Ian Fernando » adwords

How to Capture all Local Traffic from Google Adwords

Ian — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:50:10 +0000

There are ways to use Google Adwords with local advertising and local traffic. With the new map roll (geo targeting) out for Google Adwords, there are somethings that I kinda missed from the old version of Adwords. Especially when it comes to geo targeting an area. With the new geo targeting interface, you enter a city and it will target that area. BUT it will also leave out less dense populated cities around or within your targeted area.

For example here is a screenshot of all the cities Google says there is reach, from county in New Jersey.

Now there maybe some good traffic which can be captured. Even though Google Adwords can not tell the populate or reach of the area doesn’t mean there isn’t traffic there. Granted Google may pull their location for ads being searched in their location doesn’t mean it will always be covered.

To properly cover all these ’empty’ areas is to create a radial target. Zoom in the map and decide what city you want as a center axis and enter it in Google’s geo targeting tool, hit enter. It does not matter if the city you use as a center point is already targeted, you just need an axis for your circle. The default is a 20 mile radius, but you can go as low as 10 miles. Once you do that you will see an additional overlay over your original targets. It should look similar to this below.

As you can see the circular radius targets the non targeted area produced from the first screenshot. It allows me to extend my reach to these areas, even though they maybe less populated or have little reach. Since they are still within the reach of the other cities the client is targeting, this overlay reach will help with the campaign. If the client wanted to only target selected cities then this strategy will play no part. Since they are targeting a county, this will work well.

This simple overlay radial targeting will help increase reach, even find leads which Google thinks their maybe none. In essence you want to get a good reach of users or visibility to your ad. You just do not know if these ‘gapped’ areas will not produce a lead to your client.

I would probably say to use this strategy only if there are missing areas within your map. I would not use this strategy if there are missing areas outside. It would defeat the purpose and the client may not travel out that far from their office or target area. If you are missing cities that are already surrounded by cities targeted already then it would make sense to include them by using a radial target.

Check Everyday for your $50 Adwords Coupon

Ian — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:43:53 +0000

Before they expire Morgan from Wall of Monitors has given me 5 Google Adwords Coupons for $50 each. Since I can’t use because of prior issues, I decided to give them you – the readers. Morgan has been kind enough for me to grant access to my readers. So what i am going to do is update this post with a new image everyday.

The first image is below. This is for a $50 coupon, if you want to start utilizing Google Adwords and get your feet wet, use this coupon right away. I know it is going to be used right away. I also want to thank Morgan, street name Heavy T, for providing these out.

I want to thank Morgan foe letting my readers get these coupons! Thanks! To my readers, make sure you take advantage of this as each image is a first come and first serve. These coupons also expire at the end of the month.

So if you want to get started with Google but do not have any funding then utilize these coupons that are coming up in the next 5 days. I will be adding 5 new screenshots of the coupons Morgan has provided to me everyday, so make sure you come back everyday and check this blog post!

Day 2 Coupon –

Day 3 Coupon –

Day 4 Coupon –

Day 5 Coupon –

What to Do with Content Bully’s Data

Ian — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:43:16 +0000

If you already do not know about Content Bully then you should. I wrote a post about it a while back, in whch they allowed me to give away 50 of their copies. Well, I have been playing around with the software for a while now and I am impress with what it can do and how it arranges the data.

Since there is so much data that Content Bully is providing, what do you do with that data? There is data for banner ad sizes, alexa ranks, geo targeted alexa ranks, etc. There is a lot and it takes time for Content Bully to gather these data, especially if you set a filter to what you are looking for.

Well, since I have not done an excel tutorial in a while I will show you how the data looks like and what you can do with that data, from my point of view. I will show you some things on filtering by alexa ranks, banners, sorting, etc. It is all very basic Excel tips and tricks but can be very useful when doing your own data or looking at data.

So with content I run about 3-5 instances of this depending on the offers I am running and types of keywords. Since I look for the max websites with my basic specs, such as alexa ranks and if they have ads or not.

If you do not know what Content Bully is, it simply finds websites with high volume traffic with adsense ads on them. This way you can do placement targeting when working with Google Adwords.

Well, let me just show you the video of and how to decipher Content Bully’s data:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Download Content Bully, Its FREE!

