ShareThis

I mentioned in one of my post that FTC is cracking hard on flogs and this time round, Google and Yahoo have taken strict measures as well. This is probably not the latest news but worth mentioning it again in case any newbies might fall into this trap again. A lot of Adwords accounts are closed for good for this reason. That means it’s never EVER going to get re-instated again. This is some serious banning.

Items that you should try to stay away for the moment to keep your Adwords account safe, is those recurring billing products, like those Acai free trials and other health related products. The “Google Kits” is a BIG “no-no”. Looks like Google is taking serious measures to protect their reputation and punishing those profiting from its trademark. Anything that has got Google’s trademark in the products are no longer acceptable. Promotion of products using Google’s brand trust tends to mislead the consumers and Google is not going to be involved in the scam game for sure.

So, before you decided to promote an item, check the terms and conditions properly and make sure it complies with Google Adwords guidelines before getting the Google Slap or worse,  an Adwords account closed for good. You’re in their playground so play by their rules. No way to go around that!

Here is a brief video explaining Google Slap for newbies

ShareThis

It’s an usual day and about to head off for lunch when the phone rang. I answered and to my surprise, Jim Lillig, President of Offeratti.com just called me. Offeratti.com is a relatively new network in the CPA industry but the people running the network has got full of experience in the internet marketing arena. As for Jim Lillig, he does both brick-and-mortar businesses but also created a few other high traffic internet businesses. He has got so much energy and passion when we chatted and the call lasted over an hour! Quick and a pretty straight-forward guy, he explained the strict criteria that publishers have to meet but at the same time, very keen on helping honest new comers. Offeratti has got a zero-tolerance policy against fraud and that makes me feel comfortable that this is not another network flying under the radar. What’s most important to me in my opinion is the personal touch of giving affiliates a call. Jim has taken the good old flavor of traditional businesses to the internet. Nothing beats a call. The internet has changed the social bonding of businesses today as we sit behind the screen and typing “to and fro” emails. Jim doesn’t believe in that and neither do I.

The call was about 1 pm Thailand time and that’s about 1 am for Jim! Does this guy ever sleeps? Despite the late hours over at his end, he still shows so much enthusiasm and dedication towards his affiliate business. Getting a call from him is really a new breath of fresh air in the marketing world for me. Who gets a call these days, from the President personally and chatted for an hour?

One simple call and yet it has such a great impact for both the affiliates and the network. Not only does he try to help new affiliates, he also provides tools, tips and that moral boost that all of us need from time to time.

All I can say is Offeratti.com is definitely different from other networks. A true “win-win” network and working hard for all new affiliates to bring you the best offers.This is one network you wouldn’t want to miss out on.

Jim Lillig is a big name in the internet marketing world. Read more about Jim’s accomplishment over at his blog.

Here’s Jim speaking at Affiliate Bootcamp (2006)

Rating : Out-Of-This World!!

ShareThis

I got an email from Gauher Chaudry today. Gauher Chaudry is the guy who brought you PPC Formula 2.0 course. In his email, he was talking about Amish Shah and a link to Amish’s site. I opted-in and get some really good tricks for landing pages. It really worth taking a look and trying it out since it FREE.

I went on to download the tips and I was surprised that such a simple trick and it never crossed my mind before. Worth taking a look and if you want to improve your QS on the landing pages for your campaigns.  Simple, effective and no strings attached for this great trick.

Amish is currently one of the top CPA earners and free tips from this guy is not to be taken lightly.

Ratings : Further than 5 Stars

ShareThis

So, what are my strategies of getting traffic in my CPA campaigns? It can be article marketing or bum-marketing but it takes time before traffic comes in and it could mean a real offer could end by the time the traffic starts rolling in. Of course, you could go by PPC route but as a starter, it could be disastrous as well as it not cheap to buy traffic from PPC. So are there any alternatives to PPC? Yes, it CPV or PPV. “Cost-per-view” or “Pay-per-view” are getting popular these days and you can get a reasonable amount of traffic and pay way cheaper than PPC. The usage of PPV is way much easier than PPC. No more worries on Quality Score and also no hectic keyword research required. It is relatively easy to use and you could setup your campaigns really quick too. So, to make it easy, here’s another video again. Some may not like the idea of such advertising cos it is similar to ad-ware but it’s up for you to decided to consider if it is worthwhile to take a shot at CPV/PPV.

