Scrappy Business Idea Blog

I just moved into a beautiful 3 bedroom 2 bath apartment on the 30th floor in Shanghai, China.

I’m going to be working from Shanghai for about 2 months. Of course, I brought my laptop with me and have a 2MB high speed internet connection from my apartment.

I booked the Shanghai apartment rental through a FANTASTIC Shanghai relocation agency. They provided me with a cell phone and picked me up from the airport. China Expats is highly recommended! :)

I explored the city a bit yesterday. It’s super crowded with 16 million people living in Shanghai alone!

The weather is usually rainy and hot, although it’s a nice day today.

P.S.

I usually use Skype to make and receive calls while abroad using the Skype In feature ($20 for 3 months + 0.02 cents/minute for outbound calls to USA). I get a local Naples, Florida phone number which forwards to my Skype computer wherever I happen to be traveling.

However, I just learned about the Skype Forwarding function (free). I have it set up so that when someone calls my regular US cell phone, it forwards to my SkypeIn number, which then forwards to my Chinese cell phone.

I only pay 0.02/cents per minute and I no longer have to use my computer to receive in bound calls! The call quality is fantastic since it’s Skype VOIP. And since I only pay for outbound calls with my Chinese cell phone, I don’t use any of my minutes. I called a few friends today and they all said the call quality sounds like I’m sitting in the next room.

I recently stumbled upon a fantastic viral video which received over 3,858,589 video views on Youtube.

The video shows a few people sitting around a table using their cell phones to pop popcorn.

What’s so special about this video?

The whole thing is a fake. They use the video to draw customers to buy a bluetooth headset with 99% reduced power consumption.

iSpionage.com is a PPC competitive intelligence tool that allows users to track which ads and keywords advertisers are using on Adwords, Yahoo & MSN.

Unlike other competitive intelligence tools, iSpionage provides sophisticated ad tracking. You can see which ads your competitors are split testing, which position the ads are appearing, and how many times their ad has appeared.

I’ve found iSpionage most useful for getting a birds-eye view of any niche. Simply sign up for their free trial, enter 50 or 100 keywords related to your niche, and then wait a day while the data is collected. You will then see all the competitors in your niche and which ads they are using on each search engine.

Listen to my interview below with Leon Krishnayana & Marcel where we discuss:

• How competitive intelligence tools help sophisticated PPC advertisers dominate their market
• How to use iSpionage to spy on your competitors keywords & PPC ad copy
• Why it’s important for Google to be your “Most Important Customer” when using Adwords
• The importance of adding “Long Tail” Keywords to your PPC campaigns
• The future of PPC

Listen to the Interview (right click -> Save As to Download)

There are specific actions you must take to maintain a healthy Adwords campaign.

1) Maintain a high CTR on all your ads by continual split testing.

When first starting a campaign, upload 2 to 4 ads into each ad group. If you are targeting the ‘head’ of the search volume that contains a lot of traffic, feel free to add up to 4 ads. If you are targeting the tail (less search volume), then add only 2 ads.

The reason is because you want to ensure you are split testing your ads most efficiently. If there’s not a lot of traffic, then it’s going to take you forever to split test 4 ads with a 95% confidence interval. You can use SplitTester.com to test for statistical validity.

I pay $20 bucks a month to get emailed reports from WinnerAlert.com which notifies me by email each time I have a winning ad. I delete the losing ad and upload another ad to try to beat my control.

A common question is “Should I optimize my ads for the highest click through rate, or the highest conversion rate?”

It depends on your market and overall Adwords strategy, however, I recommend optimizing your ads based on the highest CTR. It’s a trade off, but I found good ads should get the highest CTR AND the highest conversions. Also, you make it up by having a higher Quality Score.

Yes, Google is very smart in getting us to put our business goals aside and give them more money!

2) Delete keywords which have accrued more than 200 impressions and less than 2 clicks/month.

Run a Keyword Report with a Filter “Clicks Is Less Than 2″ AND “Impressions Is Greater Than 200″ AND “Average Position Is Less Than 10″.

Quickly delete all the keywords which do not meet your Cost/Conversion goal using Adwords Editor.

The reason I don’t recommend deleting keywords in position 11+ is because you might want to try bumping up the bid price before deleting them to get them into a position where they have a chance of getting clicked.

From my point of view: A) It’s better to improve your Quality Score by deleting keywords that are racking up impressions without getting clicked. B) Your time is better spent optimizing the 20% of the keywords that bring in 80% of the traffic.

3) Add more targeted keywords to continually expand your campaign (and profits).

This is obvious. Make sure you run the keywords through the Google Traffic Estimator and only add keywords with a Search volume of 1-5 (export the report into Excel and then filter by Search volume).

Although adding “long tail” keywords that get little search traffic is a viable strategy, it is better to wait until your campaign is fully matured before spending too much time on the long tail.

You might also want to check out my reviews of many of the keyword tools on the market. Here’s a comparison chart.

4) Lower the bid price of high cost/conversion keywords (or delete them entirely).

Here’s a question that came from the Four Hour Workweek forum.

I seem to be stuck with the same problems forever and the problems are numerous: getting a muse, then designing a website, drive traffic towards it and so on and so on…
It’s like an endless list of obstacles to overcome. And on top of that, I have to do all of that in between activities of my current job. So that makes that I am frustrated now because it seems to be impossible.
-Davey

Hey Davey,

1) Set a goal for yourself. Realistically, what type of position do you want to be in exactly 1 year from today?

2) Once you set the goal, write down all the things you might possibly need to achieve the goal. This could mean a new computer, certain software, particular relationships, a mentor, # of hours a week you’ll invest, money, sacrifices you need to make, etc..

3) After you’ve completed step #2 (if you don’t complete step #2, you need to re-think your life), you need to organize all that information into a meaningful plan. Start from 1 year out, how might your new life be different from where you are at now? Picture your new lifestyle in amazing detail.

4) Then you need to dig deep into researching everything about your plan. Start talking to people, researching ideas, getting suppliers, finding a website designer, and all the stuff you NEED. Don’t worry too much about all the pieces, just FIRE! Start taking small baby steps , EVEN if you don’t know which direction to go! There’s an amazing thing that happens when you start moving– that momentum will propel you forward.

5) Write down all the stuff from step #3 and #4 onto a new piece of paper. Label the paper “My Plan”. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too difficult. Just jot down your thoughts and basic ideas about what you will do. Try to make a rough outline of what your business might look like.

6) Make sure your plan will provide an extraordinary amount of value for other people. If you are not totally excited and pumped about your KICK BUTT idea, go back to the drawing board and come up with an idea in a market that you know A LOT about.

7) Continue pushing forward with your plan, even if it’s small steps. If you really want to change your life this exact moment, get off your butt– print out this page, get a few pieces of paper, and start at Step #1. DO IT NOW!

Good luck!

Wade Tonkin from ChristianAffiliateMarketers.com interviewed me a few days ago on his CAM Blog Podcast.

We spoke for 30-minutes and covered many topics:

• My entry into the business.
• The travel friendly lifestyle affiliate marketing has made possible.
• The basics of paid search based affiliate marketing.
• Some of terms and conditions I like to see from merchants and networks.
• The importance of merchants placing conversion tracking code for Super-affiliates using paid search.
• Some of the techniques I use to test offers, then profit big from the ones that work.

Wade is a great guy who I met at the Affiliate Summit Gospel Brunch.

Listen to the interview.