Google Insight

Yesterday I briefly mentioned about the Yahoo! Buzz tool for reviewing the movers and shakers of the internet. Once you get a grasp of who is moving around, you will want to look at how long this trend has been sustaining its current momentum. To capitalize on the trend, you want to ensure that there is a nice steady upward trend to ensure a longer survival in your marketing campaign. Of course, there is also nothing wrong with trying to capitalize on something that is hot right now for 2-3 days. It is a matter of preference how frequently you want to be swapping out campaigns.

Take a look at the following results from Google Insight with regards to Jessica Simpson who is sitting at #10 on my Yahoo! Buzz list.

Next is to see where the searches are coming from so that you can perform accurate geo-targeting. Sometimes, you may be surprised that a search is being performed at an unexpected region for “American” hot topics.

Yahoo! Buzz

There are many free tools out there. Here is one that gives you an insider’s view of what Yahoo! users are searching for through their search engines. All the search engines have this kind of tool and I will showcase them later. This Yahoo! buzz tool is nice because you can also break down the top searches by categories. This is a really helpful tool if you are doing keyword research for particular niches or if you are into the polls and quizzes thing.

The tool is currently in beta stages, but nevertheless, take advantage of it.

Screenshot

I am giving up Facebook PPC advertising for the time being in favor of PPC for the major search networks. Facebook’s allowable advertising content as per their guidelines essentially alienates all kinds of content. It is not worth the effort to build a good landing page only to find out later that Facebook disapproves something on your content. Time better spent elsewhere.

Google, Yahoo, and MSN is where I am going next. They are the big boys of advertising where dreams are made or broken. I was able to get away with small money on Facebook, but now it is time to sink some big cash cash with the search networks. Instead of a $100 budget, I am now working with $1000 budget for search.

My first campaigns on the search networks will be e-mail/ZIP submits again. Here is my super short tip:

• E-mail/ZIP submits earn $1.50-$2.00.
• To be successful in these offers, I must keep my CPC as low as $0.10.
• To be that low, I need to have a high CTR rate.
• Finally, my site needs to have a good quality score so that Google will give me affordable rates.

That’s how the game is played on the big search networks. Let the games begin.

Today, I wrapped up my first Facebook campaign. I can tell you right now that it was an e-mail submit offer from Neverblue that pays $1.60 for a visitor to upload their baby photo to The Great American Photo Contest. I was able to get 4 days of impressions from Facebook before it completely crapped out. The problem with this offer is that you need to upload a photo of your baby. That means the user has to go hunt down that baby picture. I found that most of my users were clicking on my ad during the day time, perhaps when they were at work, using the work computer. It was unlikely for them to have their baby photo on their work computer. Hence the weakness in the Facebook system for not allowing ads to run on certain time slots only. I have since dismantled this campaign and moved on to others. But I came out making $16, which I am quite proud about. Remember, that I started out with FREE money from Facebook.

January 2009 Stats

So what is next for me? I am going to try out some offers with MaxBounty on Facebook to see if they can convert a little better. My goal is to minimize input that is required to convert. No hunting for photos to upload. Just enter your e-mail address or ZIP code and that’s it. Let that be a lesson for others. Keep user input to a minimum for conversion.

I want to talk a little about getting your application approved on the major affiliate networks. Today, I was answering a flurry of phone calls as all the affiliate networks decided to call me one after the other about my application. It took them a week to call me since putting in my application. Neverblue did it in less than 24-hours.

One thing is for sure, you do not need an existing suitable content website to get approved. I told each and every affiliate manager calling me that I did not have a website to promote their offers. My goal was to promote their offers using PPC either through the major search networks (i.e. Google) or through social networking PPC (i.e. Facebook) with customized landing pages. I also gave them the impression that I knew what I’m talking about and that CPA affiliate networking is not new business to me. That gave these managers enough confidence to approve me on the spot.

