Cybercrawler’s Weblog

Just another WordPress.com weblog

10k ppc experiment part2

This is a second and final post to my experiment with pay per click engines. This is mostly based on my theories and social engineering. Please make sure you do your own research before jumping into PPC. For a smarter approach to ppc check out graywolfs excellent series called Adsense Arbitrage:

Final Target Acquisition:

So I feel somewhat comfortable with Adwords but I still felt that I could get more bang for my buck… well more buck for my buck to be technical. So I started doing some research more research. What is it that we are selling? Well in order for a Ringtones ad to “convert��? a user has to put in there phone number then they are text messaged a pin code they must enter into a site. This I a very nice 2 step process for a payout unlike some other things. Who is most likely to freely give out there phone number? Ya… your kids.

So we know we can already eliminate Nextel because they cant use any of the Ringtones offers were are doing. Now lets look at some further demographics of our targets. After doing a quick Google search we see that the average age of cellular phone users is 21. Also you can see that Verizon Wireless customers are very choosy and like to shop around. I attribute this to the fact the have the oldest userbase in the industry with an average user age of 25. In my mind this makes them not such a good target. The next highest age on average is Sprint with an average age of its users being 23. Sprint also has the 2nd most corporate clients behind Nextel which makes them (in my opinion) less likely to submit there phone number to a website for some “No Charge��? Ringtones.

So I am going to target Cingular and T-mobile users. Cingular in my opinion is the best demographic to target. They have an average age of 19 years old. T-Mobile is VERY close with an average age of 19.5.

Now I check this data with the data from my previous conversions:

Cingular: 38%
Tmobile: 34%
Sprint: 25%
Verizon 18%

This is just going off of my previous Adwords data this means that for every 10 Cingular people that are clicking on my ad I am converting 1.8 For Tmobile 1.7 and you can guess the rest.

So if the offer pays 15$ and I have an 18% conversion that means I am Grossing 2.70 cents per click. For 38% I am grossing 5.70 cents per click.

So now we have some numbers to work with. Lets move on before my head explodes.

Adwords: I run all offers on only the Google network. I do not run on any content network (ask.com earthlink. etc) I just find that I get a bad return on those. I am sure they work fine for other niches but for me its not doing it. For the most part with Adwords I set my bids and had a max budget of 300$/day. Fire and forget. I stayed strong on my Adwords bids. I have data that shows what I need to spend to convert so there really is no guesswork involved. If the bid goes up then I am not showing ads. If it comes down then my ads are in full effect.

CPM Targeting for the win… Here is a dirty secret. CPM target sites where the only good content is the AdSense ad. Here is the deal… with AdSense lets say it costs you 6$ to be #1 for Verizon Ringtones for search results… but ohh wait, what is this??Why it’s the #1 ORGANIC Google result for the phrase “Verizon Ringtones��? and it only costs me 10$ CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions or roughly 1 cent per impression). Since this ad is really the only relevant content it converts REALLY WELL.

In general site targeting these sites is a really good investment. These guys only build these sites for 1 reason… to get AdSense clicks and the other dirty secret about them is they convert really well because the user gets exactly what they were searching for. The key to finding them is just searching on various search engines. Google for the most part does not feel these sites should get good organic listing but that does not mean that they are not making money off of MSN and Yahoo ranking these sites high. Make sure you search them also for these kinds of sites.

Yahoo Search Marketing:

Yahoo Search Marketing was quite a bit more fire and forget then Adwords. I did not have to write 80 million ads to get my quality score up and this was really pretty simple. I scraped about 15,000 terms up using overture inventory, Google suggest and some other tools around the net for anything related to “Ringtones��?. I went ahead and approved any bid that it said cause I was going to edit them later…. MISTAKE!!! I had stayed up all until 5am to get all these terms in and it said it would take up to 3-5 days to approve them… well crap. I am going to bed. Then I wake up and they were approved and I burned through about 1800$ DOH. Some clicks were as high as 8$!!! I did get some return on my investment but my first day of yahoo was a bummer due to my lack of foresight. I now have set my daily budget to 300$ and also adjusted all my approved bids to 13 cents. Amazingly enough I got a decent amount of traffic from this that was converting. I really like yahoos placement targeting where you can specify where you want to be placed. I choose to be in position 3 and while that made my average cost go up about 600% I also got a TON more exposure.

