Archive for June, 2008:
Nothing gets you more angry then some doosh-bag taking your landing pages and coping them word-to-word and starts running them beside your ads.
This happened to me recently. I came home from work one day and saw my eCPC dropped drastically. At first I didn’t know what happened. I literally froze for few seconds. I quickly fired up my browser, opened my YSM and adwords accounts to see what was going on. I saw nothing had changed from yesterday except the conversion rate, which had gone down dramatically. For the first time in 2 months after launching my campaign I was losing money. It just didn’t make sense. I knew something fishy was going on.
I saw one of my adgroups which had always performed well was doing really badly. I quickly went to Google ad-preview tool to see if my ads were running fine. What I discovered just blew me away…
I saw a similar ad above my ad worded almost exactly as mine with a similar looking domain name, only the order of the words changed. This was the highlight of my day. I don’t know how long this guy had been running his ads like this but it was really pissed off to see what I saw.
Next, I went to his site and just couldn’t believe what I discovered – this guys basically downloaded my landing pages and uploaded them on to his server under his domain. It was an exact copy! With exact keywords, ad-copies and landing pages as mine, this guy was taking a big chunk out my revenue. I was absolutely furious as I should be.
How I dealt with this cheapskate copycat affiliate?
So you ask, what do I do when someone steals my stuff? You simply report to your affiliate manager or the network right away. I called my AM @ Azoogle, had a chat about what was going on and sent him his domain name shortly after. My AM immediately shut his affiliate link and in few hours his ads were down.
Networks will work with you to rectify situations like these because they don’t want to lose your business. First of all, this is a fraud – someone copying your sites is the stupidest thing they can do. They are asking to be shut down. No affiliate is going sit ideally and let this happen and networks will take action.
You can also report them to Google. I didn’t have to do that in my case because he ads were taken down without me raising the issue to Google. But I would imagine they will also take this seriously and shut his ads down.
How to prevent yourself being copied?
Apparently copying and stealing stuff outright is very common in the affiliate world but I think you can take few steps to prevent this to happen to yourself…
1. Don’t append keywords to your landing pages. In another word, don’t use PHP conversion tracking where you append the keywords to your URL using PHP code for tracking purposes. Instead use keyword pixel tracking. It’s fast, efficient and safe.
2. Avoid naming your images same as your keywords you’re bidding on. I can run a keyword search say “online dating sites” on http://images.google.com and get links to literally 1000s of landing pages. Your landing pages are sensitive data. Don’t let other affiliates see that.
3. Lastly, don’t share any info regarding your niche, keywords or domain names with anyone out there. Once they discover your secrets, this will simply copy you word-to-word. Why not? Less work for them. Right?
So protect your work. When you do catch someone taking your stuff, report them to your affiliate manager and your network right away.
I’m going to talk about 2 easy ways you can track your keywords with Google Adwords and Yahoo’s YSM.
When I first started PPC marketing, I didn’t understand the power of tracking keywords, which is why I never got any campaigns off the ground. Tracking your keywords is a must or else you might as well just stop your campaign. Because ultimately without any keyword conversions data, you will not know what keywords are profitable and which ones are not. You need to weed out the ones that are costing you money and expand on the ones that are making you profit. It’s that simple.
Tracking Your Keywords for Ultimate Profits
Now, let’s talk about how to track your keywords. There are two ways:
Method 1: Placing your pixel code on conversion page – The simple and efficient way
Placing your Google or Yahoo tracking pixel code requires you to contact your affiliate manager or the advertiser asking them to place the code on the conversion page of the offer.
Where to get the pixel code:
Adwords: Login-> Campaign Summary -> Conversion Tracking -> Create New Action -> pick Lead or Purchase from drop down, name your action, enter the commission amount on the offer -> click Save Action and Get Code .
Once the code is placed on the conversion page of the offer, you will start seeing conversion data beside your keywords in Adwords. Now you will know what keywords are converting and which ones are eating up money.
Pros: I like this method better since its easier to setup and involves almost no work on my part. The conversion data you get back is accurate and easy to track.
Cons: It requires to have your AM your place your code on the offer page. If you work with networks like clickbank, you are required contact advertiser directly and not all advertisers will do that for you.
Method 2: Capturing search keywords using PHP code and subids – The Coding way
You can write simple PHP code to capture the exact search keywords people typed when they clicked on your ads.
The idea is to put the code in your landing pages, capture the search keyword and append the keyword as a subid to your affiliate URL.
Now let me show you the code and see how we set this up with both Adwords and YSM.
