I am throwing out an open challenge to all bloggers out there. It’s very simple:

Give up one of your ad spaces for charity!

Let’s face it, many of us have done pretty well making money online - and giving up a little blog space isn’t going hurt anyone financially. Just think of all the donations that can be driven to charity of your choice by giving them free impressions. I’m not talking about charities with an affiliate program either, just anonymous direct links to their donation page. If all the hundreds of bloggers in the “make money online” niche gave up 1 block of adspace, the impact would be incredible!

It doesn’t matter if its a 125×125 tile, a 120×600 banner, or even a text link. If you are all booked up on ads, I’m sure you can find some space to carve out on your blog.  I shrunk some images and shifted things around a bit to create a permanent space in my referral links area for the charity link. See, no excuses! If you have an empty ad space its even easier. Just drop a charity link in there instead of the “space available” image.

The charity I selected to start is the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I have been lucky enough to raise several thousand dollars for the LAF in the past and they money really goes to a great cause. We all have been affected by cancer either personally or through a friend or family memeber. It’s time we help find a cure.

Some come on all you bloggers.  Accept the challenge and give up 1 for charity!

As promised here is a technique I have been using with great success for a long time in some PPC campaigns. When using this method I routinely see click through rates on my ads of 25-45%. This leads to tons of cheap clicks and great quality scores. Also, the boost from these highly clicked adgroups can help raise the overall quality score of your whole account.  The secret is, targeting Spanish speakers.

There are an estimated 45 million Spanish speakers in the US. If you aren’t specifically writing ads for this massive audience, you are really ignoring a highly converting group. The thing is, not many people are writing paid ads in Spanish. So when someone types in a search in Spanish and your ad comes up matching their search, CTR goes through the roof. The market is still wide open in some niches. This can be implemented on the adgroup level of a current campaign, or a whole new campaign to capture the market.

You don’t have to speak Spanish to write your ads and landing pages, just use any of the online translators to convert your current ad copy. Then convert your existing keywords to Spanish.  So there you have it, a simple technique that works ridiculously well.  Enjoy and I hope it makes you a lot of money.

I was looking at the stats yesterday for the last year of a successful campaign I have been running. I ran an average yearly eCPC and compared it to the affiliate network average. I was surprised to see my average was 83.9% higher. So how am I doing so much better than others running the same offer? Here are some reasons its going so well, and some tips that can help you outperform the crowd as well.

1. I have optimized the campaign to the highest degree. Once I saw the campaign had promise, I tore it down and rebuilt it from the ground up with awesome structure. Then I kept checking reports all the time and honed everything down intto a conversion machine. This is nothing but hard work and time investment.

2. I know the niche inside and out.  I researched everything there is to know about the industry to a level that a wall street analyst would.  I checked out consumer demographics, the major players in the industry, what moves the market for the products and services, etc.  Then I applied all that knowledge back into step #1.

3. I researched the trends.  I know what days of the week convert, what months are hot, and when things are slow.  This information is can be utilized to forecast spending trends and optimize the campaign even more.

4. Success breeds success.  Good campaigns take on a momentum of their own.  The more money you make, the higher your payouts, the better terms you get, which lead to more money.  It’s like a feedback loop that keeps building and building.

I think it all boils down to knowing your niche better than your competitor and just outworking everyone else.  If you are willing to do that, you can easily outperform the averages by a large margin too.

This has been a crazy week at the CDF Networks plex. So many new projects are in the works, I can’t wait to share them with everyone when they are done. I haven’t had time to write a proper blog post, but here are a few miscellaneous items:

• MSN adcenter is about to beta launch their long awaited desktop editor. Yes this will re-write the Adcenter playbook as we know it. Have you signed up to be a pilot program tester?

• Started exchanging a few emails with the mentor contest winner Matthew. We are in the process of assessing his background, what offers he wants to try, and what networks he may need to join. It should be a great experience for both of us, and I’ll keep everyone posted on the progress

• I recently worked out a deal with Miva for a $50 credit for new signups. You may have seen the button on my sidebar. This is not the standard $20 off coupon that they are running on Commission Junction, but truly an exclusive offer for this blog. If you ever wanted to try Miva with no risk, jump on this one.

• We nearly reached 1,000 subscribers this week. I have always said to myself when the blog hits 1,000 I am going to give out a great tip that I have never seen publically discussed before on any blog. So look for that probably next week!

Have a great weekend everyone.

First of all, I really want to thank everyone who entered the contest. I am truly blown away by the response. I expected maybe 20 entries, not well over 100! It makes picking a winner extremely difficult with so many deserving readers of the blog. If you didn’t win, rest assured this has inspired me to write even better content for you guys. I have some really great posts coming up and an new guide that should help everyone achieve the goal that we all have of financial independence through affiliate marketing. Depending on how this first one goes, I may have to run this contest quarterly.

