Got a hole in your pocket?

Not sure where your cash is flying off to?

Why not make a simple excel table to track your day to day expenses.

Watch as your fast food, starbucks, gas, or ‘fun’ expenses add up :]

I’ve, personally, tracked my expenses and revenues since 2008. Why you might ask?

Well, initially it was out of curiosity, to see where my dollar bills were going.

But then it became an eye opener, as I was dropping WAY more than I was making.

I was in the negative most months, and burning my cash supply quickly.

Luckily, this conscious awareness builds some great money-saving habits.

Watch for your own self-education.

Cheers

Leonidas

Quote That Will Save You Thousands

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

~ Ayn Rand

The post [Video] Leonidas’ Excel Expense Tracking appeared first on Premium23.

For whatever reason, I’ve been continually grinding away at various campaigns, making money, and enjoying life, YET, I haven’t been producing as much educational content for my internet fans

So here is a VIDEO I quickly put together, on what I do on a regular basis for Pay Per Call and Adwords.

P.S. Just Do It

In my other promotional career (I do promo work ‘in the real world’), I was motivating my co-workers, by encouraging them to ‘just do it’. In this case, it meant getting their shit together, and putting content ‘out there’, because the more you produce, the more natural it becomes, and the more feedback you get.

You naturally build your niche like this. Thus, to be held accountable, we all promised to produce a piece of content by the following day. Hence the video above

Cheers

Leonidas

Quote of the Day

There’s no real preparing at home for stand-up. You just go and you just do it.
Louis C. K.

The post [Video]How To Quickly Setup a Pay Per Call Campaign On Adwords appeared first on Premium23.

I personally thing that people are delusional when they think (or feel) that the past was better compared to the present, and that the future is somehow going into the shitter. I might listen to these ideals, and theories, but rarely do I entertain them.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley,

is perhaps the epitome (or the bible) of an incredibly optimistic future.

The Rational Optimist is a cumulative cramming of sociology, anthropology, economics, history and a tiny bit of technology, to explain, BASICALLY, why life sucked in the past, and gradually became better over thousands, hundreds, and tens of years.

There are a few key concepts the author GREATLY extrapolates on within, and explains how each affects our strive towards prosperity.

Exchange and Specialization (I make food, and you make clothes)

By learning to trade amongst ourselves thousands of years ago, one man was able to craft tools, while another was able to forage for food, while another was able to defend the tribe. In turn, they would each provide some service, without expending gratuitous amounts of time performing EVERYTHING at once. This allowed tribes to grow, and trust and economic relationships to flourish. Imagine ‘One mans junk, is another mans treasure’, but on a civilization level.

Foraging For Food (No more hunting, food at the grocery store)

At the above point mentioned, when people needed less and less time hunting and gathering for food, they were able to specialize in other aspects of society. The invention of agriculture allowed for entire cities to grow, and focus on trading amongst themselves, while food was readily provided. Ultimately, allowing people to multiply, and continue specializing.

Constant War, Social Parasites, Disease, Famine, Corruption, Betrayal

This one doesn’t need much explaining. Life simply sucked for the majority of the population, while a VERY small group of elites dominated the unfortunate masses. Priests, kings, barons, warlords, etc etc, all contributed to misery, over and over. Add diseases such as the black plague, constant famines, viruses, sexual diseases, diarrhea, and hundreds of other illnesses constantly DECIMATED the human population. In the millions, to say the least.

Freedom From Stagnating Bureaucracies (Always messin’ with the little guy)

Previously, the hierarchy in most societies would squander the innovations, and resources created by it’s people, thus uninspiring their population to do more than they had to. Then came along a couple revolutionary policies in Europe that allowed for greater freedom for businesses to evolve. Entrepreneurs and businessmen were allowed to keep their share of profits and resources, thus inspiring a trend to do more and more. Invent, create, and fund, more and more, to the betterment of creating larger economies.

Technological Ingenuity (Telegraph one day, iPhone the next)

Rapidly evolving inventions such as the cotton-spinning machines, railroads, and power plants allowed for economies of scale (a ripple effect causing businesses to adapt to the new technologies, or go out of business). In turn, more freedom was given as nations adapted to policies that allowed for more ingenuity, thus allowing more innovation and growth, and more freedom. Life expectancies dramatically increased, populations skyrocketed, transportation, communication, health, wealth, and the quality of everything else also increased.

Finally, Africa and Climate Change (Slowly but surely improving)

The incredibly unlucky population of Africa still has to deal with the boot of human oppression. Constant wars, corruption,  famines, disease and foreign policies seem to completely impede growth. While Botswana has grown out of a miserable state, into a thriving nation, the rest of the continent is still plagued with stagnation. Technology such as mobile phones are dramatically improving the ability to barter, and thus increasing economic power. The author argues that real progress in Africa would come from an upgrade to educational institutions, allowing the population to grow their own entrepreneurs and businesses, instead of seeking foreign aid (which apparently doesn’t work).

