If you’re running a business, or if you’re following my blog, you’re getting into Internet marketing, you need to use AdWords! It certainly isn’t the only way to market your products, services and/or offers online, but it does allow you to compete for ad placement within Google and we all know how large Google is.

The operative word is “compete”. Another form of marketing is to place an ad on a well-known site that has large amounts of traffic coming to them, but they may charge upwards of $1000 for the monthly placement of your ad at the top of their page. There’s no competition and your ad shows everyday all day for the duration of your time slot. No competition for placement=large sum up front.

Another problem with this form of marketing is there’s no guarantee that those click-throughs are going to convert to sales on your site unless the site you chose has very targeted traffic that can relate to your site.

Who pays for these ads?

You do. Inside your account, you bid on keywords that people search for. As an example, your business is selling car parts. You bid $0.25 on the keyword “cheap car parts”. If your bid is the highest amount, your ad will appear at the very top search results page. So rather than battle it out with the thousands of other sites out there ranked high in search results, you can pay to get placed above them (and to the right side). These are the links you find under the Sponsored Results section.

Why bid for placement?

Ideally, you want your ads to be right in the face of web users searching for items that you’re promoting. There are two ways to do this on Google. First, build a high-quality site that has tons of links to it from other related sites and you’ll be ranked very high in the standard search results. Second, bid on keywords to put your ad right up top. The bidding process ensures that the thousands of businesses bidding for the keywords are ranked according to how much they’re willing to pay rather than at random.

Will my business revenue increase?

It should, but it may not. At this point, the toughest part of running a business is locking in sales. It’s easy to get people to call your number or visit your site, but what you do with them at this point is entirely up to you! When it comes to sending people to your website (or landing page), you have to “sell them” fast because if they don’t like what they see, they’ll move on faster than you can imagine.

How much should I spend?

Consider this answer to be part of your advertising budget. Once you have decided how much you’re willing to spend on advertising, this answer becomes clearer. AdWords allows you to set maximums on your account for things such as daily spending limit and bid amounts. Going back to our previous example, you can set up a $0.25 bid on “cheap car parts” and then add a maximum spendeture of $25 per day, so Google will keep showing your ads again and again until 100 clicks have been sent through ($25.00/0.25=100). This way, you can leverage your funds across many different keywords and be able to control your spending. I’ve known some local businesses to spend thousands per month on keywords.

My ad is at the top, but nobody is clicking…

Marketing can be tough and the market is tougher. You have to create stand-out ads so people will notice you and see a unique quality about your business. Think about if you were shopping for car parts. What kind of ads would you click on and what kind would you not click on? Utilize those thoughts and partner them with being concise and direct to create the best ad.

How do I get started?

Go over to Google and sign up! It’s free to join, but once you start adding money and running campaigns, you’ll be charged a $5 activation fee. Obviously, after that, you’ll be paying for the ads that you buy. Before you sign up, take a look around the Internet. A lot of times you’ll find promotional deals where you can get free money to put into your AdWords account.

Anybody and everybody who runs a website needs to sign up for Google AdSense. You’ve all seen the ads strewn across just about every site you’ve been to on the Internet, maybe you’ve clicked on them, maybe you just don’t even notice them.

It’s even possible that you’re under the impression that the people who run the site just put them there to try and offer you some pointless service or product in hopes that you’ll shell out tons of money. The reality is that these ads are not chosen by the webmaster and they do not make you pay large sums of money when you click on them.

The great thing about Google AdSense for both the webmaster and the company doing the advertising is that the ads are picked based on the content of the page you find them on. So as an example, if you’re reading a blog post about cars, the ads you’ll see are related in some way to cars. These can range from companies advertising car washes to car parts or to buying a car in general.

For visitors, this enhances the user experience in that they can view related offers, services, products and information based on the things they’re already looking into.

For webmasters, this enhances CTR (click-through ratio). What CTR simply means is how many times someone clicks on a link. Going back to our example about cars. If you posted a blog about cars and then manually inserted an ad about how to get a free trial of NetFlix, your visitors are less likely to click that ad because NetFlix has nothing to do with cars. This produces a lower CTR and that’s not a good thing when running advertisements.

Who pays for these ads?

