Your goal is to track which actions (clicks) produce the desired goal (a sale, or at least a hit on your landing page). Once you’ve determined that, then you can reproduce it to make more sales, and you will have an all-important edge in the game: making more money from the same amount of traffic. That edge means you can devote more of your PPC budget to things that actually work, getting you higher ad placements, more traffic, and ultimately more money. And the more you refine your campaign, the better it works.

Writing two or three different ads for each keyword grouping is part of that. By having several different ads to look at for the same keywords, you can do what’s called split-testing. This is the easiest testing and tracking for you to implement because the function is built right into your PPC engine account. The PPC engines will count how many clicks each ad gets, and show you your click-through rate so you can determine which are doing better. Your click-through rate is calculated simply by taking how many times the ad was delivered and diving it by how many
times it was actually clicked on. So, if your ad was delivered 100 times and one person clicked on it, your CTR would be 1%.

You can split-test as many ads as you want per keyword grouping at a time, but to really be able to focus on what you’re doing, it’s likely best to keep it down to two or three. Once each of your ads collect a certain number of hits (say, 100), you can see which is the “winner” and then create a new ad to try to beat that winning score. Eventually, you will end up with ads for each keyword grouping that produce consistent results.

Another thing to track with your keywords is actual conversions. If you can’t tell which keyword groupings are the ones that are translating into sales, then you’re going to keep paying for the ones that aren’t. Not all keywords convert equally, so don’t pay for the ones that are wasting your money. If you’ve grouped your keywords tightly, then you can go ahead and track this at the ad group level.

You can accomplish all of your basic (and many not-so-basic) testing and tracking needs with Google Analytics. If you are using Google AdWords, sign up right away, since AdWords integrates closely with Analytics and will produce easy-to readand easy-to-study reports. It’s free and feature-heavy, and therefore a pretty invaluable resource. The reports will show you which ads are translating into actual sales, and you can adjust accordingly. Analytics also works well for split-testing landing pages and more.

Even if you are using Yahoo! Search Marketing or MSN AdCenter, you can still use Analytics to track, and though it takes a little more effort, it’s worth it. Here’s how to do it for Yahoo:

• Open up the Google Analytics URL Builder.

• Input all of the data it asks for – your landing page url (if you’re using one), term (keyword), the name (the campaign), the source (the search engine, which is, in this case, Yahoo!), the medium (in this case, CPC), content (fill that in so you can differentiate between other ads).

• Click on the “generate url” button to get the custom url.

• Copy/paste the custom url into your Yahoo! ads to track it in Analytics. Your custom url will look something like this:

http://www.example.com/custom.html?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=CPCutm_term=trackingutm_content=testutm_campaign=Custom%2BTracking

This example only works if you want to make a custom url for each and every keyword you have running. After you get the hang of it, though, you can use Yahoo’s auto-tags to make the process much faster. To make use of that, log into your Yahoo account and make sure the tracking URLs function is turned on under the Administration  Tracking URLs tabs, which will tell Yahoo to start taking note of information for you, such as the search query, the keyword you bid on itself, and more. Then you just need to append the URL you created above with new variables, like {OVKEY} for the paid keyword, {OVADID} for the ad text ID number, {OVCAMPGID} for the campaign ID number, and {OVRAW} for the
actual search query.

When you’re done swapping things out, the new URL will look something like this:

http://www.example.com/custom.html?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=CPC&utm_term={OVKEY}&utm_content={OVADID}&utm_campaign={OVCAMPGID}

Just remember to turn auto-tagging on in your Yahoo account or it won’t work!  The process is very similar if you want to track your MSN AdCenter ads with Google Analytics, with just the variables being different. With AdCenter, you also do not need to turn tracking on like you did with Yahoo, because this is already on by default. For AdCenter ads, the basic variables will be {QueryString} for the term, {AdID} for content, and {OrderItemID} for the campaign, giving you a link that looks something like this: http://www.example.com/custom.html?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=CPC&utm_term={QueryString}&utm_content={AdID}&utm_campaign={OrderItemID}

If you are using a landing page approach, then you’ll want to test different pages – different copy and different graphics – to see which make you more sales. Insert an Analytics tracking url into each page to see how they stack up against each other, and after they’ve gathered a number of hits, look to see which is the winner and work from there. Analytics urls also work wonderfully for blogs. Later on down the line, when you are more experienced with Pay Per Click advertising and how to test and track, you may wish to implement a different tracking system, such as a PHP based script, or even outsource it to a company that specializes in such things, but for now, Google Analytics is your best bet.

