Recently the guys over at Tracking202 had sent me an email saying they are ready to launch their brand new updated platform Tracking202 Pro. I’ve toyed around with Tracking202 but have always used Prosper202, and it has always been good to me. But now all that has changed with the launch of Tracking202 Pro!

Tracking is definitely one of the single most pressing issues when it comes to making money online with PPC marketing. How else would you be able to track and monitor your clicks for your keywords to see what is converting effectively. The truth is that most affiliates dont have good enough tracking and fail to monitor their clicks properly, costing them thousands of dollars on advertising. From what I saw from the original Tracking202, they allowed multiple campaigns across multiple networks similar to Prosper202, and it was great, but apparently that wasn’t enough because the guys at Trackign202 have upped the bar to add even more features.

Original Tracking202 Vs. Tracking202 Pro

Unlike the original, Tracking202 Pro is fully integrated with the big three PPC networks (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter) and the affiliate networks which means the application is able to download all of your data automatically without you having to do anything. It is also able to get 100% precise cost tracking, and it also pulls in your subids from your networks nightly.

The Tracking202 setup is also made easier than ever. Simply add your PPC account login information, your affiliate account info, and place one piece of javascript code across all of your affiliate pages. Once that is done, the only thing you will need to do is make a simple PHP redirect, and basically redirect your traffic to your affiliate link and add in their Tracking202 subid at the end.

Tracking202 Pro will download nightly, all of your cost data from the Google, Yahoo and MSN networks, and then automatically sync all of your conversions. This will enable you to view your conversions with pinpoint accuracy, so you can find out exactly which keywords are performing and/or underperforming.

You can analyze your keywords as well as your bids on keywords next to each other. You can also split your traffic between search and content network. You can see the campaign, adgroup and creative being clicked on in real time using their spy-view. This will eliminate the labourious importing of keyword lists and in general make your life a hell of a lot easier.

Free 7-Day Trial Offer

Tracking 202 Pro Free Trial

Tracking202 Pro is a paid hosted enterprise level PPC conversion tracking platform. Unlike the original, Tracking202 Pro isn’t free. The platform was built expressly for affiliates using search to promote CPA or CPS offers. You will increase your tracking effectiveness, save tons of time and in general make MORE money using this system, and I would recommend it for new affiliate marketers and seasoned ones alike.

If you’re a seasoned PPC marketer, then Tracking202 Pro is a must have tool. If you’re just starting out, then begin with the free Tracking202 to get your feet wet. Or, you can jump right into Tracking202 Pro and see if you can make back that $19.95 monthly fee in the next seven days. Either way it’s a great product that I fully endorse and would recommend to any affiliate out there.

For those of you who may be relatively new to pay per click advertising or simply the Google Adwords model in particular, here is a helpful video that will explain to you just how the model works.

So everyone knows that knowledge is power, and I myself have been on a reading binge the last month or so, soaking up information like a shamwow… you getting this camera guy? Anyways everyone has their own set of must read books that has helped them in some way or another, and I am no different.

I made a list of books I’ve read that have personally helped me gain both financial freedom and valuable insight on personal wealth and well-being.  I feel that these books more than others I’ve read influenced me the most and left the most lasting impression on my thought process and my business life in general.  So I present to you:

Books for Affiliate Marketers & Entrepreneurs

Four Hour Work Week – Main concept follows an 80/20 rule, where 20% of your work/actions account for 80% of profits (campaigns, keywords, affiliate networks) – you should be finding the most important ones and scaling/optimizing. Stop wasting time on the meaningless pursuits.

Think and Grow Rich – In the original Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937, Napoleon Hill draws on stories of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other millionaires of his generation to illustrate his principles. This is carried on into the 21st century where many of the principles still hold true today, and can be very powerful for getting yourself in the right mindset.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad – This book tells a story about a man who was raised by two different households, and two different mindsets. One an educated dad stuck in the proverbial “rat race” and the other a college dropout who simply understood investing and how to work with “smart people”. To sum up this book in one word, outsourcing.

The Long Tail - In the most important business book since The Tipping Point, Chris Anderson shows how the future of commerce and culture isn’t in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but in what used to be regarded as misses–the endlessly long tail of that same curve. Inspirational book on finding those niche niches.

The Snowball – The biography of one of the richest men in the world, and possibly one of the smartest investors that ever lived.  Although not written by Warren Buffet himself, it is still a great read that will put you in the mind of this invesment genuius.

There are obviously way more books out there that I am missing, so if you have any *must read* books that I missed,  leave a comment and I’ll be sure to check em out.