Anybody wanting to advertise. Let’s say you sold car parts and you wanted an ad for your website to appear on search results and websites that are related to cars (and more specifically car parts). You would buy adspace from Google through another service called AdWords and you initiate a bid price for specific keywords. The bid price is how much you’re willing to pay for each time someone clicks on your ad. More on this in another post.

How much can I get paid?

This is a very large range that can be anything from $0.01 – infinity (technically) per click. The reason for this is that not every ad pays the same since not every keyword is worth as much to an advertiser. See more information on Google AdWords. So, you can paid every time someone clicks on an ad that’s displayed on your site. This money is then stored in your AdSense account until you reach a certain threshold and then Google sends you a check.

Are people really making thousands with AdSense?

Of course! However, these are people with websites that draw in many thousands of visitors. To give you an idea, take a sample CTR rate of 4%. This is a low rate, but for most sites, it’s considered normal. Applying some simple math assuming your site has 1000 unique visitors a month and you get about 40 click-throughs. If each click was worth $0.05, you just made $2.00! Of course, this number highly changes drastically based on how many clicks actually got counted, how much each ad cost, etc, etc. There are also many days when you don’t get any clicks. The most important thing to have on your site is traffic!

How do I get started?

Simply go to Google and signup! It’s completely free to use AdSense and it does not cost anything to run it, but you do need a website to place your ads. Beyond that, you need content. Otherwise the ads won’t even show.

Is there anything else I should know?

AdSense revenue can now be earned through RSS feeds, search results, parked domains and mobile content. You can learn more about each of these when you sign up. In further guides on my site, I will explore these areas of interest.

I won’t list them as sarcastically as Matt did–rather, I’ll give them to you straight.

1. Don’t Moderate — If you choose not to moderate your blog, you’re missing out on an important opportunity to keep you blog organized and relavent. If you’re noticing your posts getting lots of comments, but most them are not adding any real value to the topic, you’re actually doing a dis-service to your site. Clean up those comments and make sure that they stay on topic. Your readers will appreciate it too!
2. Spam Comments — Your blog should (at the very least) be running some type of spam filter plugin. Akismet is just that and it comes with every install of WordPress so there’s no excuse not to use it! If you end up letting spam in, you’re just opening the door for MUCH, MUCH more spam to come your way. Also, if the spammer starts spamming the links of your authors, they’re not going to be too happy either.
3. Forceful Signups — You probably experienced this one personally when wanting to comment on a blog somewhere. How many times have you really wanted to post something, but as soon as your forced to signup as a member, you simply close the page and move on? You don’t like it and neither does anyone else! Allow your visitors to post comments freely.
4. Comment Participation — If you intend to ignore your visitors, why are you blogging in the first place? You should be thankful that people are even coming to your site. One way to do this is to respond to comments as part of the dialog. This is especially true when a user asks questions.
5. Posting Random Junk — The Internet is filled with crap and LOTS of it! Don’t add to the trash heap by posting automated comments from people’s Twitter accounts, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Eventually it becomes too much to follow and along with making your site look cluttered, it’ll be a surefire way to send people packin’.
6. “Design like NASCAR” — I had to quote this one because there was no other way to describe it! If your blog is covered in widgets, banners, ads, sharing buttons, etc., then you won’t have much of a blog left in short time. Some bloggers think that adding more “function” to their site(s) creates loyalty and having too little creates a lack of substance. The fact is, if you focus more on your content and less on your “experience”, you’ll notice that in time, your content will become the experience. As time moves forward, you’ll discover new thing that you need to add to your site, but do it in small doses.
7. Search Engines — Hosting comments on external systems and then injecting them into your site in an effort to make your site appear differently to search engines as it appears to your users is a shady practice and you don’t want to get caught doing it. Getting ranked in the search engines is a never-ending game, but the most important things you can do is create original content and have other important sites link to yours. Both of these requires time. Take the time to make your blog relavent and unique and the results will come naturally.
8. Comment Pruning — While you’re advised to prune unnecessary comments and other irrelevant notes, don’t go deleting comments just because they shine a negative light over you or your site in an attempt to make it seem like you can do no wrong. This is just bad business and if people catch on, you’re going to look a lot worse.
9. Comment Box Placement — Keep the comments below the post. Not to the side, not on top–at the bottom. The point of having such a place to leave comments is because people are supposed to read your blog and then make a statement. What sense does it make to have comments anywhere else but after the post?
10. Subscriptions — Give your visitors a reason to come back. If they don’t want to come back, at least give them a way to still get your content via services such as RSS or email. This allows users to keep getting your content without having to come back and look for the latest stuff.
11. Too much Clicking — K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s really that obvious. As a web user yourself, you already know how annoying it is when you’re on a website and you’re looking for something, but to get there you have to click about 15 times. On blogs, this is usually related to loooong posts that get separated onto multiple pages or huge comments lists. My advice: just let it ride. Leave that content on one long page if you have to. The user will be happy to know that everything they need is right there.
12. Comment Moderation — There’s an option in WordPress to moderate comments before they’re posted to the site. Although this is a great tool for filtering spam, it’s also a great slap in the face to posters that have previously posted and been approved for their comment(s). Make sure these users can get through without the extra hurdle. They will appreciate that you know they’re not spammers.
13. Audience Participation — Get your users excited about coming to your site. They love participating in polls, surveys, contests, etc. These features are generally used when your site starts to have regular traffic, but in most cases, it’s not too early to start. Just don’t forget rule 6!

