Nothing is permanent in affiliate marketing. People seem to be lulled into a false sense of security that campaigns will continue to run, offers will continue to pay out, conversions will continue to happen, and so on. But you can’t count on anything. It’s like the standard disclaimer on every investment and stock, past performance is not indicative of future results. Yet, people always seem shocked when a hot offer suddenly stops, or a well running campaign is shut down. Count myself in that group. Even though you know it can happen, it’s always surprising when it happens to you. A few weeks ago, my top performing, longest running campaign on Google Adwords was effectively shut down. This campaign had been running nonstop for over a year, yet the algo change Google made totally killed it. I tried every trick I know to get it back up and running, but to no avail. It’s kind of sad that Google makes no effort to retain a “good customer”, but search relevance rules over customer loyalty it seems. At any rate, it just goes to prove my point that at any time affiliate income could all go away. So be prepared.

Google is now offering it’s new “Website Optimizer” in beta. At first glance this would seem to be a dream tool for affiliate marketers. It’s basically a tool that let’s you A/B test landing pages in a similar way that you can test multiple ads in Adwords. You can set up any number of landing pages with different elements, then get reports on which pages convert better. You can even make changes to your landing pages right from the tool. On the downside, Google gets to insert their tracking code into more of your pages and know even more of your business. I plan on setting up a few tests next week and report back with some results.

You can watch the demo here if you are interested.

There is a lot of buzz out there about Google’s new PPA (Pay-Per-Action) ads which are currently in beta. I will post my views of the service after I have had a few more weeks to see the real world results, but until then, here is a step by step guide of how to set up a PPA advertising campaign on Google. There are 14 steps and screenshots in total.

1. First step is to create your action and setup conversion tracking. By going into the conversion tracking section and choosing “Create New Action”.

(Click images to see full size)

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I have long suspected that Google may be using their analytics for more than we know. Ever since watching Matt Cutts pull up every domain a guy at Pubcon had ever registered, live in front of an audience, I have been worried. Call me paranoid, but I just have to wonder what information they are gathering and compiling into some huge database by all of us happily placing their tracking code on our sites.

Now this may or may not be a coincidence, but something very funny happened with a new site I had launched recently. This site was created to send leads to an affiliate offer. It’s more than just a landing page, but that’s the general idea of the site. I was running an Adwords campaign with some good results. All my bids were in the range I wanted, all keywords active. Then I installed Google Analytics tracking code on all the pages. Within 3 hours of doing that, ALL my bids for every keyword in the campaign went to $10 and switched to inactive. Now this seems like quite a coincidence like I said before. Is Google using analytics to determine landing page quality and relavancy?

You be the judge.

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!

I’ve been getting some unexpected cool stuff in the mail recently. Right before Christmas I got a special delivery of a box marked with “perishable” and “fresh food” on the outside. When I opened it up, it was this awesome gift basket from Azoogle. It has all kinds of fruit, nuts, candy, cheeses, meats and everything. We have been eating well around the house lately from this thing. Thanks Azoogle!

Then just today I got a small box in the mail from Google. Inside was this nice little travel mug. I’m not sure if it coincides with just getting my premium Adwords account status, but it was a nice gesture from the big G.

I got an email from a friend of mine getting into PPC asking me what’s best tip I can give him.  There are so many different directions I could have gone in my answer, but it always come back to segmentation of your campaign.   Segmentation is just another way of saying “breaking your campaign up into small chunks”.  The initial work you do in setting up numerous adgroups with highly targeted keywords and ads will pay off many times in the long run.  It’s tempting to just throw everything in 1 campaign to get something running, but laying the ground work is the key to a campaign’s success. 

For a real world example, I recently worked with a client to improve their Adwords campaign.  They had about 1,000 keywords in 3 adgroups.  I examined their keywords list and was able to break out 45 different adgroups from their original 3.  I then wrote more targeted ads for each group of keywords.  Sure it was a ton of work, but their total average CTR increased by 70% within a week.  That’s before even touching the keyword list or match types.  Just goes the show the power of good campaign structure.

Since this blog is brand new, it would be nice to start getting visitors to post. I figured what better way than giving stuff away. So the best comment between now and the end of the month will get this shiny new $50 Adwords coupon. More good stuff is to come every couple weeks, so please hit the RSS button to subscribe!

Greetings from Vegas!  I can tell I am going to need a vacation by the time this week is over!  One of the more interesting sessions I attended today was on PPC tracking and reconciliation.  One of Goggle’s senior Adwords dudes talked about the 5 biggest myths about the Adwords quality score.  Since everyone was asking tons of questions about quality score, it was good to put some of the misconceptions to rest.

Myth 1:  There is only one quality score in your account.

Truth:  There are many different quality scores for different aspects of your account.

Myth 2:  Using all 3 match types increases your quality score.

Truth:  False.  Match types are not a factor.

Myth 3:  Increasing your spend can increase your score.

Truth:  Nope, you can’t buy your way to better listings.

Myth 4:  High CTR = High quality score

Truth:  This is not always the case.  It depends on where your ad is being shown. 

Myth 5:  Optimizing your account deletes your quality score history.

Truth:  Restructuring you account and changing adgroups around do not affect quality score as your history used for score calculations are saved.