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Writing the ads themselves is the next step. A well-written ad will definitely boost your click-through rates and ultimately translate into sales, and you’ll need to write two or three ads per grouping you made in order to fully track and test your results. In addition to that, most of the PPC engines reward you another way by giving you lower bid prices and higher rankings. These are all excellent reasons to make your ads as great as possible.

Of course, as with anything, there is no magic bullet here � no pat formula for writing an ad that you can plug your keywords into, Mad Libs style, in order to instantly get sales � but there are a few guidelines that will help. And remember, two or three ads per group!

� Work your keywords into the ad as much as possible without it sounding goofy. This should be easy to do if you’ve grouped your keywords together tightly like I suggested in the previous chapter.

� Be bold. Putting those keywords in bold fonts is eye-catching for visitors, which is a good thing.

� Get creative with how the ad looks. Different structures help your ads stand out from the crowd, whether you choose to graduate each row of ad text up or down like an arrow or just keep things really short.

� Give it a great headline. The headline is by far the most important component of the ad, so it needs to be clever. Try asking your visitors a question in the headline – �Ready for That Plasma TV?�

NOTE: If you are using AdWords, you can also use a little trick to make sure you get bold font headlines. The trick involves making those headlines dynamic, and you do it by typing the following into the headline field: {KeyWord: Enter Default Headline Text Here}

What this does is ensure that the headline is automatically changed to include the search term. It makes the visitor think you have EXACTLY what they are searching for, and it will be right there in the headline and also in bold. It must have the squiggly brackets around it, and �KeyWord� must be capitalized like that in order to make the words in the headline capitalized.

If you prefer lowercase, then use �keyword� instead. The only caveat here is that the keywords must appear in that ad group in order for AdWords to display it. If they are not found in your list, then whatever you enter in the �Enter Default Headline� part of the code will display instead.

� Include a call to action (CTA). An example of a CTA is �Click here now!� It’s simply a directive to your reader, and it’s very effective.

� Keep it simple. Avoid using extra and unnecessary words. Your ads should be grammatically correct, but you are also limited on space, so keep it as short as possible.
� Spy on your neighbors. Look at other relevant ads and make note of what they do. Which ones caught your eye? Mark it down and mimic it in your own ad writing. Take the best ideas out of everything you see and mix it all into one super ad for yourself.

� Use negative keywords. You make a keyword negative by putting a minus sign in front of it in your keywords list in your PPC account. It allows you to filter out certain words so that your ads do not get triggered for search terms that are not relevant to your ad’s subject matter. It will prevent you from paying for any clicks that won’t do you any good. To figure out which words to make negative, think back to the things you filtered out of your keyword list for being irrelevant when you used the
keyword suggestion tool. If you see people searching for something that includes your keywords but has other modifiers or words attached that make it wrong for what you’re doing, add those extra words as negative keywords in your list.

� Make the ad match your landing page, whatever it may be. If you offer a benefit or expound on some virtue in your ad, the visitor expects to see that on the page they are going to. If they don’t, they’ll leave.

� Proofread that sucker. 5 times if you have to. Spelling mistakes undermine your authority, and even the most accidental of mistakes can hurt you. There are editors having a look at your ads and they will yank them if they aren’t spelled correctly or are using silly grammar.

Don’t get frustrated if you are unsure of whether or not your ad is any good. Since you’ll be writing 2 or 3 different ads per keyword group, you will have multiple chances to cobble together a good one. And if you need a little boost, adwriting-
wise, check out ShoeMoney’s easy tool to help you generate good ad content quickly.

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Putting your campaign together is the easiest part. You’ve done all the hard building work, so now it’s just time to move all of your grouped keywords and your ads into your PPC account. The process will differ slightly for each engine, but it’s still basically the same.