When you get down to the core of affiliate marketing, you will come to realize that its all about your ad copy and your landing page.  Sure you can try your luck at direct linking, but for the most part your conversions will suffer and you will lose money and time again and again.  A quality landing page can be the difference to a profitable campaign and a big loser. There are several things you can do to help make your landing pages better, and to convince the surfer to follow through with your offer.

• Split Test – When you first start running an offer, its always a good idea to have several mock up landing pages to use to drive traffic to.  Use these as a base from which to test your conversion rates and find out what is and isnt working.  A lot of the times a simple lander is better, while other times the longer review ad copy landers prove more effective.  You need to find out if the niche your targeting falls into either of these categories and stick with the one that works.  Affiliate marketing is all about going out and seeing what works, dont get lazy, testing is KEY.
• Avoid Distractions – When your targeted visitor comes to your page, you want to make sure that there is a bold call to action.  Giving them multiple options and outward links is distracting and can cause your surfer to not follow through on the offer.  Make sure there is a clear, concise directive and if you have multiple objectives (ie. acai & colon cleanse), try using a seperate landing page for each of them.
• Above the Fold – While a spanning page with multiple reviews and reasons why the user should sign up for your offer may be a good thing, more often that not it is better to keep the sign up/order now button above the fold in plain sight so that the user knows that you are selling something and makes a painless decsion. Often times the surfer can be burdened by an encompassing sales page that is drawn out and confusing, stick to the K.I.S.S. philosophy and you will notice the difference in your bank account.
• Avoid Extra Elements – Having too much graphics or too much text on your lander can make or break your sales.  Avoid over-using graphical elements such as animations and images that simply do not contribute to your objective of the page.  This can take away your visitors attention and eventually lead to a failed conversion.  Try and keep the visitors attention by using a blend of text and imagery that flows naturally.
• Navigation/Outbound Links – Your best bet is to keep the navigation either off page or in the footer area so that the user doesnt become distracted and navigate away from your offer.  If you have more information or in-depth reviews to offer the surfer, give it to them in an AJAX pop-up or CSS based slide down content so that it keeps them on the page and only helps to upsell the offer you are targeting.  While you can go the route of having no external links whatsoever, this is frowned upon by Google and will usually end up getting your page penalized.

So that it, hopefully these tips will prove effective in making your landing pages even more profitable, and increase your conversion.  The main thing to remember is to keep trying different things, and that no matter how simple the offer may be, it is always better to sell the surfer before they follow through to the signup page.

The main reason why personal review blogs like Becky’s weight loss worked so well is because they utilized all these elements, with an effective ad copy telling a personal story to play upon the visitors emotions.  Mix and match different ad copy with an easy and direct call to action, and you will see much more profitable landing pages for your all your campaigns.

If I missed anything feel free to comment and let me know what other methods you utilize to increase conversions on your landers.

So the date is soon approaching and I have been busy as of late running campaigns and working for a payment processor and haven’t had time to update.  But I will be attending this time, as I missed out on too many crazy parties from last year and can’t stand missing it this time around.

I will be staying at the Palms, and will be arriving early on friday so if any of you wanna link up before the conference for some drinks and networking feel free to hit me up on my blackberry msn @ lornefade at hotmail.com.  I look forward to making some great contacts in Las Vegas, and hitting some crazy affiliate parties.  I’ll also be sure to attend the Nicky Cakes seminar to see if anyone tries to rick-roll him as part of the ppc.bz scavenger hunt.

Once again I look forward to meeting all the people I work with, as well readers of this blog, members of WF, and anyone who is looking to network with a like-minded go getter like myself. See you all in Vegas!

The latest news in the affiliate marketing world has to be the advent of Myspace opening the door to PPC advertisers giving reach to more than 60 million potential users.  I say potential because we all know that myspace used to be a spam haven and about 20 million of those users are fake.  But besides the point that Myspace was a spam depot for some time, this doesnt mean that advertising on there wont be beneficial. There is definitely a lot of potential here with Myspace Ads, so make sure you dont miss the boat.

Setting up a campaign has never been easier, in fact its *too* easy.  They have a simple flash app that walks you through the stages and will have you pushing acai berries in no time.  Now if this is anything like Facebook’s launch, we can expect to get a shitload of traffic for cheap right now, and then have them clamp down on us with restrictions later, so don’t miss the jump.

As for bids, well Myspace isn’t THAT stupid, and they set their minimum bids at $.25, so no matter what you are bidding on you will have to pay .25 a click. And you thought you’d waltz in and get .01 clicks! No life isn’t always that easy. So far Ive had 2 ringtone ads declined for approval, while my weight loss ad went through, so it still remains to see what the boundaries are in terms of what they will accept.  Either way it is best to get on this as quickly as possible before they start declining everything like Facebook.