Taking Over Google Content Network

Ian — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:17:22 +0000

…or trying to. Well now that Affiliate Summit East is over, I have gotten a lot of new ideas and new business ventures I want to dive into. More importantly I want to talk about Google Content Network (GCN). Google Content Network is basically having you ad shown on multiple sites and trying to get a click and then having it convert. This is very different from paid search. When I started with Facebook, there are different rules I had to get use to. I can not look at Facebook Social ads and relate it to Google Search because of so many aspect such as demographics, how the ads are shown, the ad copy, making the ad copy, etc.

There are many aspects. This is similar to when I do PPC with Yahoo and MSN. But some aspects of paid search that I know from Google can cross over with the big 3. Now that I am diving into Google Content Network, I have to learn how GCN works and how ads are being clicked on and if broad, phrase, exact even matter with GCN.

I have done GCN before, but this time I will be going heavy with it. Similar to Facebook, I went heavy but when I started seeing money come through – the ad change regulations took over. I was kinda of angered and probably why I haven’t updated my facebook case study. So now after ASE I have been hearing a lot about GCN, so I was like well no one talked about it on the internet – is it a secret? Well I decided to dive into it this past Monday with 3 of my good converting products. These products do well with paid search, so I wanted to know how it would do on content network. So far .06 CTR and such a high impressions with barely any clicks but there are clicks.

Did they convert, no. So I am currently testing ad copy, since I know the audience is different from search. I even have ad groups separated by broad, phrase, and exact. I want to see how it will affect my CTR and if they really matter. Also I am checking to see if a general keyword or long tail keywords will also be of importance. Just so many things to test since no one is really talking about it.

I know several people are jumping into GCN as well and plan to master it. I will also try to master it and get away from the PPC affiliate marketing aspect for a while. I still use paid search for my digital products and they are doing great. The fact I am moving away from network base is because when I ask networks for top 10 offers, they are usually the same across the board. This maybe because it is converting better than others. The thing with this is competition, there is a lot of competition for paid search especially for the top 10 offers from any network.

The offers are the same across the board that I notice anyways: insurance, ringtones, weight lost, cash advance, debt, etc. If everyone does this how many more keywords are being used up? What are the chances of a person getting a quick dollar off the offer? I personally think it is getting saturated, base on offers. Ieven try to get top 25 offers and they still range the same across the networks. The thing with the other offers is there are keywords and niches that no one is bidding on. I try not to get caught up with the hype but sometimes its good since it is converting and if it converts why not do it.

Well I will be diving into GCN and trying to conquer it. I will still be doing paid search with some networks but not so heavy as I want to concentrate PPC with my digital products I am coming out with and as well with Google Content Network.

Grab a Seperate Credit Card for Your Business

Ian — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:43:09 +0000

PPC is almost like a rush to me. It keeps me on my toes and I am looking towards my stats at the end of the day. I don’t obsess with my stats but I do anticipate to it when it is time to view them. After realizing my spending and earnings from last month, I decided to go a head and to apply for a separate credit card just for PPC. I have maxed out my personal CC and I can’t run any Adwords campaign right now!! So I have to wait for my direct deposits and checks from several networks, arghh the pain of waiting.

This brought a valuable lesson to me, dedicate a credit card to your business. I can honestly say PPC marketing is part of my business model because it is earning me money. Having your own credit card strictly for your business can easily help you grow and being responsible for that dedicated credit card. The fact that I can not market on Adwords is really throwing my whole income source off.

I have to wait till the 15th to receive all my checks, deposit the checks and then wait for it to clear, wow! Some networks I have direct deposit and I am waiting for those to come in and then I can pay my credit card and then be on my grind to PPC marketing. I will have wasted about 2 weeks from today, because I can not pay for my credit card. Not being able to perform and earn money is really holding me back from learning and making more money. …sighs…

This is a lesson learned to dedicate my business spending on a separate credit card and my personals’ on a separate card. Also you really do not want to figure out what is business and what is personal when looking at your expenses, so this is definitely a lesson learned.

Chris Bibey says:

By keeping your personal money separate from your business, you can continue to live in the same manner as always. The only change will be funding your personal accounts from your business as opposed to a paycheck from an employer. Is this a big change? Sure. But if you want to start your own business, itâ€™s one that you need to make.

