Just about any PPC marketer will be concerned if they get an email like this because AdWords downtime could translate into a significant of profits.

Before you jump to the page and entering your account information, I checked that the HTML email was going to a *.cn (China-based) domain, so it would be pretty unwise to enter your username or your password.

Mozilla Firefox had earlier been patched with a “phishing site” notification, similarly Internet Explorer showed a similar warning when I tried to access the site.

Just take note of the destination URLs in your emails before clicking on them, also if needed view the message headers and you can usually spot their point of origination (unlikely that the Adwords team would be sending notification emails out of Africa or Russia).

There was also a port about this at KezNews.

Which PPC Ebook Should I Buy?

The first challenge, PPC marketers will face is the plethora of PPC ebooks (primarily focused on AdWords) out there. There’s a large number of PPC-focused forums and affiliate marketing forums with large PPC sub-sections.

So which do you choose?

Before buying anything, I’d suggest time checking out the AdWords Help Center and reading the Inside AdWords blog. (They’re both FREE).

As you know, I buy just about every Internet marketing product out there and a number of AdWords “Insider” ebooks merely rehash the content contained with the Help Center.

So save your $47 (use it for your PPC costs instead) and check out the resources, the Google AdWords team has provided for free…

Can I Test Google AdWords For Free?

If you’re new to using paid traffic, you might have a slight phobia as I did (as I’ve been using free social traffic generation methods to bring traffic to my sites). But here’s a way to get free adwords traffic.

There’s a number of free AdWords coupons out there (so you can have a free PPC trial if you choose to).

You can google for “$25 AdWords Coupon”, “$35 AdWords coupon”, “$50 AdWords coupon” and “$100 AdWords coupon” (which seems to be the denomination that these coupons come in).

They aren’t always available though, but your web hosting account normally comes with some credits.

Ok, The Traffic Has Come In. But Not The Profits!

Now here’s the challenge for new PPC marketers:

• Not bidding on enough keywords: It’s great to have a precision, sniper-like approach to PPC, trying to aim for the 5-10 successful sales-converting keyphrases when you’re starting out. But you’re unlikely to know what they are unless you test sufficiently.
• Bidding on too many keywords: I applied a number of Amit’s techniques and generated a keyword list containing 2,000 keyphrases. As I sorted them out, I realized that I put in a number of terms which might not convert, so I had to go back and remove them. But then I’d created other problems for myself…

One key realization that PPC Super Affiliates are using (and that I’m starting to get a handle on) is to have a detailed game plan in mind. Among the points, your “PPC business plan” needs to contain:

• What type of traffic you’re planning to attract
• What specific keywords and keyphrases will attract that traffic profile
• The ads which will get them to click
• What action they’re supposed to take once they’ve clicked to your site
• What will motivate them to take the action
• How to create an incentive or motivate them to come back again (so your lead generation cost for the 2nd and subsequent visit is marginal or cost nothing)

As you can see, the strategy is more important than the action in any PPC Campaign.

The problem is that most new PPC marketers will logon to AdWords and “figure things out”, typing whatever comes to mind, rather than have a set plan.

That’s just like going to war without a game plan and shooting at anything that moves…Good luck…

If you engage in pointless actions, like submitting a 50,000 keyword list which is irrelevant and untargeted to your traffic, it WILL NOT convert, even if you’re paying $0.01 per click.

Having a game plan is very essential or having someone show you their game plan is critical to your success.

Having worked with Amit on a marketing campaign recently, which generated more than 700% ROI on our PPC spend, it’s very clear that our Super Affiliate Accelerator project is going to yield some interesting results.

Here’re some of the more hotly debated items from the the AdWords blog post “Websites that may merit low landing page  quality score“:

 Types of websites that will be penalized with low landing page quality scores:

• Data collection sites that offer free gifts, subscription services etc., in order to collect private information
• Arbitrage sites that are designed for the sole purpose of showing ads
• Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor’s computer

If we receive user complaints about ads for the types of websites listed above, the advertisers of those websites may not be allowed to continue running AdWords ads for those websites.
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“Data collection sites” will hit affiliates who use PPC to drive traffic to zip/email submit type offers or to an opt-in page for a free report.

And who’s going to file a “user complaint”? The visitor? Unlikely. More likely, a competitor who’s already trawling the adwords results appearing in the SERPs. [Just wait till a “report poor quality page” button unceremoniously appears on your Google toolbar…]

But that’s not all…

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The following types of websites are likely to merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably. In addition, it’s important for advertisers of these types of websites to adhere to our landing page quality guidelines regarding unique content.

