The following tips is from Derek Pankeaw, I was in his PPC coaching program but he has sinced closed the program because he is setting up his own business instead of doing affiliate marketing. He was earning $5,000/mnth, I am using his methods to do my ppc and have been considerably successful so far. Let me know if you need further details on his method:).

Tip #0 – Don’t Be Afraid to Pay for Traffic

Most beginners are so focused on bum market, SEO and other free traffic sources that they put almost no attention on paid traffic.

Yet paid traffic is just so much easier to scale than free traffic. If you find an offer that converts at $0.40 a click, then as many clicks as you can get for $0.20 you’re doubling your money. It’s that simple.

Tip #1 – Know Your Earnings Per Click

The most important number is not conversion. It’s not your payout either.

It’s your earnings per click.

Let’s say your product sells for $40 and your conversion rate is 1%. Then your EPC is $0.40.

You know that for every click under $0.40, you’re making money.

This is crucially important for affiliates. You should not be looking at payouts or conversion rates like it’s the golden egg. What really matters is your EPC.

Tip #2 – Quality Score

Quality Score is one of the most misunderstood aspects of AdWords marketing. There are two phases to quality score:

Phase One, the Pre-Run scan. Before you get any traffic, the AdWords bot scans your site and decides how relevant your landing page is. It gives you a score that is generally between 6 and 8.

Phase Two, this is your on the run score. Your QS is calculated in real time on a per click basis.

Phase One quality score is only important for getting your ad to run. Often times if your QS is too low, you ad won’t even show. The key here is keyword relevance. Have your KW in your title tag, H1 tags and body text. It’s all about your landing page.

Once you get a 7 or 8 in phase 1, then phase 2 is all about CTR. Your landing page becomes just 20%-30% of the equation. Most people put way too much emphasis on it at this point.

You now want to optimize for Google’s eCPM. What Google effectively earns per 1000 impressions they give you. For example:

Advertiser 1: 1% CTR, 0.50 Per click. For every 1,000 impressions Google gives him Google makes $5.
Advertiser 2: 3% CTR, 0.25 Per Click. For every 1,000 impressions Google gives him, Google makes $7.5.

What’s amazing is that Advertiser #2 will actually rank higher than advertiser #1, get more volume and pay half of what Advertiser #1 is paying. That’s because Google’s eCPM is higher for them and it’s in their best interest to rank your ad higher. They make more money charging you less.

So the most important thing to optimize for in the later part of the game is your CTR. If you can write great ads and beat out your competition in CTR, then you’re well ahead of the game.

Tip #3 – One Keyword Per AdGroup

Each Ad Group allows you to write a unique ad. Most people lump together somewhat related keywords and write one ad for all those keywords. For example:

How to Get a Girlfriend
Where to Meet a Nice Girl
Meet a Girlfriend
Tips for Getting a Girlfriend
(Plus 10 more)

They put them all in one Ad Group and write one ad for it.

This is a great way to both kill your quality score and your CTR. Instead, it’s crucial to write just one ad per keyword so that your ads are laser targeted, your QS is high and your CTR is off the charts.

(By the way, I’ve gotten 25% CTRs before, which is insane.)

Here’s how to do it.

Tip #4 Edit in Excel, Upload in AdWords Editor

Most people trying out AdWords try to do it in the web interface. This is an insanely slow way to do things. It’d be impossible to do most of the advanced techniques, and one keyword per adgroup would be suicide.

I often launch with as many as 5,000 keywords; doing that in the web interface would take months.

Instead, you can edit everything in excel and then just copy and past it into AdWords editor.

You can do all your keyword research, group them into Ad Groups and then just copy and paste. You can write all your ads in excel and just copy and paste it into AdWords editor.

Doing this, creating 1 keyword per adgroup takes about 10 minutes once I have my keyword list. I can write ads for 200 keywords in about an hour.

It’s much faster, more streamlined and you’ll make far more money.

© 2009 Thanks for subscribing to my feeds please visit Affiliate WhiteBoard for more great content.

Saw this post at WickedFire Forum, link is here . This post is of great value to us PPC Marketers, I heard 1 guy siphoned the info and sold it as an ebook on another forum. Good marketer, bad ethics. Anyways I’m giving this info for free, credit goes to the thread starter:).

Obviously when we’re paying for traffic – we want 3 things:
-as much traffic volume as possible for as little expense as possible (High ad CTR and low CPC)
-we want that traffic to be as targeted as possible. Quality over Quantity folks. Tire-kickers and “just curious”- clickers are a waste of money.
-a very low bounce-rate from our landing page. Ideally, each ad clicker should be led on to do what we want them do to (click our call-to-action, opt in for our mailing list, whatever)

Our ads can greatly impact all of these for better or worse. I’m not gonna talk about the obvious things you already should be doing, like having the keyword in the ad, whether to use caps, question marks, etc. There’s already lots of articles out there on that topic. Go read it if you haven’t.