Remember, the goal of the approval process is to weed out the spammers and scammers that join the network and use blackhat techniques to promote offers. They also do not want people who are just going to play around and try things out. If you want to be approved, please spend a few hours reading and know your shit. You need to be able to speak affiliate marketing lingo and know what your goals are short-term and long-term. If you can do both of these, you will get approved without having a quality content website to promote your offers.

Any idiot should be able to get approval. That’s my $0.02.

If you read yesterday’s post, notice that I had a -58% ROI. My first campaign with Facebook was quickly going down the shitter as my EPC < CPC.

Fast-forward another 24-hours with a lower CPC set at $0.13 and all of a sudden I get a 269% profit? I assumed that by lowering my CPC to $0.13, Facebook would drop my impressions considerably to promote higher paying ads. I guess that theory was also flawed as I was given >40,000 impressions today. Truly a WTF moment.

The reason Facebook kept promoting my ad was because I was maintaining a 0.08% CTR with Facebook. Word around town is CTRs lower than 0.01% will automatically get your ad decommissioned by Facebook. I cannot reasonably explain why with more impressions, I was getting less clicks, but much better conversions. I am tempted to attribute this to the unpredictability (read psychoticness) of human nature.

Another 24 hours. I am letting this ad run for another 24 hours at the same CPC to analyze if I encounter the same results as I did today. If this ad is able to maintain its current earnings, I stand to earn $150 month based on $5/day net earnings. Not bad for a little side-income eh?

P.S. I do not believe that this offer is sustainable over the long term on Facebook. The demograhpics is too small (~100,000) and I cannot keyword-target my audience more specifically for the best results.

My first Facebook campaign didn’t do too well. My ROI was -58% because my cost per click ($0.30) for advertising was lower than my earnings per click ($0.13). So instead of abandoning this campaign, I decided to lower my CPC to match my EPC to get a better feel for this game.

With $0.30 CPC, I was given approximately 31000 impressions by Facebook and a click through rate of 0.13%. With the new $0.13 CPC, I am wondering how much impressions I will get and whether my CTR improves. My budget has been set to $10 so that I can keep this experiment going. I have been using free sign-up money from Facebook, so none of this is coming out of my pocket yet.

However, with just 24 hours of campaigning, it has become pretty obvious how I need to improve my strategy.

• I need an offer with a payout greater than $1.60/lead to give a bigger gap between my CPC and lead payout. Either that or significantly lower my CPC, which I have already done.
• I need to provide enough information so that Facebook users are not unnecessarily clicking on my ads. This is a good thing for me, but bad thing for Facebook revenues. I need to find a good balance to keep me profitable (and Facebook) profitable. The users who click through my ads should be those who are already in the mindset to fulfill the offer.
• I should pick newer offers. With older offers, most Facebook users would have seen the offer landing page already and won’t bother proceeding further. Newer offers will look fresh to them.
• I need to work on my advertising skills and create a sense of urgency for the Facebook audience. My ad text should indicate that the offer is limited, or while quantities last, etc.

So I will see what the next 24 hours will do for my campaign with a lower CPC. I am interested in seeing my impressions, CTR, and conversion rate. I was told by my affiliate manager that the offer I am promoting has a conversion rate of 14%. Today, I managed a measly 7%.

I launched my first Facebook ad today. I ensured that my ad was very simple, one-liner sentences. The ad title and description only had one sentence that was short and sweet. The ad description was very direct as to what the user needed to do if they wanted to participate. Not only does this prevent unnecessary clicks (clicks cost me $0.30/each), but is also quick to read for the user.

However, immediately after launching the ad, I realized that the target URL for my ad would be changing due to the way Tracking202 tracks CPC. Everytime you change an ad CPC, you get a new URL from Tracking202. DOH!!!! Changing a URL in an ad requires re-approval from Facebook. This is going to be a problem because I will need to tweak my CPC to find the optimal value that works for my campaign. I implemented a fix for this and I will illustrate this later today.