And then we have climate change, which Matt deconstructs quite readily. He debunks growing CO2 emissions with some incredibly thoughtful analysis and statistics. He even downgrades the efficacy of ‘green’ technology such as solar and wind as being ‘inefficient’ for their relative expense (land, cost, lack of power produced), but does not rule out the power of human innovation to quickly improve these tools. Matt greatly emphasizes the efficacy, power produced, and safety of nuclear power plants. Apparently a coke-can of uranium is all you need per person, for their ENTIRE life time.

So Does Life Suck Now Compared To The Future?

Supposedly it might. Technology may one day extinguish cancer altogether, wars are quickly dwindling in casualty costs, death from virulent diseases is almost negligible now, politics and evil people are forcibly more transparent, and the list goes on.

Population growth is statistically slowing down, and will eventually plateau at some point in the future. Violent behaviour is more prevalent in the media, than it is in our own lives. People are becoming much wealthier, and our living standards are gradually increasing (even beyond what we need).

So if the next time you turn on the news, or listen to a friend, or co-worker, and you hear some semblance of ‘things are going down hill’, or ‘society is getting worse and worse’, or even some combination, then just smile, nod, but don’t acknowledge. In their reality, life is getting worse, but in your reality, life is great

Pick up The Rational Optimist at the book store, library, or from a friend.

The rational Optimist is a great read!

Cheers

Leonidas

Quote for the Rational Optimist

History repeats itself as a spiral not a circle, with an ever-growing capacity for both good and bad, played out through unchanging individual character. so the human race will continue to expand and enrich its culture, despite setbacks and despite individual people having much the same evolved, unchanging nature. The twenty-first century will be a magnificent time to be alive. Dare to be an optimist.

The post Are You Rational And Optimistic? appeared first on Premium23.

You have no idea how to write a PPC ad, photoshop an ad banner, or even create a landing page. So you search far and wide, and voila! You simply rip that creative, and use it as your own.

A couple months go by, and you’ve clearly gained some REAL experience into what works, why, and what doesn’t.

So you make your own ad, banner, and landing page, and let it rip! Revenue’s start pouring in.

Yet, as you know, 2-3 days later, your conversion rates drop, volume starts to suck, and you might be breaking even at this point.

You find out that someone, just like yourself, ripped your entire funnel.

So Let’s Steal Some Landing Pages

Let me show you some cool, unsecured landing pages, and how to find more!

Step 1. Google: url:t202id= and start having a look through the links. (if you use another tracking platform/advertising agency, try their tracking url)

Step 2. Copy a line from the landing page, and put quotes (“) around it, then Google that.

Step 3. Jump the fake hoops in some of these ‘qualifying, quiz, or survey’ landing pages, and check out what network the offer is running on using WhereGoes.com

Step 4. Search the domain for even MORE landing pages on Google using site:www.domain.com

Step 5. Rip the landing page source code using your favorite method.

Step 6. Rinse and Repeat

Step 7. Profit!

Oh, and obviously just go through various mobile sites, and check out their LP’s.

So How Do We Not End Up Losing Our Sh*t Like That Guy?

Prevent search engines from indexing your tracking platform & landing page domain.

Create a robots.txt in the top-level folder you do not wish any search engines to dig through, and put this code:

# Disallow Web Bots
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
# Disallow Archive Bots
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

This will ‘encourage’ search-engine bots to not index your site. Some bots don’t follow the rules, but generally, this works.

Create an Index.php in your Root Domain Directory

Example: You type in www.landingpagesnoob.com, and the owner forgot to include an index file. Thus, his directories become listed. An index.php file prevents someone from looking into your house and seeing your inventory.

Prevent Right-Clicking and Text Selection using Javascript

There are some noob affiliates out there that simply right-click copy & paste your landing page. You can easily go around this (simply view the source code using your browser menu), but nonetheless.

Prevent right-clicking and text-selection using this article. 

Encrypt Your Code

Another noobish trick.

<body>
Becomes

<Script Language='Javascript'>
<!-- HTML Encryption provided by iWEBTOOL.com -->
<!--
document.write(unescape('%3C%62%6F%64%79%3E'));
//-->
</Script>

This encryption works on the noobs. If you see this kind of code, decrypt it here.

Prevent LP Hi-Jacking

So let’s say someone steals your LP.

This script will check where the landing-page is being hosted, and simply redirect back to your original landing page.

