When you do marketing, and yes, I’m going to give you the most boring cliché ever, but YOU HAVE TO “think outside of the box.” Be creative, do something others aren’t doing.

So I asked them, “Did you try any other paid traffic sources?” And the answer was: “Are there others?” This shows how little business owners know, even though they think they’re experts, because they read an article on PPC or Facebook marketing. Being an expert doesn’t mean you know the technical terms, it means that you’ve spent 10 000 hours doing something.

Long story short, they agreed to try some other traffic sources, although I can guarantee if they would let me try AdWords, I would make that campaign way more successful than what they did, but they won’t let me, because they “lost all confidence in AdWords at the moment.”

I signed an NDA, so I can’t show you guys their product or service, but I’ll keep you updated on how everything goes. Here are a couple of things they have agreed to try:

1. A press release and distribution – I always do this, and I use PRWeb (not an affiliate link). There are hundreds of similar sites, but I just like that one the best.
2. Improving their presence online, start blogging, social bookmarking and utilizing Facebook and LinkedIn, since that’s where their target demographic hangs out.
3. I’ve had some great success with niche products and buying traffic from StumbleUpon, and I’m going to give it a try for these guys. Some great content will be created for a free giveaway, and then the subscribers will be contacted by the sales people.
4. This is a product/service that just might work for a CPA network, so if we put it on one and it takes off, we’re golden.
5. Media Buying. Those big scary words. I’ve found some potential sites and I’m having some great banners designed, and I think this will be the most scalable solution if it works.

If you’ve run out of ideas, I suggest you take a look at the “Top 50 Ad Networks To Explore”, and find out where they advertise and how. There are a million other sources, but you gotta start somewhere. I’ll keep you updated, and I’ll try to post more “real life scenarios” from my clients. Perhaps even get permission to do an open case study, we’ll see.

Until next time!

That’s right you only pay when someone clicks your ad.

I’ve put together a little guide. Essentially, I’m going to show you what NOT to do to get the most clicks.

Alerting people to the fact that something is an ad is not only not going to help you get clicks, but it’s going to hurt your own reputation on twitter. Don’t label everything an ad!

Let me start off by stating the problem.

• Most of these services don’t allow you to write an exact ad for people to tweet out.
• In addition, you can’t force people (or even tell them) to be positive about your product!

What do I mean exactly? Let me show you.

Each of the following sponsored tweets literally use the word “ad” or “sponsor” in them.

Using the word “sponsored” is going to drastically lower the click through rate. Publishers are getting paid based on clicks, why bother labeling it sponsor if you make money when people click it?

This one starts off with “Ad:” again not going to work too well.

“#ad” is amongst the most common problematic tweets. Nobody is going to click, they are wasting their time.

“look at my sponsor” is another no-no, if you want a high CTR.

“Ad:” again.

Do you see where they are going wrong?

• They are alerting people to the fact that these are ads.

Go ahead and ask anyone, alerting people to the fact that something is in fact an Ad is going to have a certain percentage of people that never even give it a second of their time to consider.

The bottom line is, if you are mentioning a paid service then it is already an ad, you don’t need to label it! People know you are sending out an ad once they realize it’s a paid service. Just by stating that it is in fact an ad, does not help your reputation on twitter, your click through rate and certainly doesn’t help your wallet. In fact, I could make an argument that labeling everything as an ad or sponsor in fact HURTS your reputation more-so than not alerting people to that fact!

Is this a problem for me? Not really. I only pay when people click.

If this a problem for people sending out Sponsored Tweets? Yes, because they only get paid when people click so they are wasting their energy by labeling something an ad or a sponsor.

Instead of labeling everything an AD/Sponsor… Here are some better ideas.

1. Write the “ad” as if it’s something you’re just casually mentioning in conversation.
2. If you really want someone to click, know your audience and don’t try to make it sound like ad!
3. Tell your honest opinion about it.
4. Ask for their opinion about it, in your tweet!
5. Relate it to something else you did that was positive.
6. Find text on the advertisers landing page and use that! They probably already know what works best!