This is how I envision the workflow for my campaigns working. Unfortunately, there are 3 hops before the visitor will see the actual offer page, but I consider these hops a necessary evil for adequate tracking of ad campaigns and conversion rates.

Facebook Ad > Landing Page > Tracking202 Site > Offer Page > Trackback (URL

Facebook Ad

This is the ad banner that the Facebook user sees and clicks. The destination URL points to my landing page and is provided by Tracking202.

LandingPage

My landing page will be doing a few things. The main purpose of my landing page is to up-sell my offer before forwarding my user to the actual offer page. But behind the scenes, a JavaScript is fired to my Tracking202 site to count a click. This JavaScript is provided by Tracking202.

I am going to be lazy and have one landing page per ad campaign. It is just easier that way.

Tracking202

If the visitor decides to proceed and sign up for the offer, he/she will click on my large call-to-action button. This button URL points to Tracking202 which tracks that the user clicked through to the offer page. Then Tracking202 will forward my user to the actual offer page. The URL for the call-to-action button is provided by Tracking202.

Offer Page

This is the page that I have no control over. The offer page is hosted by the advertiser and requires the user to perform a certain action (e.g. filling out a form) to complete the offer. Nothing for me to do there other than ensure that my landing page matches in look and feel to the offer page. We do not want to shock the user with something different.

Trackback (URL)

This is a script that is inserted on the advertiser’s page when the visitor successfully completes the offer. This will send a notice back to Tracking202 to record a successful lead. The script is provided by Tracking202.

I am certain that this is not the only way to accomplish ad tracking. In fact, I will not guarantee that this is the most efficient way. However, this is the best strategy I can think off without making it too complicated. In general, most of the magic is happening within the Tracking202 software. If you have not looked at Tracking202 yet, please do so. This little piece of software will do a lot for you.

Today I finished setting up the backbone to my website. I ensured that my website is extremely flexible to allow me to change my landing pages easily and I also wanted good tracking of my campaigns to ensure that I can tweak and refine my ads based on the landing and conversion statistics. It is important to know which ads are working for me and which ads are not so that Darwinism can be applied by survival of the fittest.

Backbone #1: Redirect Page
A redirect page is a very simple PHP script. When the user clicks on my ad, the ad URL points to the redirect page which will then forward me to the appropriate landing page. This is important because I want to route my user through the tracking software before showing the landing page. Also, if I wanted to change what I show to the user, I can easily modify the redirect page without changing the ad URL and resubmitting the ad for approval. The URL that the user clicks will contain a parameter string to track which ad the user saw when it was clicked. The tracking software will then show me for the ads that were clicked, which ad actually led to a sale. It is not only important to see which ads out there people are clicking, but also which of those clicked ads also result in a lead/sale. This is how I will ensure survival of the fittest ad.

The URL that the user would click looks like this with the ad identifier parameter embedded (i.e. ‘ad=1′).

http://www.mysite.com/redirect.php?ad=1

A very basic PHP script for redirect is as follows:

<?php
if ($ad == ‘1′) {
header( ‘Location: http://www.mysite.com/tracking/stats.php?ad=1′ ) ;
}
?>

Backbone #2: Tracking Software
For tracking, I am using Prosper202 which gives me the ability to track which ads users were clicking, how much did those clicks cost me, which ads were resulting in a sale, how much were those sales, and finally how much I earned for on each ad campaign.

This kind of tracking is a must if you want to survive in this industry. You need to know what works and what does not. Advertising is a trial and error process.

1. Some ads will catch on like hot cakes and convert to sale at a high percentage.
2. Some ads have only a short lasting effect and quickly tapers off after the first few days/weeks/etc.
3. Other ads just fail. You can throw money at it, but if the ad is not catchy or misses the demographic, you will not get see any success with it.

Once the successfull ad is found, it is a process of refinement because even good ads can be made better. And after refinement comes scaling, which may include finding other advertising mediums other than Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc.