PayPerClick - PPC | Andrew Wee | Blogging | Affiliate Marketing | Social Traffic Generation

Amit Mehta and Anik Singal’s PPC Classroom 2.0 Product Review October 15, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wee in : PayPerClick - PPC , 8 comments

You’ve probably seen numerous blog posts and received even more emails about Amit Mehta and Anik Singal’s PPC Classroom product launch and might want to get an idea if it’s all it claims to be.

The product which had been speculated to run into the thousands during the product’s pre-launch phase, has finally been revealed to cost only $77 (accurate at the time of this blog post, but might be revised…).

What do you get from that?

A comprehensive 9-module course spanning topics like:

Marketing research, including finding and screening affiliate offers
Keyword research
Direct linking vs creating landing pages
Setting up your Google AdWords campaign
Designing landing pages optimized for high conversions
Understanding and enhancing your Google quality score (QS)
Launching your PPC campaign
Introducing split testing into your campaign (to further increase conversions)
PPC bid optimization strategies

Having worked with Amit on a PPC coaching program for a select group of clients previously, I have seen firsthand how he goes through in a detailed, step-by-step manner the system which he has developed and follows.

Granted about 60% of the course material might be found on Amit’s SuperAffiliateMindset blog or in Google AdWords documentation or during his presentations at events like the first PPC Classroom live event in Vegas last year or in his Affiliate Summit presentations.

What makes Amit different from other affiliate marketers is (more…)

Popularity: 4%

Why You Should Not Focus On Internet Celebrity Stargazing September 1, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wee in : PayPerClick - PPC , add a comment

If you’ve been following developments in affiliate marketing, you might’ve seen 16-year old affiliate Harrison Gevirtz (right) blog or met him at a conference. Posting at Shoemoney’s blog recently on “How I Optimize My PPC Campaigns“, it’s easy to see how marketers might be overly focused on his age or the fact that he earns about a 6-figure net profit each month from his PPC campaigns.

Just as celebrity fans check the magazines to find out who’s dating who, what they wore to the MTV awards, or who they’re currently feuding with, likewise in the internet marketing world, legions of marketers constantly scour the blogs and forums to find out what a successful marketer’s shopping trip cost, how much they paid (or overpaid) for a rare painting, or just pictures of their $1,000 dinner.

While reading this news can be a source of motivation for some, the risk in spending just about all your time on this pursuit can be detrimental to your business growing efforts.

I’ve been talking to my friend NickyCakes about issues of time management and prioritization, here are a couple of issues for consideration:

Prioritization: Are you spending 90% of your time relaxing, spending your time checking out cool stuff to buy, planning your next vacation, researching your business (ie: reading blogs and forums, chatting over IRC), leaving 10% of your time to actually running your business? Or should it be the other way around?
Focus: How much of what you are doing now will help you get what you want? Or could that time be better spending doing something more productive?
“Secrets” of Internet Marketing: As mentioned by guests on the Friday Podcast, although you can learn strategies and techniques from blogs, forums, books, courses and networking at seminars and conferences, ultimately your success will rely on taking action, as well as testing and measuring your results. If you’re looking for a magic wand or magic dust to achieved your desired income level, you could be looking for a long time.

You can check out Harrison’s tips on setting up his PPC campaigns.

Popularity: 3%

3 Faces Of Success In PPC Affiliate Marketing August 27, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wee in : PayPerClick - PPC , 2 comments

In the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to 3 top PPC (pay-per-click) affiliate marketers. More than that, I’ve had the opportunity to gain insight into how they operate their businesses as well as set up and fine tune their PPC campaigns.

Although I shouldn’t have been that surprised, still it’s quite amazing how different their approaches are from each other. Which goes to show that there are multiple avenues to achieve your goals with PPC and affiliate marketing.