I’m going to stop the list there. What other ways can you guys think of that will actually get people to CLICK on twitter “ads”? Obviously, labeling them ads and sponsors is not going to help you get clicks or make any money as a publisher!

Here’s my response and how you can do it too:

First of all, the landscape is ever changing. Picking a niche is tough.

What I can tell you is this.

The niche itself (to an extent) is not necessarily the first thing that you should decide.

The first thing you should decide (and maybe just a better way of discovering a niche), is how can you create an interactive website that people will want to keep coming back to. Don’t think in terms of niche, think in terms of what you already know something about and how you can engage people.

How do you engage someone? Create something funny, informative, interesting that they wouldn’t truly want to tell to their real life friends. This is basically ‘how to be viral 101′.

Don’t make it about what keywords or what niche would work well for the sake of selling ad space. Instead, make it about HOW you can get people to keep coming back to this site. Come up with something unique or do something that’s out there in a better way, in a way that’ll get those people to send it to their friends and tell them how cool, funny or interesting the site or content is.

When you think about things with this mindset rather than thinking about the niche, you separate yourself from the competitors in whatever market you end up being in. They are all thinking about how they can land all these banner sales and you are just out there creating a cool environment, that people actually want to use.

Law of attraction really works here and people will be using your contact form, emailing you, calling you, and knocking down your door to get their banners or ads on your new interactive site that people in their niche are actually using.

Still have no ideas? What niche is interesting to you to do a site about? What are you knowledgeable on that you could personally write content on every now and then or at least be the driving (knowledgeable) force behind making decisions regarding what’ll be on the site and what is interesting to you??? By using yourself as the demographic (to an extend) you instantly have the power and know-how to ‘make it happen’ in this niche that you know something about.

I had a friend that was making a site about Intellectual Property because the contextual ads paid out well. He didn’t have a clue what he was doing and failed and lost a lot of money. After 1 hour of coaching him, the same stuff that I am telling you guys, he ended up creating what is now one of the most successful Mixed Martial Arts websites in the world. (One of his biggest personal hobbies.)

That’d be my recommendation. Still have nothing? If you respond and tell me more about you. i.e. What has worked for you. What was not worked for you. What your biggest success in marketing has been and what your personal hobbies are, then I could help you come up with an interesting spin on a niche that’s out there. But truly, you can do it all yourself. If you still want to fire ideas off someone then respond to this email and I’ll talk to you about it for free.

At the end of the day it’s not about doing what someone else is doing it’s about making something work that you already know how to make convert, whether you realize it or not you are already an expert in something. Are you getting my drift?

P.S. Please show your support by heading over to JonathanVolk.com and checking out my Interview with him. Leave me a nice comment over there if you like it!
Interview –> http://www.jonathanvolk.com/affiliate-marketers/interview-brian-evans.html

Now it’s not all bad news. What does this mean exactly? What happened when Google laid down the law on most of the more aggressive Affiliate promotion methods? The competition died down and the smart ones made a lot more money.

Not only did the competition die down. It created a boom of people that began creating higher quality products and finding ways to sell their products because of the lower competition and less garbage floating around in the ad space. The less garbage and shadiness going on,  the less people become “ad aware”, IMO.

What does this mean for me and you? It means that the marketplace (ad space) is wide open for high quality product owners and innovative affiliate marketers to start new products/campaigns and sell like never before. It’s also a great time for things like membership sites (of high quality) to be promoted in innovative ways. It’s a great time to BUILD LISTS. It’s a great time to make money in general, because a lot of the affiliate marketers that were taking advantage of Facebook in the past, are moving on to other things or taking a break.

Less competition, less shady promotion going on opens the doors right up to high quality affiliate marketers and product owners that are promoting in new innovative ways.

The new guidelines do not take away much in terms of creativity. If you want to do what everyone else has been doing, then you probably won’t even get your ad accepted. But the doors are wide open for innovation. Finding new innovative ways to bring in customers is the key moving forward.

