Someone asked me how I create my framed landing page. It is actually pretty simple to do and its quite similar to my previous posts in November 2004 about my LinksBetween.com cloaking web site.

Here’s How You Can Have Your Very Own Framed Landing Page:

1. Own your very own web domain and get a web hosting account to store your files.
2. Either use your domain name or create a subdomain at your default domain name. For example, I could simply use VincentRich.com or a subdomain like GoogleAdWords.VincentRich.com. You do this in the control panel of your web hosting account.
3. Use an affiliate cloaking software like Affiliate Diamond or Affiliate Cloner to encrypt your affiliate URL in a file called "index.html".

   
   In the screenshot above I used a "secure redirect page" which is actually a frame.

   
   Next, I’ll save it as "index.html" and we now have a framed landing page file!

4. Now we need to upload index.html to the proper folder at our web host. If you created a subdomain, it should be placed in a new folder that corresponds to the subdomain name. If you plan to use it at the root folder, then simply upload it to the "public_html" folder.

Please note that you do not need to call it "index.html". You may use whatever filename you want. I use "index.html" because I want people to visit GoogleAdWords.VincentRich.com and see my page. If you do not use "index.html", your browser won’t display anything. You will have to specifiy the full path like GoogleAdWords.VincentRich.com/myfilename.html or VincentRich.com/myfilename.html.

A Word of Caution….

Google actually doesn’t like this but they are not doing anything about it yet. I’ve been using it since November 2004 without any problems at all. Read my previous post about Google’s answer about these framed landing pages. Please use them at your own risk.

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | No Comments »

Last week I emailed Google Adwords support with the following question:

Hello Google,

I have 1 last question to clarify with you.

In your email:

"Please note that your Display URL must match the URL of your landing
page, and you may not simply frame another site."

When you say I may not simply frame another site, do you mean:

I cannot purchase domain.com and use the domain masking feature to link
to the merchant’s site?

e.g. FreeShoes.com -> frame redirects -> www.amazon.com

But can I do this?

1. I purchase FreeShoes.com
2. I create FreeShoes.com/nike.html
3. FreeShoes.com/nike.html frames to amazon.com Nike shoes page

Is this OK since the display URL and landing URL are the same?

Sincerely,

Vincent

I’ll share with you a little secret… This is what I have been doing for months now! And it still works without having any of my ads getting banned. But I fear Google will find out sooner or later.

Anyway, here’s what Google has to say about this:

Hello Vincent,

Thank you for your email and patience. I understand that you would like to
know if we acceptable for you to purchase FreeShoes.com, then create
FreeShoes.com/nike.html, and then finally have FreeShoes.com/nike.html
frame to amazon.com Nike shoes page. Unfortunately, the description of
this setup is still framing another site.

For more information about this change, please review the January 2005
Google AdWords service announcement:
http://adwords.google.com/select/news/sa_jan05.html.

We allow affiliates to use AdWords advertising. Please note that we’ll
only display one ad per results page for advertisers sharing the same
top-level domain in the Display URL. This means that if you’re an
affiliate advertiser, your ad may not show for a query because another
affiliate or the website that runs the affiliate program also has ads
using the same (or a similar) domain in the Display URL.

If you have additional questions, please visit AdWords Support at
https://adwords.google.com/support, where you’ll find answers to many
frequently asked questions.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising
available.

Sincerely,

Justin
The Google AdWords Team

Ok… Google say this is still a framed site.

So if you plan to do something like that, please do it at your own risk! Its like beating the system but I know the guys at Google will learn about it sooner or later and disable the ads that do this.

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | No Comments »

I have reached the end of the road with this Dog campaign. Like my previous run, I made 1 sale and couldn’t get any further. I decided to stop this campaign before I lose money.

Here are my stats:

Here are my Google AdWords campaign screenshots:

• Daily Summaries
• Daily Full Campaigns with all the ad groups & keywords

Remember my post on split testing Page 2a and Page 2b? As you can see from the stats above:

• Page 2a received a total of 11 clicks to the merchant page
• Page 2b received a total of 12 clicks to the merchant page

Ok, Page 2b is the winner by 1 click. But that’s too little to determine whether shorter landing pages work better than longer ones. I’m still not sure which ones work better. If you’re got stats on a similar situation, please share with me your results.

