Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner
Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) is removing “Top 5 Max Bids,” “Position” and “Your Cost” from the Manage Bids portion of their interface in early December. The View Bids tool is also going to be removed.
In their place will be the Estimated Average Position and Bid Range for Top Positions data columns.
According to the email that I got a few minutes ago, [Read more…]
Anik Singal finally convinced me to give up my lazy affiliate ways and be more specific about my favorite traffic generation strategy.
To that end, he and I co-authored a very thought-provoking report that is available for download right away – and we're not charging for it. This report reveals a “tool” that I started using almost 2 years ago that basically tripled the traffic to my site almost immediately.
Anik has also been using this tool for close to a year and recently just used it to launch a new niche site that generated traffic to it the DAY he launched it (all because of this tool). We not only reveal this tool, but an additional 5 reasons you need to start using it right away as well.
By the way, the tool takes about 3 minutes to install and we give you the URL where you can go get it at absolutely N0 cost…
All in all, this is a *must-have* report. And yes, the report ACTUALLY gives you great resources and links – it's NOT a “gimmick”!
Read it and Prosper!
If you have a Google Adwords account, you should have received an email (on or about May 20th, 2006) with the subject line, “Important Legal Notice Regarding Your Google AdWords Account“.
The first paragraph of that email read:
This court-ordered notice may affect your legal rights. Please read it carefully. If you purchased online advertising from Google between January 1, 2002 and the present, you are a class member in a class-action lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Miller County, Arkansas. This notice is to inform you of the Court’s certification of a class; the nature of the claims alleged; your right to participate in, or exclude yourself from, the class; a proposed settlement; and how you can claim an award of advertising credits under the settlement.
The attached PDF included information on how to submit a claim form, exclude yourself from the process or object to the settlement.
To learn more about the settlement go to Clicksettlement.com.
You will be able to FILE your claim at Clicksettlement.com between June 19, 2006 and August 4, 2006.
Happy filing!
Ros
Until recently, if you did a search on the term ‘satellite dish' at Google, and then surveyed the URL's in the Adwords listings, you were bound to see that most of the ads linked to just one company. You'd also note that most listings ended with the ‘aff' (affiliate site) designation.
Eight ads all link to the same site. How useless and frustrating was that?
Well, Google Adwords has just introduced a new affiliates policy that finally addresses that problem.
However, the new policy has been met with much whining on various affiliate and Internet marketing forums.
Why?
‘Cause affiliates who link directly from Google Adwords to their merchant partners' sites will have to get to work or go home.
Well, maybe.
There seems to be a loophole in the new policy's wording.
Here's how the new affiliate policy reads:
“With this new affiliate policy, we'll only display one ad per search query for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same URL. This way, users will have a more diverse sampling of advertisements to choose from.”
“Affiliates or advertisers using unique URLs in their ads will not be affected by this change. Please note that your Display URL must match the URL of your landing page, and you may not simply frame another site.”
Did they mean to say ‘domain', not ‘URL'?
If Google did indeed intend ‘URL', then there is no problem for those who engage in the ‘Google Cash' method of affiliate marketing, as each affiliate URL is unique.
Here's an example.
These are URL's for 3 affiliate marketers promoting the ‘FriendFinder' dating service.
• http://friendfinder.com/go/p1234
• http://friendfinder.com/go/p5869
• http://friendfinder.com/go/p3468
Each URL is unique, ergo it should be no problem to for affiliates to link directly to Friendfinder's site with their affiliate links.
However, if in fact Google meant ‘domain', that's quite a different kettle of fish.
Because each URL above points to the ‘friendfinder.com' domain, only one listing will be displayed, and chosen on the basis of Ad Rank.
Here's the official wording from within the policy.
“For instance, if a user searches for books on Google.com or anywhere on the Google search and content networks, Google will take an inventory of ads running for the keyword books. If we find that two or more ads compete under the same URL, we'll display the ad with the highest Ad Rank.”
Ad Rank is determined by a combination of an ad's maximum cost-per-click and clickthrough rate.
Less competition is great news for affiliates who have always linked back to their own sites… as Super Affiliates always do.
One more benefit to affiliate marketers in Google's new Adwords policy is that you no longer need to identify yourself as an affiliate in your ad text. That means no more ‘aff' at the end of the ad… and 4 more spaces to add content to your listing.
I figure consumers had no idea what ‘aff' meant anyway, so Google just wanted to get rid of what looked like garble in the listings.
However, your current ad text will continue to display your affiliate status until you change it.
Assuming Google DID mean ‘domain', this new policy is good news for affiliates… genuine affiliate marketers.
I've always taught that affiliates with content sites enjoy much higher conversion rates.
It's simple. Spend an hour writing an endorsement, upload it to your web site, then advertise that link on Google Adwords.
Why waste advertising dollars on a .5 percent conversion, when it only takes an hour to double or even quadruple that rate?
For more information on how to become a ‘genuine' or Super affiliate, read “The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in ONE Year Selling Other Peoples' Stuff Online“.
Get it at: The Super Affiliate Handbook