The sole purpose of your ads on Facebook should be to get the users attention, create an interest/desire for the product and finally get them to take action (click the ad). If you are trying to do any more than that you have a major problem with your strategy. The argument could even be made that you simply want them to click your ad without creating desire. That’s a more advanced topic for another day, regarding how to convert semi-blind traffic by getting them to click an interesting image (can be very difficult unless you really know your demographic).

What I want you to take from this is that you shouldn’t think of Facebook as a dead zone. In fact, a lot of marketers will tell you that Facebook is DEAD so that they can make all the money in the world, with no competition. They are banking off the negative media associated with Facebook Ads based on the recent guideline changes. I’m here to tell you the truth that there is plenty of money to be made still. It’s just that how you are going to have to do it, is different.

It’s the perfect time to create a product. Whether it’s a simple eBook on a subject you are familiar with, a physical product or a members only website for golf tips – there’s money to be made. It’s not very complicated to setup hosting, a PayPal account and start selling an eBook or Video series on a website. If the product is high quality enough then you won’t need to a whole lot of “hard selling”.

My challenge for you is to pick your most favorite pass time activity that you are knowledgeable on and make an eBook, Video or even just a website with ad space for sale and try to make some money. Gradually, expand and create a newsletter and offer a product, if you aren’t already.  After you get some success, start tweaking your “sales” page and eventually move into buying traffic on Facebook for the product. If you don’t get success, shoot me an email and show me what you have . I’ll give you some free tips.

You can make a lot of money as a product owner. With the changes on Facebook it’ll be cake to sell a high quality product that fits in their guidelines. I’ve been saying it for years and it’s becoming more and more true. It’s all about promoting the high quality products regardless if you are an affiliate or a product owner. It’s time to create, innovate and promote high quality products in new ways that we should have been doing all along. The future is all about quality. Promote high quality products in new ways and you will find success.

The next time you visit your local car repair shop, hair salon, spa, car dealer, electronics store (ok, not the major chains), even grocery stores, ask to see the manager. Present yourself as a happy customer who’d like to give something back, and tell them what you work with. Ask if they’re currently doing any online marketing, if they have a website, if they’re happy with it, if they’re interested in slashing advertising costs and increasing their ROI (return on investment, meaning they will get back more than they invest) etc. Some of them will, some of them won’t.

Always be professional, because if you are, you might land a client who first said no a bit later. Tell them about pay per click (or whatever you think is suitable for their niche, but ppc works for most businesses), tell them about ranking high on google, heck, even bring a laptop/iphone and show them the competition’s ads for the keywords that would be relevant for them. Tell them how this new kind of target marketing will slash their ad costs compared to newspaper advertising, and there is a great chance that it will increase their ROI greatly.

Set up a deal with them, and the kind of deal will depend on what they want and what they do. Maybe they need a new website, maybe the current one needs to be a bit optimized, maybe you need to get a commission for all online sales, if they sell stuff online, paid per lead, or just a ppc management fee. Bring in 5-6 clients, and quit your day job.

Now, I know that if I end my post here, people will start begging for a blueprint like “what did you say, how did you do it, how much do you charge, how did you know what to do, I don’t know PPC, etc.” Okay, here is EXACTLY what I did when I first got started, and it should be enough for you as well:

1. First client was a hair salon, I happened to know the owner. He wanted more clients and was complaining about the competition who seemed to do so well online, but all he did was lose cash when trying that “pay Google thingy.” I said “let me get back to you, we’ll fix it.” At the time I wasn’t really too knowledgeable about PPC, so I went to some forums and asked what the best book on PPC was, and got he answer “Perry Marshall’s ‘The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords‘,” so I bough it at a bookstore the same day. I read the book twice in a couple of days, went back to my friend and explained how I was really good at PPC, and that we should set up a deal.

At the time, I didn’t really know about lead generation and performance based marketing deals, so I just said, give me $199 a month, and I’ll take care of it. He set a budget, I opened a Client Center account with Google, put in his account (yes, he paid the click fees to Google, I didn’t), and off we went.