So without further ado - the winner is:

Matthew

Here was his entry:

“Chad,

Pick me because I’m one of the hardest working individuals you’ll ever have met. Unfortunately, books have not helped me much over the years and I haven’t had much success, even after putting in 70-100 hours of work per week.

I’ve been fighting Anxiety for several years now and I haven’t been able to get a normal job, so I’m stuck for a while trying to earn online. Any help would be great!

Matthew“

I was really surprised to get this package yesterday in the mail from Market Leverage. I met Debby from Market Leverage briefly at Affiliate Summit in Vegas and was impressed with her, but honestly I had never heard of her company. It turns out they are an affiliate network with some pretty interesting offers. One thing that really stand out looking at their website is the 5% lifetime referral program. With most networks cutting their referral programs, this blows everyone else out of the water.

It’s pretty common to get gifts from affiliate networks that you work with, but I’m amazed that a company sends a package like this to someone who’s not even a member of the network! The gym bag, polo shirt, blanket, and jacket are really high quality, not to mention the Vuzix iWear AV230 , USB key, books, and even a white water rafting trip gift certificate! I’ll definitely be taking that trip. Thanks guys!

Domain choice is a hugely important step in any new PPC to affiliate campaign. I touched on this subject briefly almost a year ago in this post about display urls, but I wanted to expand on that. Your choice of domain names to host your landing pages will have a big impact on conversion rates. So here are some quick strategies I usually follow concerning domains to be used for PPC.

1. Always buy a new domain for every offer. Don’t try to use the strategy of buying a general domain and then splitting it off for every offer you test. This will lead to lower conversion rates and may kill what could be a promising niche before you even get started.

2. Don’t buy a overly hyphenated domain that looks spammy. A domain like buy-my-products-now.com does not instill confidence in the consumer. Short, dot com names have always worked best for me. Never buy dot orgs.

3. I have had some success buying names that sound similar to the offer. This way when the searcher clicks from the landing page to the offer page, they are often unaware anything has changed, especially if you are keeping the same look/feel of the offer page. This leads to high conversions.

4. Most often, buying a domain with the keyword in the title works best. When someone sees the keyword they searched for also in your display URL, it reinforces the relevance of your ad. That follows through all the way to the conversion.

5. Once an offer shows promise, I buy multiple domains. Domains should be split tested for conversion rates just like ad copy. It’s amazing how keeping everything the same, except the domain name can affect conversion rates. I have seen a 7.2% increase in conversions by picking a better name. How many names should you buy? I would keep testing until you are satisfied you have the best domain possible. I have tested10-15 domain names on my most long running offer now.

Keep in mind, these strategies are for PPC to offer campaigns and are different that strategies for building a long term site. I am not factoring in brand building or SEO like you would if you were building an a site for organic results.

I have been wanting to give something back to my readers lately. Rather than giving away some t-shirt or mug, I thought the most valuable thing I can give my time. Here is what I am offering:

I will mentor your for a week for free. I will spend 15-20 minutes a day for a week to help someone get started in PPC to affiliate marketing.

Here are some of the things I will help the winner with:

• Selecting a test offer
• Evaluating the offer and niche
• Choosing a network to run the offer
• Choosing the best PPC source to test
• Keyword research
• Campaign structure planning
• Breaking up keywords into adgroups
• Writing ad copy
• Setting up split tests
• Determining the best bid prices
• Landing page analysis
• Setting up tracking on landing pages
• Analyzing test results

Now, I won’t be doing all the work. That is up to you. But I will do what I can to get you started and advise you every step of the way. What you get out of it will depend on the effort you choose to put in. All I ask is that you are sincere in your desire to learn, and that you are flexible with your expectations. This won’t be a formal session at the same time every day, but will have to fall when I have a few minutes to spend with you.

Want to enter?

Its simple

1. Contest is open to subscribers only, so if you haven’t already - subscribe to my feed.

2. Reply to this post with a comment of 2-3 sentences about why you would like some help getting started in PPC-affiliate marketing. Please don’t write a book, just 2-3 sentences.

How will the winner be picked?

It will not be a random draw. I will pick the winner by my favorite reply. I will pick the winner 1 week from today on April 30th.

Rules and Disclaimer:

I make no promises about any amount of money you will make as a result of this, but I’ll do my best to help.

Please don’t enter if you are already making good money. I want to help a rookie get started.

I may ask you to keep certain techniques confidential, if so please be prepared to honor that request.

UPDATE:   Last chance to submit your entry is 10 PM P.S.T.  4/29/08 - I will announce the winner Wednesday morning.