Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

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.

I don't want to leave more advanced AdWords users out in the cold, so I'll mention again the eight-week, online workshop called Adwords Copywriting Intensive that AdWords guru Perry Marshall and copywriting legend John Carlton start next week.

You'll get all of John Carlton's copywriting genius applied to Google ads, opt-in pages, sales letters and email followup. You'll see how to apply persuasive copywriting to the killer "sales funnel" that Perry developed into the top producing formula online.

It's NOT for beginners. But if you feel you're ready to move your AdWords skills to the next level, by all means check it out!
Jeff

Labels: Google AdWords, John Carlton, 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

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from Being Observant
This is one of my favorite ways of finding a topic for articles -- and an absolute staple of my blog. I love to find connections to new business insights in such mundane things as watching a bridge being built, walking past an unrented storefront, passing a business sign that someone has covered with a tarp, or the change in household duties required by my wife's broken wrist.

If you can keep track of the ideas that unconnected events trigger in your mind, you can have an almost unlimited supply of engaging article ideas that you can share with others.

The problem is not that no ideas exist about which you can write an article. The problem usually is that we simply haven't trained our minds to recognize the multitude of article ideas that bombard us every day.

Train your eyes to see those ideas. Then, go out and write some articles.
Jeff

Labels: article marketing

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from PLR Content
If you have trouble coming up with ideas for articles, Private Label Rights (PLR) content is a great way to get ideas. Most people feel more comfortable editing content rather than writing it from scratch. PLR content gives you prewritten content that you can edit to make it uniquely your own.

The temptation with PLR content is to take the prewritten articles and submit them -- as is -- to article sites. The problem with that is that many other people buy those same articles and submit them to the same directories.

It doesn't take much for the article directories to catch on that article A is identical to article B. Once they find that, you can forget about them accepting that article. You could even find yourself banned from submitting to that directory ever again.

Use PLR articles to get you started. Get your idea from the PLR article and then take it from there to make your article unique. I'm not talking about changing a word here or there. I'm talking about making your article completely UNIQUE.

Most PLR articles I've seen are pretty lame, anyway. Most are pretty generic. They desperately need better writing and more useful content.

Take the PLR articles you buy and make them your own. You're much more likely to get them accepted that way.

By the way, if you'd just as soon outsource your article writing to someone else, check out Spin Ready PLR. You work with writers who write specifically for your niche (as opposed to most PLR sites who write articles for a variety of niches that might not always be a good fit for you). And they present your finished articles to you in a way that makes it extremely simple to "spin" them into a completely unique article.
Jeff

Labels: article marketing

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from Old Books on Your Market
Unless your niche came into existence yesterday, you can step back into the past for an article topic. Look at older books about your niche. Consider what has changed and what hasn't.

Those changes (or lack of them) give you several angles to use in approaching your topic.

• What has changed and how those changes affect your readers
• Why things have changed
• What those changes suggest about the future of your niche
• What hasn't changed and remains as a timeless value to you and your readers
• What things that have dropped out of favor are ripe to be rediscovered

Does this work only if your niche has been around for 3,000 years? Absolutely not. Any niche that has changed over any period of time is ripe for this approach.

Consider the Internet. It has been commonly used only for the past 15 years. Yet look at how much it has changed over that time!

Any niche that has grown and developed gives you a chance to use this approach. Things DO change in virtually every niche. Take advantage of that fact.
Jeff

Labels: article marketing

Keys to Article Marketing - Getting Great Article Ideas from Classic Stories
Another good source for articles is by taking a universally known story, like a fairy tale, and drawing a connection between it and your area of expertise.

Classic stories resonate with people because they touch a familiar chord in their own experience, even if they've never stepped through a looking glass, or done a taste test of porridge in a house built by three bears, or accompanied a Jedi knight on a quest to save the universe.

Tap into the shared experience that cause people to connect with those stories. Tie those shared experiences in those stories to your topic and you'll engage people's curiosity to see what new insights you're leading them toward.
Jeff

Labels: article marketing