The Affiliate Lifestyle Blog

It took a long time to answer your questions! Hopefully this helps you guys out a bit.. Let’s do round #2 soon.

Hey guys.. Feel free to ask any questions you have about PPC, keyword research, adwords/yahoo optimization, media buying, landing pages, traveling, etc, etc..

Just leave a comment with your question.

I will answer your questions sometime soon.

-Josh

Most of us will go through life and never realize how talented we truly are.

How much more we are capable of achieving each day.

How much further we could run, if we only pushed ourselves a little harder..

It’s time to set BIG goals and to work towards them every day.

Time to get off our butts and stop being lazy.

Now’s the time, because who knows what tomorrow will bring?

And we go through life, saying “one day.. I will retire and see the world..”

Or, “maybe some day I will get out of this job I hate and start my own business..”

Or, “I’m so unhappy with my life”..

Do we not realize our potential?

Change– daily. Change our attitudes, our exercise habits, our eating..

We can change, but it takes work.

I’m only beginning to learn these lessons - But each day, I try to move closer to where I want to be-

It’s the process of SELF IMPROVEMENT. Meaning, you are never too old, too fat, or too anything to change yourself and create the life that you want.

What are your goals? And what are you doing each day to achieve them?

Are you investing in your “life education” - Are you standing on the shoulders of giants by READING the amazing books available at your local library?

I’m FAR, FAR from perfect. But I know, that if I just work A LITTLE harder each day, get up a LITTLE earlier, run a LITTLE further, push myself to take RISKS a little more, and work each day on improving myself, just a little bit.. Then one day I will look back and see how far I’ve gone..

So let’s all WAKE UP to our true POTENTIAL and make small changes towards our goals today.. And have the patience and determination to do the same tomorrow, and the next day! :)

1) Check your email twice a day MAX (good luck with this one)

2) Check stats only twice a day.

3) Work on ONLY 1 thing at a time.

4) Close all open Windows (including AIM, Skype, Gmail, etc) except the specific project you are working on.

5) Write a to-do list in the morning which you follow.

6) Spend your time working on the thing that will potentially make you the most money.

If you just follow these 6 simple rules every time you sit down at your computer, I guarantee you will at least double your income in 30 days.

If you’ve never heard of Adwords Editor, match types, or basic keyword strategy, then this mp3 is for you!

Click the “Play” button below to listen to Mike Cowles interview me.

The interview was recorded last month. (Feel free to Right Click –> Save “As” to download to your computer / iPod).

In PPC, you are handsomely rewarded for helping people to find what they are looking for. If you want to be successful in PPC - keep that in mind.

When you fail to satisfy your visitor (ie. your campaigns suck and you are going broke), it’s usually because:

1) Your ad promised something that you didn’t have (ie. you used the keyword as the title of your ad, which was inaccurate)

2) You failed to provide visitors with the information they were searching for (ie. poor or untargeted landing page/post click experience)

3) They are confused. They don’t know who you are or why they are on your website (ie. your ad or landing page was misleading or confusing).

4) They are not ready to take action or buy (ie. you targeted someone at the wrong stage of the buying cycle)

5) Your offer sucks.

These are common problems to every PPC campaigns. You can learn to reduce these errors by:

1) Have an outsourced person from the Philippines write custom ad titles for every keyword

Use 1 to 3 keywords per ad group. Do not use the keyword as the Title of your ad (yes, I used to advocate the “keyword as the ad title” approach when launching a campaign, but I’ve realized this is lazy and undermines your success).

2) Test multiple versions of your landing page.

Don’t be afraid to have your designer create 3 different landing pages right off the bat.

Start collecting split test data the second you launch your campaign. Make sure to have 2 ads in each ad group.

Make sure Google analytics is installed AND GOAL TRACKING IS IN PLACE**. Don’t wait until after you launch your PPC campaign to do this stuff or you will be losing valuable information.

3) Provide custom copy on each landing page for all high volume keywords (this is the future of PPC/affiliate marketing).

Custom copy means a unique headline and intro body copy. Dynamic keyword insertion on your landing page is not enough.

3) Make sure you start your campaigns (and focus your time) on keywords that are highly relevant to the product/service you are promoting.

For example, if you are promoting a product on weight loss, it’s not necessarily a good idea to advertise on “recipe” keywords (ie. ‘chicken recipe’).

I suggest starting with 1000 to 5000 highly relevant, directly related keywords.

These are the top 20% of keywords in your niche which get 80% of the traffic as determined by the Google Traffic Estimator.

Once you get these keywords converting, expand outwards to cover a broader (less relevant) keyword base to see how it converts.

4) If you are an affiliate, split test your offer.

You can do this by rotating the offer on your landing page evenly, so that you are split testing the same offer across different affiliate networks. Or you can rotate in very similar offers.

Anyway, following these simple rules will improve your PPC success rate by 50% or more.