This of course is just a smidgen of the things you should be weary of. As a rule of thumb, if you’re not sure what to do, just post content. Just post what you feel, what you want to talk about, what you’re passionate about and everything will come in due time. Your blog may not be ranked high in the search engines and it may not be considered popular, but as more and more of your words get out into the world, the more action you’ll see on your site. Don’t get discouraged and happy blogging!

It’s been an interesting six months to say the least and I don’t mean that in a negative way at all! All relationships take work; work that can break one in half or make it last forever. Needless to say, we’ve had our ups and we’ve had our downs, but as strange as it is, our “downs” never really seem that bad. It makes me feel good to know that our relationship requires less work than most.

Maybe it’s our personalities or our insane desires to remain independent, but whatever it is, it works.

In honor of this day, I’d like to share with you my top ten list of things I love about my sweetheart:

Number 10

She’s an artist. Although she may disagree with my taste for art (or anybody’s for that matter), I think that she’s a wonderful artist with a skill that most people could only dream to possess. It’s hard to get her to give up an original and it’s even harder to get her to draw something you ask for, but that’s what makes it all the more special if she does do one (or two) just for you. Here is my favorite:

Number 9

She’s sociable. I have never met anyone who can strike a conversation with the most random of people (including one that goes by the name, Red Wolf). In fact, it was this trait that I mistook for flirting that got us into this predicament in the first place! One thing I have learned from this is that everyone out there has a story to tell and if you just open your ears, you might find something very interesting about that person and by sharing your own tales, you may actually find a decent friend.

Number 8

She’s independent. I can’t tell you how important it is for me to be with someone that is not going to be attached at the hip 24/7. I don’t know how people do it and I certainly don’t know how people can rely so much on someone else that they become an extension of themselves. It turns the relationship into a necessity that they can’t live without. For me, this relationship is a lesson in growth and not a day goes by that I’m not thankful for her.

Number 7

She’s not selfish. Everybody wants to feel important and because of this, it’s not hard to feel like you’re a little better than some of the people in your life. What’s worse is that you can be blinded by these feelings and end up taking more than you should. I’m a prime example of this. She, on the other hand doesn’t know the meaning of take. Even when people are taking from her, she still keeps on giving. And when you try to give it back, she just keeps on giving.

Number 6

She has a big heart. Although I haven’t gotten the full effect of this one, I can tell you that it’s there. She has an undeniable passion for the things she does in life and it’s never more prevalent than in the work she does. I’d advise anyone wishing to see what it means to love unconditionally, go visit the Biola University swimming pool during the summer weekdays.

Number 5

She loves family. This one is a combination of six and seven. She is hellbent on putting family first. If there’s one thing that upsets her most, it’s when people put their own wants and desires before those of their own children. She understands that life isn’t perfect and things don’t always go as well, so the willingness to lose a little in her own life to give 100% to her family is a daily mantra–and she doesn’t even have her own family yet. That says volumes.

