Competitive Intelligence - A Free Gift for you!

For those in the know in many ways the landscape of affiliate marketing has changed & moved up a notch recently with the release of Competitive Intelligence tools (”Spy Tools” to you and me). Do they really work? Yes indeed! I will be expanding this subject more in the very near future, but just as teaser one of the Best tools out there is “KeywordSpy” BUT rather than go on about how great it is… how about I share for you as a FREE gift their keywords & ads that they use to generate PPC traffic?

Now you’ve got to guess HOW i got these…Reply to this thread, I will choose the winning answer  & I will give you for FREE the 5 competitors of your choice

( Competitive Intelligence -All their keywords & best ads!)

(TIP.. I did not use KeywordSpy !)

Keywords:

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Best Ads selection:

“Spy on your Competitors”
See which keywords are being used by your competitors.
Try it now
KeywordSpy.com

“Keyword Research Tool”
Spy on your competitors Keywords!
World’s largest keyword database.
www.KeywordSpy.com

“Spy on your Competitors”
Competitive Intelligence:
Beat them using their own online ad campaign.
www.KeywordSpy.com

SEO - Free Keyword Search
Competitive Intelligence: Beat them Keywords
& Rank Higher - Easy ROI
KeywordSpy.com

Keyword Spy
Find Which Profitable Keywords
Your Competitors Are Using. Try It Now.
www.KeywordSpy.com

Adwords Program
Spy on your competitors Keywords!
World’s largest keyword database.
www.KeywordSpy.com

Adwords Insider 101 - hearing it from the horse’s mouth.

A fellow colleague on the most excellent Forum connected with the Pay Per Click Formula 2.0 just sent the following information to me. His name is Amir and he owns http://www.xconversions.com/. I have been using his tool for a while together with other keyword tracking software including Prosper202, Hlola 2.0 and Affiliate Prophet…I will be doing an unbiased review asap but for now  I just read of this absolute goldmine of insider information…

“I had written this report a little while ago, yet it’s still as relevant today as it was back then.  I recently got slapped for one of my campaigns and redid the same thing that I describe below. Below, you’ll find the result of a simple experiment that I did with two identical landing pages.

In reality the two landing pages were identical except…they were using different domain names.

Here are the two landing pages:
landing page 1:

(min bids .04c to .20 cents)
http://www.thewebsherlock.com/PLFBonuses.html
http://www.xconversions.com/slap1.JPG

landing page 2:

(min bids .20 cents to $10)
http://www.xconversions.com/plfbonuses
http://www.xconversions.com/slap2.JPG

One of the more clever customers plugged the two domains in the
google suggestion tool and found that google thought one of the
domains (the one that didn’t get slapped) was more relevant for my
keywords, while the other was for some reason classified in a
different context although as you can see both domains:
(www.xconversions.com and www.thewebsherlock.com) are pretty much
geared towards affiliate marketing.

I’ve spoken to an inside source at google and gotten a better
understanding for how this whole thing works and it’s really funny
how things come together at the right time…(I’ll explain I mean
in just a min).

I had a long technical discussion with the inside source, which
shall remain anonymous.  I’ll won’t bore you with the technical
details.  I’ll just present you with a few facts that will shed
some light on this whole quality score and min bid procedure.  And
trust me, it doesn’t get any better than hearing it from the
horse’s mouth.

The are a few filters that the ads go through, but we’ll keep this
simple.

1- (This was a big surprise to me.)  The google algorithm for
ranking organic results has NOTHING to do with adwords as a whole.
In fact the organic ranking algorithm is highly secretive inside
of google itself and only those that work on it know how it works.
Other developers/employees have NO access to it whatsoever..not
anymore than anyone outside of google.

I always thought that if a site comes up in the organic listings,
it means that google thinks it’s relevant for those keywords and it
will automatically get a good quality score/low min bids.
WRONG!!!!  The organic relevance algorithm and the landing page
relevance algorithm have NO relationship to each other
whatsoever!!!  Interesting huh?

