Friday, February 23, 2007

So, now here's the Truth as I see it.

My Clickbank account shows that of the two sales I made, one has asked for and got a refund.

Since then 1 more sale but essentially all my campaigns are absolute rubbish and I am just losing money. I really despise this state of affairs. I have followed the instructions to the letter, I get good CTRs, I even cloned Chris' million dollar racing campaign but have spent large amounts of money for no result.

So, what is one to do?

I have set up a couple of adsense pages with proper content that I wrote and keyword optimised. I set up some adwords to test the results with and I get about 55% CTR on the visitors who arrive which is OK, the ads cost me $0.05 and I am getting approximately $0.03 average per visitor. This means I am in front by $0.01 per click, can't see myself retiring on this just yet.

I bought a video package which is brilliant for Adsense Marketing and really helped me a lot regarding the optimal positioning of ad blocks etc and the one thing which you are realling missing out on with all the other "guru's" B.S., the one thing they don't tell you about that really makes the difference.

Now I'll come back to this point in a moment but right now I can tell you that even with Perry Marshall's book, Google Adwords, he talks about CTR and how to get the best results for your ads and he shows you traffic numbers, clicks etc. but even he misleads you severely. All the "Gurus" do. Perhaps this is unintentional but I doubt it, I suspect that they don't know where they get their sales from but I am positive that they do not get them from Google Adwords. I suspect that they don't even know this themselves because they don't track their results properly.

I have sent over 2,000 visitors to a sales page which claims to convert at 2.5% but got no sales credited to me. The "Gurus" steal your visitors by signing them up to their email list and then make the sale from there or signing them up as affiliates and allowing them to make their purchases via their own affiliate link. Either way I lose money to Google and have commissions stolen by the "Gurus".

What can I do about this? In the words of Baldrick "I have a cunning plan..." I am developing a program which will suck in the sales page and modify any part of it to whatever I choose. I can track clicks on links, I can remove/redirect links, I can modify text on the page, change the images displayed etc. I might even sell this program later or not, I doubt the the "Gurus" will be at all happy with me for this but they might like a copy for themselves as well.

I don't see this as theft but as making sure I don't get robbed, I haven't actually implemented this yet as I am still testing and fine tuning but soon....very soon, and the reports will be posted here.

In the mean time the secret they don't tell you. I know, I know everyone tells you that "this is the secret the gurus, banks, Google, Microsoft, etc. etc. don't want you to know" but this really is true. They often allude to this but they never state it outright. You need lots and lots and lots of traffic to make any money online. You need to get 500 to 1,000 visitors per day.

Most of the sales pages you send your traffic to only convert around 1% so if you make $20 per sale, you'll need to send 1,000 people per day to get $200 per day. If your Google campaign is costing you $0.20 per click and you are getting a 5% CTR then you'll need 10,000 to 20,000 impressions per day to get 500 to 1,000 eyeballs on the sales page and it will cost you $100 to $200 per day to get the sales. You cannot make any money doing this. But the "Gurus" will because they are not paying anything for their half of the sale.

Is it any wonder that they don't tell you any of this stuff? You, my friend, and I have been conned and continue to be conned by these thieves and they continue to sell you the dream while only delivering it to themselves. This is fraud.

Now, Google is a great place to test and develop your ads and keywords but a really bad place to be trying to make an income from because the CTR price is just too high mainly due to the "Gurus" promotions which have pushed the prices up considerably for non-performing keywords. When you have got a good CTR on your ads you should set up your campaigns where you can get much cheaper traffic. Where can you get traffic for 1/10th of the Google click?

Head over to the Adsense videos here http://www.kentberry.com.au/presents/video and buy the package, it is genuinely worth the money. Have a look at the promotional material on the sales page and look at views side of the image, not just the income side. See how the traffic increases overnight from around 50-100 views per day to around 20,000 views per day. Would you like to be able to turn on an extra 19,900 views per page for your campaigns? I know I would. I have begun to implement these strategies and will report results soon.

Good luck.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Some Results At Last!

I have been following with some interest the emails from Chris regarding his new book about how to make the adwords marketing work.

His new book is Day Job Killer and is due for release tomorrow, I suspect that he will sell around $25,000 worth in a couple of hours.

This is due to the amazing promotion he has been running for the last month or so building up the interest. If his book is 1/2 as good as he is claiming then it will be superb. Assuming I can get a link to it I will post it here tomorrow.

Now, onto the real news. I have made 2 sales in the last two days. I know that isn't earth shattering compared to Chris, who has a video up showing how he made over $1million last year but it is the first sales I have made for a total of $48 at a cost of (in this campaign) $150. Numbers rounded for simplicity.

I found a pretty good niche for traffic and enthusiasm, I have got my ads working. Actually, I cannot believe what I did this morning, I actually changed an ad which was giving me a 2.4% CTR. Why? The other ad is giving me a 4.5% CTR so I am trying to beat that one.

On another campaign I am actually reducing my maximum bid because the ads are too high in the list, they are all average 1.5 (approximately) and I want them to be around 3. These are also giving me about 2% CTR at the moment but I don't have enough clicks to determine which one to change yet.

Want to know how to determine that? Go here and follow the instructions, no charge for this tip folks.

Changing tack yet again, I bought a cheap ebook on ebay yesterday but I have not yet got a download link. They have until tonight to contact me before I start hammering them all over ebay and here for fraud.

An ebook should be delivered instantly, there is no excuse for any delay so I might have been scammed on this one. Still, via eBay and PayPal, I should have no problem getting a refund and these people charge with criminal activity if that is what is required.

Tomorrow for the good stuff.

The Google Guerrilla

Some of you might have seen the promotions for getting a $299 website for free. They have been coming via email and in Adwords ads from many different places.

Here is one I prepared earlier so you can see what is on offer. I have to confess that I was sceptical but I fell for the Free tag. Seriously, I doubt that any of these have been sold for any price.

The Google Guerrilla

It isn't a scam, you really do get a free website but you pay for the hosting and you pay for Yahoo marketing.

What you are really paying for though, is to market for the host. There are pop-ups which promote gambling sites, ringtone sites etc which I suspect do not have your affiliate links on them.

Because of the pop-ups and exit pops you cannot promote these directly through Google using adwords. However, I have found a way that will work for you profitably and is perfectly within Google's rules of conduct. I am still perfecting this method and trialling it with some adwords campaigns to "bench test" the system. I will post the details here when I have some genuine results.

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