2. Next client was my car repair guy. I actually Googled him, and discovered that he wasn’t online at all. No website, no presence. I went over there and explained how he was missing out, and showed him other garages in the area and what they were doing on my laptop. He got all excited, so I said the same thing: Give me $199 a month, and I’ll take care of it, and I’ll charge you 700 bucks for a simple 5 page website. That was about 2 days of work, and it brought in $900 for that month. I actually did the website myself at the time, now I outsource all website creation to elance.com.

3. And so it went, I learned about more marketing models and started charging commission, lead generation fees, doing SEO work for $499-$1200 a month, that I outsourced completely, and started offering custom software/programming/backend solutions, also outsourced, as my programming skills are completely non-existing. Not very long after, I was making way more with my new clients than I’d ever done before. Now I have a couple of other ventures going on, and I’m not actively pursuing new clients, but if I see an opportunity, I ALWAYS ask about their current marketing strategies.

Don’t ever be afraid of asking, don’t ever fear a no, read up on sales techniques, and I can dearly recommend Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn and those guys. Fantastic!

Get some audio tapes, listen to them on the computer, in the car etc. This is a real business, this is your life, take action now!

Peace out!

–Sam

April Fools or Real?

According to the email, they are encouraging everyone to transition to Chitika. Wow, they wouldn’t recommend a competitor as an April fools would they?

http://ysm.yahoo-email.com/a/hBLs3K2Adp951B8Gu79A3Ecyr9M/ysm9

The Email:

Dear Publisher,

Yahoo! continuously evaluates and prioritizes our products and services, in alignment with business goals and our continued commitment to deliver the best consumer and advertiser experiences. After conducting an extensive review of the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, we have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010. We expect to deliver final publisher payments for the month ending April 30, 2010 to publishers no later than May 31, 2010. All publishers eligible for 1099s for the 2010 tax year will have those mailed by January 31, 2011.

Because our content will no longer be delivered to your ad unit spaces after April 30, 2010, we recommend removing all YPN ad code from your pages by that date.

For the opportunity to continue earning revenue, we suggest using Chitika, a leading advertising network that syndicates Yahoo! Content Match and Sponsored Search ads. Chitika has set up a special process for YPNO beta publishers to participate in its platform. Click here for more information.

We thank you for your participation in the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta. If you have any questions regarding this announcement, please contact our Support Team at (866) 785-2636, Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PDT.
Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo!

April Fools or Real? Post comments below.

You may have the best ideas in the world as far as what’s going to work on your landing page and ads. You may even have data that shows what has worked in the past. But that doesn’t mean its going to work today or forever! And it certainly doesn’t mean that you have found the best way and most profitable way to do it.

There is always something else to split test. There are literally so many factors that go into the decision making process people have wrote hundreds of page books on the process and still are barely scratching the surface.

The bottom line as Dan Ariely proves in his book Predictably Irrational, is that behavior is NOT always Rational (even when our MONEY is on the line!) And that sometimes even the silliest changes can yield more profits. Sometimes it’s literally the one idea that you say “nah, that’s too simple that wouldn’t work… would it?” sometimes those ideas the ones u dismiss right away in your mind  (the sometimes irrational ones) can be the ones that work so well.

Here’s some other factors in landing pages that are usually overlooked or not given enough attention.

Colors alone play a major role, the wrong “non sales” color can turn people off who may have bought otherwise. A creative google search will link you to many studies on this.

You can have the best sales page in the world but if you leave out the trust building process then you are skipping a major step! Read the book Trust Agents or listen to any of the new Frank Kern List Control stuff.

Make sure to have a control in your split test so you have something to compare to. Base all of your additional testing pages off of the control page so that you can say that 1 simple factor showed improvement, rather than trying to guess which modification yield better results.

The landing page is not the only thing you should be split testing, you should be split testing your ads, keywords, demographic targeting and sources of traffic as well.

Whenever possible get them to opt-in to an email list on your sales pages so that you have additional chances to build a relationship with them and ultimately get them to buy something.