2- All google employees and developers are genuinely trying to
create an optimal experience for the user and the advertiser.  They
are told time and time again that optimizing revenue is NOT the
goal.  They also read most relevant feedback they receive.

————————-
HERE IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING
————————-

3- There are various factors that affect the Quality Score (QS) and
min bids.  Some of these factors are more prominent than others.
The most prominent of all is machine learning algorithm that
uses a LOT of historical data, your ad, your account history and
comes up with a score.

That system is the major deciding factor for which ‘bucket’ in the
min bid spectrum you’re placed in.

That system is also EXTREMELY complex with hundreds of thousands of
possible combinations and conditions.  It’s also a
NON-DETERMINISTIC EVER EVOLVING SYSTEM that’s being worked on by a
team of developers.

Here’s what that means…

It means that the same set of data from your side as the advertiser
(ie the same ad, landing page url, account history etc..) can yield
different results in different iterations of the system.  So let me
repeat that in different words.

If you start a campaign and write an ad and select keywords to bid
on and hit submit, you will get a set of min bids for your keywords.

If you start a new campaign with the same ad and bid keywords that
you just did in the previous step, you may get different results.
Arguably the variance won’t be that much, but nonetheless, it’s an
important point to keep in mind.

Another significant factor that can cause major shifting of your
min bid status and override the results of the first algorithm is
the landing page relevance algorithm.  The first algorithm doesn’t
consider any of your landing page content whatsoever.

4- Two separate pages that have the same identical content are looked
at as two different pages by google eventhough they have identical
content.

This technical discussion although didn’t add much that I didn’t
know practically speaking, was very enlightening on how I look at
the adwords system now.

The question is:How can these new insights help us create better campaigns?

1- Make sure that the ads are highly relevant to the keywords that
your bidding on.  The main algorithm that decides your min bids
doesn’t look at your landing page, it only looks at your ads, bid
keyword, and a bunch of historical data.

2- Your account history is VERY important.  If google sees that
you’re a ‘bad’ advertiser, they just won’t show your ads.

3- Make sure your overall domain is relevant to the theme of your
bid keywords

4- Make sure your landing page has relevant content to the bid
keywords

Now probably the more important factor in this list, generally speaking is the first one. The difficulty though with making ads that are highly relevant to keywords your bidding on is that it’s very tedious and time
consuming.”

-Naturally a few solutions were developed to solve this problem the solution that I use and highly recommend is Speed PPC by Jay Stackwell.  I believe Speed PPC is the best solution on the market right now to accomplish this exact task. A cheaper version is available called Efficient PPC along with Adgrenade (which works well with Clickbank tracking.)

Motivational “Leaders in their fields” - Secrets to Success.

I was going to write about the following life changing thoughts & actions in my own words but just couldn’t improve on the message. The people who have practised some of these ideas will be nodding their head in approval reading these points…for the rest of you (the majority!) I urgently advice you to apply at least some of these measures “THIS WEEK!”

Enjoy & become inspired…

1.Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life – In a society where people blame everything from their parents to the government for failure, those who don’t buy into this mentality or succumb to the “victim” thinking succeed. To blame something or somebody outside yourself is saying they have control of your life and not you. Someone else’s opinion of you doesn’t have to become your reality.

2. Live Your Life On Purpose - What separates motivational thinkers from the unsuccessful is that they believe they’re doing what they were put her to do. The difference between this and just living is that the latter is just getting through the week with the least problems. But when you live your life on purpose, your main concern is doing the job right. For the entrepreneur this means finding a cause you believe in and building your business around it.

3. Be Willing to Pay the Price - Be willing to pay the price for your dreams. Wanting a big house, a luxury car, and a million dollars in the bank is all very nice, and everyone wants these things – but are you willing to pay the price to get them? This is one of the major differences between the successful and unsuccessful.

4. Stay Focused – Every day we’re bombarded with hundreds of tasks, phone calls, messages, and everyone competing for our time. Focusing requires giving up something in the present because you are investing your time in something that will pay off big-time down the road. Jack Canfield and Mark Hanson were turned by 30 publishers when they submitted the first “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book. Instead of giving up, they stayed focused on their goal and did four or five interviews per day for radio, TV, and newspapers, for five days a week for a whole year. Eventually, a small publisher decided to take a chance, and of course now it’s a best-seller that spawned an entire series that have sold more than 10 million copies.

