Adwords Power

Facebook Cookbook: Building Applications to Grow Your Facebook Empire (Paperback) newly tagged "facebook"

 

Why You Should Start Using Facebook Ads

The internet is the hottest place today to earn cash. If you are planning to start an online business, then you first need to know that although the internet will potentially generate a lot of cash for you, it doesn’t mean that you will be able to achieve success overnight. You still need to work hard even if it is an online business.

And, if you want to become successful with your new online business, you need to market it on the internet. You have to remember that if you have a new website, no one knows about it and if someone knows it exist, he or she wouldn’t care. You have to market your products by marketing your website. It’s how it works in the internet.

It is also important to remember that marketing on the internet is different from marketing in the real world. In fact, even the most experienced marketers in the real world have hard time marketing in the internet. It is a new kind of marketing and it will require different strategies to make things sell.

There are free ways to market in the internet. However, these free ways can be a pain. Unless you are a really good writer, it is often very hard to catch people’s attention in the internet. If you are just a beginner in the world of internet marketing, then you might want to try out Facebook. Here, marketing is easy, effective, and is very cheap.

Facebook is basically a social networking website where each member will build their own network of friends. Here, people will be able to communicate and have lots of fun with the different applications available. With over 60 million active subscribers and still continuing to grow, you will obviously see that Facebook is definitely the place to market your products or services.

You don’t have to worry about traffic as with the amount of people logging in and out each day, you know that you have your clients here. All you need to do is get them to your website.

After becoming a member at Facebook and building your own network of friends and also after completing your profile, the next step is to start using Facebook Ads to market your products or services.

Facebook Ads is basically a pay per click advertising tool offered by Facebook to its members and is used within the Facebook website. The great thing about Facebook Ads is that it will let you decide your target clients according to interests, age, gender and other general information. You will also be the one to decide the daily budget for the advertising.

This way, you will be able to try out your advertising without investing a lot of cash. If you are just beginning to advertise, don’t expect to get results right away. It’s all a matter of trial and error. Besides, nobody’s perfect. You have to find out what your target market wants in an advertising campaign or what will get their attention. With Facebook Ads, you will be able to do this.

So, if you are just starting out with your online business and you want to promote your products, services and your website in the internet, you might want to try marketing in Facebook Ads. Here, marketing is a lot more fun, cheaper and also very effective ( ref FaceBook Marketing Tips).

facebook

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Having one foot in the SEO and one foot in the PPC

The online community is definitely a large market place that you cannot ignore, especially if you have an internet business. There are thousands if not millions of consumers that you can tap in the internet.

At the same time, the internet also poses a quite different challenge. The easy access that internet provides also gives you as much competition as you can imagine. It is too crowded and congested.

Having a website is not enough to make your business running and able to compete. You must take other alternatives to give way for the online community to access your website at any rate or chance possible.

You have to expose your website. Make it known. It has to be visible. It has to be frequently targeted by consumers and surfers.

Invest in marketing your internet site. There are basically two options available to you, the SEO and PPC. These two are probably the most desirable alternatives you can get for your internet business as strategy for search engine marketing.

1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some researches indicate that 60% - 70% of internet surfers and users actually resort to using the Google search engine to find and locate web sites and pages, for any topic they desire. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet uses will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from the rest.

To get a search engine optimization, you will have to build on your own internet site frequently hit internet links to web site pages. The process will involve IBLN or Independent Back-Linking Network, wherein hundreds or even thousands of pages will be utilized to promote a particular website of a client.

In SEO, there is no need for you to pay for the clicks although it will require you to spend time doing research to get a favorable combination of ads and target audience. The SEO process is a long term one. It requires months, 6 months at the least, before the proper outcome is fully achieved, but once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely get a steady source of profit.

2. PPC

PPC means Pay Per Click. It gives way advertising on a search engine. These are sponsored listings that you see whenever you make a search. There will be a charge whenever a visitor or web surfer clicks on any of your ads. There will first be a bidding process. The highest bidder for the price per click will definitely get the chance to be first listed in the search engine.

With this kind of advertising, you can still basically control your campaign as you get to create your own ad. You will also manage the target audience and still stay within the bounds of your budget. Most of the providers of PPC advertising will allow you to specify the target market, either by topic, industry or geographical location. You can also very well check if your ad gets to be shown at all and if it is competitive with the rest.

There are some guaranteed benefits when you get to maximize the PPC strategy.

* PPC lets you advertise to the whole of the online community. It is also relatively easy to set up.