Note: I’ll be painting in broad strokes here, so expect some generalizations.

super affiliates

(left-to-right) Jeremy Palmer, Amit Mehta, John Hasson

Jeremy Palmer is a name that comes up often, especially if you’re a Commission Junction (CJ) affiliate or if you attend the Affiliate Summit. I’ve found that Jeremy and I use a similar approach in looking at offline research avenues, including books, magazines and reports to research niches, and develop deep, content rich sites.

Given his experience as a web developer, I guess it’s not surprising that he tends to build sites from the ground up. Also, having presented and watched his Black Ink project unfold, I’ve seen how Jeremy uses a systematic approach to building his campaigns.

You can check out Jeremy’s appearance on the Friday Podcast.

Amit Mehta has spoken at the past 3 Affiliate Summits, and given his background (more…)

Popularity: 4%

PPC Marketers Take Note: China-based Domain Phishing for Google Adwords Accounts March 24, 2008

Posted by Andrew Wee in : PayPerClick - PPC , 2 comments

I got this email over the weekend which looks like a genuine email from the Google Adwords team, mentioning that you need to authenticate your account because it’s been disabled/suspended.

fake google phishing email

Just about any PPC marketer will be concerned if they get an email like this because AdWords downtime could translate into a significant of profits.

Before you jump to the page and entering your account information, I checked that the HTML email was going to a *.cn (China-based) domain, so it would be pretty unwise to enter your username or your password.

Mozilla Firefox had earlier been patched with a “phishing site” notification, similarly Internet Explorer showed a similar warning when I tried to access the site.

Just take note of the destination URLs in your emails before clicking on them, also if needed view the message headers and you can usually spot their point of origination (unlikely that the Adwords team would be sending notification emails out of Africa or Russia).

There was also a port about this at KezNews.

Popularity: 5%

Leaving Las Vegas…And PPC Classroom Live! December 12, 2007

Posted by Andrew Wee in : PayPerClick - PPC , 3 comments

It’s been more than a week since I left Las Vegas after attending Anik Singal and Jeremy Palmer’s PPC Classroom Live.

So the question is “Was it worth a 20+ hour plane ride each way?”

Certainly a resounding YES!

I got to meet a bunch of great people and the stellar cast of speakers presented great content. Now it’s a matter of hunkering down and putting some of those ideas into practise.

The turnout was very respectable with the room filled to the gills…

ppc classroom live

It was great to hear how Anik took one of his info product sites, added CPA offers to it and have it generated $42,000+ to date this year.

anik singal and andrew wee

Andrew Wee and Anik Singal

Just as you’re seeing a convergence of search marketing and PPC marketing, I believe the worlds of info marketing and lead generation/affiliate marketing are going to draw closer in the coming year.

andrew wee kirt christensen greg cesar

Andrew Wee, Kirt Christensen, Greg Cesar

I look to Kirt Christensen as one of the pioneers in Internet Marketing, together with his partner, Terry Dean.

It was certainly illuminating to hear about his strategies for positioning yourself as a PPC management agency and it was pretty impressive hearing about some of the biggest Internet marketers he manages PPC campaigns for.

Greg Cesar is someone who’s in my mastermind and this was (more…)

Popularity: 16%

Google Adwords Holiday Profit Tips November 22, 2007

Posted by Andrew Wee in : PayPerClick - PPC , add a comment

The Google Adwords team has published a number of tips for optimizing your campaigns across 3 verticals: retail, entertainment and automotive.

Here’s a couple of techniques to bump your CTR (clickthrough rate) and conversions:

Behavioral-based bid management

Research shows that consumers are surfing shopping sites and doing price comparisons during work hours. Bump your ad positions during office hours to get better ad positioning (and consequently, higher conversions).

buying cycle

Match your consumers stage in the buying cycle

Your keywords determine your websites’ visitor profile. For buyers early in the buying cycle, they’d be looking for information, product reviews, so create an appropriate content site.

Buyers in the later stage, primed to buy, will be looking for coupon codes, bonuses, and other goodies, so a coupon site or inventive site will convert better for that demographic.