5. Become An Expert in Your Field One striking factor all successful people have in common is how seriously they take their profession. They strive to be the best at what they do, and do almost anything to improve. If someone followed you around all day with a video camera at your business, would it be a tape you’d be proud of or embarrassed about? Make the decision today to work at being the best in your field. How? By finding out what the “best” in your field are doing, and do what they do.

6. Write Out a Plan for Achieving Your Goals - Write out an action plan/map for how you’re going to achieve your goals. Trying to reach your goals without a plan is like trying to drive from Los Angeles to Chicago without a map. A goal that isn’t written down is merely a wish or fantasy.

7. Never Give Up - Never, never, never give up. When you’re fully committed to achieving your goal, giving up is not an option. You must be willing do whatever it takes to make it happen. The power of perseverance is an awesome force. As someone once said, “inch by inch it’s a cinch”. Think of the lowly inchworm – if it pondered the length of the trip from start to finish before it started, it probably would never move. To a worm’s point-of-view, the garden path must look like a trip to Mars. Never give up! Keep on going like the Eveready battery bunny, and pretty soon you’re there.

8. Don’t Delay - Nobody knows how much time they have left to accomplish their dreams, and we must remember that we don’t have forever. The clock is ticking, and sooner or later your number comes up and you’re gone. Successful achievers know this too, but they don’t view it as a “negative”. Achievers use it to “spur them on”. They go after what they want as energetically and as passionately as possible, for as long as they have.

With much thanks to Author Michael Jeffrey who personally interviewed the 15 top motivational “Leaders in their fields” in 1997 for his then upcoming book. After talking to people from Brian Tracy to Dr. Wayne Dyer, he distilled 8 Secrets to Success they all agreed upon.

(BTW I am writing this in 2009, 12 years after the message…& its still going strong!)

Google Cash Detective, PPCBully, Ispionage, etc - Any Good?

Well today has been a VERY good day. I have been comparing “apple for apple” with real campaign keywords several different tools that help me “SEE” into the marketplace of PPC advertising in Google, MSN & Yahoo.

What can only be described as “Truly Enlightening” my results so far have been way above my expectations…I am NOT going to reveal what I have found just yet…but need to test (and track the results) more before I release this information…If I am really motivated I might add some vids too, so keep an eye on this one.

So How much have you spent?

Counting the cost.

Since starting Affiliate Marketing in Early 2008 I have spent over $5000 in IM courses & tools. I now have an arsenal of software & scripts that leverage my time and profitability.

Just a means to an end?

Was this necessary? For me yes, definitely! In purchasing the various courses I have not only got lifetime upgrades & support BUT more importantly I have personally networked with some of the most brilliant IM minds on the planet. This is worth FAR more than what I have spent and has fast tracked my online success. If I was to summarise its not only finding the best leverage tools, it’s critical to find the right mentors as well.

Who is your mentor today?

IM Sigma - Finding The “Pure”Gold

Follow the Leader

The most brilliant minds will tell you if you really want to succeed, hang out with those who are already successful. This can be in any walk of life…a truly gifted person is very rare, maybe 0.001% of the population… what makes an expert is someone who has PRACTISED for YEARS and become an authority on the subject, which means YOU can become that expert if you so desire.

Leverage the right tools

SO where is this leading?  Well I am constantly evaluating not just what I know but who I know and my recent discovery in the team behind IM Sigma & the awesome tools they are developing has yet again confirmed my belief in following excellence. The release of a tool within the IM world that can discover with such accuracy the depth & breadth of internet traffic sources within a niche & pull out both the online shops & the affiliates THAT ARE EXCELLING in this current downturn…is pure Gold to me.  Welcome to the world of the “Competitors Traffic Desk”. As I am in close contact with the developers of this tool I will release more “inside” information as I get it… so stay tuned!