites tend to pay affiliates quite well Login, Link Up Ok, now we’re starting to make some progress. You’ve picked some Affiliate Programs and are ready to get started. What we need at this point are our personalized affiliate tracking links. These links allow the Affiliate Sponsor or Clearinghouse to give us credit for the shoppers we send their way. To get your links, go ahead and login to the affiliate program. This is generally done by logging into an Affiliate Clearinghouse and picking the program from a list of programs to which you have subscribed. There is generally and option to the effect of “Get Links”. Your tracking link may look something like this: http://hop.clickbank.net?xxxx/adwrd Save a listing of these links in your files. Be sure that you copy them exactly. A misspelled link may still go to the correct site, but there is a very good chance that you will get no credit. With our links in hand, we’re almost ready to start making some money. Conjuring Keywords We’ve picked our programs and gotten links. Now we need to decide on our keywords. These are the words that will trigger our ad to appear. Start off thinking of words customers would use to search for the program you’ve selected. Make a list. Imagine we’ve found a promising affiliate program for a company selling cheese over the Internet. We might consider: Cheese Fresh Cheese Order Cheese Cheese Mail Order Don’t feel limited to stick with one particular word, or form of the word. Common terms, while appearing in more searches, will be more in demand and force a higher click price. The trick is to think of other words or forms of the word that will appear in searches but have been generally overlooked by other advertisers. We might want to look into: Ordering Cheese Cheeses Cheddar Meunster Cheeze Chese Crackers Notice that we employed the plural form of the word, changed the tense of Order, selected some more specific types of cheese, and even went for common misspellings. A substantial portion of all searches is for misspelled words. “Crackers” is an example of branching into complimentary products. A user searching online for crackers may be interested in something to put on his crackers. Brand names and model/part numbers are also adivisable. It also never hurts to take into account what words the affiliate program has already come up with. Visit the page you are promoting. In your internet browser, select View and then click Source from the toolbar at the top. At the top of the code that appears, you will see a list of meta-tags. These generally include a long list of words that are typically only seen by search engines. This is a good place to get your keyword list started. Your creativity and mastery of the English language can equate to substantial earnings at this point. The Subtle Art of Ads Make no mistake, not all ads are created equal. A well-written ad will always lead to a better bottom line. Let’s discuss what makes an effective Google AdWords Ad. When constructing your ad, be aware of the space limitations. You are allowed a headline of 25 characters, and two text lines of 35 characters each. You will be amazed with what you can do with 95 characters. First, get their attention. A great trick is to use the keyword as your headline. If the search was for “Imported Cheeses”, using that term as your headline is certainly going to draw the user’s interest. Also, placing the search term in the two lines of text will cause it to appear in bold! Remember, it is not your job to sell the program. Your job is to drive traffic. Don’t tell people why the need to buy necessarily. You only need to convince them to click. Tell the user why they should be interested in the program you are promoting. If you are promoting a new diet, don’t say, “Great New Diet”. Rather, try, “Lose Weight Now!” Extol benefits, not specifics. In developing the benefits of a particular program, spend some time on their site. Try to understand what the program can do for the user. Summarize into an explanation. Use a whole page if you need to. Then summarize that page into a paragraph. Summarize again into a couple of lines. Finally refine the text to the 70 words allowed. It can take some getting used to, but the end result is generally fantastic. Certain buzzwords and catch phrases are also great for capturing clicks. We recommend: Limited Time Offer Supplies Are Running Out Below Retail Sale Save Time Save Money Make more $$ Easy Simple Work From Home You get the idea. One caveat worth mentioning is the most dangerous word in advertising: FREE. We would advise avoiding the dreaded F-word at all cost. Anything free is going to generate large amounts of clicks. However, that is about all it seems to generate. The type of user cruising the web for Freebies generally does not convert well for affiliate programs. If the program you are promoting has a price, mention it. Driving only qualified traffic that has the potential of converting into a commission will increase your profits. FREE is a word that can put you right out of business. Getting Googled The time has come to make our first foray into Google. For the initial round of introductions, I defer to the experts at Google. You will want to take some time with the documents listed below. The Site: http://adwords.google.com The Tour: https://adwords.google.com/select/tour/1.html The FAQ: https://adwords.google.com/select/index.html The Setup: https://adwords.google.com/select/steps.html Get through the details? Great! You will want to refer to these guides again in the future. Google updates them regularly with important service updates. Your First Campaign OK. Now that you are familiar with everything, lets actually set up your first campaign in Google. First go to https://adwords.google.com/ and click on the “Sign up Now” button (unless you have already completed this step). You will then be taken to the first of 4 steps to complete. 1. Target languages & countries - Unless you have specifically chosen a campaign that you want to target non-English speaking countries, I would suggest just choosing the United States. You can also include Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia if you want to broaden your reach a bit. You can adjust these later and change them for different campaigns if you want in the future. 