Create a new “geoloc.php” in your landing page directory. Paste this script:

<?php
$referringDomain = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$myDomain = 'domain.com';
if ( preg_match("($myDomain)i", $referringDomain, $matches) == false ) {
//no match - output redirect javascript
?>
window.top.location.href=’http://domain.com/lander.php’;
<?
Die();
} else {
// do nothing
}
?>

Then run the script from your landing page using this:

<!-- Important for geolocation, do not remove or it will break -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://domain.com/geoloc.php"></script>

<!-- Important for geolocation, do not remove or it will break -->
<!--
document.write(unescape('%3C%73%63%72%69%70%74%20%74%79%70%65%3D%22%74%65%78%74%2F%6A%61%76%61%73%63%72%69%70%74%22%20%73%72%63%3D%22%68%74%74%70%3A%2F%2F%64%6F%6D%61%69%6E%2E%63%6F%6D%2F%67%65%6F%6C%6F%63%2E%70%68%70%22%3E%3C%2F%73%63%72%69%70%74%3E'));
//-->
</Script>

P.S. I claim no ownership for this script.

Prevent someone from Hacking your WordPress & Tracking platform

My tracking platform (prosper202) was hacked recently, and a back-door was implemented, allowing the hacker to see all of my campaigns & data. Luckily, this was a new installation, so not much was lost.

Nonetheless, we are going to prevent any one from accessing your login files, by only allowing our own IP-address.

Create a new/edit your .htaccess file in your domain FTP, and put in

<Files 202-login.php>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from 127.0.0.1
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.google.com
</Files>

Experimental Neat Tricks

Ad-creative with a Coupon-protection

Create an Ad copy/banner: “Get 30% off Hotels” “Limited Time. Use Coupon 1234″

User clicks on your ad, and is redirected to a password/coupon prompt, enters the password/coupon ID, and gets access to your LP.

You can now rotate your passwords on a regular basis.

Now, there is no sexy solution to this, but here is somewhere to get started for now.

Of course, you could simply do this with a generic landing-page that filters traffic based on the coupon … and some complex PHP coding

Cloudflare Your Site (Advanced)

This method will place your landing-page and tracker on a CDN (content distribution network), thus increasing performance, while a the same time, decreasing hard-hitting hacker attacks.

Just in case, decrease the Cloudflare security to ‘LOW’, and performance either CDN or CDN+Performance. This will ensure maximum compatibility with 3rd-world traffic.

Cloudflare your site here.

Encrypt the URL (Advanced)

This involves having a VPS, that allows editing server files. This will really prevent URL-jacking.

Example:
www.example.com/how-to-encrypt.html
To
www.example.com/DMQRzZWMDdGQtbndzBHNsawN0aXRsZQR0ZXN0AzcwMQR3b2UDMjQwMjEwNQ
For those that understand how to do this, feel free to share. This is for more advanced coders. Learn more on How To Encrypt Your URL Here

Pass Your Offer from the URL into the LP using PHP

I saw one particular domain where every landing page call-to-action button simply redirected to /clickhere , which went no where. Of course, this simply meant that the owner passes the offer link to the button, using the address-bar URL.

So for example:

Direct linking to landing-page:

Address bar: www.landingpages.com/offer.php
Link: Dead End

Landing-page with parameter:

Address bar: www.landingpages.com/offer.php?offerID=offer1234.php
Link: Advertiser Page

This prevents direct-linking to your LP, and stealing your offer funnel.

Seems simple, except this involves some PHP, which even confuses me sometimes. Here is a source to get your started, or perhaps share your knowledge, because at the moment, I have limited know-how on this.

The Obviously Needed Disclaimer

Nothing is 100% safe. People will be people, and steal your shit regardless. BUT, I 99% guarantee that 1 or 2 of these tips will prevent your next hi-jacker.

If you like this article, +1 on share on Facebook or whatever.

Cheers

Leonidas

Quote Of The Day

“I got a new car. I just need to put it together. They’re easier to steal piece by piece.”

 ~ Jarod Kintz, $3.33

The post How To Steal Landing Pages (And How To Secure Landing Pages) appeared first on Premium23.

For an affiliate marketer, this sucks.

Over the last few years, people have always mentioned having lack-luster success with Admob: burning through their advertising budgets, getting fraudulent clicks, lack of user engagement, or whatever.

Well, here is why Admob is the best tool, overall, for advertising your App.

The Best Targeting in the Mobile Business

You get to:

• Target by Device & Platform (not limited to one or the other).
• Target Province & State
• Target Carrier & Wifi Traffic
• Target by Demographics! (Gender & Age)

Generic OS stats for U.S.

Being able to segment your traffic like this is extremely important.

Insane Volume, and Cheap Traffic

Targeting by any country, carrier, device combination has a minimum bid of $0.01 CPC. Most other mobile ad platforms average anywhere from $0.05-0.17… for the same inventory (ie. Tapit, inMobi, mMedia, etc).

With a $0.01 CPC, you just paid for 3000 clicks, for only $30, for U.S traffic! That’s outstanding!

Yet, there ARE various mobile platforms to advertise for $0.01, but their traffic can be questionable, and their targeting isn’t as amazing (ie. Airpush, Buzzcity, SendDroid, etc).

Traffic Quality Is Now Gold

Here is an excerpt from an App-developer:

It appears as though, Admob has implemented new ads that require you to press in certain regions of the ad to actually count it as a clickthrough. 

