Now, I don’t mean this to be mindless self-promotion (although it all helps of course!), but more of an attempt to get some SME’s to think a little more logically about the management of their Adwords campaigns with a short example.

A small trader with a new e-commerce store came to me recently for a quote on managing his Adwords campaign. His store is a (very nicely designed) niche online gift store and he had been managing his own campaign with little success in terms of sales and he had got to that point (that I see very often) where his CTR was almost non-existent, his quality score was poor and his click prices had gone through the roof. His adgroups (and keyphrases) were illogical, his ad-copy all wrong, etc, etc…

His average cost per click was 37p and most of those were not targeted correctly. Suffice to say, he had no REAL idea as to how it was performing other than to say his sales were non-existent.

In short, it was a mess.

Anyway, when I first spoke to him on the phone, in the first minute he said the words that I never, ever, ever understand.

He said something like… ‘well the problem I have now is that I can’t afford to spend much on Adwords’.

Hmmm…

To that I said what I normally say…

[me] ‘OK… well, if you could find a way of buying 50 pence for 40 pence would you do it’?

[him] Err… yes… obviously…

[me] ‘And how much could you afford to spend on doing this?’

[him] *Laughs* – as much as i could buy…’

The Point? Well, if an Adwords campaign is correctly managed, this is possible, and in his case, is actually doing so. Less than 3 months on, his average click price is 24p, but, and here’s the killer part, we know that, on average, EVERY click is making him a profit.

How? Firstly, it’s about knowing how to manage an Adwords campaign (obviously), but less obviously, it is about measuring the performance of your ads and doing so constantly. You can use Google Analytcis to tell you exactly what return in terms of revenue each click gives and so once you have done this, you can see what a click is worth, and if you see what a click is worth, you know how much you will pay. After sufficient testing, If you know that a click on a certain keyword, consistenly results in an average profit of 50p per click, then you know what to pay up to.

So, in summary, if you are inexperienced with Adwords and need a single piece of advice, make very sure that you have installed Analytics and that you KNOW how to measure your campaigns performance.

It can be just like ‘buying profit’.

We run the Profitistic affiliate network, and come into contact with many merchants/advertisers who are looking to start an affiliate marketing campaign, or who are looking to expand an existing one.

They want to further their marketing reach, generate additional sales/leads, and make their brand as popular as possible, so one of the first questions we are often asked as a network is ‘how many affiliates will be promoting our website’? The answer of course, is that it very much depends on the merchant and the details of the campaign.

So, we decided to have a little office chinwag and discuss the Top 15 factors that we think dissuade affiliatese from running any particular merchants affiliate campaign.

Here are the 15 Reasons Why Your Affiliate Campaign Isn’t Attracting Affiliates:

1. Low Commission: An obvious one this, and fundamentaly the most important. If you offer a lower level of commission than that of your competitors, who do you think the affiliates are more likely to promote?

2. Poor Or Lack Of Creative Material: Affiliates are fully aware of the power of good creative. Poor creative generates low click through rates, and wastes potential earning opportunities. Also, a full suite of creative should be made available, including html (email creative) a wide range of banner sizes, text links, and any other supporting material.

3. Restrictive Terms: Affiliates use a wide range of traffic sources to drive sales/leads to merchants campaigns. Restricting promotional choice (e.g, no pay per click affiliates, no email affiliates) can severely reduce the amount of traffic being sent to a merchants website

4. Leakage: Prominent telephone numbers with strong call to actions (e.g call us now!) will serve to divert a proportion of affiliate referrals towards calling the merchant in question, rather than completing the online checkout process. This will result in lost commissions for affiliates. Experienced affiliates know this and will avoid such merchants.

5. Merchants Website Design/Usability: With affiliate marketing, conversion of traffic referrals is everything. The merchant’s website should be professional looking, and usable to maximise conversions. Poorly designed websites will see high bounce rates, and affiliate traffic will be wasted.

6. High Merchant Pricing (sales campaigns): This ties in with conversion rates. If a merchants pricing is higher than its competitors pricing, conversion rates will be low. Experienced affiliates know to compare prices and promote the merchant with the lowest pricing.