Questions to ask yourself to help improve your landing page:

What is the “Call to Action” on this page? In other words, what is the most important thing that I want them to do on the page. If you have more than 1 page make sure that each page has a clear Call to Action and then focus your efforts around getting them to take that action. Always favor the shortest simplest process that you can. I’m not saying to write a short sales page but always favor short over long if you can make the sale quickly rather than prolong it. (Sometimes it takes a long sales page to make a conversion depending on various factors).

“SO What?” Ask yourself this question after READING your landing page. This is a question to ask based on the particular offer on the page. Say “So what?” and keep answering your own question by re-writing your landing page until its extremely powerful, simple and motivates you to do something (this question can also work well for ad writing too).

Surveys can be very useful and are rarely used by Internet Marketers for the purposes of improving their own sales process. When you build a list, segment it into a few parts then ask them to reply to your email with what they think of the product/what they would like to see added on/what they dislike/ etc.  People will generally be pretty honest, especially when saying what they dislike about your sales offer. You can then put this information in your future ads, future emails and future sales/landing pages for the particular product or campaign. It’s a very commonly overlooked part of the process and surveying is a great way to really be able to get to know your list/customers. Then, if you’re able to squash all the common questions or dislikes about your product before sending them to the actual sales page, then you are way ahead of the game and your conversion rates are going to sky-rocket. You could even make jokes about the common misunderstandings people have of your product, to put them at ease about it. You might be asking yourself what if you don’t have a list? Well, if you have customers buying products of yours and you aren’t capturing their email even on the checkout process then you need to take a close look at your business model for these kinds of gaps. You should at minimum be capturing on the checkout process to upsell and keep them a long term customer for future products.

If you are an affiliate marketer running offers, this also still applies to you. You should be building that list of ultra highly qualified customers before they buy anything. Then you can keep selling them over and over on related products BY building a relationship with them through email! The better the relationship you build with them by telling them stories that involve you and the products (amongst other things) the better they are going to convert for you time and time again. Being an affiliate is no excuse not to be split testing, building lists or surveying.

Always be split testing. There’s always something to test. Don’t let yourself go crazy with it, make sure that you can properly analyze all of your split tests. Do them small at first and work yourself up to running several split tests for a single campaign. Always be aware that several factors go into the decision making process and that you may never figure them all out. The best way to figure something out in Internet Marketing is to give your visitors these slight variations and let them tell you both by surveying and by their actions on your split test pages.

–Brian

Targeting for B2B and tough demographics such as a certain type of corporate executive or company size can be tough. Most people don’t realize that LinkedIn has a DirectAds program.  For around $3 CPM (or a pricey CPC option) you can display similar ads (text and image) as you can on Facebook, to ultra targeted demographics. There are lots of business people on LinkedIn and it’s premium ad space for any product that they might be interested in. However, you have to realize WHY and *WHEN* they are on the site in order to capitalize on it on top of just knowing the demographic.

For the sake of saving money, I would suggest figuring out your effective CPC elsewhere then bidding CPM on LinkedIn, their CPC tends to be very pricey. You can select all sorts of options such as what size of a company they work for, what their particular profession is and etc.

This is PREMIUM ad space for any type of B2B product or other product that targets people working at small to large companies. Most of the people on LinkedIn are employed and then from there you have the ability to target to all size companies with various other specific demographic related options. People generally are fairly accurate with their LinkedIn profile, maybe even more-so than Facebook, which is VERY good for marketers that know their demographics.

Advertising for services can be effective on LinkedIn as well. People go to LinkedIn for several reasons. They go their for work related updates to their profile & networking, and if they are thinking about work and see a relevant ad that could benefit their company they are likely to click it right at work. They also go there when they are at home, looking for another job, updating their profile or doing some networking outside of work.

The most important aspects of LinkedIn DirectAds are 1) Demographic targeting (which is almost exclusively how their ads are targeted) and 2) Understanding why, when and where people are accessing their account. (If someone is at home and fed up with their Job then I highly doubt that they are going to be interested in a product/service that benefits their current company.)