1. Log into your account.

2. Create a new ad group named after the first keyword grouping.

3. Copy/paste the keywords from the grouping into the appropriate field.

4. Copy/paste the corresponding ads into the appropriate fields.

5. Save your new ad group.

6. Repeat for each remaining group.

When you name your ad groups, make sure that you do it in such a way that you can easily recognize which is which. Keeping things as organized as you can from the get-go will make everything go a lot easier, especially when it comes time to track and tweak.

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Eventually, you will be able to determine what works and what doesn’t that way, but in the process, you will spend a lot of money and take up a lot of time that you wouldn’t have to do otherwise.

So instead of approaching the keyword selection for your PPC campaigns all willynilly like that, I advise using a much more efficient and methodical way. You will get better results in a lot less time, without wasting your PPC budget on 500 clicks that didn’t make you a sale.

The first thing to do is brainstorm. If you were searching for your niche or products, what would you search for? Make a small list of those. While you’re doing that, bear in mind that you want to think like a visitor. Since you’ve chosen a niche that you are very familiar with, you may be used to thinking in jargon or industry terms that the average visitor may not know about. While it’s fine to include those, make sure you think in terms that the uninitiated may think in. If you aren’t sure if you’re coming up with the right things, ask friends or family what they would pop into Google if they were looking for the products you are going to promote. If they differ from what you’ve got, write them down.

Then take that list over to a keyword suggestion tool, like we used earlier when picking our niche. Plug the list in there, one by one, and see what comes up.

From those results, start compiling a new list.

How long you make this new list is up to you, but it doesn’t hurt to make this list as exhaustive as possible, so you don’t rule anything out unnecessarily. Just avoid any of the results that don’t deal with what you are doing, even if they contain your keywords. You want a list of RELEVANT keywords and phrases to work from, or you will be paying for clicks that will not do you any good whatsoever. And that’s a waste of time and money.

Put the high volume keywords (the ones that usually appear at the top of the results pages and indicate they have more people searching for them) at the beginning of the list, or mark them in some way so you know what they are, and put the lower volume keywords lower down on the list.

This will help you determine later which clicks are worth your budget and which aren’t – though, of course, the larger the budget, the longer the list can be, and can include those lower volume keywords and phrases.

If you want to see how your keywords are stacking up against the competition AND maybe get some more ideas for your own list, you can spy on the people bidding on keywords in your niche using a special spy tool. There’s a great one in the toolbox over at ShoeMoney that I highly recommend, and it will also let you get an idea of what people are paying for their keywords.

With this larger list, it’s time to start grouping them. You want to take all of the different keywords and phrases that are closely related and group them together. You will be writing an ad per group, so you want them to be as closely related as possible, even if that means you only have two or three terms per group.

Once everything is grouped together as much as possible, then you expand them.

Think of as many different variations as you can for each term, and write those down in their respective groups. Think of common ways people might type out your words. A word that is normally a compound word can be broken up into two words, for example, or you can make them plural. You can also add words like “compare,” or “buy,” to the terms, because that will bring some really specific and targeted traffic your way – people that are already looking to buy what you are promoting.

To be even more thorough, you can run them through what’s called an automated keyword transformer program (there’s a free one here that you can download).

This will produce even more versions that you can use and is particularly useful for coming up with the three different “match types” for each of the keywords you already have if you are using Google AdWords as your engine. It effectively triples your keyword pool for AdWords ads.

The AdWords match types are called “broad,” “phrase,” and “exact.” Broad matches are the default option in AdWords and will allow your ad to display for many different variations of your keyword or phrase. For instance, if your keyword is “plasma television,” your ad would be eligible to appear whenever anyone searches for either or both “plasma” and “television.” Your ad would also be eligible if people search for plurals, synonyms, and perhaps other variations, depending.

Phrase match means your ad will show whenever someone types that phrase in, “plasma television,” with the words in that order, and you get that match type by entering your keyword into AdWords inside quotation marks. Your ad may also display if the visitor has other words surrounding the phrase, but not always.

Exact match is exactly what it sounds like – your ad will display when the visitor searches for your exact term, without any other terms included. You denote an exact match keyword in AdWords by surrounding it with brackets like this:

[plasma television].

