Get your landing page wrong, and you can lose a ton of money. But get it right and you can be well on your way to the lifestyle you want. Let’s get rollin’…

Mistake #1: Having a confusing design.

What do people like more? “Ugly” pages or “beautiful” ones? It’s not a question of beauty. It’s a question of simplicity, clarity and usability. Simple sells. Most “ugly” websites tend to be very simplistic (which is good). That’s where “ugly sells” came from.

Avoid having distracting links above the fold - put them at the bottom of the page instead. What you want is “eye-pleasing but dead simple.” Which brings us to…

Mistake #2: Not using “eye candy.”

A picture equals a 1000 words. Just having text can be simple (as it should) - but it’s also boring. People are short on time and they make decisions within nanoseconds. A picture (also known as a “hero shot”) can convey the message and the “good feelings.”

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I know tracking doesn’t sound “glamorous.” BUT:

If you don’t track, your campaign is almost DESTINED to fail

If you track, you can take a “so-so” campaign to super profitable!

I’ve had campaigns where my most profit came from the source I would LEAST expect. If you are not tracking your advertising and you start now, I can almost guarantee you are in for a few surprises .

Ok, some tips:

If you are an affiliate for someone else, by FAR the best method is this: Send the merchant an email and tell them to add your conversion code on their thank you page. That way, everything is getting tracked down to the individual keyword.

Some of the merchants will agree right away. Some may need some more “convincing.” You can always wait till you have made a couple of sales for them before contacting them. Trust me, once they see that you are actually making them money, the $$ signs will appear in their ayes and they will fall in love with you. They are almost guaranteed to put your code on their thank you page.

If you want to do everything “solo”, without emailing the merchant, you can still do this. You can add a tracking ID at the end of your advertising URL. For example, Clickbank has the variable “tid.” If you are promoting a dog training course and you are linking directly to the merchant, then you can track like this:

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Sometimes, it’s challenging to make money via Google Adwords, because Google requires us to pay much more than what we expected.

Some markets are competitive and you may have to pay over $1 per click just to play the game. But if you see minimum bids of $5 to $10, then there’s something else going on.

I have only been “Google slapped” once - and that was because I deserved it. I used almost nothing from the list below (I was doing a quick test back then).

Even if you haven’t been slapped, you can still pay less than your competitors by pleasing the almighty god Google. The list below is by no means exhaustive - but it’s a very solid start. So, here are some tips:

Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time: Recently, a team of marketers started putting up fake blogs, all basically saying the same thing: “I was fat but then I found this combo diet (promoting two diet products) and I lost weight.

If you were looking for something like “Acai” or “colon cleansing”, you would basically get at least 5 of the top results being similar-looking blogs. They made the offers appear free while in reality the customers where getting billed $89 after 14 days (the affiliates where pocketing $30 per “free” conversion on average).
Many people started complaining and eventually all those campaigns got slapped. In fact, some of those advertisers lost their entire accounts.

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Ok, it appears that many people wanted to know about PPC. This happens to be one of my favorite subjects, as I have been doing PPC for years…

Below are some of my current thoughts “as they come to me.” Some of them, you will agree with. Some of them you may scratch your head over - and that’s totally cool. Some of the tips will be more “philosophical” in nature and some of them will be “hands on.”

1: “The only constant thing is change.” I think what trips many people up is that they apply today what worked great in the PAST. The internet changes at a fast and furious pace. PPC advertising is no different.

In the past, you could make a mile-long list or “somewhat related” keywords, point them to your affiliate link and make bank. Today, this will get you slapped, broke and frustrated.

The problem is that outdated information can still float around. Older ebooks, forum threads, articles etc. Even “outdated thoughts” inside your head can make you believe that this is the way to go - only to find out the hard way that things have changed. You should always be as up-to-date as possible on how things in your chosen field work.

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