2. Create Ad Groups – This section has a few parts, but first you have to name this ad group. I usually use something related to what I am offering with the date after it. For example if I am selling books I would name it “Books100103”, but feel free to use whatever works best for you. a. Create Ads – Here you will put together your first ad. Before you start, make sure you read over the AdWords Editorial Guidelines and adhere to these rules as you put your ads together. If you do not, they will reject them and you will have to rewrite them all over again. Now with what you have learned so far and some of your own personal creativity, it is time to write that ad. i. Headline – This is the eye catcher so try to grab your audience with something exciting. Remember, a good way to become inspired is from the other ads that are out there. If you have trouble coming up with something, just do some Google searches and see what others are writing. ii. Description line 1 – Start writing your description here and try to include relevant but exciting information. Ask yourself what would get you excited enough to click on this ad? But, also make sure what you are putting is relevant. Remember, you want people clicking that are actually going to be interested in what you have to offer. Clicks cost you money, so you don’t want to mislead people with your ad that would never take advantage of what you are offering. iii. Description line 2 – Finish it off, and keep their attention! iv. Display URL – This is where you will enter in the web address of the offer you are selling. Don’t put in your affiliate link just yet, that goes in the next box. But put in the address for that merchant you are selling for. For example www.books.com if that is the merchant’s web address. v. Destination URL – Now is where you put in your affiliate link that you generated from the program you signed up for. Will probably look something like this http://hop.clickbank.net?xxxx/adwrd and MAKE SURE YOU ENTER IT IN RIGHT! Test it out and make sure you get to your affiliate page or you won’t be getting any credit for your effort. When you are finished click on the “Create Ad and Continue” button. b. Choose Keywords – OK, another important step is getting those keywords selected. You should see your ad on the left hand side of the page in the little box. You can also Edit the ad if you would like. Then, get those keywords you have come up with entered in one on each line. Be sure to take advantage of the available “suggest keywords” tool if you run out of ideas. When you are finished click on the “Save Keywords” button. c. Choose Maximum Cost per Click (CPC) – Now you should see a list of all your keywords in a box and you have to determine how much you are willing to pay per click. To start off Google “suggests” an amount. Instead enter in 0.05 (5 cents) and click the “Calculate Estimates” button. Google will estimate the estimated number of clicks per day you will receive and the average position your ad will appear in. The lower the number of the position the better. Play around with the number but know that you can go in later and change the CPC you are willing to pay for each keyword if you want. The safest was to start is at $.05 until you are ready to go higher. When you are comfortable with your selection click on the “Save & Continue” button. For now we will not add an additional Ad Group (though you can do it later) so click on the “Continue to Step 3” button. 3. Specify your daily budget – Basically Google will only show your ads until you reach your daily budget per day. For example, if you set all your CPC at $.05 and had a daily budget of $10, as soon as 200 people clicked on your ad, it would be turned off until the next day. Again, you can always change this number later so it is usually good to set it low at first just to make sure you stay in a comfortable cost range depending on your situation. After you type in your daily budget click on the “Save & Continue” button. 4. Sign Up – Enter in all your information and make sure you save that information in a safe place. When you are finished click on the “I agree – Create my AdWords account” button and that is it! You will receive an e-mail at the address you specified with the final account verification and info on how to submit your billing information. When you have completed that final information and the ad you submitted is approved (fingers crossed!) then your first Google ad will be up and running! Real World Example I have always thought the best way to learn how something is done is to watch someone who knows how to do it. That is what this section is here to help you do. I am going to walk you through one of my own successful campaigns to give you a feel for how it is done. One day I received an email advertising a pocket sized portable printer for sale. Since I do a lot more traveling now that I have the time and freedom, I thought this would be a useful product for me. So, I bought one. When it arrived, I thought it was great! That got me thinking that everyone who travels should have one. So, I signed up for the affiliate program with the company selling them to offer to people just like me, and I got to work! First I did some searches in Google and other search engines to see who else was selling these through Google Adwords. Luckily for me, there was almost no competition. I had found a great little niche to work with. Next I used an indispensable little tool called the Ad Word Analyzer http://www.adwordanalyzer.com/ to help me out. It is worth the small investment if you plan to do this a lot. You can also use the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, which will help you out for free. The Analyzer tool came up with something like this: Now I had a good idea of how many searches were being made, and other similar terms being searched, their respective results. That got me off to a great start. Next I looked at some of the keywords they were suggesting to see if anyone was selling the portable printer I had to offer. I made notes of all my findings as I went through all the suggestions they offered. I also came up with some of my own, and put all this information into a file for later. With my ideas and my keywords ready to go, I then went back to the company’s Affiliate Program and got the affiliate links I would need for my Google ad. I added this link to my file along with some brainstorming ideas for other keywords and ad text that had come to me in the car that afternoon. Armed with all the necessary information I went to Google Adwords and set up my ad. This is what I had come up with: I thought that this ad would: 1. Catch people’s attention. 2. Help keep away people that were not interested in buying a product by providing information relating to the price. 3. Get people looking for this sort of product just interested enough to entice them to come and see what it was. So with everything ready to go the ad was submitted and I went out to dinner and a movie with my wife. Checking back in later I logged into Google Adwords and went into their reporting tools. I was able to see the statistics of my campaign on a screen that looked like this: For these keywords I had received 67 clicks out of 1,592 impressions (number of people that saw the ad) for a Click Through Rate (CTR) of 4.2%, which is very good! It cost me $3.35 for the ad. I was making a payout of $15 per sale from the merchant as their affiliate. So at 2 sales for $30 of revenue your profit is over 700% of your cost! Google AdWords worked for me and it can work for you! Start today and find a product you think is of high demand to a niche audience! If you can come up with just a few campaigns like this you will be an Adwords Pro in no time! ! ! " # $ $ $ & % $ ' $ " (