Jason from ads4dough sent me an email giving me a heads up on this, something more affiliate networks SHOULD be doing but aren’t. He seems to think that Myspace users will convert at 5x the rate of their fellow Facebookers, and he could be right, but we wont know until I start seeing decent amounts of traffic on my campaigns.  As of right now I’ve only had around 30 or so clicks and 1 conversion, not a bad start, but nowhere near my budget limits.  So give it some time and I’ll have an update for you to let you know how it goes.

As for what to advertise on Myspace, well since I havent tested extensively yet it is hard to say, but I would shy away from offers where users need to bust out their credit card, as most people on Myspace barely know how to use a computer.  Id stick to simple zip/email submits where you can get high conversions, although that might be risky with the .25 bids,  only time will tell. Either way get the ball rolling and leave some feedback as to your thoughts on the Myspace advertising platform and I’ll have an update for you once I start making or losing money.

It began a couple days ago, Facebook users could check out the new layout with all its aesthetically pleasing appeal simply by visiting http://www.new.facebook.com. Now starting this morning users have been given the prompts enticing them to switch over and try it out.

So what is new?

• New Menu Bar
• Mini-Feed and Wall are now under the wall tab
• A new “Bio” box
• Complete rearrangement of tabs for your wall, info, photos, and apps
• Facebook Apps are now found in the “Boxes” tab
• Users can add extra tabs
• Use your webcam to take a photo or record a video to add to your collection or post on the Wall of your friends

So what does this mean to advertisers and affiliate marketers using Facebook Ads? Well the first thing I noticed was that there is an additional ad unit on the right side of the page. The old layout had simply one ad unit on the left hand side of the page, and now there seems to be more white space as well as not one but two ad units on the right. (Note: after surfing for awhile the two ad units switched back to 1, so this may be facebook’s way of controlling click fraud.) This only applies to profiles however. The “home” page no longer has ANY ad units on it whatsoever, and affiliates are going to see a drop in traffic from this undoubtedly.

New Facebook:

Old Facebook:

Facebook may simply be doubling its rev share with this move but more importantly this will mean more competition for affiliate marketers. Instead of having prime placement for your campaigns, you will now have to compete with a secondary offer either above or below your ad, and while I am not certain whether or not the ad’s being displayed are by the same advertisers, my best guess would be that you are competing directly now for the traffic.

Another big change that advertisers are going to notice is that the applications have been moved into their own panel. This is a grey area since I haven’t really done any work with Facebook app’s as of yet, but any advertisers out there that use Facebook applications for promotions and campaigns, it would be interesting to see what kind of changes you see because of this.

Overall I don’t really mind the new redesign, although I feel that a lot of the less internet savvy users are going to have issues adapting to the changes. The wall and mini-feed conjoined isn’t really a bad move, and the custom tabs leaves room for a lot of customization so I think Facebook might be on to something with that. Let’s just hope they don’t take the customization too far and turn into Myspace 2.0.

So I recieved an email from a friend the other day recommending I should start blogging about something relevant and useful, and I came up with nothing. Then he suggested paying me to write something useful, at which point I also refused… Finally he said that I should check out blog marketing because they will pay me to actually write content that doesnt even have to be useful, to which i scoffed. Could it be true? Was there actually a system in which I could be paid to write something people will find no use in whatsoever? SIGN ME UP BILLY!

Anyway to make a long gregarious story short, I signed up and this was my first assigned task once my blog was approved. (Yes they actually screen your blog for PR and Alexa rank) So now that I am a new “postie” as they call me, I get to talk about what i love best about PPP (PayPerPost), or triple P’s as I like to call it.

Well lets start off with the positives, I like triple P’s opportunity to make money. Did I mention that getting paid is nice? There are actually some crazies that blog so much they have earned over $20,000 with triple P… impressive. The system is easy enough, you just pick whatever niche you wanna talk about and you get anywhere from $5 to $50 per post, which may or may not be worth your time, but hey does it look like I care?

Either way, if you want to squeeze some juice out of your blog and write about stuff that may or may not be relevant to your readers, check out PPP, you may or may not be disappointed. I guess that really depends on how you look at it.

Heres the neat little disclosure button they get you to include in your posts, isn’t it cute?

For most webmasters and affiliate marketers, Google AdWords is their bread and butter, and rightfully so.  AdWords is a beast of an advertising system, and if targeted properly its earning potential can be great. If you follow some of these strategies then maybe even you can make money off Google AdWords.

1. The merchant or vendor site should have a professional look to it, in order to ensure the surfer that it is a credible product/service that they will be buying into.