Over all I was surprised at the lack of features with Yahoo Search Marketing. I mean these guys have been doing this the longest right? (Formally known as overture) That’s what I thought anyway… I hate having to wait DAYS to see if my listings get approved… and also I found the editing of listings to really suck. If I wanted to change something even if it was the website address it almost always got denied… They defiantly have some improving to do.


MSN AdCenter:

Ok positives first… MSN is by far the cheapest place to buy clicks. You can get tons of good 5 cent clicks. Also the traffic seems to convert 3-4% better then any other PPC program I tested. Also with MSN I did not have to write assloads of ads. It was pretty much fire and forget.

The downsides to AdCenter:

* There is not much traffic… even for top phrases. I had set my budget on AdCenter to 300$/day and it never got close to that.

* Import/export really sucks… forget trying to mass import large-scale keyword lists. I ended up doing them about 100 at a time and that… sucked….

Adbrite:

Adbrite is really the true diamond in the ruff. You have to search for them a bit but you can find them pretty easy. I never paid more then 8 cents a click and got many clicks for around 2-3cents.

Adbrite is somewhat a different monster then the others. You pay on a time period based level for the most part so you want to encourage users to click on the ads as much as possible. Because it costs you the same. The goal for Adbrite is to get as many clicks as possible.

The Bottom Line:

Over all the 40k experiment turned out to be a really profitable experiment. I have tried not to focus too much on specific numbers because people always get so hung up on figures. In order to comply with the broad TOS seemed to be shared by most of these PPC engines I am not going to specifics. I will say that on the whole Adbrite performed by far the best bang for the buck. I will say that Adbrite performed the best profit wise and CPC wise. Also keep in mind that I only played in the Ringtones arena and my methodologies produce many different results then others.

In March using these 4 networks I budgeted $40,000.00 Of that $40,000.00 I was only able to spend $28,932.75 for a total gross return of $144,329.29 for the month of march from cj.com and azoogleads.com Ringtones affiliates. The last parting words I have is do your homework. Find out what you need to spend to make a profit then stand strong on your bids. I HIGHLY recommend not using any automated bidding software for PPC-> affiliate.

Good Luck!

Source: shoemoney

April 15, 2008 Posted by cybercrawler | Tips & Trick, adsense, it, seo, webmaster | , , , , , , , , | No Comments

Google Adsense Banning Users For SEO?

Google Adsense Banning Users For SEO?
I got some emails and these could not wait for mailbag monday…

Hi Shoe-
Yesterday I noticed Google Adsense changed many things. One is this:

“Sites displaying Google ads may not include: Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site’s search engine ranking, e.g., your site’s PageRank”

So does this mean I will get banned from Adsense for optimizing my site for search engines now?

Thanks,

Ray

Ray - Interesting view on that. I am 100% sure it is not Googles goal to ban SEO’s from Adsense. I think Google is just trying to be as broad as possible with there terms of service (as any company is). When was the last time you actually read a terms of service? I think you will find many of them try to give the company a “its not our fault you violated TOS”.

I think you are probably safe to proceed to SEO your site with what adhears to the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Basically you cant cloak or do what Google considers “blackhat stuff”… Well unless you are a major news paper. (sorry had to do it)

Source: shoemoney

April 15, 2008 Posted by cybercrawler | it, seo, webmaster | , , , , , , , | No Comments

Adsense Slaps Foreign Webmasters in the Face

Google today announced they are changing their referal payout system and some big publishers really feel its a slap in the face.

Here are the 2 key points:

If you’re in North America, Latin America, or Japan, the pricing structure for AdSense referrals is changing.

What does it mean? Basically that you are going to make less money… a lot less money. Ill sumerize it for you. The current payment structure you get $5 who makes $5 (in 180 days). You get $250 for referring someone who makes $100 (in 180 days) and if you refer 25 people who make $100 within 180 days you get a BONUS PAYMENT of $2000 WOOT.

What is it going to? Well its going back to the old you only get $100 if you refer $100.

So why does this suck? Well I am guessing 80% or more of the people refered make less then $100 in 180 days. This means you get BUTKUS:

OK so I hear you foreigners… This doesnt effect you right… Well technically right this rule does not apply to you. Ohh but Adsense has something for you.

