Note that these numbers are from November 2009 through Jan 2010, and I’m still working on this campaign so I still won’t be telling y’all what I’m actually running with. Look for a new case study coming up in the next few weeks or months. Probably months knowing my slackass style.

For this campaign I ran things a little differently. If you remember from my last post, what I did was have about 600 keywords spread out over a few ads in one ad group. This time though I did it differently and set things with a new method. I went with;

• 20 ad groups
• each ad group having 1 keyword
• 3 ads based around those keywords.

I ran with this formula on Bing and Yahoo, but with bidvertiser I just ran with the highest performing ads from the two networks combined with some simple math to calculate which was the overall best ad.

So, on to the numbers shall we?

BIDVERTISER

With Bidvertiser, as with all my previous attempts with them I had horrible click through’s with relatively high impressions. I know some people love bidvertiser, but I just haven’t figured it out yet. I probably won’t try much more with them till I’m baller like some of you guys and can afford to throw away money

Bidvertiser Spend: 12.54 Bidvertiser CPC: $0.96 Bidvertiser Impressions: 75,291 Bidvertiser Clicks: 13 Bidvertiser Sales: 0

Bidvertiser Statistics

YAHOO

As with the last campaign, I started out with Yahoo, and then once I started getting traffic and clicks I paused the underperforming groups and migrated the performing ones to Bing and Bidvertiser. I did see one sale, so I made some of my investment back on this one, but not nearly as much as I had hoped, especially with my highly targeted ad groups, and ads per ad group. I am still confident in yahoo though because I had relatively high impressions over this amount of time, however my CPC was way high, I wished it would get down to what BING was doing, but apparently not.

YAHOO Spend: $156.92 YAHOO CPC: $0.71 YAHOO Impressions: 37,193 YAHOO Clicks: 220 YAHOO Sales: 1

Yahoo Statistics

BING

This was hands down my best experience ever with PPC. I had 3 sales getting me around $144 before removing my initial investment of $2.12. This is simply awesome. I don’t know why it dried up but I will be going back and revamping the campaign to hit BING with again because I haven’t seen sales like this ever before, especially with limited impressions and very limited clicks. Fucking awesome.

BING Spend: $2.12 BING CPC: $0.30 BING Impressions: 198 BING Clicks: 7 BING Sales: 3

Bing Statistics

SUMMARY

So let’s total it all up.

Total Spend across all networks: $171.58
Total Impressions across all networks: 112,682
Total Clicks across all networks: 240
Total Sales across all networks: 4
Total Commission amount: $192
Total Profit: $20.42

As you can see, I was profitable. Not very much, but I was profitable. So, this campaign was definitely a win for a PPC newbie like me. If you remember last time, I was still 80$ shy of actually turning a profit, so even $1 would be a win for me at this point.

What have I learned off this one? Bing apparently fucking rocks, or I just hit the right market at the right time – I guess we’ll see on the next test. I do think I’ll drop bidvertiser indefinitely and probably yahoo too since my spend was so high compared to Bing. Yahoo, nothing much, same old shit – I just need to refine my process with them, and probably develop more ads along the way – I just ran out of money to keep testing.

Now on to more testing.

Last summer was my first visit to an Affiliate Summit, which I went to in New York City, I thought it was a great time, and a lot of people to meet – however, I was still pretty newb at that point so I really wasn’t sure what kinds of questions I was supposed to be asking, who I should be talking to or even the right lingo to use. So, I mostly sat back and just absorbed like a sponge and used that knowledge to further my business over the next few months.

Affiliate Summit West was completely different, this time around I knew who to talk to, what questions I should be asking, and most important, how to make myself more money and enjoy the entrepreneurial lifestyle of never setting an alarm, and working when, and where I want.

This time around I met a lot more actual business contacts, and discussed things with them. However, I will note that the partying in Las Vegas is a little crazy – if you really want to conduct business I would suggest New York over Vegas – while there may be more people in Vegas, there’s also a lot more opportunity to get yourself into trouble and not pay attention to the real reason we’re there – monies.