* At first glance, PPC advertising may seem very expensive. Could it possibly happen that someone out there will go on clicking on your ad? This will definitely give you a large bill without the expected profit on your part. If this provides a lot of worries, be rest assured that there is a protection for you. Networks are able to recognize fraudulent clicks.

* You can also set a budget for a certain period. The moment your budget has been used up by the target number of clicks, your ads will no longer be displayed until the next period you want it again displayed.

* You will also be able to adjust well to changes in market demands and trends.

In deciding which of the two strategies will work right for you, think of your goals and of your resources. They definitely offer benefits and advantages that will work for your good. The better way to approach this two is to evaluate according to your short term and long term plans. Take the PPC course for your short term goals and choose SEO if you have long term ones.

There world is out there for you now. Just make sure you do what will work best for your entrepreneurial endeavors and visions. The secret to success lies in your hands. Just study your options well and you’ll get exactly what you want.

seo vs ppc
internet marketing

How to Transform Mundane Information Into New Customers

Engaging in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has its own benefits and drawbacks. But what exactly is PPC advertising and what it can do to your business?

Business nowadays is doing different kinds of austerity measures when it comes to advertising their products and services. This is because of high rates of placing ads on print and on television. But there is a fast growing approach that businessmen can utilize to bring their services closer to the people and that is through Internet Marketing.

One tool that is causing internet marketing popularity is PPC advertising. This is a fine tuned technique used in search engine marketing that requires one to pay a fee every time someone clicks an ad on your website. Usually this placement is done through a bidding process. If you are a top bidder for your keywords/phrases, you are sure to be on the number one spot on all search engines. Just be sure of the effectiveness of your ad copy to get the most number of clicks you need for your business.

The benefits of PPC advertising are:

1. You need not be a genius in computer and technology to be able to run this ad campaign.
2. Immediate results are seen after a few days.
3. No need to make a website conform to the SEO rules.
4. Nothing to lose even if you do not top the pages of different search engines. You can still always choose PPC advertising.
5. You can make use any search engine available.
6. You can type in any keyword you like.

Cons of PPC advertising includes:

1. Fixed payments every month to the search engine you choose.
2. Pay for each click received by your website. At times, visitors are just competitors or people playing pranks on search engines. This hassle wastes money you put in to this advertising.
3. Inability to pay for the fees next month would mean removal of your website on the paid listings.
4. This advertising can only be used temporarily because it is difficult to handle in the long run.
5. Pay-per-click pricing can be costly for long periods of time, therefore, this should be stopped after an ad campaign.

But how exactly can PPC advertising increase traffic, leads and sales?

PRE-QUALIFIED TRAFFIC. All visitors of your website are already considered as a qualified consumer or buyer of your product. PPC advertising leads your customers to you for a lesser cost.

INSTANT EXPOSURE, IMMEDIATE PROFITS. PPC search engines enable you to get your desired results fast. They will have your website live within just a few hours which means immediate increase in sale.

CONSISTENT TOP LISTINGS. This is to get your website on top of the sponsored search results for free. You just have to choose the keywords related to your site and business and place them within your web pages. After this, you are done.

PPC advertising enables results driven advertisers to control their advertising campaigns. Advertisers have effectively targeted their audience and set their own price per click. PPC advertising networks provide the platform to identify the desired audience by geographic setting, topic and industry. These networks have a list of websites of the publishers where the ads will be placed.

Tools are provided by the networks to check how the pay per click limit is working for a certain advertiser. If its still competitive, would it be even listed among the paid search lists or does it generate sales? Of course, if the advertiser made the highest bid, the better chances the ad will be seen in the search engine. These networks too provide protection for the advertisers against click fraud. This advertising set-up allows advertisers to set a daily budget for his ads, thus, less spending for unnecessary clicks. Advertiser will never go over his budget.

In PPC advertising, the important cornerstones are the keywords and phrases and particularly the way it is managed. You have to select at least ten “very specific” keywords that would give you the best traffic in the search. Then, write the ad creatively but straightforward. Tell the truth about your product or service and do not lie. Good thing if your product or service will not disappoint those that are relying on your ad’s promise - but what if it did otherwise? Important too is the clarity of the ad. Do not use very vague languages. Include important details like the price.

You should also remember to budget your bids. Do not go overbidding because you will only lose your money and do not go so low that your ads will never get the chance to show up. Check your profit against your spending. If you see no progress then most likely you have to drop your ad campaign.