On some, you can tap anywhere on the ad, then you have to hit a download button. On others, you can only tap the blue button on the right. 

Anyway, this new ad type seems to have destroyed all ad revenue.

Here is the new “Accidental clicks” prevention measure.

Admob Accidental click prevention

Previously, users with fat-finger syndrome would accidentally tap your ad, with no purchase intentions. According to some statistics, this resulted in 40% of clicks being useless to the advertiser.

Furthermore, Admob is Google, and Google has the world’s smartest anti-fraud algorithms. Any fraudulent activity coming from various apps, is quickly filtered, and the apps may, themselves be suspended.

Also, “Exclude all proxy traffic” is an interesting feature, when setting up your targeting. Fraudsters can set up various bot-nets to run clicks through various IP-addresses using hundreds of thousands of proxies. So 1 computer can essentially pretend to be 100,000 computers, thus costing you $$$.

Preventing proxies for authentic mobile traffic

Not all fake traffic runs through proxies of course, and I’m not entirely sure this prevents fake traffic, BUT, technical intuition tells me it does.

Limitations of Admob?

Only in-app traffic. Many marketers realize that app traffic may not convert as well. For whatever reason, the ad is placed to generate many accidental clicks, or the user isn’t fully engaged in your ad when playing ‘Angry Birds’.

No publisher blocking. Some publishers/apps might send non-converting traffic. I don’t know if you can block them in Admob, but fairly sure you can’t at the moment.

Why All of This Doesn’t Matter For Affiliate Marketers

So Admob is pretty much perfect for Targeting, Traffic Quality, Price and Volume.

Yet, as an affiliate marketer, you have no chance of exploiting this gold-mine (directly).

Tracking Platform Redirects Are Not Allowed

No using Prosper202, iMobiTrax, CPVLab, BevoMedia, MobAff Tracker, or whatever. No tracking platform, means no pixel / post-back conversions, means you are SOL.

Directly from Admob Support:

Redirecting URL : Please know that we do not allow any redirecting URLs on your network. In case you need to redirect for tracking purposes, please set up Conversion Tracking in your account or use Google Analytics.

To track your conversions, you need access to the app itself, and the SDK. Well, as an affiliate, you don’t have that.

Only Direct Linking To the Store is Allowed

Only direct linking to iTunes, Google Play, or the Windows App store are allowed.

Mobile Marketer/App Developer?

A duo of an app developer, and a mobile marketer would make a killing on Admob. Google simply prevents all means of advertising on this platform otherwise. No cheap ‘battery booster’, or ‘horoscope’ apps.

How Do You Get Around this?

Basically, advertise on Adwords. CPC’s are higher, but you also get mobile web traffic. Quality ads are key on adwords, otherwise Ban-central is only an algorithm away.

Ultimately, I think Admob is a mobile ad platform that other mobile ad platforms should emulate. If you decide to drop cash on a mobile ad platform, compare it to Admob for features, before depositing your advertising $’s into it.

Cheers.

Leonidas

P.S. If you have an iTunes or Android app idea, and need mobile advertising advice, hit me up. Info is free, and I got tonnes of it

Quote For your Jollies

The easiest job in the world has to be coroner. Surgery on dead people. What’s the worst thing that could happen? If everything went wrong, maybe you’d get a pulse.
7 up, 1 down

~ Dennis Miller

The post Admob is the Perfect Mobile Advertising Platform, Yet You Can’t Use It appeared first on Premium23.

No Comparison Between Adwords & Bing Ads

Comparing Bing Ads vs. Adwords is an easy cop-out, and we all know Bing Ads has maybe 20% of the functionality and ease of Bing Ads.

I really don’t understand why Bing won’t make their advertising platform better for the marketers who want to give them money… really…

But aside from ranting, I’ll tell you some thing’s that I found frustrating, broken, or missing within the Bing Ads platform.

Most of these are related to Pay-per-call, but some to mobile, and some to the entire platform itself.

Can’t Target Carriers, Mobile Devices, Exclude Wifi

In the mobile game, many affiliates know that carrier traffic, and targeting by device is where the money is at. WiFi does not convert well for the advertisers when running mobile offers. When running pay-per-call on smartphone-traffic on Bing, 90% of your traffic is useless WiFi-traffic that does not click-2-call.

Bing Ads Comprehensive Device Targeting

One thing I will mention is that, the new Google Enhanced campaigns are butchering functionality for mobile-targeting as well. A HUGE step backwards for marketers. Pretty much bringing it back to the stone-age days of the comprehensive targeting you see above from Bing Ads.

No Click-2-call functionality

Sure there is an ‘address’ feature. But a strict click-2-call search ad converts considerably better. It’s like looking into the yellow pages. You see the ad, you see a 10-15 brief word description, specific to your needs, and you call. I don’t need to link to a website, or post an address if the business I’m advertising is National (aka. all of US and Canada).

You could run a click-2-call on smartphones with Ringrevenue’s “&mobile=1″, but you still get useless WiFi-traffic, that doesn’t make calls.