7. Low Stock Availibility: Similar to above. Conversion rates will be low if stock levels prevent referred traffic from converting into sales.

8. Brand Reputation: Affiliates know that well known brands are often trusted by potential customers compared to lesser well known brands and so, all other things being equal, convert better. Lesser known brands have to offer ‘more’ in order to attract affiliates to them.

9. Poor Localisation: Campaigns should be localised to the target market. For example, a UK landing page should show currencies in GBP, and address details should ask for Postal Codes (not ZIP codes). Don’t mention CNN or ABC News to UK visitors because they will see that it isn’t UK-specific which can drain trust.

10. Payment History: Some merchants are more reliable on the payments front than others. Savvy affiliates will know who pays (and who doesn’t) and prioritise merchants accordingly.

11.Payment Terms: Affiliates want to be paid as quickly as possible, using the most convenient, and lowest cost payment methods. If you are offering net-90 terms, and insisting on paying using Postal Orders, it willl effect affiliate take-up.

12. Trust Of Longevity: Does your campaign have monthly sales/lead caps? Have you suspended the campaign and restared it umpteen times? If so, you may have lost the trust of potential affiliates who require campaign consistency and longevity.

13. Pre-Approval Requirements: Many merchants (especially on the larger networks) pre-approve affiliates. The problem is that some merchants take weeks (or even months) to approve affiliates and so affiliates prefer to promote instant-approval merchants who enable immediate promotion. Merchants need to ‘strike while the iron is hot’.

14. Poor Campaign Descriptions: When describing their affiliate campaign, merchants should go into details about why affiliates should be running their campaign. Campaign descriptions should include all of the merchants unique selling points, and anything else that sets them aside from the competition.

15. Lack Of Niche Marketing Materials: Many affiliates require specific marketing resources to enable promotion. These may include data feeds, voucher codes, content units, and anything else a merchant can think of to increase accessibility.

We think this is a decent list of the main factors, but please feel free to add anything we have missed!

Building links is an important means to running a successful website. Incoming links improve your relationship with Google and influence your placement amongst the search engine results pages (SERPS). After you have exhausted any directories and other submission-type links with value, the next step is to begin building relationships with other websites in an attempt to earn yourself links. Below I have outlined nine top tips for writing link building e-mails.

1. Spend time targeting your desired audience
Begin by compiling a list of potential targets that you believe you could either negotiate a link from or who you believe you can offer something of value. Do not mass e-mail or spam people, it is important to research and contact other companies that are related or would have a reason to want to link to you. Consider bloggers – if you have interesting information or value to offer them, this could lead to them linking to you.

2. Keep your email short and sweet
Do not make your e-mail a daunting task to read or it will end up straight in the Trash. Get to the point and include only vital information and you stand more chance of your recipient actually reading it. Whether they reply is another matter, but getting them to read it is the first successful step.

3. Key information – who/why/what
Begin your e-mail by introducing yourself as a person rather than a company, and move quickly to informing them with why you are contacting them and what you propose.

4. Write the email with a personal touch
Try beginning your letter by describing why you like their site and use their names if you know who you’re writing to. It is important to the recipient that it does not feel mass produced and batch e-mailed as a personally written e-mail is much more likely to survive the trash. Mention individual content they have produced to personalise further.

5. Don’t ask for anything at first
If you go straight in asking for a link without offering anything first, the only thing you’ll get back may be an impolite response suggesting you do not contact them again. Instead suggest/offer something, such as interesting or related content or offer to write some unique content for them in the form of articles or blog posts. Also, iff you can generate interesting material, ultimately people will want to link to it.

6. Sign the e-mail off
Finish your e-mail off with your full name, contact details (including phone number) and company address as this looks much more professional, and gives greater credibility.

7. Be flexible
Be prepared to offer more than you originally offered. The person may come back to you with a slightly different proposition that you originally had not enquired about. However, if you are serious about securing links from external sources then you may need to meet them half way.

8. Build on your relationships
If you have successfully had a positive response, ensure that you continue to build on that relationship as this may help develop more links in the future.