Also, I know this has been said before, but the amount of paid women in Vegas is pretty much disgusting. Who cares if you get a shitload of pictures with your arm around some woman that cost 1000 bucks an hour, if you think that’s baller because of that then you need to give your head a shake. Sorry guys. New York has a lot more – REAL – women, that don’t charge by the hour and are more than happy to talk to you about your nerdy business. Trust me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting down Las Vegas, or ASW – it was a great time and I’ll be going next year for sure. I really do feel that more business can be conducted in a little more relaxed environment like New York though.

Contrary to the previous summit I went to – I already knew a bunch of people this time so it was a lot easier to get around and go see the town, and meet more people in the extended circle of internet marketers that I chill with. So that was a definite plus to the whole experience, and the meet market was absolutely huge in comparison to what I remember from New York – not to mention the exhibit space. There were so many exhibitors present, that I had to go back 3 times to pick up all the free shwag (yes, we all are suckers for the free tshirts that fall apart after 3 washes aren’t we? – hint hint – buy better shirts exhibitors!) and to meet all the interesting companies that were showing off the latest and greatest products that we can help them sell.

To me, that was the biggest benefit of Las Vegas and Affiliate Summit – was that the sheer amount of people, exhibitors and speakers surpassed that of New York. Basically what I’m saying here is, go to Las Vegas to find a shitload of offers, and then hit up New York to conduct more business and get those offers sending dollars to your bank account.

But, what if you still don’t know where to get traffic for these wonderful offers?

Enter Ad:Tech. I wasn’t familiar with this conference until early last year – remember, I said I am still considerably newb compared to other folks out there. Anyway, I heard it time and time again, if you’re looking for traffic hit up Ad:Tech.

So, that’s what I’ll be doing this coming April with a few friends. These two conferences put together, from what I’ve heard anyway – are the best stepping stones into really ramping up business in this industry. Affiliate Summit for the products and ideas, and Ad:Tech for the traffic to run to your shiny new offers. It’s really a simple concept, but nobody ever said it to me like that so maybe this will help someone else out too.

I hope to see a bunch of you again at Ad:Tech, and the coming Affiliate Summit East in New York City.

Fun times brah’s.

These are lame, but always slightly funny

No. I wasn’t paid for this post, just got this random email from them explaining their product and to check it out – probably because OpenX has my email address or because I’m on their consultancy list with one of my other companies.

I thought I’d contact you to introduce you to Adtelligence, a new analytics application which will change the way agencies, ad networks and publishers will monitor the performance of campaigns, and report information to their advertisers, and help you reinforce the value of OpenX to your clients.

Adtelligence sits on top of OpenX (*) and offers a level of intuitiveness, customization and convenience that are unknown in ad serving and campaign reporting… and at no cost for the product currently online.

(*) Adtelligence is however compatible with the OpenX Community Download and OpenX Enterprise only. We’re not able to accommodate users of the OpenX Community Hosted product.

At a later stage, Adtelligence will also deliver inventory optimization and yield management capabilities, helping your clients and any media agencies, large publishers and ad networks make the right decisions regarding the management of their advertising inventory. Since we’re planning to charge these future applications, we will want to discuss with you at that point a model that will let you benefit financially from the commercialization of these applications to your clients.

We’d love to get your views on Adtelligence, and would therefore recommend you take a look at the product demo at www.adtelligence.net. Also feel free to start using the product with your clients, if you think the product is right for them.

Thank you for helping us gain visibility with your clients and future OpenX users. We’d be happy to speak with you over the phone, in the event you’d like to know more about our project and company.

And, here’s their video.

If I remember I’ll post an update after I check it out and what my thoughts are on it.

ASW Post is still severely late, but it’s coming I swear.

This year I did it a bit differently than last year, I took a friend of mine down with me because he is thinking about getting his product into the marketing world we live in and away from the traditional outlets he’s currently using. It was cool to have someone to share expenses with too.