This is a true because you can take a look at your business account and transfer some amounts to your personal to pay for bills etc. Just keeping the 2 apart from each other can help you be more organized. Also since I am treating affiliate marketing as a business I would need to act like it is a business and not just an everyday action. Affiliate marketing is a business!

With this in mind I will be opening a separate account as well with my bank for a business account. As Chris stated in the quote, having both separate and treating it differently can help me appreciate the business and industry more.

Now I will be off to my bank to talk about opening another account under my business (soon to get an LLC) and see if I can apply for a business credit card. So this is all going to be new to me and I will be reading quite a lot to just have a good understanding and what to expect as well. Any Recommendations?

Overall, this experience shows and tells me to better organize my business (making money online) vs my personal expenses. I am angered I can not continue my PPC marketing in the next couple days because of a maxed out credit card. So I will take a lost for the next couple weeks and I will definitely be on the grind and go heavier than ever, soon to be making 6 figures!!!!!

Make sure you separate your business and your personals on all aspects. If you are making money online treat it as a business and a business needs to be treated with specific aspects, which I have learned the hard way – but guess that is what my blog is a bout.

From my last post a lot of have told me about American Express. I have even got an email to try to use Advanta. I will be looking into new credit cards in the coming days. Thanks for everyone that has left a comment and recommendations.

March Spendings vs Earnings and Hurdles

Ian — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:52:46 +0000

As you may know I have started back up in PPC and I have survived last month but I face some hurdles along the way. So I have made pretty good amount last month especially since I got back and I started as a newbie. I took all knowledge that I knew of PPC – with the exception of the basics – and started as if I was new to adwords, which I am. But thanks to several blogs that I read and my affiliate managers I manage to do pretty well last month.

I started off pretty small and I think I did fairly well for a beginner. Prior to this small project I have done adwords in the past but not as efficiently as I did last month. I had more tools and I was more focus on my campaigns. I was paying more attention to my landing pages and looking for certain aspects of the offers.

But lets take a look at my Adwords account which is my spending and we will take a look at one of my networks for the month of March. I will not post my other networks as they are little but they were all within the month of March and my ROI is a little higher. Azoogle is one of my higher payouts so I will post the screen shot below.

Adwords spending:

Azoogle Earnings:

You can see my adwords spending is at $592.40 and my total earnings from Azoogle is at $1375.87! For one month I came out positive and pretty high I think. Last month is one of my more improved month, since I started with several campaigns and did some testing and now concentrating on specific aspects that I saw that needed to be adjusted. This is just a snapshot my azoogle ads network, now my total earnings is higher since my other networks are not included in this. I want to show you PPC and affiliate marketing is the truth and showing you the potential.

I was Slapped Hard!

During my March madness there were issues I encountered first hand like being bitched slapped several times. I scrambled to all my resources and asked for help and even talked to my Am to find out if they knew of anything. During that time I research Google and found some issues happening at the time of the slap and other aspects of me being slapped were my QS and keywords. I simple just adjusted what was needed via landing pages or keywords.

There were several days where my impressions dropped for 3 days and then dropped again horribly on the weekends. I was so piss and angered – I asked several people on twitter and IM if they saw same results. Some saw similar results but probably not as bad as me. I let the days go by with the lower impressions and then it sky rocketed again – not too sure to make of it – I attempted to call Google between those 3 days and I really got no where, no one answered.

The weekends were horrible one week I had 75 impressions one time VERY LOW! I tend to know that the traffic on the weekends drop but since my impressions were dropping already my weekend traffic got killed. Again I waited for it to pass by and then it went back to normal the following weekend, not to sure what to make of it.

Account Managers are your Best Friends:

Prior to this post I posted how your account managers are assholes. That post was strictly towards a specific network. But my other networks helped with providing great information and what I may need to turn my PPC campaigns into click able converted campaigns. They provided me some great insights that I would not even think of or wouldn’t even try. They give a visual explanation of why it can work and how it can benefit – you really do not know until you test. So I tested most of them and found a couple to work well.

The other bad part is I only have 1 credit card (never applied for others) and I use it for everything so its kind of maxed out – so I am waiting for my direct deposits and checks form the networks so I can get back on my grind. So now I will be looking at credit cards to use strictly for PPC and marketing, any recommendations?

Thank you Super Affilaite Bloggers:

By simply reading and focusing on the topic you can definitely make it – I am not a super affiliate just yet but reading several blogs and tips has helped!