• eBook sites that show frequent ads or install malware
• ‘Get rich quick’ sites
• Comparison shopping sites
• Travel aggregators
• Affiliates that don’t comply with our affiliate guidelines

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Do note the use of “are likely” in term terms above.

It’s not a guaranteed slap, merely “likely”.

In case you missed the affiliate guidelines:

Affiliate Policy
We allow affiliates to use AdWords advertising. Please note that we’ll only display one ad for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same Display URL per search query. We also monitor and don’t allow the following:

• Redirect URLs: Ads that contain Display URLs that automatically redirect to the parent company.
• Bridge Pages: Ads for webpages that act as an intermediary, whose sole purpose is to link or redirect traffic to the parent company.
• Framing: Ads for webpages that replicate the look and feel of a parent site.
  

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So domain redirects, iframes are “likely” to go out the window in time too.

Does this have anything to do with Google’s CPA ads?

The jury is still out, though Geordie observes:

Kiss the “work from home and make millions in your lawn-chair” sites good-bye. Feed-scraping travel and comparison engines are in for it too by the look of it (bizrate.com anyone?). When you read their affiliate guidelines, it’s clear that they’re targeting those affiliates using poor direct-linking strategies etc… not affiliates in general…

And an AdWords insider mentioned also on the hitlist:

extra long sales-letter style ebook pages due to their not approving of the ‘business model’ employed by these advertisers. Looks like judgment day is nigh for those sites too.

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Now before anyone screams or writes a “Death of AdWords” report and gives it away or sells it for $7, realize that this directly affects the landing page.

I’m assuming if you’re planning to be in Internet Marketing for the long-haul, you’d have had a solid business plan in place and focused on creating a credible site, rather than a single HTML page hosted on a $2.99 .com domain…

It’s an interesting evolution to see Google’s developers working towards developing more human-like algorithmns.

Although the content scoring metrics might seem crude now (and probably a few genuine content sites might end up as collateral damage), smart marketers will focus on building a solid content site and using PPC to drive traffic and convert them to an offer on the “backend”, that’s the difference between a ‘speed dating/speed seduction’ type deal, rather than the old ‘wine-and-dine’ to build a long lasting (business) relationship.

If you’ve been focusing on building a long term business, neither this nor any future development should derail any plans you might’ve had. If you didn’t, you’d be scrambling to do some quick fixes till the next announcement…

Taking a longer term view, content creators and copywriters could see their cachet increase significantly as more site owners beef up their content.

“Death of AdWords?” Hardly.

This latest development will merely be a blip in affiliate earnings, if at all.

Who’s Mark Roth?

He’s generated more than 1 million leads using Google’s AdWords PPC program.

In the process of his PPC efforts, he had customized software and a management platform developed to facilitate his affiliate marketing and CPA marketing efforts.

With PPC and its associated databases of keywords and keyphrases, there is a significant amount of data management involved. While you can still track keywords on Excel spreadsheets up to about 1,000 keywords effectively, you’d be hard-pressed to go beyond that without automating your systems.

…Which is where Affiliate Radar comes in. Mark mentioned that it’s the same system he uses in his marketing campaigns. Here’s an overview of Affiliate Radar’s features:

Affiliate Radar’s key feature is to manage your PPC and conversion tracking efforts from a central console. It currently supports Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter from a central interface.

Besides the ability to track your keywords with it’s broad, exact and phrase match variations, Affiliate Radar allows you to replicate successful campaigns across the different ad networks, as well as track and remove non-performing keywords from your ad groups.

Here’re a couple of slides from Affiliate Radar’s feature set:

If you’re new to PPC traffic generation, Mark and his partner Amish have created a suite of training videos to guide you through the setup process.

As most PPC software and tools involve some degree of complexity, the Affiliate Radar videos are a godsend.

Here’s an overview of the Campaign Launcher which allows you to manage your ad campaigns across the networks:

In addition, Affiliate Radar incorporate a keyword research module, tapping on WordTracker’s keyword database.

Affiliate Radar’s keyword tracking tools include:

The keyword tracking functions across 12 affiliate networks, including:keyword tracking across 12 affiliate networks

• Affiliate Traction
• AzoogleAds
• Clickbank
• Commission Junction
• DirectTrack
• Hydra
• Kolimbo
• Maxbounty
• NeverBlueAds
• Promote AR
• Rocketprofit
• ShareASale

I think one of the key differences between Affiliate Radar and other PPC products in the marketplace is that Mark is an active PPC practitioner, rather than a marketer who decided to develop a PPC product as a side project.

As a result of this emphasis, you can be sure that Affiliate Radar will continue to see continual enhancements over time.

For more information, you can check out:

–> Mark Roth’s Affiliate Radar