2. Make sure to be able to maintain a level of communication between you and your affiliate preferably through an AM.  This will help you realize which ads convert better as well as keep you updated with new offers.

3. When you are paying for clicks, you need to realize the ratio between what will be a positive return and what wont be.  Try and promote affiliate products that will pay more than $15 in commission to get your ROI up. Clickbank is good for this.

4. The landing pages and sales sites need to be top of the line. If the customer is unhappy with the appearance of the page, it is more than unlikely they are going to invest their money into what your selling.

5. Same goes for the sales copy and actual marketing that is done ON the landing page.  It should include testimonials , and other key selling features in order to ease any hesitations the buyer may have.

6. Would you buy it? Ask yourself this when choosing a campaign for your affiliate program.  Chances are if you wouldn’t buy it, then most people wouldn’t be comfortable buying it either.

7.  Affiliate links are fine with your vendor as long as they are low key.  It can kill a sale if the user feels like he is getting scammed or bought into something.

8. The referring page for the vendor website should only have one product/service on it.  If there are multiple products the user can get confused by the sales messages and become hesitant to buy.

9. Tracking!  Keep a keen eye on your keywords and phrases. If any of them are getting higher than a 1:200 buy:click ratio, they need to be cut off.  A decent ratio to look for is around 1 in 50 creating a sell.  The higher the click-through rate, the better rankings you get on your niche.

10. Most affiliates will keep a record of email addresses for all your referrals.  This makes sure that you get credit for a sale even if the customer took 4-5 visits before buying… which is the case a lot of the time.

So you want to be the next super affiliate and make uber amounts of cash online… great… grand.. fantastic. There’s no magic formula that is going to get you rich quick, so if thats what your looking you need to go beg your boss to give you your job back. What you need to do is understand exactly what your getting into, and what affiliate marketing really is. I get asked on a daily basis what it is I do, and how I can help other people make money online, so I figured I would help you all out a little bit.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

First of all to get into affiliate marketing you need to break down exactly what it is. The first thing is obviously the affiliate, a company in which you will promote their offers for cold hard cash. Depending on the offer you will either get paid per click, per lead (signup), or per impression. There is undoubtedly greater detail for each but we will keep it simple here. Next there is the marketing aspect in which you will need to market those affiliates’ offers and try to get other people to do one of those aforementioned things. (click/lead/impression)

Which Affiliate Companies are Best?

Now you are probably wondering what to look for when you go to signup for an affiliate company. One of the most important things to look for is the quality of the customer service and of course the reputation of the company. I would suggest reading around some affiliate related forums to give you some insight. There are literally tons of affiliates out there depending on what you are trying to sell. If it takes longer than a week to approve you for their program or there has been no contact from an AM (affiliate manager) then its more than likely not the best bet. If however when you signup you are greeted by a friendly email and are given numerous methods of contact, then you may be on the right track.

The Marketing Aspect

So great you’ve decided upon one of the numerous affiliate companies out there, now what? Well you need to start pushing those offers and try to get some leads. What is the best way to do this you may ask? SPAM! No just kidding, the truth is the vast majority of affiliate marketers don’t really make that much money. Around 10% make 90% of the money, and thats just the way it is. They’ve built monopolies on certain market segments and it is extremely hard to topple some of those strangleholds. However don’t give up all hope yet!

The secret to affiliate marketing lies within the niche you choose to market. If you look through your affiliate companies campaign listing, you will see there is pretty much an offer for any type of product you can think of. And if its not there, then you can bet there is another affiliate company or program somewhere out there to cater to your specific needs. An example of this is a hip hop forum that I was running and wasn’t getting that many leads for the offers my affiliate company was offering. I switched over to an affiliate program for the clothing supplier DrJays.com and started to make some nice dough off of actual sales. Affiliate marketing is all about tweaking and testing your offers until you hit a home run, and then once you find that golden gem, you need to drive it into the ground until the wheels fall off.

Putting it all together

There are other ways to earn money through affiliate marketing without the need for a website, although you will need a landing page. But Lorne I am slow, what the hell is a landing page?! A landing page is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link, taking them to your offer and hopefully getting them to signup, and getting you a conversion. An example of this would be facebook ads, where you can simply setup an offer through their developer network and pay per click. The premise here being that if you pay for example .20 cents a click, and your offer pays out $1 per lead then you would need 1 signup for every 5 clicks to break even. Obviously no one wants to break even, you want a positive return on your investment (ROI).

So on a very basic level I hope I have given you some insight as to exactly what affiliate marketing is, so that next time when one of you donkeys goes to ask me exactly what it is, I can simply direct you to this article