Tim submitted some questions for topics. I will answer the easy ones now, but the first 2 will have to be reserved for later, as they are huge topics on their own.
Question: How many keywords do you think is a good idea to start with? Are you an advocate of thousands of keywords or just a few?
Answer: I usually have in the thousands. If I am doing a test, I will come up with probably 2,000-4,000 keywords so it will be a good test. Then if things look promising I will expand from there.
Question: How do you start out bidding? Low? High?
Answer: I find out the average eCPC of the offer and back calculate from there my bid prices. I’ll have a break even point in mind when I set the the pricing for my PPC campaign. I come in at a good mid range bid and see what happens.
Question: Do you build your own sites or outsource the work?
Answer: If we are talking landing pages for affiliate stuff, I build my own sites for the most part. I outsource some of the graphic work though. I would love to outsource everything, but I still haven’t found someone good that I can trust. For quick landing pages, it’s usually easier to just get it done myself.
Question: Do you use PHP in any capacity? How so?
Answer: I use PHP on almost everything. Almost all my landing pages have some php code in them. For things like cloaking links, geo-targeting, click tracking, stuff like that…
haha
Chad,
Thanks so much for answering my questions! I don’t know if anyone else has seen these but I have found these issues to be incredibly complex and some of the toughest parts of succeeding as an affiliate. I only wish others could see your responses and learn. You are certainly the real deal. I kind of found your blog by accident off of Shoemoney but I saw you post on digitalpoint as well. Again, thank you so much! You no doubt know how tough a lot of these things are to grasp for people getting started. I’ll look forward to reading your future posts.
Take care,
Tim