Bulk-Location Uploading

Ok, this one is almost perfect in Adwords, but completely and utterly lacking in Bing. Let’s say you are running a DUI lawyer PPcall campaign, and have a list of… 4000 Zip-codes, hyper-targeted to where the advertiser has lawyers.

Well, in Adwords, you simply upload a list (limited to 1000 zip-codes at a time), and bingo! You have 4000 Zip-codes targeted in about 10 minutes.

Adwords’ insane targeting & bulk location upload

In Bing Ads? You enter them in… 1… by… 1… manually… Not only that, you are limited to only 247 locations, per campaign. Well, most marketers would target by state, which still sucks, because you would need to enter let’s say 30 states, one by one.

You CAN upload 4000 zip-codes into Bing… but it’s long and complicated, involves Adwords, and creating & managing 15+ campaigns, with 15*x Adgroups, and keywords.

Message me if you REALLY want to know, and maybe I will write up a guide.

So, bulk uploading locations in Bing Ads, is broken…

The Worst Day-parting known to Man

Ok, this one really get’s to me. You have a campaign that only runs from 9am-5pm EST (typical rat-race hours). Well guess what… Here are the time-brackets you can advertise on in Bing Ads.

Bing Ads Day-parting

Based on this, you need to buy up 3 hours of useless time (7am-9am & 5pm-6pm).

You can get around this by switching your campaigns Time-zone to PST (9am EST = 7am PST), and another campaign for CST (5pm EST = 6pm CST). Confusing right?

Then do this again for weekend times… Bing Ads really sucks grande cojones here.

Crappy Keyword Targeting

“What language do your customers speak?” I select English. I get this:

Bing Ads Broad Match English Keyword Targeting

In this case, I was targeting very broadly… but still in English. Those are clearly not.

Keyword Research Still Sucks

Bing Ads has a tool called Bing Ads Intelligence, which uses Excel, and can provide some interesting details on keyword volume, and such. Takes a bit of learning. But overall, most marketers use the Google keyword tool regardless, because it’s still the best.

Updates & New Features Are Few and Far Between

I’m not sure if the Bing Ads team is limited in resources, or they simply deal with bigger clients and their self-serve platform is meaningless to them… But overall, I haven’t read or heard about any upcoming major additions to Bing Ads. Nor has anything even evolutionary (let alone revolutionary), come out of Bing Ads recently. Looking forward to something though.

You can read their blog here: Bing Ads Blog

Some Hassle Removed By Bing Ads Editor

Just like the Adwords editor, the Bing Ads Editor does a couple neat tricks to speed up keyword, ad, adgroups, and campaign processing. This is a given when running campaigns of more than 100 keywords. I would use this to learn the platform in general. Yet, I’m still surprised you can’t upload location in bulk even in this tool.

On the PLUS Side!!

Because Bing Ads is so limited, many marketers avoid the self-serve platform. Thus, keywords can be dirt-cheap. I’ve paid ~0.20-$1 for College/university, or Car insurance terms due to low competition. Adwords, on the other hand, has a premium of x2-10 on those same keywords (because everyone and their pet iguana is saturating on them).

Now, this is a HUGE plus. You get to show your ads to fresh eyes… ones not penetrated by Googles global advertising domination.

Do the cheap keywords out-balance the crappy feature list?

Well… that depends ultimately on your ROI.

Search volume on Bing is limited (I believe they only have 8% of the US market). But, the %ROI is good. I’ve pulled in 200% ROI with Bing Ads this month alone.

But that involved LOTS of reading the hundreds of search queries, making a bazillion campaigns for a list of 10,000 cities, testing, optimizing, creating some more, rinse, repeat, etc etc.

Worth the effort

Cheers

Leonidas

Quote For Your Cojones

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project. ~ Napoleon Hill 

The post Why Bing Ads Sucks And Why It’s Ok appeared first on Premium23.

Adwords PPCall Mastery Course on Hiatus?

While I wanted to create an amazing course, I wasn’t sure on how to go about creating it, marketing it, and protecting it from the pirate world…

Thus I got locked into “analysis paralysis” and the course fizzled off into vapor-ware.

Analysis paralysis?

BUT! The good news is that I’ve learned a SH*T tonne of new ways to create and optimize money-making Adwords campaigns.

We also have this new thing called “Enhanced Campaigns” from Google.

Thus, the Adwords PPCall course will be updated with the new features & adjustments.

What Are Enhanced Campaigns?

Enhanced campaigns make things a bit more confusing for you and I.

It’s basically a complex way of adjusting your bids to show up when they REALLY need to show up to make you money.

This is GREAT for the real-world businesses who want customers to come to their local stores, as you walk by with your cell-phone.

This is an interesting feature to test out because you can now increase your bids on:

• days and hours that convert well
• locations that convert well

Bidding by location (for advanced targeting)

Finally, You can now Attach your Phone numbers to Adgroups, instead of creating individual campaigns per phone number.