If you’re outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan, AdSense referrals will be retired.

They are terminating your referral program completely…. thats right… If you are not in the Americas, or Japan… your done.

From Australian based Darren Rowse AKA Problogger:

Yes you hear me right, its about the location of you as a publisher that excludes you from participating in the AdSense referral system. It’s got nothing to do with your audience’s location, the topic you write about, the quality of your blog or any other factor - it’s about where you blog from.

I’m not privy to the reasoning for this - they simply say ‘We’ve found that this referral product has not performed as well as we had hoped in these regions’ - but in my mind this is stupidity to the ultimate degree.

Source: shoemoney

April 15, 2008 Posted by cybercrawler | it, seo, webmaster | , , , , , , | No Comments

Bagaimana Blogger Terkemuka Meraup Dollar

Mari kita lihat dan pelajari apa yang membuat blogger terkemuka seperti Markus Frind, Mark Frauenfelder, Steve Pavlina, Jane May, Tyler Cruz, Yaro Starak, Joel Comm, Everton Blair, Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney), Darren Rowse, Perez Hilton, Matt Coddington , Jhon Chow meraup dollar dari blog-blog mereka.

Apa sebenarnya hal-hal yang sering kita sepelekan, hal-hal yang kadang tidak kita perhatikan dan sebenarnya merupakan kunci dari keberhasilan dalam dunia bloggers. Mari kita lihat dan pelajari dari beberapa blog dan blogger terkemuka berikut ini.

Boingboing.net
Mulai online : January, 2000
Founder : Mark Frauenfelder
Penghasilan : Over $1 million a year
Jumlah penulis : 4 orang
Banyaknya artikel/hari : 20 - 40
Jumlah pengunjung/hari : Lebih dari 300.000

TechCrunch.com
Mulai online : June, 2005
Founder : Michael Arrington
Penghasilan : $200,000/bulan
Jumlah penulis : 3 orang
Jumlah pengunjung : 5 million page views/bulan

PerezHilton.com
Banyaknya artikel/hari : lebih dari 40
Penghasilan : $110,000/bulan.

ShoeMoney.com
Founder : Jeremy Schoemaker
Jumlah pengunjung : 20,000+ unique visitors/hari
Penghasilan : > $12,000/bulan

Bagaimana Dengan Indobloggers

Saya yakin, sebenarnya blogger Indonesia juga tidak terlalu tertinggal oleh mereka. Hanya saja keberadaan blogger kita belum banyak tercium dunia.

Diantara blogger kita yang cukup sukses, dan sebetulnya layak bersanding dengan para blogger terkemuka diatas, diantaranya : Cosa Aranda ( 90.000.000/bulan), Keeper dll. Sebetulnya saya masih mengetahui : ada beberapa orang lagi yang penghasilan meraup $ dari internetnya cukup lumayan, tapi saya belum berani menuliskannya disini, dengan alasan : bukan blogger, tidak mengetahui nama asli dan alamat url blognya, dll D

Nantikan : Kisah sukses Indobloggers, kisah sukses para blogger indonesia yang akan kami hadirkan di blog ini.

Sekarang, mari kita introspeksi diri kepada diri kita masing-masing. Berapa banyak artikel yang kita tulis tiap hari ?, berapa banyak jumlah pengunjung yang kita peroleh tiap hari ?, seberapa menarik dan bermanfaat kah artikel yang kita tulis ?, berapa umur blog kita ?. Telah sebanding dengan penghasilan yang kita peroleh juga bukan ?.

Bangun dong, jangan berharap berpenghasilan banyak kalau kita cuma nulis artikel (yang belum tentu menarik dan bermanfaat) 1 buah dalam 1 minggu, itupun kalau sempat dan tidak malas. Saya harap tulisan ini dapat mengingatkan kita (yang belum berhasil) tentang bagaimana suatu keberhasilan itu diraih. Ada aksi ada reaksi, ada input ada output. Jangan cuma mimpi !.

Tetap semangat ! Sukses Selalu, Merdeka !

Source: www.indobloggers.com

April 15, 2008 Posted by cybercrawler | Tips & Trick, WordPress, seo | , , , , , , , | No Comments

SEO Suggestion

Do these suggestions make sense to you?