We got our trip booked up the day before Christmas for a pretty good rate, I think it was like 580$ Canadian, after tax for Jan 16 – 22^nd. I think we were a little drunk when we ordered the tickets though because we didn’t realize our trip back had 3 stops – oh well, that’s what you get for being cheap. Who needs first class when I had 1500$ left to spend in Vegas instead eh!

This year was funny I probably took more photos of our trips through the airports than I did of most of vegas and the show – I have a couple, but they’re on other peoples real cameras since I only had my mobile with me for picture taking.

Lets start with this monstrosity, it was something my buddy ordered at the Fox Sports Bar at the Detroit Airport. Whats funny is, his beer was nearly double the cost of all this sickening food. And we wonder why both our countries have problems with obesity!

He did manage to eat most of it. I didn’t touch it. I’m against everything Fox especially their food.

There was also this wicked tunnel at the airport. I was saying that it’d be rad to hold a flashmob down there for 3 minutes and then all run to get onto a flight somewhere. Sadly it’s behind security, but check this shit out – the lights and music are all in sync and everything!

After being mesmerized by the tunnel a few times we went to another bar and chilled and then went to another and chilled and then finally it was time for our flight to Las Vegas. 4 Hour flight nothing special. I wasn’t used to American airlines or Continental, they didn’t have TV’s in the seats and they were super oldschool compared to what I’m used to from Air Canada.

We eventually got to Vegas after an uneventful flight and went to our hotel. Then we went to Meet up with BofU, Brentdev, Enigmabomb and Russell P  for an evening of drinking and walking around the strip. Went home to sleep after that. Later that day met up with MattF too, there’s always a soft-spot for other canucks in the scene.

Took these the next day outside the conference, the only sunny day we had!

and the rest of the days looked something like this

But that’s okay cause we got to go to exclusive parties at in the Palms Towers later the next evening to stay out of the rain. Some crazy shit went down there, and I learned a new term “Making It Rain”, very interesting indeed.Thanks again to Gigidawg for getting us in. Also met up with Ian from Opes Media that night for a bit, always great to see old friends. Later on we met up with the Off White Hat for some drunken gambling with his friend Duncan the Architect/Photographer.

This was the view from the party, sorry I was shaky, it was an open bar. Very open.

That big red building is the Rio, where Affiliate Summit West was held. Cool.

Some cool LED Lights

That’s looking up the palms tower where the party was at.

Then we went home to nap for more partying later.

Where Brentdev, Enigmabomb, myself and my buddy chatted up some girls from Ireland. Fun times. Bitches still haven’t friended us on facebook yet, wtf!

I don’t know what that paper is, maybe my phone number? haha.

wtf is this

6 pound burrito? gross. GROSS.

view from Jeff of Equte’s and Sam of CompeteSEO hotel room. There’s the other Palms tower and the Rio in the day time. I don’t really like heights I couldn’t get closer than a foot to the balcony up here haha.

I was promoting a new venture with stickers around Vegas and we met these crazy fools from New Zealand. This guy climbed a light for me to stick one of the stickers up. Thanks Jeremy!

Taken early morning, drunk stumbling around Vegas. I like the composition.

Cool picture of the Flamingo. I like their marquee, it’s cold chillin oldschool flava.

The infamous AKMG skateboard Fiasco that Brentter, Myself, @phillian and Sam were involved in.Thanks Eleah you guys are pretty cool!

And finally. Let’s not forget the most important rule.

So that’s all the pictures I took that I can show you, but it gives you a different perspective of what these conferences are also about besides the bling bling and showboating lifestyle, it’s also about friends, seeing the sights, networking with associates on a more personal level and just generally having a blast.

Later today I’ll write up an actual informative post about my thoughts on ASW 2010 Las Vegas this year.

But, that’s okay because there’s something new out there that makes all of this history. I found out about these things called a “Poken”. In basic terms, these things are electronic business cards. They’re a small USB device that stores all of your key information so you can quickly transmit it to others. This means no more business card printing which is great for the environment and no chance of running out of cards to hand out – of course, if you lose the device you’re kinda screwed, but how often do you lose your keys? I assume, never.