Number 4

She has personal values. While the rest of us were caught in the vortex of the social pipeline, she was working on her future. While we all went out for the evening looking for a glimmer of excitement in the dim shadows of a local bistro, she was building her business. Does this make us less of a people? No, but it does say something about her. She found solace in the comfort of her own home and the friends at the gym. Her personal health is of great importance and it shows–in so many ways.

Number 3

She is trustworthy. I have never once been in a relationship where I can say, without a doubt, that I trust someone with my life. It’s a great feeling to know that no matter how bad things get, no matter how scary the future looks, you don’t have to worry about trust. She is also trusting. It’s hard when your significant other has friends of the opposite sex, but to be able to place trust and faith above small bouts of jealousy is an amazing feat. To be able to return the favor is even harder.

Number 2

She has a “nook”. This one’s of a more personal sentiment, but she has found a spot (on me) where she can place her head and effectively distance herself from the world and just be relaxed. She once said she could never fall asleep anywhere but her own bed, but I take great pride in knowing that this statement is no longer true when she gets in her nook.

Number 1

She’s with me. I’m nothing special. I often think about what I can offer the world and although I have a lot, there’s nothing really unique. Maybe I don’t have to be and maybe it doesn’t matter, but it does help the human ego when you can leave your mark in history. The point is, I did something to make her want to be with me and now, I just hope I can give her reasons to stay. With that said, I’m the luckiest guy alive to be with such a wonderful girl and nobody in the whole damn world can tell me otherwise.

What this does is make any and every purchase they make with that cookie get credited to you! Commission payouts start at 4% and can go to 6% (after you successfully convert 6 sales). This may not seem like much when someone is buying a $10 cd, but I can remember on more than one occasion when a user clicked on one of my links and ended up buying something completely different (and more expensive)!

Using the program is super easy. Once you log in, you can view all of your stats including dollars earned, current commission rate, number of clicks, API access, Amazon store creation and most importantly, the link builders. Here are some of the various ways you can create links and product ads for your site:

Better yet, if you have a blog system such as WordPress, you can download plugins that allow you to plug Amazon links right into your site based on content. Think of Google AdSense, but with Amazon products! Plus, if you have multiple sites that you want to run separate reports on, you can simply create new tracking ids (up to 100) and they all lead to your account. This way, you can track the performance of each site independently to see how you can maximize your exposure.

Here’s a bit of information about aStore. You are currently allowed to create up to 100 aStores in your account and what this does is allows you to create niche stores based on your desired content. For example, if you had the domain name, computerparts.com, you could create an aStore full of nothing but computer parts and accessories that Amazon sells! Of course, this is probably tens of thousands of items, so rather than add each item one by one, you’re able to add them by category. You can also add search capabilities. When someone goes to buy something, they click through to the Amazon site and make their purchase. You’re essentially creating a landing page related to your specific content.

Within about 5 minutes, I was able to create a sample store for you to see. This is a sample, but it’s still a fully functional store. You can purchase anything you want from this aStore!

You also get a 15% commission rate and link building tools for all products listed at Endless.com–Amazon’s new online shoe store! Everything is managed under your one account!!

There’s no reason not to sign up with Amazon. It’s free and very easy to use. Join today and start promoting more products than you can get anywhere else!

Once I do, I’ll have a full report here with what I think of everything and what some of my plans are for getting my feet wet. Hopefully by this point, you have already looked at my top five affiliate networks and have either signed up for a couple and/or are already approved.

I’m already thinking about some of my ad campaigns and once I get them into place, you’ll see a detailed report with stats and other information. Stay tuned for daily updates Monday through Friday.

AzoogleAds (AZN Networks)

This company is universally recognized as the top company of its kind. Jonathan Volk is quoted as saying:

AzoogleAds is my personal favorite affiliate network and the one I’ve made a LOT of money on. I’ve been quite open about them being my favorite affiliate network for years and they remain my favorite.

Signup today!

Elite Clicks Media (ECM)

If you plan to market your products and services via social media networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and more, this site provides offers that are top convertors for those audiences. Jonathan Volk says this:

Besides having a lot of really great offers, the professionals behind Elite Clicks Media is a great team of guys that are set on helping their publishers go to the next level. For example, just recently, ECM held a free webinar on CPV/PPV Marketing. More importantly, they have even more webinars lined up to help their publishers learn! This, to me, shows how they are not just like any other old network.

Signup today!