ShareThis

Today is an exciting day for me. Woke up and found that I got approved by Maxbounty, PepperJam and Hydranetwork. It’s really easy that all these networks use AIM and can be contacted easily. I submitted in the applications and added their AIM handlers. They responded quick and friendly, asked a few questions and if you answered it with satisfactory results, they approve you right away! Instead of waiting, giving them a call or sending them a message does speed things up a lot.

So, I decided to give Market Leverage another call today and to my dismay, they don’t answer calls (leave you on the voicemail) and they don’t answer my  mails.

Folks over at Maxbounty and Hydra are extremely helpful and keen to get you started. I’m very pleased the way they handle their job and looking after the affiliates. Image is everything, isn’t it?

LATEST UPDATE : Dina over at MarketLeverage left a post explaining the situation. Now, thats much better isn’t it? Thank you Dina!

ShareThis

Let’s say that you have been accepted into the CPA networks. Now, what’s next? Where should you proceed and what steps should you take?
I’m going to break it down into several parts for better understanding. Since I’m implementing the PPC approach towards my campaigns, these applies only if you are going to take the same approach. BE WARNED that without, proper keyword research, relevancy, highly optimized landing pages and adcopy plus overall good Quality Score. Otherwise, Google is going to penalize you and prepare to pay sky-high prices for your keywords.

1) Go to your CPA networks and look for the best campaigns that you can find to promote via means of PPC (Highest paying campaigns doesn’t mean its the best, lookout for current trends and choose the best ones)

2) Research your competition thoroughly

3) Research keywords –> IMPORTANT

4) Create several highly optimized landing pages for split testing purposes

5) Keywords ads grouping and prepare for split testing between different ad groups

6) Export Keywords Groups into Adwords Editor

7) Launch campaigns and monitor campaigns and costs!

8 ) Tweak and take away non-performing keywords and tweak more to improve results.

As always, I will provide a video on explaining landing pages.

These are VERY basic tips and you should do more research on each of the stuff I mentioned aboved and tuned it to perfection. Getting a course on PPC is highly recommended before you launch your first campaign. The best keyword tool I would recommend is Google’s very own keyword tool itself.

ShareThis

With CPA networks and blogging platforms on the rise, there are a number of bad apples in the business and setting fake blogs to drive their CPA campaigns. These blogs are known are FLOGS.

I was looking around the internet and found a couple of such campaigns immediately. They are single page blogs with high traffic (due to heavy PPC advertising) and usually there’s a “before” and “after” image prominently displaced to capture attention. The RSS counters and even the comments are all made up to provide the visitors with fictitious information. However, that doesn’t mean the products they are promoting are not up to expectations but the fact that making facts and misleading statements could harm both the network and also the advertisers. Thus The FTC is tracking down on such blogs and shutting them down. Even the before and after pictures are faked easily using photoshop.

Making money is okay as long as we stick to ethical standards. Here’s a video I found on Youtube that clearly demonstrates how the pictures are morphed into “perfection”.

Amazing stuff huh? It also applies to some sites I saw on teeth whitening products. Making money is fine with me but faking stuff up to bring in the cash is simply WRONG and might end up in hot soup!

ShareThis

CPA Marketing is the hot topic these days and almost all internet marketers are taking the plunge into this marketing system. So, what is CPA? It stands for Cost-Per-Action. The advertisers pays you for every lead that you generate for them. It could be a trial-product offer or even a simple email submits. If you don’t know what CPA is about, then you are living under a rock!

Lets watch the following video I found for a deeper understanding of what CPA networks and campaigns can do for your online marketing business.

Over the next few posts, I will review several CPA networks and had submitted my application earlier today to MarketLeverage as well. Internet marketing is no longer just selling miserable ebooks from Clickbank and CPA marketing has taken a big step for internet marketers to get more involved with brand building and awareness for the “Big Boys” advertisers. My approach is using direct PPC and having highly optimized landing pages for campaigns. Yes, it could mean that I can easily rake up alot in adspend but again this is the fastest way in which I can start split-testing my campaigns almost immediately and deliver results for the advertiser on a much quicker pace. Ther are other source of traffic generation techiques as well but as for now, I will concentrate on PPC.

ShareThis