So, why do smart marketers need one of these? Simple, it’ll cut down on your luggage if you’re bringing 1000 cards and you can keep everything organized in one spot and quickly download it to your computer or laptop when you need to. No more rummaging through napkins, post it notes or whatever else you have peoples contact information written on. Not to mention that these Pokens come in cool colors and styles – ranging from business professional to cutesy little ninjas and monsters.

So, how do they work? Just as you’d expect in today’s technology driven world – you simply walk up to anyone else with a Poken, touch them together and you’ve transferred your contact information. Could it really get any simpler? I don’t think so.

Obviously it will take some time for everyone to have these, so the transition might involve some hand writing and converting information to get it on your Poken, but in the long term I really think lots of people will start using these and it will only get better and easier as time passes.

I personally love this idea, and will definitely be picking one up to use at Affiliate Summit West, now the problem is deciding which one I want to get!

See you at ASW 2010 and I’ll even let you touch my Poken if you ask nicely!

I’m not a super ninja with rewrite rules, so I had my buddy Eli Sand from nerdscene give me a hand on these. Also note, depending on your configuration options these might need to be changed. The key thing to note is to convert the (.*) to ([^_]) instead.

Here are the original Apache Rewrite rules;

RewriteRule ^item-(.*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*).html$ auction.php?title=$1&item=$2&country=$3&ccid=$4
RewriteRule ^item-(.*)_(.*)_(.*).html$ auction.php?title=$1&item=$2&country=$3
RewriteRule ^item-(.*)_(.*).html$ auction.php?title=$1&item=$2

Here are the typical redirect rules for your LIGHTTPD Wordpress Vhost;

url.rewrite = (
“^/(wp-admin|wp-includes|wp-content)/(.*)” => “$0″,
“^/(.*)\.(.+)$” => “$0″,
“^/(.+)/?$” => “/index.php/$1″,
)

And, here’s what we’ve added to make it compatible with PHPBay

url.rewrite = (
“^/item-([^_]+)_([^_]+)_([^_]+)_([^_]+).html$” => “/auction.php?title=$1&item=$2&country=$3&ccid=$4″,
“^/item-([^_]+)_([^_]+)_([^_]+).html$” => “/auction.php?title=$1&item=$2&country=$3″,
“^/item-([^_]+)_([^_]+).html$” => “/auction.php?title=$1&item=$2″,
“^/(wp-admin|wp-includes|wp-content)/(.*)” => “$0″,
“^/(.*)\.(.+)$” => “$0″,
“^/(.+)/?$” => “/index.php/$1″,
)

Pretty easy stuff really, but took a minute to wrap our heads around the conversion of the rules.

It looks like Amazon is partnering up with Blogger, to provide automatic insertion of ads from the marketplace into your site. This sounds pretty good in theory, but also opens up the opportunity for shitloads of MFA (read, made for amazon) sites to clutter the tubes. Anyway, just thought this would be something interesting to discuss especially with the decline of EPN lately.

Here’s the letter I received;

Dear Associate,

Today we are excited to announce Amazon Associates for Blogger, a direct integration between Amazon Associates and Blogger.  This new collaboration enables Bloggers to monetize their content by adding relevant Amazon products to their blog posts without interrupting the blog editing process.  Amazon Associates for Blogger is available now available here on Associates Central. [ http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/blogger ] Amazon Associates who dont have a Google Blogger account can set up a free Blogger account with their Associates ID and start earning right away.

The new tool allows Bloggers to add links and images to their blog posts in just 2 easy steps:

1.Bloggers highlight the relevant text and the Amazon Product Finder will search Amazons millions of products and recommend the ones that are most closely associated with the text

2.Bloggers can then insert a link or image to that product which includes their Associates ID, enabling them to earn up to 15% in referral fees from Amazon

Bloggers will also be able to show dynamic content in their blog sidebar using a new set of integrated Sidebar gadgets, such as gadgets for MP3 clips from the Amazon DRM-free music store, an Amazon Deals gadget, and an Amazon Search box.