Time of Day Rotation Script

Here’s a BIG tip about making a successful LinkedIn campaign. As of the time of this writing DirectAds has the ability to do all sorts of cool things as far as how to target VERY specifically to a demographic. The problem, is that you can’t target to the time of day!

A businessman AT work is not likely to click on anything that his current employer would not approve of, such as any type of business opportunity. Whereas someone at home would be much more likely to look at that. Similarly, a businessman at home is less likely to be interested in something that his current company can benefit from, whereas if he his AT work, it would be more likely that he would click and take a look.

For these and many more similar reasons, we need to test LinkedIn by the time of day. Here’s the basic PHP script to do so (note, you can also target by Day of the week as well with a similar code). Put this code on an index.php page and send your DirectAds traffic to index.php. The actual landing page codes should be in index2.php and index3.php. Note: You can set this up with many more variations. You can hire a PHP programmer on DP to write you a script for your exact case for $15-20 or contact me if u want free help.

<?php
$hour = date(“G”);
if ($hour < 6) $page = “index2.php”;
if ($hour > 6) $page = “index3.php”;

include $page;
?>

So with this you are showing one variation during the day and one variation at night. Keep in mind, this php code works on your SERVERS time, not your computers time, so be sure to calculate that or write a more detailed script to account for all the time zones that you are targeting. If you need help use the contact me at the top of the page. The point here is to give you an ah-ha moment in realizing that its not just about the demographic especially when we are targeting B2B, business opportunity or other business related people/products. Time of day is very important!

–Brian

Take a look: http://www.facebook.com/pages/DailyConversionscom/103341103032800?v=app_4949752878

P.S. Note how I used the Facebook IM box to my advantage in the landing page.

It’s very simple to setup and now you can send people from Facebook Ads directly to a Facebook hosted landing page. It’s been proven over and over to convert best by keeping people in the Facebook environment giving a sense of honesty and authority to your page.

How to do it:

1. Create a Fanpage
2. Download the Static FBML Application
3. Go to your Fanpage and click Edit Page.
4. Scroll down to FBML, click Edit.
5. Enter the name that you want the tab at the top of your Fanpage to be.
6. Insert your AWeber Opt-In code or other HTML landing page code.
7. Go to your Fanpage main page and click on the top.
8. Copy the URL and create your Facebook Ads campaign direct linking to that Facebook Opt-in Page’s URL.

If you liked this tutorial, go to my Facebook Opt-in Page and Opt-in, I promise you will get some really nice goodies!

———-> My Facebook Page

–Brian

According to Experian Hitwise, Facebook topped Google for the most traffic last week ending March 13, 2010. Facebook accounted for 7.07% of the US web traffic that week. Google 7.03%.

Facebook has more traffic than Google. Facebook is more engaging, because its not just a Search Engine. You are interacting with the site in many more ways than simply typing something in and looking for a result.

Facebook Ads is FAR SUPERIOR to Google Adwords. Not just because Facebook has more traffic, but for several other reasons:

1. You can put an Image next to your ad! Yes an IMAGE. And some of you still use Adwords?
2. You can target by AGE, COLLEGE, LOCATION, just to name a few. On Google, you can take an educated guess at most, on Facebook you can do a heck of a lot more like target a 22 year old college student, going to Umass Amherst that grew up in Kentucky. Google… you can, do none of that
3. Google’s Audience has been PROVEN time and time again to be of a “certain type” and in some cases may be less likely to purchase something than a visitor on other Search Engine, such as Bing. A growing demographic of older people (turning younger) are going to Bing as opposed to Google, when they are in buying mode for things such as Plane tickets.
4. You won’t get penalized or slapped for artificial reasons.

The drawbacks:

1. Facebook ads are harder to get approved. It seems that what one rep might approve another might disapprove.
2. Approval times are much slower than Adwords, usually.
3. The stats are not quite as detailed as Adwords, but they aren’t too bad.
4. If you get banned on Facebook Ads, they will also ban your personal Facebook account. Might want to consider an alternate computer/IP/account to use if you are doing risque stuff.

Stay tuned. I’m going to be posting some Facebook Ad Case Studies soon.

–Brian