One the most common questions I continue to be asked is “should I use the Google content network?”

The Google content network is still one of the most misunderstood forms of online advertising. The confusion is understandable.  At first all the experts and gurus said to “just turn it off”. It was thought that it didn’t convert for CPA offers. After a while people started realizing that it does in fact work quite well, it just requires a different skill set than normal pay per click advertising on Google.  So where does the content network stand today at the start of 2010?

The content network on Google is alive and kicking and stronger than ever.  Although things like PPV are getting a lot of press these days for cheap clicks, I still believe the content network is one of the best sources for cheap clicks.   I am talking really cheap like .01 to .02 cents a click.    Here are the some stats for a campaign we have running strictly on the content network.

For this one campaign Google delivered over 54,000 clicks for about $1,000.   That’s among the cheapest paid traffic you can to buy.   This example is obviously on the lowest end of the scale, there are other campaigns we pay up to $1.00 per click on content.  But the clicks are usually much lower than you would pay for Google PPC.

Content traffic does convert as well.   It’s just a matter of tracking everything, finding the converting sites that your ads are displayed on, and focusing your optimization on those sites.  There are no specific rules for which sites to exclude from displaying your ads.  For example, a lot of people say to exclude gmail.com, but I have seen conversions come from there.  Just like everything else, you have to test for your specific niche.

Quality score is important on the content network, although I have found not as strict as normal Google Pay Per Click.  So if you have a campaign that just won’t run on the PPC network, its possible Google will allow it for content.  As you can see by the example stats, a .09% CTR would be horrible on PPC but runs fine on content in the 3-4 ad position range.

So as 2010 starts, I’d say the content network is still an excellent source of cheaper traffic and should continue to be for the foreseeable future.   It doesn’t work for every niche and offer, but definitely should be tested to find out.

With the social ad networks like Facebook and Myspace getting all the attention these days, its easy to forget about the #1 largest ad network: the Google content network.   With an 80% reach of all Internet users and 140 Billion page views a month, the Google Content network drives some serious traffic.   And just like social networks, you can also do specific GEO targeting and some demographic targeting.

But are the clicks still cheap?  Here is screenshot of a couple test campaigns from just last month.  These 2 campaigns received over 20,000 clicks at .02 per click!

The Content network can still be a goldmine of cheap traffic, if used correctly.   So what is a simple game plan to access that traffic?

Basic content network strategy.

1.  Always create separate content network and search network campaigns.

2.  Create your data gathering campaign.  This is generally a keyword targeted campaign.  Use only about 15-25  keywords per adgroup.  Duplicate keywords are fine across adgroups, this establishes a theme that Google uses to trigger your ad.  Individual keywords don’t matter, its the theme of the keywords in an adgroup that matter.  Use lots of negative keywords to hone down your themes.

3. Tracking performance and being able to interpret the data and reports is what I consider the biggest component of any campaigns success.  In order to do that you will need to set up your landing site with tracking.  Install conversion tracking on your thank you or success page.  Also install Google Analytics on every page of your destination site.  Set up Goals and Funnels in Google Analytics for each step of the landing page to conversion process.   (Those steps aren’t just for a content network campaign,  I recommend them for any landing site you are driving traffic to.)   Now you are in a position to see all the possible data from your campaign.

4.  Run a Placement report in Adwords to show what sites on the content network are showing your ads.   Be sure to include conversions in your report data.  Then sort the report by conversions.   The results shown are the gold mine of data that you are looking for.

5. You can now use the data to create a new Placement targeted content campaigns with the URLs of the converting sites.   In those, I would continue to use keyword based adgroups as well as adding image ads.  If the image ads also convert well on those placements, you can split them off into another campaign.  These Placement campaigns should convert very well based on your previous data.

6.  You can also continue to optimize the original keyword campaign by using the site exclusion tool to block the non converting sites.  For the converting adgroups you can increase bids, and narrow your demographic targeting.  Eventually the keyword campaign should provide good results on its own, as well as  a further testbed to extract more converting URLs for the Placement campaign.

That’s just one basic strategy, there are many ways to use the content network.  But however you use it, don’t ignore this valuable traffic source!

By now most people have heard of MSN rebranding their search to Bing. We have been playing around with the search engine, and are actually impressed with the features.  The left sidebar with topic categories, related searches and search history is very effective when searching.   I also like the pop up text preview of the organic listings.    When searching for people, Bing seems to heavily weigh social media results like Twitter accounts in their SERPS.

All this is great, but how can you use Bing to make more money as a marketer?   Timing for one thing.  Microsoft is throwing $100 million into a media blitz.   With this kind of hype, its a great time to take advantage of the increased traffic bump to the new service.

If you are using Adcenter, you are already on Bing.  Results from old PPC campaigns are shown automatically on Bing.  But you might want to check your Adcenter campaigns and see what this media push is doing to your campaigns.  Most of our campaigns are showing increased impressions and clicks.

Positioning has also changed a bit.   Some searches we have been testing show as many as 11 paid results on the first page.  They also display some highlighted main column listings at the bottom of the 1st results page.  That is a first for PPC.   With all these positions available, your campaigns could radically change as you ads shift around.  Again, its a good time to re-evaluate your current PPC ads to track the results of the Bing launch.

It’s still too early to tell how this will affect the bottom line of revenue, but so far results are promising.   What do you think of Bing?