9. Do not give up (but do not harass)
Try offering a product that they could review, or offer a product as a prize that could be presented as part of a competition on your targets website. This could lead to you ensuring a link on your targets homepage.

Right, now you are fully equipped to start building contacts with other websites.

Go get your writing hat on and good luck…

The voucher code debate – are genuine voucher codes simply a cheap and effective marketing tool or do they harm your brand?

Having a ‘voucher redeem’ area on your site could be looked at as eating away at your profit margin and allowing all customers the opportunity to get a discount. The customer may have purchased from your site even without a code, so why do it?

The Positives

Being listed on voucher code directories with as many as 5 million potential cusomers seeking voucher codes on a monthly basis will naturally generate sales and increase your brand awareness. As a retailer, factoring in a voucher code into your marketing plan will reduce your profit margin but in return could significantly increase sales volume – and getting a sale must be better than nothing.

Maybe seeing a ‘voucher code redeem’ area encourages potential customers away from your site to seek a promotional code from one of the many code sites which could be perceived to be a bad thing but if you were buying an identical or similar product and multiple sites sold it, would you purchase from the one that offered a 10% voucher code? Price is not always paramount as I’m personally a a great believer in product support and customer service but in today’s price conscious climate, customers enjoy feeling like they’ve got a great deal and a voucher code does just this as well as giving you the edge over your competitor. You may already have an extensive list of previous customers lying dormant who have opted in to receive marketing that could be emailed with a ’10% off code during December’ which would encourage previous customers back onto your site. In addition to being listed on voucher code directories it brings additional exposure to your brand and don’t forget there is an increased likelyhood that these customers will return and buy again.

A voucher code does not always have to be generic for example like ‘Save 10% off all products’, if your average basket order value was around £80 you could state spend £100 and save10% and this would be a nice a way of icentivising customers into spending a little more and increasing your profit. There are different types of strategic codes that can be used and our research shows that a high percentage of UK shoppers in search of a specific product take the reverse psychology route and opt to trawl the endless list of voucher code sites looking for a appropriate retailer and offer a voucher code before turning to Google to seek out their product through search.

The Down Side

Offering a voucher code opens up a new channel for sales as your code could be listed on freebie sites, voucher code sites, blogs, forums and many other sites but the viral spread of a code from site to site can be difficult to manage so this needs to be considered. You may notice voucher code sites offering exclusive codes and the reason for this is that they receive additional commission and an exclusive code from a retailer in return providing sites with increased exposure. Exclusive codes such as MVCBATHSHOP for example also help minimise the viral spread of codes as the code is created personally for My Voucher Codes in this case.

In all honesty we live in world of bargain hunters and savvy shoppers but you may not wish to be portrayed as a bargain/promotion retailer due to the fact that customers may perceive your products to be of lower quality and if this is the case you must ensure that voucher code directories fully understand and respect this as they may still list your site, with or without a voucher code.

Also, a retailer offering codes on a consistent basis makes it quite clear that you have enough margin to play around with and if you suddenly remove all active voucher codes then this can lead potential shoppers to seek alternative sites offering a voucher code. It’s also important to consider that there are shoppers who don’t even browse voucher voucher code directories and base their decision purely on price taken from Google search so it’s important not to increase your advertised price to cover your voucher code as you could be cutting out the shoppers who make their purchasing descions purely on displayed price. Admitedly it’s a fine balance between giving enough away to incentivise shoppers and remaining price competitive to non-voucher code users.

My Opinion

Before ruling out the use of offering codes it’s really worth taking some time to understand how they can be used as part of your marketing plan as there are a multitude of options available to incentivise people to your site using strategic codes.

Finally, please don’t just think that voucher codes are successful with purely high end well known merchants. Voucher code directories are prepared to add retailers large and small which helps to provide additional exposure regardless of business size, and should be considered by any retailer looking to increase online sales volume.

Keyword Research

Spending time researching which keywords to target for SEO purposes is imperative to the long-term success of any search marketing campaign, and yet it never fails to amaze me:

1. How few online businesses actually allocate time and resources to doing it
   
2. How misguided the research and subsequent results can be
   
3. How companies often ignore the ‘goldmine’ of existing data at their fingertips.

I would like to concentrate on (3).