Once you have done all of this, you will have a nice long list of keywords that you can use to build your ads around.

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The number one Pay Per Click search engine is Google AdWords. It’s indexed over a billion webpages and it is available in over 100 different languages. As far as scope goes, you won’t find bigger than you will with Google. For this reason, if you are brand new to PPC or you can only afford to use one engine right now, even though AdWords is usually the most expensive, this is likely your best bet for giving yourself the most potential for return on your investment. AdWords offers you benefits and tools that will allow you to really buckle down and get your campaigns running like you want, from the ability to edit your ads to the ability to classify them into keyword clusters to the ability to target your ads to specific geographical locations. There is a $5 USD start up fee, but no minimum spending requirement, and they don’t put time limits on you. It’s also quite fast, because after you pay that one-off fee, your first campaign can be up and running within minutes.

Though AdWords does not disclose the specific algorithm it uses (like all Google algorithms) to determine the placement of your ads, it is usually very fair and balanced. It is, like all PPC engines, ranked on the bid price you are willing to pay for your keywords, but it also takes into account the relevance of your ad and it will give precedence to ads with higher click-through rates. That means that with a well-written ad that gets a lot of clicks, you can end up appearing higher up than an ad that is paying more than you are bid-wise but isn’t getting as many clicks. What a deal, no?

The second most popular PPC engine is Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture). Yahoo! Search Marketing’s main product is something they call Sponsored Search, which reaches over 80% of active Internet users. Sponsored Search provides sponsored listings in many of the Web’s top portals, and these include not only Yahoo! itself but MSN, Excite, Altavista, CNN and many others. Another very interesting feature Yahoo! Search Marketing offers is Content Match.

Your ads have the potential to appear not only on search engine results pages, but within articles, emails, and newsletters, depending on whether or not the content matches. This means that, say, if your ad deals with books like we talked about before, it could appear along with an article on CNN.com about publishing. Yahoo! Search Marketing offers two plans, the SelfServe plan and the FastTrack plan. SelfServe is free, but you do not get all of the support and extra benefits that the FastTrack plan offers, like a detailed review of your website that will produce keyword and search term suggestions from their experts. If you have about $200 USD to burn and you are a beginner, the FastTrack plan will provide you with invaluable, individualized help and training in making your PPC campaigns work, but you can still construct excellent campaigns on your own using the SelfServe plan if your budget doesn’t permit the paid plan.

Those are the big guns when it comes to PPC engines, but there are others that you should also take a look at if and when your budget permits, like MIVA and MSN AdCenter. They are smaller, but the MSN AdCenter engine in particular is growing quickly and is getting good buzz for its good returns, and MIVA has always enjoyed good reviews from its users.

When you are comparing the pros and cons of each engine in order to choose the right one for you, be sure to take into account the minimum cost per click that each engine requires you to pay (also called the bid). For Google AdWords, it is a mere penny, but you will usually end up paying more than that. For Yahoo! Search Marketing, it is $0.10. That may not sound like a lot at the get-go, but remember that you will be paying each time someone clicks on your ad, whether or not it converts into a sale. If you are working on a limited budget, you want to go with the PPC engine that is going to offer you the most bang for your buck, as it were.

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� Send your PPC traffic directly to the merchant. This is likely the easiest approach for the complete newbie, and one that will let you get the hang of the PPC basics without having to set up a website of your own. You will be able to set up PPC campaigns and test different keywords and ways to write your ads, and all of the clicks will go through directly to the merchant. You must make sure you use your affiliate link, though, in order to get credit for any sales made via your ads � otherwise, you’re just paying to advertise for the merchant itself with no return for you personally. This approach is ideal for people not sure whether or not affiliate marketing is for them, or people with no HTML or other web design experience. You can try it out before deciding to invest in paying someone to build a site for you, or investing your own time to learn how to build a site yourself.