Overall, I made $24.92 in sales, spent $19.26 in Google AdWords and that’s a profit of $5.66. At least I didn’t lose money on this "test". I did learn a ton about creating landing pages and tracking the clicks on them.

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | No Comments »

According to these PPC search engine review sites, there are only a couple of PPC search engines worth looking at.

Read more about the PPC search engine reviews at:

http://payperclicksearchengines.com/
http://www.payperclickanalyst.com/index.htm
http://www.payperclickguru.com/

All of the reviews seem to point to:

1. Google AdWords - Sign Up To My Newsletter To Receive a $50 Credit For Your New Account

Sign up to my newsletter to receive a "secret" link to let Google give you $50 when you open a new account and pay a $5 deposit.

Your ads will appear along side or above the results on Google.com search results pages.

Additionally, your ads could appear on the search and content sites and products in the Google Network. The Google Network is the largest online advertising network available, reaching over 80% of 30-day US Internet users. So you can be certain that your ads reach your target audience with Google AdWords.

2. Overture - Sign Up Here To Receive a $25 Credit For Your New Account

Overture will give you $25 when you open a new account and pay a $30 deposit for a Self Serve account. Overture displays businesses in search results on premier sites like Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, and CNN.com, where advertisers can reach over 80% of active Internet users.

Each Overture account has a $20 minimum monthly spend. There is a minimum bid requirement of $0.10 per click through. A non-refundable initial deposit of $30 is required.

3. FindWhat - Sign Up Here To Receive a $10 Credit For Your New Account

FindWhat will give you $10 when you open a new account and pay a $50 deposit.

FindWhat distributes your keyword text ads throughout our vast distribution partner network of hundreds of high-traffic websites—including large search engines such as CNET’s Search.com, Excite, Webcrawler, MetaCrawler, Dogpile and Microsoft Internet Explorer Autosearch. FindWhat also partner with specialty sites serving niche markets in order to drive the most targeted traffic to your website.

4. Enhance - Sign Up Here To Receive a $25 Credit For Your New Account

Enhance will give you $25 when you open a new account and pay a $50 deposit.

Enhance Interactive’s Paid Listings program is an easy, effective way to purchase PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. Pick both the keywords for your ad and the price you’re willing to pay for someone to click on it (as little as $0.03). You only pay when your ad is clicked on.

Enhance Interactive’s partner network displays ads on many popular sites, such as EarthLink, InfoSpace and MSN.

Enhance Interactive’s Guaranteed Inclusion service allows you to submit URLs which are guaranteed to be in the database of highly visited search engines such as Excite and Dogpile, as well as smaller directories. Enhance Interactive also offers banners and skyscrapers distributed throughout our partner network in specific categories such as finance or travel. This is a cost-effective way to advertise on great sites such as EarthLink and NetZero.

Conclusion

Its no mystery why Google AdWords is still number 1 in my opinion. I only have to pay $5 to sign up and I can get $50 credit. They’re not money suckers out to get your cash.Just take a look at the rest of them? Google charges you only for the clicks after someone has clicked on them. The rest of them require you to put money in before you bid on the keywords.

I don’t understand Overture’s $20 minimum spending rule. If you don’t have enough click to reach $20, they’ll charge you anyway! I suggest you take only your successful campaigns over to Overture, FindWhat and Enhance. Remember to read the fine print for any other charges!

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | 3 Comments »

I’ve got good news and some bad news. The bad news is only 25% of the visitors to my landing page went on to visit the merchant page! And the good news is I made 1 sale on my 1st day of relaunching my Sit Stay Fetch Campaign. More bad news…. That’s about all the sales I made from 14 January 2005 to 16 January 2005.

My instincts were right. I simply took the same bunch of keywords when I made my 1st sale with Sit Stay Fetch on 9 December 2004. If those keywords helped me make a sale, there is a good chance they will work again and lucky for me, I got another sale!

Here’s the screenshot of the Clickbank sales receipt:

On 14 January 2005, my stats were:

Google AdWords: 24 clicks
DogTrainingSystem.com: 6 "unique" clicks
Sales: 1

Therefore…

Landing page to merchant page click-through rate was: 6 / 24 = 25%
Conversion rate to make a sale: 1 sale / 6 unique visitors = 16.7%

Looking at the above, we can see that only 25% of my Google visitors clicked on the 3 links of the landing page to visit the merchant’s page. 75% of the visitors must have left once they landed on my landing page. Well that’s seems bad doesn’t it? What if 100% of my visitors went on to visit the merchant’s page and 16.7% of them bought the ebook? Imagine…. that would be at least 3 sales! Maybe a landing page would really help me get higher conversion rates. 16.7% is one of the highest I’ve ever recorded.