We find that many of the companies who come to us for SEO advice and services have already embarked on some kind of Pay Per Click campaign, whether it be through Google Adwords or some of the other click providers. Adwords in particular gives the advertiser a wealth of information at keyword-level, including search volume, click through rates, the value of clicks and the earnings per click for individual keywords. So why not use this data and integrate it with your keyword research?

Essentially, keyword research should be used to identify viable target keywords based on:

• Search volume
  
• Relative competition
  
• Relevancy
  
• Commercial viability

Well a successful Adwords campaign can tell you the EXACT number of page views on the Google listings a search term will receive, and it enables you to spot and nurture the ‘golden’ keywords – those that convert and give you the greatest return.

So, use this data! Remember that keyword research and Pay Per Click data are not mutually-exclusive concepts and delve into those PPC stats to find the clues. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes!

To achieve the highest click-through rates for your PPC adverts, you need to ensure that your ad copy is laser-targeted and then conduct more testing than a Korean nuclear scientist. And then, once you have finished testing, you need to test some more.

You see, we are all smarter than Einstein’s underwear, but we actually have no idea which ads will really perform until we have tested them. I have lost count of the times I have been shocked that the ad I thought would underperform blasted the CTR’s of the other ads out of the water. This is because, in the words of Mr Jim Morrison, ‘People Are Strange’.

How Do I Test My PPC Ads?

This is how I do it:

I always run 4 ads per adgroup (making sure that with Adwords, your campaign settings are set to ‘rotate’ and not ‘optimise’), initially to find the best performing of the 4 and then to use that ad as my ‘control ad’.

Then, I duplicate the control ad another 2 times so that 3 of the 4 ads being rotated are my control ad, with one new ad being tested. I do this because if the new ad being tested bombs, it will only account for one quarter of impressions. I then replace the new ad and keep testing. Once a new ad out-performs my control ad, that ad becomes the control ad. Then, I continue to do this happily ever after.

You will be amazed at how well this works, and how it gradually increases your adgroups CTR.

If you aren’t doing this or something similar, you are a dunderhead, but I don’t mind because it leaves higher click-through rates  for the rest of us!

I read a lot of SEO blogs and forums and it never fails to amaze me how the same, fundamental basic SEO questions crop up time and time again, and the same old advice is wheeled out, rinsed, and then wheeled out again. And then when that is finished, it is wheeled out again for good measure.

So, I thought I would compile the 10 most common SEO questions, and issues we come up against when assessing client’s websites.

• 1. URL’s and Duplicate Content: Do you have both a www version of your web pages AND a non-www version of your web pages? If so, Google sees these as 2 separate pages (the www version is effectively a sub-domain) and may determine either version as duplicate content. Also, natural incoming links may pass juice to either version of your page rather than a single one, diluting your incoming ‘link juice’.

• 2. Internal Links and Duplicate Content: Does any part of your internal page navigation link to a duplicate version of another page? The most common scenario here would be that your home page URL is ‘www.monkeyheadfood.com’ but your internal navigation points to ‘www.monkeyheadfood.com/index.html’ (or similar) which serves the same content. This also leads to duplicate content issues and the potential for incoming links to be split between the different versions.

• 3. Poor Keyword Selection: I think it was Darth Vader who said ‘the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of keyword research‘. Something like that anyway. All websites, new, old, good, bad and ugly, need to have conducted a full keyword research otherwise you are indulging in the webmaster equivalent of trying to nail jelly to a wall. If you haven’t produced a full keyword research document (or had one prepared for you) how on earth do you know what to target? How do you know where the search volume is? How do you know which keywords you actually have a chance of ranking highly for? You get my point.

• 4. Ignoring The ‘SEO Spine’: I have just made ‘SEO Spine’ up. Impressive little term, eh? Ok – I will move on. By ‘SEO Spine’, I am referring to your on-page keyword targeting. Ideally, your page should have your target keyword in the URL, the title, the heading tag, and the content, creating a ‘spine’ (but don’t over-do it and spam keywords). Can you see what I did there?