QwikMedia

QwikMedia specializes in pay per click traffic, media buying and lead generations. They are recommended if you plan to focus on these elements. Jonathan Volk had some nice words about them:

Many of the offers are exclusive offers (meaning you can’t get them at another network) that are doing really well right now in niches like dating, insurance, and more.

Sign up today!

Tatto Media

This is an all around company that provides great offers that work in any marketing plan. They also provide some of the best mobile phone offers. Here’s what Jonathan Volk has said:

The other great thing about Tatto is that many of the offers are their own exclusive offers that they have made and optimized themselves. They have some of the best mobile offers. Mobile offers do really well on social traffic and media buys. If you plan to focus on either of those methods, you should check out Tatto!

Sign up today!

Neverblue

Neverblue provides tons of high converting offers and it’s easy to get started. If you’re focus is to market across social networking sites, Neverblue provides many offers specific to this niche. Jonathan Volk had this to say:

In fact within just a few weeks of running on NeverblueAds, I was able to get a campaign going that was making upwards of $400 revenue per day!

Sign up today!

The girl I spoke to was very nice and she said that I should go get some experience with another marketing firm and come back to get my application approved.

According to Azoogleads as of this very minute, they are only accepting applicants with previous network affiliation experience. This translates into you having worked with or are currently working with another affiliate network. This leads me to believe that they are trying to weed out the saturation in their network and to be quite honest, I like that. It shows me that they are interested in keeping their members working in a competitive market that’s not drowned out by people that don’t know what they’re doing or people that sit there and don’t put much effort into their marketing business.

So what’s next? I plan to sign up for Elite Clicks Media which happens to be the number two recommended affiliate network by Jonathan Volk. If needs be, I’ll keep moving down the list until I can find a company willing to take a chance on me.

If you’re following along with me during all this, you may or may not have the same outcome as I did, so I strongly recommend that you:

• Still apply for Azoogleads first and see how your phone verification process goes.
• Apply for another affiliate marketing company while you’re waiting in case Azoogleads doesn’t accept you at this time. I created a list of the top affiliate marketing programs as defined by top marketers.
• Don’t get discouraged!! It’s easy at this point to start feeling like you’re not up to the challenge, but don’t let it get you down.

I’ll start a new post for ECM as soon as I get the application out.

I used to think that depression was a result of something drastic that happened in your life such as the loss of a close loved one, the premature ending of a dream career, drug use gone bad or just general unhappiness about life. One could also make the claim that most people fall into depression because of financial troubles or just being lonely.

And then, every so often you hear a story about someone who you think had it all. Someone that had tons of friends, lots of money and everything else that most people aspire to have. Your first response is usually along the lines of “what do they have to be depressed about?”

Well, sometimes the answer(s) to that question are not so clear. The doctors tell us depression is a chemical imbalance in your brain and although it can be triggered by and greatly enhanced by traumatic events in your life, for the most part, it’s either there or it’s not. So to fix it, we generally take a antidepressant which is supposed to correct the imbalance and bring us back to “life”.

However, doctors are now saying that these drugs don’t work as well as people are led to believe (upwards of 60% of treated patients say they don’t feel a difference). They say that with the exception of extreme cases, these drugs don’t do anything at all. In fact, most doctors openly admit that they’re not really sure how they’re supposed to work anyway!

This would completely explain why, in a country where 10% of antidepressant takers are people above the age of 6, we don’t have any significant reduction in the amount of depression cases. It’s also important to note that most doctors don’t even directly link depression to suicide. Essentially anyone who has thought about taking their own life is usually faced with that idea after seemingly exhausting all possible ways of living. These people can’t control/handle their lives and/or their looking for an easy escape.

Who’s to judge? But, how can we help? Or can we help?

The lines in the song I mentioned earlier are: “Help me, comfort me. Stop me from feeling what I’m feeling now.”

It’s sad to see people at the end of their rope. I only knew of one person who killed himself and the story was that he did it over a girl. He hanged himself in the closet. Then you have your string of famous celebrity suicides who just couldn’t take life anymore: Kurt Cobain, Hunter S. Thompson, Cliff Baxter (vice-chairman of Enron), Ray Combs (host of the Family Feud) and of course Adolf Hitler, but he had another reason.

More updates to follow at the end of the day.