Tracking keywords using PHP code with Google Adwords:
1. In the destination URL of your ad copies, append the following text in red
http://www.your-landing-page-domain.come/?kw={keywords}
You’re telling Google to get the keyword user types and append that at the end like this…
http://www.your-landing-page-domain.come/?kw=blue+widgets
2. Now, we just use the follwing PHP code in our landing page to capture this keywords and append it as subid to out affiliate URL.
<?php
$kw = $_GET["kw"]; //get the search keyword user typed
?>
<html>
<body>
<a href='<?php echo "http://your-affiliate-url?sub=$kw"?>' >Get Free Widgets Here</a>
</body>
</html>
Tracking keywords using PHP code with YSM:
YSM is bit different from Adwords. You don’t need to modify you ad destination URL like in Adwords. Yahoo will append the search keywords to your landing page URL itself as long as your have Tracking URLs on.
Turn on Tracking URLs in YSM:
YSM: Log into your YSM account -> Administration -> Tracking URLs -> Select Tracking URLs on -> Click Save Changes.
Yahoo now will append ?OVRAW=<search+keyword> query string to your landing page url containing the search keywords user typed when they clicked you ad. You can learn more about it here on Yahoo help pages
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/screenref/16897.html
The PHP code for tracking keywords with Yahoo:
<?php
$kw = $_GET["OVRAW"]; //get the search keyword user typed
?>
<html>
<body>
<a href='<?php echo "http://your-affiliate-url?sub=$kw"?>' >Get Free Widgets Here</a>
</body>
</html>
Pros: With this method you don’t need to run around after your AM or the advertiser to place your pixel code. You can basically track keywords on your end in your advertising network account. Your keywords will showup as subids. For example in your Azoogle affiliate account, you can pull up the sub id report to see the keywords.
Cons: Requires basic understanding of PHP coding on your part.
Chad from CDF network (one of my favorite blogs on affiliate marketing) is running a free contest on his blog. The contest is open to anyone. Prizes include…
$200 ML Amex Rewards Card – Free $200 to spend on anything
This is perfect to test a new offer or a niche with PPC
Flip Ultra Video Camera - Perfect for taking videos
Its a cool looking camera. Here’s a picture and a review.
Ipod Nano
Well, who doesn’t know what a Ipod Nano can do?
USB Pen
Pen with 2GB USB drive. Slick idea.
Contest Rules:
You can earn up to maximum of 5 points by taking any of the following actions:
1 pt. for commenting on their contest blog post
3 pts. for stumbling their link and then commenting
3 pts. for Technorati Favorite CDF Networks and then commenting
5 pts. for linking back to their post from you blog
5 pts for signing up for MarketLeverage
Click here to visit the contest page.
You know when you’re struggling, everything seems dull in life. Well, I had been struggling to make a dime online for a long long time. Its just recently things turned around for me and now I’m making $250 a day. So, if you’re struggling with this “making-money-online” thing or with anything just don’t give up and keep at it because one day luck will strike you too. Before you know it, you will see yourself in the same position as other successful people you read stories about.
This post is not about PPC strategies, or link-building strategies, adsense or website creating techniques or affiliate marketing in general but more about psychological mindset that sets the successful people apart form the losers. That’s right, its all in your head. If you’re the kind of person who thinks you can’t do it, then chances are you won’t be able to do it even when you try. People who don’t worry about consequences are the ones that get ahead in the game. Sometimes it pays to just STOP thinking and just DO IT.
I want to take this opportunity to share my experience with you, my past struggles in online marketing and how I came to my recent success. It took more than a year for me to get to where I’m now. Honestly, I could have done this year ago but I couldn’t. Why? Because I was not a risk taker, I was not a positive thinker and I was too emotional about failing. If you are one of those people who are struggling to generate even $20 a day online, then either you’re not a risk taker or always worry about failing. Its this worry that “what if it doesn’t work out” always keep you from succeeding and trying new things. Everyone works hard but not everyone works smart.
Turn your bad luck to good luck
One advice I would give everyone is that is to stop thinking and just do it. Sometimes you sit there and think why should I create a new website or why should I try this because I don’t think its going to work. You need to realize that the only reason it’s not going to work is because you’re going to do anything about it. Pick sometime and then make up your mind to stick to it and once you do stick to it, then don’t give up on it until its where you want it to be. That’s how you will break out of bad luck.
The day I stopped worrying about losing money, the day I stopped whining, the day I stopped becoming emotional about my failures, the day I said to myself, forget everything, whatever happens happens, just do it and keep doing it until you get somewhere. It’s when things started turning around for me and before I know it I went from $0 a day from $250 a day in a month.
Chances are if you had been trying to make online for a while you know more than the person who hasn’t tried it. So, you are already way head of the game. So sit down, stop worrying about everything, stop being emotional about your struggles, put everything aside and just DO IT and keep doing it until you find success.