If you are using RingRevenue and strictly click-2-call on Adwords, then Adgroup-specific phone numbers is a great addition.

The Not-So-Good, Slightly Confusing Enhanced Campaigns

I played around a bit more, and noticed non-WIFI targeting is gone. What does this mean?

Back in one of my reports, I mentioned that a pure click-2-call button would not appear on WIFI-only mobile ads, which means you need a landing page.

This can shoot down conversion rates slightly, but testing is required.

Good to know: If your ad group contains mobile-optimized text ads only, those ads ->may appear on desktops and laptop computers and tablets.<-

Furthermore, WAP phones still allow you to target by carrier-provider (ie. Sprint or Virgin mobile). Full-browser mobile ads seem to have this option missing. Not a big deal for PPCall marketing, but for display mobile marketing (another money maker altogether), this may be an issue.

Overall, I welcome Enhanced Campaigns as a new addition.

It brings new elements worth testing, while at the same time if you don’t like the new additions, you can stay on the “Legacy” Adwords platform for 6 months more.

In the mean time, I need to haul ass and grind out your Adwords PPCall Mastery Course, which includes LandingPages, proper Keyword Research, Scripts to convert everything into a phonecall, how to do things properly and ultimately, internet money

Stay tuned

Leonidas

P.S. For the nerds among you, go ahead and read the details on Upgraded Call Extensions here, and Enhanced Campaigns Overview here.

Quote of Redemption

“It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves – in finding themselves.”
- Andre Gide

The post Is Pay-Per-Call On Adwords Dead With Enhanced Campaigns? appeared first on Premium23.

Quick Adwords Pay per call Notes

• Call Forwarding: Companies/marketers that used the call forwarding functionality, saw an average call time of 6 minutes. Presumably, Google filters calls that are instantly dropped, thus you don’t get charged. This feature is still limited to only a couple countries.

• Click-2-Call Button: A new button now shows, instead of a click-2-call phone number link. This potentially increases call-through-ratios (callers clicking, but not making the call), according to Google.

New Click-2-Call Button

• Call Extensions For In-App Ads: Now you can have your call-button within apps featured in the Google Display Network (GDN). Targeting is very limited (can’t target keywords), and call length-time has been below 30 seconds on average. This would be great for “Win Free Stuff” PPCall offers (rare). Also, you can’t enable call-forwarding on in-app ads.

Also, make sure if you have any major questions with Adwords PPCall, then give their support a ring. For the most part, they know their stuff (sometimes they don’t), or they will send you an updated email.

Cheers

Leonidas

Quote Of Relevance

Advertisers using Google call forwarding numbers see calls last over six minutes on average.

~Adwords, http://adwords.blogspot.ca/2012/11/dialing-up-on-click-to-call.html

The post Google Ramps Up Click-2-Call appeared first on Premium23.

Remember that annual sport-shopping event called Black Friday?

Why do seemingly sane, smart, conscious people suddenly transform into frenzied and psychotic shoppers? What is this invisible force that’s causing them to push and shove each other over that $200 32-inch 3D-LCD TV?

Shoppers fighting each other for that awesome deal!

Don’t they realize that, when the metaphorical dust clears, they probably wont want that TV in the first place,  and most will simply dig themselves further into mind-numbing credit card debt?

As an internet marketer, this is probably your fault. You are consciously aware of what drives monkey-brains to salivate over the latest gadgets. Simply put, you know how to influence others to act in a certain way… The big boys know how to do it, and so should you!

So if you want the super powers of magically influencing ‘consumers’ to buy your magical wares, then read on!

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert Cialdini

I heard about this book from an internet marketing affiliated with the Jesus of self-development himself: Tony Robbins, whom incidentally pulls in 6-figure digits on a monthly basis. As such, I had to follow through with reading this… ultimately a masterpiece, of important psychological concepts for ALL marketers and sales people.

Psychology of Persuasion is exactly what the title implies. How do you persuade people to do something? More importantly, in the context of this blog, how do you get them to take an action, either submit their email, make a phone call, buy something, or even convince their friends to buy it as well?

First published in 1987, the concepts are very much applicable today, because they still relate to our monkey brains, which are easily influenced. These concepts are:

1. Reciprocity
2. Commitment & Consistency
3. Social Proof
4. Authority
5. Liking
6. Scarcity.

With the annual Black Friday mass-consumerism frenzy past, and the holiday shopping season coming up, bringing these concepts to your conscious awareness, will make you think twice about your next decision (ie. do I need that $200 32-inch 3D LCD TV?).

So what is…

Reciprocity?

Give a little, get a little bit more. You know those free samples we love getting at events? What about free internet content? When you give a little, people tend to feel indebted, even slightly, and ultimately ‘reciprocate’ in some way. A great example in the book, involves asking for a donation, after giving a canned drink to a potential doner. Those that received the drink donated WAY more than, those that did not, despite the relatively low cost of the drink. In internet marketing, you see a lot of free eBooks  in exchange for emails, which is a fairly common practice.