� Send your PPC traffic to a landing page. A landing page (sometimes also called a �lead capture page�) is any web page that a visitor lands on after clicking on an advertisement or a search engine results page link (be it a PPC ad or just a regular link that shows up in the results themselves). Creating a great landing page is something of a fine art, since they must be optimized for the search engines to find your keywords and phrases, and also work as an enticement for the visitor to buy. A good landing page converts clicks into sales, it’s that simple. Landing pages in PPC marketing are also used to measure your clickthrough rates and determine which ads are converting better so you can adjust your ad campaigns accordingly (we’ll talk about click-through rates in a more in-depth manner a little later). You’ll need a domain name and hosting package to get your landing page online, so this approach is best for people willing to invest in web space. You can create your own landing page if you have web design experience, or you can hire someone to do it for you. There are many companies that specialize just in creating custom landing pages, and their prices are often very reasonable, especially considering you are getting a page created by people that do this very thing
for a living.

� Send your PPC traffic to a new website. This approach is likely the best way to see long-term benefits and results via a Pay Per Click marketing
campaign, and will also allow you to branch out into other types of affiliate marketing without starting over again from scratch. As with landing pages, you will need to purchase a domain name and hosting, and then either build the site yourself or hire someone else to do it for you. It will take some time to build up steady traffic, and you will need to focus on the content of the website in order to draw visitors in and keep them around, but you may find this approach the most rewarding in the long-term because it allows you to establish yourself as an authority and build rapport with your visitors, which in turn inspires them to click and buy via your affiliate links.

� Send your PPC to a new blog. This is a great approach for many reasons. Blogs are easy and quick to set up. Even the most novice of web users can set up a blog in no time, and they are free when you use a service like Blogger or WordPress. Search engines LOVE blogs and crawl them often, so your blog will quickly get indexed and move up in the rankings. If you update your blog often with new, fresh, useful content, and send your PPC traffic to the blog, you may find you have quite a winning combination for raking in some great affiliate earnings.

� Send your PPC traffic to an existing website or blog. If you already have a blog or website set up, then you likely already have search engine
ranking and some traffic. You can capitalize on that by adding the necessary information about the products you are marketing, and send your PPC campaigns right to the sites you already have. These are not the only ways you can go about doing a PPC campaign, but they are the most common. You can combine these approaches to come up with a way that works best for you, of course, but it will be different for everyone.

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To determine which niche to get into, there are two basic guidelines: �go with what you know� and �start small.�
� Go with what you know. Make a list of your interests. It does not matter what it is, as long as you enjoy it – whether it’s books, cars, music, movies, or 18th century Glockenspiels (well, okay, maybe save that last one for another time). When choosing a niche, it is important that you choose an area that you are actually interested in. It will make the process more fun and it will also make it easier, especially if you are a newbie. Having prior knowledge of a subject will help you figure out how to sell its related products. Selling books when you hate reading is not going to do you any favors, and this will eventually show itself in your affiliate commissions, whether you realize it now or not. Having a passion for your niche is important.

Now look at that list, and make another list � this time, it should be products you would buy, related to those interests, if you could. If it’s movies, perhaps you would buy piles of DVDs and the biggest TV you could find. If it’s music, perhaps you would buy tons of CDs and great stereo equipment. You get the idea � what kind of products are out there that are related to your passion? Write them down.

� Start small: A first-timer trying to jump right into the game with a huge site oriented in any of the more competitive areas of affiliate marketing is going to need a lot of luck in order to make a great success of it. By starting small instead, you can hone your skills and better figure out what works for you and what doesn’t before you try to get into the fast lane. So what does that mean, exactly? It means that your first foray into affiliate marketing should likely not be, for example, a large shopping directory featuring tons of different products, a site for Internet service provider comparisons, or an online casino site.

Sure, you may have a passion for Internet roulette, but these are highly competitive areas to get into, and you will find that while it is certainly possible to rake in the cash with a site like that, you’re going to be wrestling for traffic with a lot of other affiliates out there that are doing the same thing…and chances are that many of those people are going to be a lot better at it than you are, especially as a beginner. To effectively get into huge markets like those, you will need a ton of research and a ton of patience, even after you have been an affiliate marketer for quite some time. Not doing as well as you assume you should with a site like that can end up discouraging, and that’s something you don’t want. Save yourself that particular stress, and resolve to start out small in order to figure out what you’re doing, learn all you can, and build up your skill-set before you wade into the more competitive markets.