  • Don’t repeat multiple times the same word in the title.
  • The title of the page is the most important ranking criteria for search engines. Take care to build good titles to be well ranked, it’s very important!
  • Don’t create titles entirely in uppercase letters.
  • You can code accentuated letters in HTML (é = é).
  • Your page title must be 7 to 10 words long and must contain important and descriptive words for your activity.
  • Avoid titles like: “Homepage”, “Welcome on our web site”. They don’t describe your activity and what the end user will find in your pages.
  • Every page of your site must have its own title, representative of its content.
  • Of course, every page of your site must have a title… -)
  • Avoid the lists of words separated by commas: write a real sentence.
  • Don’t begin your title by a space.
  • HTML code: <title>Your title</title>
  • In the HTML code, place the title as high as possible (close to the <HEAD> tag).

 

April 14, 2008 Posted by cybercrawler | seo | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tips


There a millions of web sites on the Internet, with 1000’s more being added every day.One of the best ways of finding any of these web sites is by using search engines, but you type anything into a search engine you are likely to get 1000’s of search results, and how many times do you look beyond the second page of search results? Not very often I guess.

Well what you need to do is to try and get your web site listed as high as possible in the results and there are a number of things you can do to help.

Page Title

Make sure each page on your web site has a title in the head of the document. Many search engines use the title of the web page as the link to your site, so it is important that your title be as relevant and descriptive as possible.

To see how many Untitled Documents there are out there, all you need to do is type Untitled Document into a search on Google, when I tried it returned 44,600,000 search results. When you look at the pages found, Untitled Document, is not going to make you want to visit that page.

It is best to use the title for your page that describes the content of your page as much as possible in the most descriptive way. For example, if you were looking for a page that sells Crystal Wine Glasses and the search engine title for the page said Glasses it could mean the page contained anything from Sunglasses to Beer Glasses.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are one of the most important parts of a web page when it is indexed by a search engine.

Meta tags are used by almost all search engines to index your page and contain items such as page description and keywords.

The description meta tag is very often used by a search engine to display a sort description of what your web page contains. Some search engines look at the keywords entered into the keywords meta tag and will use this to display your page in the search results if it is one of the words used in the search criteria.

For more information on Meta Tags look at the Meta Tags Optimisation Tutorial .

Page Content

A number of search engines will index the first few lines of your web page, so try to make a the first few lines as descriptive as possible.

Some search engines will even index your entire page. To try and trick search engines some people enter hundreds of keywords into the bottom of the page but in the same colour as the background so they can’t be seen by the user, but they can by the search engine spider. This is known as spamming and many search engines are clever enough these days to see this and will actually put your site lower in the listings or black list it altogether.

Hyperlinks

Try to place as many descriptive text links in your homepage to other relevant pages in your site as possible as search engines will use these links to index the other pages on your site.

Images

Most sites these days contain images, so it is important that you use the alt tag on any images to try and describe as much as possible what the image is of. Not only will this help index your site better but it will also help those visitors to your site who are visually impaired.

Where possible try not to use images that contain text as what maybe easily visible to you won’t be able to be indexed by a search engine.

Links to Your Site

Many search engines, including Google, will return your web site higher in search results by the amount of web sites that link to your site, also the higher the profile of the site that links to yours, the higher your listing is in search results again.

With this in mind it is worth searching the Internet for other web sites on the same topic as your own. Many of these sites will have link pages and even if they don’t its worth asking the web site owner if they could link to your web site.

The more links to your site the better as I find many sites get more visitors from other sites linking to them than come through search engines anyway.

Sites Using Frames

Frames tend to cause search engine spiders allot of problems when indexing your site as many won’t recognise the document that opens up your frames and so wont index your pages.

To help over come this problem place your main homepage into the noframes part of the document that opens all your frames. The noframes part of the page is for those browsers that can’t handle frames, but as most nowadays do your web site visitors will never see what is in this part of the document.

To help index other pages on your site it is also worth placing links in the noframes part of the document as this will allow the search engine spider to find other pages on your site and index them.

Frames do cause allot of problems and not just when indexing your site, what happens if someone clicks onto a link which takes them into only one frame on your site, they may not be able to view any navigation controls and so will not be able to go to other parts of your site. I would recommend, where possible not to use a frames on your site.

 

April 14, 2008 Posted by cybercrawler | seo | , , , , , | 1 Comment