Commitment and Consistency?

Getting someone to commit, orally or in writing, increases their likelihood of following-through. Get them to commit multiple times, and you increase that likelihood even more. In the self-development world, it’s recommended you write down your goals, with some psychologists recommending reading over the goals multiple times through the goal duration. The Chinese used this psychological trick to convince American prisoners of war to slowly become pro-communist and anti-capitalist, by having them gradually, and consistently write down small anti-capitalist statements. With internet marketing, you have email lists, which gradually convince you towards a product or service purchase. Ultimately, you rationalize that it is in your best interest.

Being consistent can convince you into believing things

Social Proof?

Ever seen a celebrity strutting around, with an army of fans, and security, yet you have no idea who it is, YET, you still want a picture or autograph? What about those nieve moments in the night club, seeing some guy surrounded by girls… he must be rich, and successful, etc etc. Right? Wrong. The celebrity status, and cool status simply comes from the imaginary perception of you and those around you. It gets worse when that status is amplified by dozens, if not hundreds of fans. For IM, this is called a testimonial, which is incredibly powerful for encouraging an action. Have 1-2 convincing testimonials, and you get social proof.

Social proof can trick you

Authority?

You listen to your doctor right? What about your mechanic, computer technician, software guy? All of these people are ‘perceived’ experts in their field, therefore you listen to them, and take action on what they say. Well, your doctor can be wrong sometimes too (they are only human), thus mistakes can be made. In the self-development niche, Tony Robbins is considered an authority, because he absorbs, studies, and relays the self-development information to the community. For IM, if there is a specialist in the niche, then you typically listen and read to their advice and strategies, such as Pay Per Call Marketing

Authorities are experts, but not necessarily right.

Liking?

Have a cool, fun friend, or do you follow someone on YouTube on a regular basis? You’ve probably grown a liking to them (an attachment of some kind), and will listen to what they say. You are more likely to take advice from, and buy things from people you like, even if you don’t need these things. Multi-level marketing also employ this tactic, by having ‘friends’ enroll their friends into pyramid schemes. Attractive people can make you buy things as well (we like attractive people, it’s a monkey-brain stereotype). IM’ers can become liked from social-media, blog posts, and simply developing a brand of personality.

Likable Con-Artist Swindling Your Grandparents

And finally Scarcity…

No matter how smart you think you are, this one can still catch you off guard. ‘Only available for a limited time’, ‘limited edition’, ‘only 3 left’, ’70% off for a limited time’. This is what drives insane consumerism during the shopping seasons, that can cause violence, competitive shopping, and insane debts. I will admit, I bought my first car, because I wasn’t sure if I could afford it later, or would have the time later, thus getting a really terrible deal. Scarcity drives demand, and it drives sales. We don’t usually know when the scarcity is simply faked to drive sales (ie. digital product sales… only 3 left… Frank Kern), the scarcity is psychological (that other person might buy that laptop if I don’t buy it now), or it’s actually physically limited (cheap plane tickets). IM experts can use a release-day bonus, or seasonal discounts to encourage scarcity.

What An Internet Marketer Sees During A “Sale”

So who do you need to watch out for the most?

Doctors who you like, whom others like as well, who offer you free stuff, although that free stuff is limited. Yep, this combination can be dangerous.

Ultimately, uninformed people fall into these ‘psychology of influence’ traps, because our brain sometimes needs to make decision shortcuts. When you are sick, following your doctors advice is essential, or if you are trying to improve yourself, then consistency and commitment are important. But when you are caught off guard by a salesman, with a tactic such as ‘limited time’, or ‘free sample’, then be prepared to fight off your monkey-brain automated responses.

Do I recommend ‘Psychology of Persuasion’ by Robert Cialdini? Yes!

As usual, pick it up from your library, or book store, before it’s too late!

Anyways, I’m off.

Cheers!

Leonidas

Quote of the Day:

“The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge of turquoise, were using a standard principle—a stereotype—to guide their buying: “expensive = good.”

― Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

The post Limited Time Only: Psychology Of Persuasion appeared first on Premium23.

The Importance of Timing in Affiliate Marketing By Chris, NetBizzle.com

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but good affiliate marketing is all about putting an offer in front of an audience of people. When people act on that offer, you get paid. So as you can see, traffic is KING. The bigger your audience, the bigger the take-up on your offer. The affiliate marketers dream is to have a huge crowd of people looking at their offer. But not just regular people, oh no, people who are primed and already looking for the offer. These are the ‘holy grail’ people you need to find. And it’s not as hard as it sounds.

It’s all about timing

The top earning affiliate marketers know the importance of timing and using events to their advantage. The biggest ‘event’ coming up is Christmas, and affiliate marketers can make a FORTUNE at Christmas!

ComScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, found that between November 1^st and December 26^th, $30.5 billion was spent online in 2010. That’s a lot, right? Well, compare that to 2011’s figure of $35.2 billion and you see a 15% increase within only a year. And these stats are just for people in the US!

Affiliate marketers take advantage of all these people being online, frantically looking for products and offers. What they usually do at this time of year is find something that’s trending. This could be anything from a children’s toy to a new kitchen gadget. A quick look on Google Trends or eBay Pulse will show you what’s hot.

Next, affiliate marketers will set up a website, usually in October/November so it can start ranking on the search engines in time for the Christmas rush. The site will be a simple information/review site dedicated to the item of choice. The website will typically be www.itemname-review.com, I’m sure you’ve seen them.

The affiliate marketer would usually then place links throughout the site to their product of choice on Amazon. Being an Amazon Affiliate, they would get a cut of any sales made on Amazon within a 48 hour period from when the user clicked their links.

It’s not a bad method, but it’s been done a thousand times.

So how can it help me?

Well, we can apply the same principles to our pay-per-call campaigns. You really need to think about the person that’s making the call. We’ve already established that more people shop online in November/December than at any other time of year. We need to find services that people would be searching for at this time of year. For example, services with potential would be things like:

• Emotional support services (lots of people feel lonely at Christmas, so you would be providing them someone to speak to)
• Dating services (Nobody wants to be alone for the Christmas holidays, right?)
• Health services (Illness hits an all time high as the weather gets colder, so provide people with some help, like a national helpline)

We can see one in the screenshot below, taken from OfferMobi:

This is a health insurance service that pays out $2.10 per conversion. People will be primed to call this when they are most sick or immediately after, and as we said above, illness is up in the winter flu season.

So these are some ideas on pay-per-call campaigns that would see better results over the Christmas period, but where this marketing method really shines is in the post-Christmas lull.

Another quick look at OfferMobi [Your link here Leonidas] shows us some interesting opportunities. Take a look:

I’ve highlighted a couple of services related to something that does very well after Christmas. The debt industry. Now, my full time ‘proper’ job is as a staff trainer for a debt charity in the UK, and let me tell you, January and February is our busiest time by far. People spend the money in December running up to Christmas, then the credit card statements drop through the door at the end of January. We always see a massive uptick in calls during the first part of the year. I’ve been there for 6 years and it’s been the same every single time.

In the UK, we have a helpline called ‘The Samaritans’. Anyone can call with any issue that they want to talk about, kind of like a free counselling service. In 2011, one in five calls was from someone wanting to discuss money worries. The important point is, people need someone to talk to about their debts, this much is obvious. By setting up a pay-per-call campaign, you can be there to point them in the right direction. And with this industry peaking in Jan/Feb, huge profits can be made from your campagins.

These are the areas you should think about. You’re helping people, and have the potential to make a killing with pay-per-call. During the big Christmas rush, you can make some good money, but all the affiliate marketers are out doing the same thing, bidding on keywords and trying to get the same customers. By focusing on the post-Christmas lull instead, you’ll enter the Christmas marketing battle ground after all the others have fought and left. You will provide a great service to get consumers back on track and make good money in the process.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try make money with the Christmas rush, but look at the bigger picture too and see if you can think of other occasions that you can jump on. In terms of convergence, making money and helping people is the best combination in the affiliate marketing business.

Take action

This alone won’t make you money. We’ve talked here about finding an offer to suit an event, taking advantage of people’s reactions to the events i.e. spending more money online, getting into debt etc.

You still need to create a killer pay-per-call campaign to go along with it. This is where Leonidas’ free guide (and Pay-Per-Call Mastery course) comes in. As you will see, this game is all about testing and tweaking until you have a well performing campaign. So what are you waiting for?

 Action steps:

1. Download Leonidas’ free guide on how to set up a pay-per-call campaign and read it
2. Read it again!
3. Got it? Good. Now join a pay-per-call network if you’re not already a member
4. Search for an offer to promote, but spend a lot of time on this, thinking about what types of people will call, why they will call and when. Link it to an event coming up that will have people looking for an offer like yours
5. Use Leonidas’ guide to set up a killer campaign
6. Enjoy watching your results, chopping and changing it to improve as you go!
7. Share your results with others. Let people know how you get on and help other people avoid any mistakes you make. You can do this on the Forum of Glory.

Whatever you choose to do with the holiday period among us, just do something. Any action is better than no action. Although there are loads of other ways to use events and timing to your advantage, Christmas only comes round once a year so get going!

Help people, make money and have fun with it.

Good luck,

Chris Wakefield

Netbizzle.com

Chris has also tested various Bing advertising methods, to test out their Call functionality (keep in mind, Bing is updating their Click-2-Call feature soon).

Check out Chris’ Bing Ads – Pay Per Call Case Study Here

Alright everyone, cheers!

Quote of the Day

“Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.”

- Cherokee Proverb

The post Timing In Affiliate Marketing & Bing PPCall Case Study appeared first on Premium23.