More and more advertisers have been using PPC advertising and it will continue to grow faster than any online advertising techniques. From revenues of $2.6 billion in 2004 to $5.5 billion in 2009, cost per click will dramatically go up as well from $0.29 to $0.36.

PPC advertising is still a relatively fresh phenomena in specialty online marketing and it is going to continue in the years to come. For advertisers, this means increase revenues with fewer advertising expenses, savings, more sales, good return of investment (ROI) and effective ad campaigns in the days to come.

learn advertising

Guest Informant New York 1985-86 Edition (Hardcover) newly tagged "advertising"

 

Some of you might have noticed that Microsoft Adcenter Affiliate Program has closed according to newsletter emails from the program manager in Kowabunga, effective as of february 29th, 2008.

In the account, however, the offer remains and is still active…..active to June 30th, 2008….telling that you will be paid $100 USD per Adcenter signup with activation ansd suggests you to sign up to their Microsoft Affiliate Network;

——————
Offer your customers $75 in free* search advertising credit, and for each new U.S.-based Microsoft adCenter customer you generate, you’ll receive a cash reward of $100**.

*Does not include the one-time, nonrefundable $5 fee required to open a new adCenter account. **You’ll receive $100 for any customer who spends $50 of their $75 credit within 90 days.

Promotional Guidelines:
Offer valid through June 30, 2008 (11:59 P.M. Pacific Time)…..

…………………….

The manager for this program didn’t want to give any explanation nor reason for this closure for some reason when asked…

Shawn Collins have a method to handle this kind of changes in regards to affiliate links sent out and is described on his blog. I didn’t know that it was allowed to redirect the affiliate links actual at all as far as I can remember but this may be possible for mere advanced entrepeneurs.

From an affiliate perspective, I do not like the way this was handled in line with others. Of course it was a Beta but they could have been better to inform and present the progress especially when regarding the size of the businesses involved. No press release here…

They use and take advantage of a lot affiliates and many is disappointed for natural reasons. Many affiliates have made sincere efforts in time and costs for advertising just for to find everything is gone.

I remember when 5star affiliate program network actively promoted and recommended it throughly enough in december last year through imnews and other sources. This is one example from their official blog:

——————————-

“This program is a clear win-win for Microsoft and affiliate marketers.” said Linda Buquet, President of 5 Star Affiliate Programs. “Having an adCenter affiliate program will help expand Microsoft’s reach in the advertising community and will offer affiliate partners the opportunity to share the revenue. We are proud to have Microsoft join the 5 Star family of high integrity affiliate programs.” she said.

——————————-

In their forum I can found just one notice about that they have launched this program and how big client it was. 

Hmmm…..what to say…..this was the first and the last time following their recommendations if they have advanced consulting and marketing management coming out with these kind of offers. I do not know much about them, however, I have changed my mind about their capability and reputation to judge and select good programs to promote meaning I would not take their suggestions into consideration anymore than this made. One time is enought especially when it come to bigger companies like this actual.

I couldn’t find any way for cancelling my account to this microsoftaffiliates.net. No way for it within the affiliate account, nor in the welcome mail, nor in the newsletter emails received. And their manager wrote first from this net address and then from Kowabunga….I have requested a cancellation of my account, however, nothing have been done about it for some reason….

I am still wondering how was it all going and what was the reason for the ‘closing’. Was it a smart move to draw attention to their program so other people could promote them? Did they receive a lot of revenue? A lot of traffic? Bet they did. The video in december shows on the other side that they were looking for partners and bigger search engine partners. What was the output from that campaign? How was the interests from the public in general?

I can find in my trash bin inbox that they sent me a new offer as of feb 8th 2008 about;

—————— 

The Microsoft Affiliate Network (MSAN) has launched a Windows Live Spaces account as a new resource exclusively for our affiliates to keep you informed of all the latest news, promotion tips and offers.

—————–

The link in the bottom of the email goes to Kowabunganews which is not possible to cancel.

Without responding to that offer I was automatically into it anyway as it seems. I received an email today named ”Welcome to Windows Live Spaces” now from livecom and nothing about Kowabunganews.

So who have earned most from all this do you think? Microsoft? 5star affiliatenetwork? Kowabunga? Who have turned up the efforts driving traffic to this adcenter?…….

I have tried to search for any valid reason, however, I cannot find anything of content as of yet. Just messages from the email and some reflections and reactions and of course 5star yet only the statement nothing more. I do find a lot about the launch but missing the information about the closing process. Why cannot Kowabunga explain as they are their manager? It is all about being communicative and informative in good faith.

