Sherman's Online Marketing Tips

Jeremy has come up with an affiliate blueprint for 2009.

Here are some of the key points addressed.

Test Your Niche – Before entering any niche, we need to know whether or not that niche is something people need. So its important to test with some money before going in full scale. Here you'll learn a method to quickly test a niche.

Develop a Successful Business Plan – This is going to be your business model, aka "looking at the big picture". This is where you generate your income for the long term. Could it be a seminar, a coaching program that you might want to offer?

Content Planning – Content planning allows you to create a systematic follow up to reach out to your audience. For example, if you're selling cosmetics, then you next step is to share with your audience to come down for make up work shops and why its important. A consistent flow is important in communicated your ideas to your people.

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If your Ad is good, your CTR will be high. There will be a good number of clicks on your Ad, and Google will show your Ad more often , often for cheaper clicks. However, because this requires a gestation period, its not possible to have your ad showing on the front page of Google without building up some account history.

Just like in MLM, its good to be the 1st one in. If you're advertising a certain keyword that is highly lucrative, then being the 1st to grab that keyword, allows you more clicks before other merchants/affiliates hop on the bandwagon. In this way, you will grab positive account history before others do. And once your "CTR" reputation has built up and you're now paying low bids per click, others that decide to use the same keyword, will need to build up their account history for that keyword and by this time, the keyword will often cost more then what you paid for it early on.

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I'll say upfront that i'm not really a fan of 2nd Tiered Networks. The reason for this is I've ever tested up to $600 on 2 different lower tiered PPC networks and the traffic from these sources are not high converting.

The second of traffic that you want to be careful of are Banner traffic. This is CPM which means you're charged per 1000 impressions of your banner shown. If you want your banner ad to be shown on top of others, you will need to pay more per 1000 impression. So lets say I decide to pay $10 while you decide to pay $5 per 1K worth of impression, my banners will show up in place of yours.

I don't recommend banner advertising unless you're good at tracking your results from this source. One way to do this is to create a campaign that is solely targeted at a certain site. Have a conversion tracking code on the thank you page, and watch your conversions. If your ad spend is less then your earnings, then keep the banner running, otherwise, take it down. You'll also want to be careful of where your banner appears. This is because some banners are placed in non-ideal positions and even though the page loads, your banner will not be visible to the websites visitors.

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I was following the Lexus Cup 2008 at the Singapore Island Country Club. Big names included Se Ri Part, Annika Sorenstam, Natalie Gulbis, and Paula Creamer. Many people see the glam side of things, yet behind success, there's always sacrifice, dedication and dreams.

Here's a video of Natalie describing her daily routine.

Natalie was willing to dream big and invest time, money, effort to do whatever it takes to reach that level of success in her life. I think its no different in internet marketing or anything that is worth while achieving. Granted that some will have it easier, but if we're not versed in HTML or simple Copywriting, then one just needs to start sooner and work longer.

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Making money online with pay per click marketing is a skill that takes time and practice to learn. Seed money needs to be put in in order to learn the ropes of this business. Pay per click marketing involves being versed in a couple of things, including tool usage, pivot tables in Excel to track ROI, tracking of keywords that convert, and design of good landing pages.

Let's look at 2 quick PPC tips.
 
1. Pay Per Click Engines.

The 3 main pay per click engines are Yahoo, MSN and Google. Generally competition in all 3 engines are challenging, especially if you're trying to target products from the affiliate networks known to most affiliates. Most affiliates that try to go in to Pay Per Click marketing will often get burnt and lose about $200 to $300 in a few days. This is because PPC is not as simple as slapping a few keywords together and hoping that people buy a certain product. In fact, I would say that some top affiliates actually spent 50% of their earnings to develop campaigns and test new messages of what caters and addresses the concerns of their audience. So if you're completely new to PPC, just aiming to break even is the correct mindset one should adopt.

2. Tracking ROI

ROI or Return on Investment just means earning more then you spend. If you invest $200 a month, there should be a business model where you can reap $20,000 somewhere down the road. It could be a health seminar if you're into selling health juices, or getting new distributors to be in your downline. Or, if you're in the fitness industry, perhaps share your $1000 training program sometime in the near future. Understanding the lifetime value of your customers will allow you to have an edge in PPC marketing because you will have a maximum bid of how much you should spend.

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