Also as part of this new integration, Bloggers who dont have a free Amazon Associates account can create one directly within Blogger so tell your friends that use Blogger how they can start earning with Amazon Associates today.

Please tell us what you think of our new Amazon Associates for Blogger feature using hashtag #AMZN4BLGR on Twitter [ http://twitter.com/ ] or contact us via the  contact form [ http://tinyurl.com/2nurmj ].  We want to hear from you!

Sincerely,
The Amazon Associates Program

Did you guys get it too? What do you think? Are you going to attempt more with amazon now? or just stick with EPN or forget them both?

With this in mind I’ve put together a little list of some common things to market every month of the year. I realize this list is far from complete, very subjective and maybe even speculative. But let’s face it certain things “always” work, and are here to stay.

So, with that said, here’s the list myself and the Off White Hat came up with.

Feel free to add more in the comments and I’ll update the post.

January:

• Debt Consolidation
• Diet
• Gym
• Exercise / Fitness Equipment
• Vacations
• Dating
• Movie Tickets / Event Tickets
• Superbowl
• Electronic Cigarettes
• Education

February:

• Greeting Cards
• Valentine’s Day
• Gifts
• Chocolate
• Movie Tickets / Event Tickets
• Olympics if occurring

March:

• Yard Tools
• Spring Break Vacations
• Shoes
• Clothing
• Easter (Depending)
• Tax Time

April:

• Yard Tools
• Garden Supplies (Seeds, etc)
• Rubber Boots
• Gas Cards
• Mother’s Day
• Easter (Depending)
• Tax Time
• Sleep Aids / Stress Aids

May:

• Mosquito Repellant
• Father’s Day
• School Graduations
• Stanley Cup
• Kids Gifts

June:

• Weddings
• Canada Day / 4^th of July
• Summer Vacations
• School Graduations
• Stanley Cup
• Gas Cards

July:

• Weddings
• Summer Olympics
• Cottages / Camping
• Gas Cards

August:

• Weddings
• Fishing Equipment
• Hockey / Sports Equipment
• Back to School
• Gas Cards
• Clothing
• Shoes
• Makeup
• Cottages / Camping
• Education / Continuing Education

September:

• Thanks Giving (Canada)
• Halloween

October:

• Thanks Giving (USA)
• Halloween
• Winter Jackets / Winter Wear

November:

• Black Friday
• Thanksgiving (USA)
• The Snuggie!
• Black Friday

December:

• Christmas
• Electronics
• Kwanza
• Hanukkah
• Gift Offers
• Payday Loans
• Kids Gifts

Bonus Constants Category

• Caskets / Funeral (walmart now sells caskets)
• Alcohol
• Poker / Gaming
• Acne
• Teeth Whitening
• Weight Loss
• Births of Children / Birthdays in General
• Fleshlights

We hope this list can help you when you’re trying to decide which niche to tackle next and it’s coming up on the end of a month. I’m sure we missed tonnes, especially in the international markets but this is a start. Don’t forget to check out the Off White Hat for more handy tips just like this one.

This morning, after working on the new campaign I’m launching I took a break for about .. oh 3 hours, and just did procrastination shit like catching up on emails, working on some beats in ableton live, doing some client work, and catching up on rss. I was reading this design blog and he had a link off to this place that has free databases, that you can download. What?. Yup. Free CSV databases of all sorts of things.

Hiking Trails, Restaurants in California, Beer Comparisons, Etc.

It’s called Factual.

I got a database as a test of those restaurants in california, and it was 54k rows, and 20 megabyte download. Niche stuff, free, constantly updated, and already formatted for you.

Who knew!

On another note, I also found this cool site for a bunch of free photoshop or illustrator logos on it. I’ve seen most of these before, or very similar ones, but they are good as samples to go from or to modify into your creations.

While not directly affiliated marketing related, these types of tools are great for any web entrepreneur to have in his or her toolbox.

I’m sure this is “teh old” to some, but it was pretty cool of a find to me.