It is more the way it is handled and managed than everything else….

Do I need to say that I will not use any of these three services anymore. It’s a shame.

Profitability

PPC can be very costly, time consuming and sometimes not worthy. But if you know how to go about the step by step procedures, PPC is a welcome change to traditional advertising.

Tools for Internet Marketing have been rising to popularity these days because of cost-effectiveness and the possibility of measuring increase in profits and sales.

Pay per click (PPC) is a means to advertise business through the use of keywords/phrases in the search engines. The advertiser is required to only pay for each click that sends a visitor to his website. Search engines such as Overture, Google Adwords, Search Yahoo and Miva are just some examples of search engines. They offer top positions among the sponsored listings for particular keywords/phrases you choose. The idea for bidding is you have to buy/bid on keywords/phrases relevant to your business. The highest bidder gets to be on the top of the search result listing and the second highest bidder, of course, gets the next top listing and so on. Every time a visitor clicks on your website, you will have to pay the same amount that you bid on that particular keyword.

If you do your searches for products, articles and auctions in the net, you usually type in a keyword or a set of phrase to guide you in your search. Either you use Google or Yahoo Search depending on where you are most comfortable at and where you usually get the best results. As soon as you key in the search button, immediately a long list of keywords or phrase will be displayed containing the keywords you key in. The first or the top link that you saw is most likely the one who bids the highest for that keyword you type. In this way, wise entrepeneurs will produce the desired results; they get to be advertised, at the same time, saving and spending only for the clicks they need that might translate to potential sales.

The way to start PPC bid management is to identify first the maximum cost per click (CPC) you are willing to pay for a given keyword or phrase. CPC varies from time and even search engine to search engine too. Maximum CPC can be measured by averaging the current costs of bids (bids range from $0.25 to $5). Average of these bids is to be used as the maximum CPC to begin with. As your ad campaign progresses, the actual conversion rate (visitors turning to potential buyers/sales) will be determined and you may have to adjust your CPC (bidding rate) accordingly.

When you start to bid, see to it that you adopt different bidding strategies for various search engines. Search engines have their own PPC systems that require different approaches. It is also worthy to identify different bids for the same keyword phrases in various search engines.

Another thing, it is wiser not to bid for the top spot for two reasons: 1) It is very expensive and impractical, and 2) Surfers usually try different search queries in various search engines before they settle on the right one that fits to what they are looking for. This hardly results to conversion. Try to bid for the fifth spot instead and work your way up.

If you are now going steady on your PPC biddings, it is time for you to develop your own bidding strategy accordingly. It is important for you to track down which sites bring the bulk of your traffic and identify the ranking of your paid ads. This will help your bidding strategy to be effective and you should also decide where you want your ad to be positioned. Usually your maximum CPC will limit your choices.

Bid gaps (e.g. $ 0.40, 0.39, bid gap, 0.20, 0.19, 0.18) occur when there is a significant price increase to move up one spot in the PPC rankings. It is best if you take advantage of the bid gaps by filling them in so you can save up your cents to other bidding opportunities. Often there are keywords worthy of lesser bids to get the appropriate ranking on the list and produce a good number of clicks and higher conversion rate rather than bidding higher but having a poor conversion rate. You have to put in mind that overbidding too is not good but rather the best position for the most effective bid.

Using pay-per-click bid management in promoting your website will only be successful if you take time building many lists across many engines and studying the performance of every listing. In this way, you can make the most value from what you spend in the bidding process. The key is to use the necessary precautions to stay ahead of the competition.

Bid Management Tools

In ensuring best results, you may use bid management tools. There are accepted and approved management tools that will help you in your bidding. They are categorized in two different types:

• Web based (services by monthly subscription) or,
• PC based (a purchased software)

Monitoring tools too may help in the tracking down of your keywords/phrases and search engines as to which among them often generate sales, overall and in relation to your cost per click. This is what you call return of investment (ROI) monitoring.

These bid management tools may include additional functions that may not get from online marketing tools that are readily available. Other tools can monitor competitor’s bids, produce reports for different parties and offer the ability to interface with multiple PPC engines. This is particularly helpful to those who manage more than a hundred keywords across several PPC engines to boost productivity and save time.

Pay-per-click bid management is ideal for the effective promotion of your business online without the hassles of draining your financial keeping too much. It is now fast catching up as a means used in marketing your goods and services to reach to as many consumers as possible.

See also: The Alchemist’s Keyword Bank