I do not expect 100% Landing page to merchant page click-through rates but 25% is pathetic. Judging from my stats I decided to do something about it.

Split Testing to the Rescue!

I shall call my 1st landing page "Page 1". Page 1 is now "dead". I have deleted it. Now I’m moving on to "Page 2".

Page 2 will be split into 2 versions. I shall call the 1st one Page 2a. Page 2a is the same as Page 1 with 1 difference, the "Click here" links have bigger font. Page 2b is the shorter version of Page 2a with only 2 links to the merchant page.

What I want to get out of this split test is to find out:

1. Will the shorter landing page, Page 2b, help me get more clicks to the merchant page?
2. Will the longer landing page, Page 2a, help me get more clicks to the merchant page?

I’ve heard different views about this and I want to test it for myself to see the results! I’l let it run for a few days to see how it goes.

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | 1 Comment »

This is a follow up to my 1st part of the landing page series of posts.

I decided to move the 1st testimonial below the headline. Thanks to Alan for the suggestion. After that, I installed 3 tracking links to the 3 hyperlinks on the the landing page. If you’re wondering which 3 links I’m talking about. They are:

1. eBook Cover
2. 1st Click Here link
3. 2nd Click Here link

My main concern is will the visitor from my PPC ads click on any one of these 3 links to visit the merchant’s web site?

The only way I know is to keep track of the number of clicks on these 3 links and then compare them to the number of clicks at my Google ad stats.

If the number of clicks on my landing page is less than the number of clicks on my Google ad stats then its pretty clear that I am losing money because my landing page kind of puts them off.

Please note that adding tracking links is 100% optional but you can do it with the 2 free scripts I have as bonuses when you sign up for my newsletter. I personally use DynaTracker because it has more features than the 2 free ones.

Some of the things on my landing page I wish to test are:

1. Which headline works better?
2. Will buttons help me get more clicks than a “Click Here” text?
3. Will a shorter page help me get more clicks?

For a start I am just going to test whatever I have right now with the 3 tracking links. I have yet to officially launch my Google campaign. I’ll post more about this when its up.

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | No Comments »

I apologize if I have missed anyone of your emails during my web host down time earlier this week. Please email me again if you emailed me something important from 11 January 2005 (Tuesday) - 12 January 2005 (Wednesday).

Now everything’s back to normal. HostGator is my new web host and they have excellent customer support. All my questions were answered through their live chat almost instantly. I’ll have to test it for 1 month to see if its really as good as some people say.

Categories: Blog Updates | No Comments »

Google left me with little chioce but to create “landing pages”. Landing pages are simply web pages that the visitor sees straight after clicking on your PPC ads.

I first read about creating landing pages from Barry Stein’s blog. Its there right on his 1st post! Here’s Barry Stein’s example of a landing page. It so short and simple. The purpose is just to forward your visitors to the merchant’s web site with your affiliate link so that if he/she purchases something, you get your commission.

The dangers I see with a landing page is that if it sucks, the visitor will simply close his/her screen and go elsewhere and you would have wasted your money on your clicks. Your visitor won’t even get a chance to see the order form. You’ve got probably 30 seconds or less to convince your visitor to click to the merchant’s web site.

The good thing about landing pages is that if its a good one, you’ll probably enjoy higher conversion rates, help your visitor get a better “frame of mind” to purchase the product when he/she visits the actual merchant’s sales page.

Other fancy things you can do at a landing page is to capture your visitor’s email address, offer them some kind of free report or ebook with your affiliate link in it so that you’ll get more than 1 chance to market to them.

Let’s revive my Sit Stay Fetch campaign….

I ran this Sit Stay Fetch dog training ebook campaign in December 2004 and it sort of “failed” because I didn’t make a profit on it. I made a loss of $2.52 and made 1 sale. I usually let my failed campaigns rot in cyberspace but this one’s different because I managed to make 1 sale from it. And if I can make 1 sale, I can make 2, 3, 4, 5 and more sales. I just need to understand why and how I got the 1st sale and build from there.

