I have no stake in promoting this product, but I just had to give a shout out to http://www.textpad.com/  This program seems so simple until you realize how powerful it is.  It’s able to handle huge text files more quickly than any program I have tried.  I find myself doing so many different web development projects with this program it’s amazing.

For example:

Say you need to add exact match brackets [ ] around a list of 10,000 keywords.  No problem, just fire up a custom macro and boom, you’re done.

Say you need to edit a single line of code in 200 similar landing pages.  Do a mass open of all the docs, run a search/replace for the line in all documents at once and boom, your done.

Say you need to sort a list of keywords and delete duplicates.  Piece of cake.

There are just so many ways you can automate routine tasks with this program I love it!

So it seems there is a lot of interest in ringtones again, after the big shake up this summer. I don’t usually discuss the niches I am promoting, but with ringtones the cat is so far out of the bag that it makes no difference at this point.

Like almost all newbies starting with PPC, I tried ringtones. I did OK, nothing to brag about; at least I didn’t lose money. I eventually moved on to other niches that have been much more profitable for me. So now that I am doing pretty well and have learned about 1000% more than I knew back then, I decided to give them another shot.

I started on Jan 1st, and went about creating super focused keyword lists and ad groupings. I hooked those up to super relevant ad copy and landing pages. Using the same traffic sources as before (the big 3) and pretty much the same bid prices, the second round of ringtone testing began. The results were pretty surprising to me. The first time around I think I had eCPCs around .30-.50. This time around with my focused campaign I am seeing eCPCs in the $1.50 up to $5.00 range! Pretty amazing. I know the market hasn’t gotten any easier, so my techniques have definitely improved.

Not to brag or anything, but it would seem I now have the PPC ninja skills!

After planning on going, then not being able to go, then playing by ear, I am not going to the Affiliate West conference this year. I am just buried too deep in some major development projects and can’t break away next week for the summit. It’s amazing, now that I don’t have a full time job anymore (this is my job now) I am busier than when I was working full time and doing this stuff. I’ll have to catch the next one. I definitely plan on going to the SES show in San Jose and of course Pubcon again in Vegas and maybe the Adtech conference this year. Hope everyone has a great time

This is an update to the first Pay Per Click Network challenge of a few weeks ago. There is new data, new PPC networks included, and a new scoring system based on everyone’s input from the last one. Hopefully it will be even more helpful now.

To review:

These networks were all tested running the same PPC campaign (meaning the keywords and the ad texts were the same) to an affiliate offer with the exact same landing page.

Scoring system:

I threw out the interface rating as many people thought it skewed the results of bad performing networks that had a good interface. I agree that performance is king and if something converts well I can live with a bad interface (MSN, cough, cough). Now the scoring is based on 3 factors with 2 being double weighted. This should more accurately show the total performance of a PPC network.

• Traffic Volume (Highest volume = 10 out of possible 10)
• Conversion Rate (Best conversion rate = 10 out of possible 10)
• Click Pricing (Lowest pricing = 5 out of possible 5)

For a possible total score of 30

The Results:

Traffic Volume Winner:

As always Google is king of traffic volume. The only thing that keeps it from the overall leader is its stiff click pricing.

Conversion Rate Winner:

MSN is the tops for conversions. Too bad their volume isn’t up to Google or Yahoo’s levels.

Recommended:
• MSN
• Yahoo
• Google
• Searchfeed
• Looksmart
• Miva

Stay Away!
• Adbrite
• 7Search
• Enhance
• Kanoodle
• Search 123
• Bidvertiser

Remember these results are based on my campaign and niche, your results may vary wildly.

When I started out with the crazy idea of quitting my day job as a pretty successful network administrator to become an internet entrepreneur, I made a lot of mistakes. One of my biggest mistakes was trying to go the cheap route with everything. I used free trials of software, looked for free marketing ideas, cheap hosting, etc….It was totally understandable as most people starting out want to spend as little as possible to see if things will work out. But one of the biggest turning points for me was when I decided to start spending money to make money. I dropped my cheap hosting company for an expensive but rock solid web host, I started spending a ton on advertising, I started purchasing great software to help with my campaigns, I went to conferences to learn more about the industry, and you know what? It all paid off by huge amounts. Every dollar I sunk into these things returned many, many times over. So my biggest advice to newbies is, don’t go cheap. Spend the money to get yourself what you need to be successful. If you believe in yourself and what you are doing, it will be money well spent!

So I had dropped my campaigns with Searchfeed and Miva a while ago. Searchfeed conversion rates just started dropping, and also their GEO-targeting started getting really off. I take random samplings of GEO accuracy and one day in mid December it just took a big nosedive. It was disappointing too, because SF used to be a very strong converting PPC source for me. I ended up emailing them with a spreadsheet of my stats and explaining what happened. To my surprise, less than a day later, they refunded me almost $1,000 in clicks for December and wanted me to give them another shot. Since I resumed my campaigns they seem to be back on track.

I had tested Miva in the past and the conversions were just not there, so I stopped using them. Then my account rep called me last week offering me free matching clicks to try them again on their new “precision” network. Well, I am never one to turn down free money so I fired up a campaign with them for more testing. I was pretty impressed at their effort to retain me as a customer.

These results will be included in a new and improved PPC Smackdown 2.0 that I will be putting together at the end of this month. Stay tuned!

Are you good at designing landing pages? I am looking for a web designer who is an ace at designing high visual impact/low page weight single landing pages. Payment would be on a per project basis. Shoot me an email at designer@directoryvault.com if you are interested or know anyone who is!

I have to say after 2 months of use, I am liking YSM more and more all the time. From the totally un-useable system it was before, they really nailed it with Panama. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it’s pretty damn good. The upload/campaign conversion tool is the best feature. If you are a spreadsheet geek like me, being able to lay out the whole campaign in Excel, then hit upload is great. Or if you already have a campaign running in Adwords and you want to lauch it on YSM, it’s as simple as opening your Adwords editor, exporting the campaign to a CSV, running the convert tool in YSM, then uploading the converted CSV back to YSM. I took a 40 adgroup campaign with a hundred ads and 8,000 keywords from Adcenter to YSM in under 5 minutes. Another great technique I have found is to build the campaign in the Adwords editor, then export, convert, and upload to YSM.

Are you listening MSN? You need to make a solid, campaign level upload tool!

So I just noticed something interesting with this blog. I only started it less than 2 months ago, and I assumed although it was being indexed by the big 3 that nothing would really be in the SERPs yet. Well imagine my surprise when just today I was doing a Google search for “keyword assists” and found the #1 position was my blog for that keyword! I was just trying to get more info about the topic for my own curiosity and had no idea I would be up there. This is from a short blog post I did on the subject on December 6th. I guess the search engines really do to give weight to blog posts!