Entries from December 2008 ↓

Recently I’ve been ambushed by a number of promotions all claiming to solve the Google Adwords puzzle, Google Ambush being just one of them.

But there’s one thing different about Google Ambush. This isn’t just a PPC (Pay Per Click) tutorial, this is online software that will let you do all the keyword research, load your Adwords campaign and set up your Landing Pages all from one online dashboard.

Here’s what it looks like inside. As you can see it’s actually a logical process. Starting on the Left of your Google Ambush dashboard you first find a product to sell, (you can search the ClickBank Marketplace from here), research keywords for that product, create your Adwords Campaign and then set up a Landing Page to presell the product.

It’s a really simple process and looks set to put you on the road to selling popular ClickBank products as fast as possible. You don’t need a website, you don’t need to know how to create webpages, in fact you can start selling online as an affiliate with no previous knowledge of Internet Marketing at all!

And this, for most people, must seem like a dream come true! It’s so simple that a monkey could do it if you taught it how to use a keyboard.

Within 15 mins I was able to set up this Landing Page, already automatically coded with my affiliate link.

But therein lies the problem with Google Ambush. It’s TOO simple!

Let’s look at what you end up with. The Landing Page that is automatically created is very basic and doesn’t show competitive products (which I would normally add to a review page).

In a similar vein the PPC campaigns are ubiquitous – there’s no training to show how to weed out unprofitable keywords, for example, though advice is given to use the lower bid keywords rather than bidding top dollar, which is sensible when you’re starting out with Adwords.

I would still recommend that you also invest in learning the ropes of how to handle a profitable PPC campaign through other tutorials, such as PPC Classroom (this is the tutorial that I’m using to brush up on, and improve, my own PPC campaigns).

So it’s the very emphasis within Google Ambush on making things simple for the user that is its undoing. However all is not lost. A little more work by the user on adding product images, expanding the Pre-sale Landing Page to include mention of competitive products, and learning how to use keyword campaigns efficiently, for a good ROI (Return On Investment) would make your Google Ambush results well worth your outlay.

At the moment you can try out Google Ambush for just $4.95. Once you’ve read the salespage just go to exit the page and you’ll see a pop-up which gives you this trial offer. Go here to find out more…

Hot on the heels of Yahoo Cash 4 Idiots comes CopyNProfit – a system that shows you how to plug into existing profitable PPC campaigns.

The premise is simple. The author has found ubiquitous products which have a wide appeal on the Internet. All you have to do is set up these campaigns in your own Adwords, or even Yahoo (see Yahoo Cash 4 Idiots), PPC account and start raking in the dosh.

Along with the campaigns that CopyNProfit gives you is a complete breakdown of how affiliate marketing works, how you can back up your campaigns with article marketing, blog promotion and forum marketing, all neatly presented in a series of online video tuition.

So far, so good. There’s only one problem with CopyNProfit that I can see. With the 20 or so campaigns that are currently in the members area you are entering an already crowded and competitive market.

Let’s look at an example.

I don’t think I’m giving any secrets away if I tell you that ‘Get Your Girlfriend Back’ is a hot niche – most marketers looking at niche markets know this. A Google search for this term shows up 39,200 pages for the exact phrase “get my girlfriend back”, which ain’t that many! Even better, which incidentally CopyNProfit doesn’t mention, is “getting your ex girlfriend back” which has 50 searches a day and only 20,800 Google’d pages.

However there are currently 35 PPC campaigns running for that phrase and variants of it. That makes it highly competitive in PPC terms. As a new Adwords user you’d have to bid pretty high to see your ad on the front page – around a $1 or more a click at my estimate.

And the trouble is that the conversion rate of click thru to sales is poor for the product that CopyNProfit recommends. So I wouldn’t rate this as highly profitable. In fact the suggested keywords that CopyNProfit recommend have minimal searches per day – for example “get back with your ex” only gets two or three!

Now I’m not saying you can’t make money with this niche. A carefully orchestrated and maintained PPC campaign would turn a profit, especially if you choose one of the better converting products in this niche. But it’s not, in my view, going to be a big profit.

I really don’t think that pre-selected campaigns like this are the way to market niches. And, just remember, these niches will be getting more competitive the more people buy CopyNProfit!

Yes, there’s some low hanging fruit in CopyNProfit which is there for you to grab, but the emphasis of the site is that you don’t have to do the work fine-tuning your PPC – “so easy a baby could do it” – just plug the campaigns in and go.

And that doesn’t work. To my mind Yahoo Cash 4 Idiots is a far better proposition. It does at least show you how to research a niche properly and set up an ad campaign that you KNOW is not too competitive and within your reach.

You can see more details of CopyNProfit here, but it’s not for me.

Last year I was fed up with Google PPC. I was finding it unbelievably difficult to turn a profit on any of my campaigns.

Part of the reason for this was lack of education, a factor I am in the process of remedying thanks to PPC Classroom 2.0. But the main reason that most marketers have difficulty making PPC work for them is the highly competitive nature of Adwords.

Unfortunately the world and its uncle know that PPC is the quickest way to drive traffic to your site(s). If you are an affiliate for a newly launched product, for example, you’ll want to beat the competition to the mark in order to take advantage of the initial flurry of interest.

As I’ve found out the hard way, however, you can lose your shirt on a poorly managed Adwords campaign. I wouldn’t let that stop anyone learning PPC, just avoid the most competitive niches until you’ve learnt how to create profitable campaigns.

Unless, and here it comes, you move out of the competitive Adwords market. So where do you go? To Yahoo PPC instead!

That’s right. Yahoo is the underdeveloped PPC market. It’s so much easier to find profitable niche products to promote using PPC once you start competing in the Yahoo market.

So that makes Yahoo PPC a much more encouraging platform on which to learn and hone your PPC skills. But you’ll still need tuition, and that’s where Yahoo Cash 4 Idiots comes in.

David Cassady, the author of Yahoo Cash 4 Idiots, has worked professionally handling PPC campaigns for a variety of advertising companies. Which makes him an expert on the subject.

But that doesn’t make him a geek that talks in a language you can’t follow. Yahoo Cash 4 Idiots is so-named because of the way it takes you through the simple steps necessary to sign up with your first Yahoo account, how to find suitable niche products to promote, the best way to set up a profitable campaigns and what makes good keyword lists.

But, if that was all, then Yahoo Cash 4 Idiots would just be yet another PPC book. What makes David’s treatise different is his description of the Yahoo ‘Glitch’, a strategy which will put you ahead of all of the PPC competition when you follow it.

Actually the Yahoo ‘Glitch’ isn’t just one strategy – it’s a combination of three techniques that add up to letting you grab traffic that ‘normal’ PPC campaigns would miss. Cunning stuff this.

I also, as an Adwords user, I loved the chapter on migrating Adwords campaigns into Yahoo PPC. As a complete starter’s guide to less competitive PPC, Yahoo Cash 4 Idiots does exactly what it says on the box!

Find out more by clicking here.