What to put on the landing page?

Lucky for me, the author of Sit Stay Fetch has an affiliate resource page with all sorts of material for us to use. I’m going to use:

1. Product image (The one that says “Sit Stay Fetch”)
2. Product overview
3. Text link #1 & 2
4. Testimonials

How shall the landing page look like?

I want my landing page to look like the author’s web site without blatantly copying all his graphics. I would use the same colour scheme and font.

How to create the landing page?

Here’s an easy way I know of to capture the whole web page into your PC without having your browser mess up the original source code. I don’t recommend using Internet Explorer to simply “Save Page As” because Internet Explorer inserts its own code for the saved web page and its pretty messed up.

Instead I use FireFox and an extension called ScrapBook. ScrapBook allows me to save the web page to my computer with its original code intact along with all the pictures of the web page.

Here’s how it works…

#1 - Visit SitStayFetch.net & Capture Page

Simply right click on the web page as select “Capture Page As”. Click on “Capture” and you’ve just saved the web page to your hard disk. Now you need to find it on your hard disk.

Turn on your scrap book and you will see a bar on the left of your FireFox browser. Click on the Sit Stay Fetch title on the left and you’ll see the author’s web page. Take note of the address bar because that’s where it is located on your hard disk.

#2 - Edit Web Page & Add Affiliate Stuff In It

Now use your favourite HTML editor and edit the page. What I did was I removed all the text from the web page, including the header. What I kept was the the web page’s border. I used the affiliate resources and added the content to make it look like a mini sales page. I also created yellow testimonial boxes for the 2 testimonials I included.

#3- Upload the Web Page To Your Own Domain Name

One of the domain names I purchased on Sunday was DogTrainingSystem.com. I picked this domain name because its generic for all dog training resources. I can use Sit Stay Fetch or whatever ebook or product related to dog training I want with it. I recommend using a multiple domain web host like HostGator to host all your domain names.

I uploaded all the related files and images to DogTrainingSystem.com. This is pretty much the basics of a simple landing page. Visit DogTrainingSystem.com to take a look at it!

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | 2 Comments »

I decided to get rid of my previous web host because it went down again this morning when I woke up. I lost some sales because I depend on it to host some of my domain names.

I chose HostGator because someone recommended it to me. It isn’t cheap but I believe its trustworthy. The monthly cost is $9.95 with 2GB disk space, 20GB monthly transfer space and unlimited databases, domain names and sub domain names. That’s perfect for building mini sites and landing pages for affiliate marketing. I have over 10 domain names to host on it so $9.95 per month for my peace of mind is definitely worth my money. I can’t afford to wake up and have my web server down for the rest of the day anymore!

I did a search on Google.com for "HostGator Review" and I found the reviews to be positive. They seem to be in business for more than 5 years unlike my previous one which was less than 1 year old.

I’m in the process of moving all my files from my old web host to the HostGator so some of the things won’t work 100% yet. I’ll update you guys on my progress.

Categories: Blog Updates | 3 Comments »

Google got back to me and this was what they had to say:

Hello Vincent,

Thank you for your email. I understand that you have some questions about our new affiliate policy.

Google has incorporated a new affiliate advertising policy that is designed to provide a better user and advertiser experience. We now only display one ad for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same URL per search query. So you can continue to use the affiliate merchant’s URL. As always, your ad will be displayed based on Ad Rank for given search queries.

If you’re an affiliate, this means that you no longer need to identify yourself as an affiliate in your ad text. However, your current ad text will continue to display your affiliate status until you change it.

To change your ad text, please follow these steps:
1. Log in to your account.
2. Click a campaign.
3. Click the Ad Group you would like to change.
4. Click ‘edit’ located next to your ad text.
5. Make changes to the ad text.
6. Click ‘Save changes.’

Affiliates or advertisers using unique URLs in their ads will not be affected by this change. Please remember that your Display URL must match the URL of your landing page, and you may not simply frame another site. Also, we don’t allow ads that redirect to the parent company’s site if the domain name of the Destination URL differs from the Display URL.

If you have additional questions, please visit AdWords Support at https://adwords.google.com/support, where you’ll find answers to many frequently asked questions.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

Matthew
The Google AdWords Team

I believe the email answers all my 3 questions. Well let’s get to work on this!

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing, Pay Per Click Search Engines | No Comments »