• 5. Images (only) For Navigation: The main search engines are still in kindergarten when it comes to reading text on images. They just aren’t very good at it. So, you should not be using images for navigation because you wont receive the positive ranking score from your anchor text, (which can be very valuable).

• 6. Title Tag Suicide: Your title tag is the ‘pocket dynamite’ of your web page. There isn’t a stronger signal of relevancy and Google loves to allocate bucket-loads of value to them. So, read this post about SEO and Title Tags now!

• 7. Unfriendly URL’s: Although the search engines can index ‘unfriendly’ dynamic URL’s these days, they still prefer the static versions of the same. I can tell you, for example, that Google certainly DOES prefer static URLs to their dynamic buddies. Perhaps more importantly, having keywords in the URL will increase your click-through-rate from the search engines as they appear in bold in the displayed listings.

• 8. Poor Site Architecture: Your website should be as ‘flat’ as possible to minimise the number of clicks from your home page to any other page (without using a search box). If you have less than 10,000 pages then you should, ideally, be able to reach any other page within 3 clicks.

• 9. Sub-Domains Not Sub-Directories: Google has changed the way it looks at sub domains and so, these days, it is much more beneficial to add any additional content (e.g a blog or an ecommerce facility) in a sub-directory. Reading reference: SEO Sub-Domains

• 10. Link Building:  We love link building. However, it seems that many webmasters don’t! A web page’s inbound link profile is the most important signal to Google when determining a pages trust and authority, which in turn, helps determine rankinings.We all-too-often see either very few links, or the worst set of spammy links since spam was invented in the world, ever, ever, ever. You need to build quality links, and when you have finished, you need to build some more.

Looking for a competitive SEO and/or link building quote? Contact us now!

For anybody involved in affiliate marketing in the UK, the A4U Expo is the event to be at. It’s staged over 2 days (18/10 and 19/10) in London and will this year be held at the Hilton Metropole, a new, improved venue following last years venue which comprised of an endless tube journey (from St Pancras) that was the Excel Exhibition Centre.

This year probably sees the strongest speaker line-up yet, and includes an ‘affiliate health clinic‘ appearance from my good self on the subject of CPA Marketing and making money from affiliate marketing with different, non-traditional traffic sources.

So, I thought I would give a few good reasons why anybody looking to learn more about the affiliate side of internet marketing should attend. I actually decided on a ‘final 11′ but trust me, this list could go on. So, without further ado, here are 11 Great Reasons Why You Can’t Miss The A4U Expo (in no order, apart from the last one…):

1. Google’s very own Kaspar Szymanski will be hosting a ‘health clinic‘ on all things Google including the recent Panda update
2. Dr Karl Banks (who actually is a rocket scientist) will be speaking on ‘Copywriting For Conversion’ – a hugely important factor, that is often overlooked.
3. Kevin Edwards  will be discussing the advent of mobile in affiliate marketing. Nobody can be ignoring mobile right now.
4. The IAB will be providing clarification on the upcoming privacy directive – a subject that could affect us all.
5. Speed Networking should provide a great opportunity to meet potential clients/partners.
6. Great parties! Oh, I mean ‘networking opportunities’…
7. The Street – a new area for start-ups to display their groundbreaking wares.
8. A wide range of exhibitors  offering yet more potential for business opportunities.
9. You can win lots of cool stuff from exhibitors (always) and try and grab as many freebies as our own James Anderson who is a self-proclaimed expert.
10. A great-looking speaker session on Facebook advertising, the pitfalls, and the potential ROI opportunities.
11. You can meet me, and if I like you, I will buy you beer.

Webtistic is growing and we require the services of a full-time, permanent PHP developer to join our talented team in Derby.

About the job:

As well as being infatuated with internet marketing, we run a number of internal projects including web applications, affiliate websites, proprietory tools, mini-sites, etc.

The role of the incoming person would be to work with the marketing team on conceptualising, developing and managing core projects across a wide range of sectors.