What I do wanna talk about is what not so many people bother to do – that is, to write ads that connect directly to the current mindset AND personality of the consumer.

BUYER MINDSET

It is common knowledge that people use searches online in one of three different mindframes – depending on their current phase in the buying process. The steps are often identified as:

I’m sure you’ve all gone through these stages when you have bought something online.

How do you know what mindset your traffic is in?
The keywords themselves (you did segment/categorize them right?) should mostly tell you this. Some are obvious, like “night vision binoculars” (surfing mode), “StalkerVision 3000 review” (compare/review mode), “cheapest StalkerVision 3000 free shipping” (buying mode).

For keywords you are unsure of, check out their OCI (Online Commercial Intention) value: Detecting Online Commercial Intention: Audience Intelligence: adCenter Labs

And, check to see what sort of words people were looking for before or after they looked for that word: Search Funnels: Keyword Research: adCenter Labs

PERSONALITY
Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg has pioneered a lot of groundwork when it comes to research of what appeals to consumers. They have almost made this a science, and have written numerous books on the subject. One of my favourites is their classic “Call to Action”, which details how you can get the most out of your traffic – whether it’s through ppc or natural seo.

The 4 classic types of buyers personalities are described as:

-Methodical. Very thorough and slow-paced in researching a purchase. May be sceptical of contests, free shipping and returns – what’s the catch? Likes side-by-side product comparison to make a rational decision. They want to know: How this product/service will help them.
They want accuracy, details, features, hard evidence, superior service, proof, etc.

-Spontaneous. Why should I or should I not order this now? They are spontaneous, appreciates a personal touch, and prefer quick decisions. Responds to sales, discounts, limited stock and time-limited offers. Responds to free overnight shipping (I can have it tomorrow!). Interested in “how many” reviews there are, not necessarily reading them.

-Humanistic. They are slower-paced, have no rush, might ask “who else has used this product to solve my problem?”, enjoy getting to know other users, enjoy real testimonials, shared experiences. Looks for the perfect gift, use gift finders and wish lists. Cares what others have to say. Appreciates live support and human interaction.

-Competitive. Logical, but faster-minded. Likes to be the first to own a product – responds to new items, featured or best-sellers. Doesn’t want to dig for information. He or she is into facts, summaries and some detail – but rather not spend too much time on research.

How do you identify your traffic’s personality?
First of all, what you are promoting should right upfront give you an indication of who your target demographic is. I mean, if you’re selling nursing bras – chances are your visitors aren’t methodical science geeks with their credit card in hand ready to buy! I’d venture to say they are first-time mothers, aged 20-35, with an either a humanistic or spontaneous personality. And thus you need to appeal to them in all 3 buying phases.

Of course, we can’t categorize all humans into just ONE of the four personality types because we all have some traits from each of those – but we can assume that the majority of the demographic likely belongs to one of them.

Check out some of the keywords in your niche and see who’s behind most of the searches. My favourite here is the MSN ad lab tool: Demographics Prediction: Audience Intelligence: adCenter Labs

Last but not least – split-test 4 different ads on the same ad group or keyword. Each ad corresponding to one of the 4 personas. Make sure to set the ads to show evenly. In Adwords, you need to uncheck the setting for showing ads with high CTR more often. We don’t want this when we split-test ads. After you gather some data, you should be able to see which ad tends to get the most traffic for that ad group or keyword – and that my friend, tells you what sort of personality is searching the most!

Time to get targeted!

So knowing this, I developed my own little chart to get the creative juices flowing for writing ads. Keep in mind, these ads are of course only examples and some of them are too long to be approved by any of the top-tier paid SE’s. I haven’t used the most amazing headlines or call to actions here either – but that’s not the point. The point is to show how I word my ads and carefully choose different approaches, depending on who I’m writing to and what they want to hear at the moment.

I proudly present: ImagesAndWords’ Ad-Matrix:

Sending them to what they wanna read. Give them what they expect.
What I like to do is create different landing pages for different traffic. I segment my keyword list based on mindframe, personalities (among other things) and then set up relevant landing pages depending on who I’m presenting it to. These pages (although for the same product or offer) may be completely different in style, formatting, headline, wording, bulletpoints, images, etc.

And there you go. Hopefully this makes it easier for some to write better ads.

Now go earn some dough:).

© 2009 Thanks for subscribing to my feeds please visit Affiliate WhiteBoard for more great content.