So now you have two lists, and you know the importance of starting small, so it is time to narrow down your lists and refine things to reach a conclusion about which niche is the niche for you. If your interest is books, that’s great � but trying to focus just on �books� will be a huge task, and it’s not a good idea unless you are secretly Amazon.com. Instead, perhaps narrow it down to a specific kind of books, such as poetry,
biographies, horror novels, or literary fiction. You could also narrow it down to a certain type of author, or a time period, or a country � just make sure that you narrow it down, because if your scope is too large, then you are not starting small.

So, for the sake of example, let’s say you have chosen �literary fiction� as your narrowed-down focus. Now it’s time to make use of your first tool, the search term suggestion tool. KeywordDiscovery has a great free one that is very easy to use, so we’ll go with that for our purposes. Pop on over there and enter �literary fiction� into the search box. The tool is going to return a huge list of search terms people use with �literary fiction� involved. This lets you see what people are after when they are looking up anything to do with that niche. Not all of the items on there are going to be useful for you, but scan the list and see what jumps out at you, and you will find your niche. In the list returned for �literary fiction� at the time of this writing (bear in mind that, depending on when you are reading this, the list may have vastly changed, since people are always Googling around), the search terms that jump out at me are �best literary fiction� and �cadmus award – literary prize – fiction writers.�

What could I do with those? Well, I could build a site that lists or reviews the best literary fiction, including Cadmus Award-winning fiction, and links out to where people can buy those books. And, boom, I’ve found my niche. Your mileage will vary, of course. If you are into movies, then sign up with Express Revenue, build a site that recommends movies to rent from Netflix, offer your affiliate link, and boom, there’s your niche. Take a look again at that list you wrote of products you would buy related to your niche. Have a look at the affiliate networks you’ve joined to find those products (or similar products) that you can add to your list of things to promote. If you’re going the movie route, consider DVD players and televisions, and even the smaller items like cables, speakers, and universal remote controls.

Just remember � go with what you know and start small. Make sure that what you choose to work with is not something you’ve just chosen because you think it sounds good, but something that you actually enjoy spending time with. Good affiliate marketing takes time to implement and keep going, and if you don’t like your niche, you won’t be as likely to put that time in, and your efforts will go nowhere. Even if you’re just borderline or neutral on the subject, you may find you end up disliking it after having to stare at it on your computer screen day
after day (especially if it doesn’t make you as much money as you thought it would). Once you’ve picked your niche your ready to move onto the next topic.

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Pay Per Click advertising (also called PPC for short) is a type of online advertising that has enormous potential for increasing both traffic to a website, as well as the web presence itself of any size business, though as an affiliate marketer, you will find it particularly useful in helping you reach your goals.

Simply put, pay per click advertising is a marketing method wherein a small ad is placed on the results pages of a search engine. The ad that is displayed at any given time will be related to the keywords or key phrases that the search engine user entered in. This is done in exchange for a specified payment (often called a �bid�) by the advertiser each time a visitor clicks on that ad. As an advertiser, you do not pay to have the ad actually appear on that search engine results page, you only pay when someone clicks on it. And that’s how Pay Per Click advertising gets its name � you pay when someone clicks.

It sounds simple when you put it that way, and it is, but the tricky part comes into play when it comes down to actually making it work for your affiliate campaigns. Choosing good keywords and structuring an ad correctly are the keys to creating pay per click ad campaigns that actually work � after all, if you are going to be paying for these clicks, then you want to make sure they convert,
right?

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of PPC advertising for the affiliate marketer itself, you need to have an affiliate network or two under your belt. If you do not have an affiliate network at the moment, the following are a few that I have personally used to great effect:

� Motive Network
� Convert2Media
� Express Revenue
� Ads4Dough
� NeverBlueAds
� Market Leverage
� CX Digital

Once you have chosen a network, then it is time to get down to the business of creating a profitable Pay Per Click campaign, from start to finish…

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The guide will start out very slowly, however I am sure there is something for most people to learn from it. As we move along I’ll talk more and more about advanced strategies. The introduction tutorial on the very basics will be posted tomorrow.

Sorry for the lame post today, I’ve been spending time talking to Katie as today is our nine month anniversary. While this blog is mainly affiliate marketing, I’ll be adding the personal touch here and there. Thanks for reading.

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