Required Skills:

• extensive knowledge of PHP, HTML, and CSS programming
• understanding of API
• understanding of XML, jQuery
• desire to remain current with new cutting-edge programming technologies
• a full understanding of start-to-finish project management and the development process
• strong communication skills
• the ability to work as a part of a busy team

Recently, I caught up with Kirsty McCubbin from Affiliate Stuff, a leading UK affiliate (now residing in the land of OZ), internet marketer, and all round good-egg. Lovely as Kirsty is, she agreed to a short interview relating to her dealings as an affiliate.

Kirsty McCubbin - Affiliate Blogger Of The Year

Here is the interview in full…

Welcome to the Webtistic blog. Please introduce yourself, and tell me how long you have been involved in affiliate marketing.

Ooh, it’s like affiliate Blind Date! Hi Cilla, my name’s Kirsty McCubbin and I’ve been a full time affiliate for 8 years but was first involved in the industry on the management side of things I think maybe 1 to 2 years before that. It’s so long ago now I don’t quite remember.

Are you able to disclose your main projects, and the traffic channels you work within?

My main areas of promotion are underwear through two sites, LingerieBrands.co.uk and BlokesUndies.co.uk. Those two are largely organic search with an almost insignificant smattering of PPC here and there.

Which of your achievements within affiliate marketing are you most proud of?

Still being here after 8 years. It’s not always easy being an affiliate when Google is throwing everything it’s got at you, we’ve all had to evolve so much in the last few years and the learning curve just gets steeper all the time. So long as I’m keeping up, and broadly understanding the flurries of new things we need to deploy to remain in healthy SERPS positions I think I’m doing A-OK!

How long was it before you realised that you could earn a living from affiliate marketing?

As soon as I found out about the concept of affiliate marketing I was immediately excited. Already working in digital marketing I knew how to generate good traffic for other people, but not how I could do it for myself without opening an online business. Within a few months I’d put up some test pages and was totally hooked. I left my digital marketing job about a year later in 2003 and my life has been totally affiliate funded ever since. I doubt I could get a job doing anything else now – if I was an actor I’d have dreadful typecasting problems!

What projects are you currently working on?

My main brain drain right now is dealing with some Panda issues on one of my sites. It’s been quite badly affected but I’m pleased to say I’ve worked out what needs to be done and I’m well into actioning it and am seeing pleasing results. It’s going to take a while to get it back to full strength but as always with these things it’ll be worth it in the long run. Alas I don’t believe there’s a quick fix for that particular bit of algo fun but I know I’ll have stronger sites in the longer term because of it.

What is the best thing about being an affiliate marketer?

The flexibility and being able to make more money than you could in a standard 9 to 5 gig. That aside, I love all the challenges, constant learning, and the great variation in the tasks you perform to keep your business running. It’s never dull. Sometimes stressful but I’ve never gotten bored and that can only be a positive thing!

What is the worst thing about being an affiliate marketer?

Those little surprises from a Googleward direction and the odd bit of unpredictability of income as a result of that and other factors such as merchants suddenly going bust or deciding not to pay you. That said, it’s the best feeling in the world when you get on top of these issues and beat them so even the bad times have their positive side (eventually!!)

If you had a time-machine, what would you do differently?

I’d have bought lots of generic keyword domains back in 1999 when I first got my job. I’d also have started a good quality content site right at the start of my career instead of spending so long mucking around with PPC. I’d also have bought those Google shares when I had the chance instead of worrying about making too big a dent in my beer money for a holiday

What do you do for fun outside of affiliate marketing?

Well I do love a bit of travel! Most recently I did a nice little jolly to NZ’s South Island and it was absolutely breathtaking. I also like cooking and gardening – domestic bliss or what eh??

Do you have any advice for people looking to get into affiliate marketing?

It’s hard work, there are no shortcuts, if it sounds to good to be true it probably is – remember that when someone tries to sell you something. Above all, create quality content and a resource that people will find interesting and useful and you should be OK. Easy huh…

I would like to thank Kirsty for taking the time to answer these questions. If you are interested in providing an internet marketing related interview, please feel free to contact us.