One of the biggest gains you can make in the profits of your campaigns is to optimize the conversion process.  A great way to do this is by using conversion funnels in Google Analytics.  By setting this up, you can see exactly where visitors are being lost during the conversion process through a visual interface.

The process is fairly easy.  You log into your Google Analytics account and create a new goal.  That goal will usually be the URL of your thank you or success page.  Then you define the intermediate pages that lead up to that goal page.  The first page might be your landing page, then a payment page, then the thank you page.  This is your conversion funnel process.  You then install the tracking code on those pages and you are done.

Once the data is being gathered you can go into the Goals section and view the report Funnel Visualization.  This will show you exactly what is happening to your visitors at each step in the process.  By seeing how many are bouncing out on each step, you know just where to focus your efforts to increase conversions.  This combined with the Website Optimizer are the most powerful tools I have found for increasing profits of your landing pages.

Here’s a short overview of the process:

Over the weekend I was reminiscing about some of my earliest efforts to make money online. I tried a lot of strange things, most are long forgotten, but there are a few I remember. As I look back now, some of those ideas were surprisingly ahead of their time. I always had a full time job so these were just things I tried in my spare time for fun.

1997? - The first website I ever built was called The Downhill Scene. I was heavily into downhill mountain bike racing at the time so I learned HTML and made a really crude site. Compressed images, tables with borders, the works… I had no idea that monetizing a website even existed back then, but it was a fun site. I even had web 2.0 style user generated content with an HTML guestbook.

2001- I had an idea to write what is now known as an Ebook and sell it from a website. It was a 5 page PDF guide on how to secure your PC against spyware and viruses. I put the site up and waited around for traffic, and actually sold a few copies. I was an info product marketer without even knowing it. I even used Ebay auctions to sell it as well as drive traffic back the site to make sales there. I think that might have been against the rules.

2002 - I signed up for a weekly email from Dell computers that sent out coupon codes. I would take the coupon codes and buy notebook computers, usually at about 30% off, then sell them on Ebay. This actually worked for a while and I made about $100 profit on each computer. I would buy 10 or so at a time, store them, manage the auctions, deal with shipping, returns - it was a total nightmare. But I was pretty proud of myself to actually make money on my own.

2003 - This was a big breakthrough when I finally realized you didn’t actually have to have a product to make money online. So instead of managing all the headaches of the Ebay stuff I would try affiliate marketing. I made a website with the coupon codes then got in the Dell affiliate program. I even made a form on my site to collect email addresses to notify people when the codes were released. I pasted those email addresses manually into a spreadsheet and did the emailing manually as well in Outlook. I had no idea at the time, but I was a list building marketer! This was going pretty well, until Dell threatened to sue me for copyright infringement.

2005 - I learned about Adsense and started building all kinds of sites for that. Then I learned pay per click, tied it into affiliate marketing and the rest is history. I never really got serious about making my living online until 2005 , but after deciding thats what I wanted to do things really took off.

What crazy things did you try back in the day?

With so much interest in social network advertising lately, I thought it would be interesting to take a poll to see how affiliate marketers are using social networks these day. This will also help me with targeting new case studies and posts I am working on. Thanks for helping out with your answers!

Where are you advertising? Mostly Pay Per Click Mostly Social Networks Both about the same View Results At which social network do you spend the most? Facebook Myspace Other View Results Which interface or ad creation process is better? Facebook Myspace View Results What is your favorite targeting technique on Facebook? Location Age Sex Keyword Education Companies Relationship View Results What percentage of ads get accepted on Facebook Under 10% 10-30% 30-50% 50-80% Almost all get accepted View Results Do you have a Facebook account manager? Yes No View Results In 2009, do you estimate you will spend? More on social network advertsing Less on social network advertsing View Results

We are making a big push around here in 2009 to automate as many things as possible and make life easier. To that end, we have been testing a lot of new tools lately. Not sales letter page things, but actual tools that I think show some promise. Although most end up not working as advertised, some are actually turning out to be worth using.

With all the emphasis we are putting on building our landing sites for SEO as well as PPC, we needed a fast way to build up links. This technique helps with quality score, bid prices, and eventually free traffic to affiliate sites. One tool we tested that does work as promised is Social Submitter. The software automates the submitting of links to social bookmarking sites. It can submit to 160 social bookmarking sites and is a very advanced program. You can create filters for your submissions, use proxies, and see the status of your bookmark submissions all within the program.

I almost hesitate to blog about this one, because I think its a great advantage to have. This could be used to promote straight affiliate sites, or just bookmark your blog entries to get more exposure for your site.  But with a price tag of $150, most people will pass this one up. As far as I’m concerned though, any tool that helps make money is always worth the price. They have a demo you can use to try the program to a limited number of sites for 3 days, if you want to test drive it. Is anyone else using this software to boost affiliate sites yet?

Let’s face it, Google pretty much knows all.  Sometimes its in your best interest to keep them from knowing all they can.  Say you were to have certain solid Adwords campaigns that are running well in an account, but wanted to maybe try some other ideas with landing pages that are thin with no quality score.  If you wanted to prevent that main account from being tied to the “experimental” account, here are a few suggestions for the test account:

• Don’t use Google conversion tracking
• Don’t use Google analytics
• Never accept data sharing
• Spread the affiliate domains on different hosts, IP ranges, and DNS servers.
• Always use whois protection.

If you did this, the campaigns should be isolated from Google’s reach.