Back to the Future

Many moons ago I had built a health related website, but then lost interest in that topic for a while and did not touch the site in ages. When I upgraded the server that is hosting the website to PHP5 I had to make changes to the site due to problem with PHP5. For whatever reason that motivated me to put a little more work into the site and I finally got around to start working on it again this week. I updated the design to give it a fresh look and also installed a new ad server to place some ads on the site. Last night I was done with that and even found some time to add more content to the website.

After sleeping a night over this one I checked the website again and are very happy with the results. I think I will dedicate another 2 or 3 nights now to add additional content. Loaded with new content I will then probably go and see if I can get some additional inbound links to the site going to get a little more traffic. Me not working on the website has not really helped in getting more traffic, so that is something I want to look at to improve.

Anyway – I do have a few of these sites sitting around. I build them when I had high interest in the topic and let them slide when the interest cooled down. These are not my core websites that make most of the money and so it is kind of easy to not feel guilty about it. On the other side it is a waste as I might have some good money makers sitting there at my hand, but just don’t push them hard enough. Since SEO has become more difficult over the last 12-18 months it is good to have these established websites sitting there. They were all created and seo’d before Google and the others changed the rules and as you probably know – aged domains just work out better naturally. It almost feels like back to the future – going back to something you have been before and change it and almost instantly see the results take affect.

PayPal does not like Trees

Hey Paypal, ever heard of the ability to customize pages for printing? What do you think most people will do with the 1099-DIV forms you provide? Printing would be the answer. I just printed mine from the web browser and it needed a second sheet of paper. I am kinda used to have these type of print jobs fit onto one page. Who needs your company logo on such a report if further down your information is provided in detail? Why is there no PDF version of the report or the option to get a customized page for printing purposes only? It’s not that hard to do …..

At least when it comes to computer related stuff I am trying to be a little more conscious about the environmental impact and those stupid things like PayPal being so ignorant really ticks me off a little bit.

One a Day, one for the Web

I am slowly recovering from a long weekend of work for my full-time job. Slowly I am picking up momentum again and have been able to push some great content to several websites. I am reviewing products and publish those reviews with matching affiliate links. I am doing pretty good in my opinion as I have been able to update several websites with at least one article per day now. Fresh content is usually working out pretty good as search engines love new content. So, I hope to see a fair ROI on these efforts in the weeks and months to come. I still need to find time promote these new pages – either with some SEO or via PPC. For now the goal is to get the content out and indexed. The remaining pieces I am not too worried about at the moment.

I also bought two domain names that seem to get natural type in traffic from what I can tell. I will need to find a good content writer who can dive into the topic and provide me with ~20 on topic articles per domain. In the past I have used different folks for that, but with mixed results. The overall quality of work I am getting through forum members at Digitalpoint.com has gone down the drain. It’s now the 3rd time that I have to start a PayPal dispute to either get my money back or the work done I paid for. Very frustrating. This did not happen once 12 months ago and I think DP is going downhill fast. Time to find another webmaster forum that is not so over-saturated and where members still try to provide value. DP feels different nowadays. The majority of the members seems to have 60 postings or less and are coming from India or Pakistan – I am not a racist – I rather want to point out the difference in mentality compared to when the majority of folks seemed to be from the US/Canada/Australia/UK. The moderation has also changed. I see several long time members being banned. And a few weeks ago I received a warning from a moderator for something I still don’t understand. Anyone of some other good webmaster related forums that cover a large variety of topics. I know Sitepoint.com and maybe one or two others, but ….

Great Month for me at CJ.com

I am happy to see my affiliate marketing efforts slowly getting grip. My stats over at CJ.com are improving and I am very happy with the initial results. It seems like I am slowly moving up from a random conversion to getting more commissions more often. The other good thing is that it is spreading out between different merchants as well which I consider good. It is still a long way to go for me though. I accepted the “hit” when signing up for CJ’s data feeds which set me back $200.00 (one-time fee though) and I am happy to have that already absorbed and to actually see a positive balance in my account. Only a small fraction of my CJ earnings are coming from PPC traffic at the moment. For whatever reason I am getting a good grip on PPC traffic and CJ merchants. PPC traffic still works better for me with networks like Neverblueads or Copeac. From most networks I am using I currently like Neverblueads interface the most. For whatever reason I am not having much luck with my affiliate manager, but I have been too busy to follow through on that.

So, overall it is good to see the efforts I am putting paying off at least a little bit. Like I said, I still have long ways to go, but the results are motivating for me. In case you wonder – review type postings with text links have worked best for me in getting results in affiliate marketing. That is where I will spend additional time on this week.

Update on my Newsletter Marketing Efforts

In my blog posting here and here I wrote about my efforts to build a mailing list and send out a newsletter every once in a while. The first newsletter went out last week and overall I am happy with the results. The newsletter must have been Ok, because nobody unsubscribed – which is good. I did not sell anything (yet) through the newsletter, but that is kind of expected. The subscriber-base is still very small and I am not putting too much emphasis on selling products just yet. It is with many things – build up value and trust and then later on benefit from the trust you earned before and that is my approach here, too. My main goal really is to provide value. I personally hate crappy newsletters, too and that is why I am not trying to be spammy here.

Clean up your subscriber base for best results. I am mainly targeting U.S. customers and so I looked at my subscriber list. About 5% of the subscribers were from different countries and continents. Unless I see a large group from one specific country I am not going to pursue marketing efforts tailored to them. So, I am moving those accounts into a separate mailing list for now to avoid sending them information that does not apply to them. If I see enough people from one specific country I can then go and create a customized version of my newsletter. My website is pretty popular in Australia, Canada, and the UK as well.

My other efforts have been lacking attention this week as I am currently involved in a major project through my day job that is still paying the majority of my bills and is fun, too. So, updates on PPC marketing will come back some time next week I hope.

Efficient PPC Review

I was notified about a new PPC software and decided to take a closer look. The new software is called Efiicient PPC and is supposed to do almost the same as SpeedPPC. I watched videos and checked out everything available on their website. The tool looks pretty neat and offers some great features. It’s not quite there yet where SpeedPPC is in my opinion though, but if I would be in the market for a software like this and would have to choose between SpeedPPC and Efficient PPC, the latter would get my money mainly due to price. If I would be in the market for the features, SpeedPPC would get my money as it still is a clear leader.

One major difference between the 2 software packages seems to be the way how to upload the campaigns into the Adwords Editor. In SpeedPPC I do a simple copy and paste while Efficient PPC is less efficient and requires to save the campaigns first and then select them one by one for upload. Efficient PPC also seems to lack export capabilities to upload the campaigns into MSN Adcenter. The latest Beta of SpeedPPC even supports Yahoo Overture uploads – nothing seen here with Efficient PPC (at least not from the videos or feature information on the website).

Efficient PPC has a small advantage when it comes to building keyword lists and how to dynamically integrate them into the ads. It also allows to save those lists into the existing setup and re-use them as needed. That’s where SpeedPPC still needs to catch up a little bit. You cannot add keyword lists and keep them inside the software for other campaigns and at the moment you will always copy and paste your additional keywords (be it “buy” keywords or price related keywords like “cheap”, “discount”, or others).

I do have a copy of SpeedPPC and do not have one of Efficient PPC yet. The price is attractive, but at the moment I would not gain anything from it really. I like that there is a second product now as I feel that competition will be good for both. Honestly I think the price for Efficient PPC should go up to $199.00 instead of $99.00 (too cheap to really make significant income) and I think SpeedPPC should lower itsprice to $299.00 or $349.00 to gain more market share now that there is a direct competitor.

PS: Visit the SpeedPPC website here.

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