If you’re on the same email lists I am, then you’ve probably received a lot of emails about the “Speed PPC System” . . .

I haven’t said anything before now because I wanted to try it out for myself first. I am NOT a PPC (pay per click advertising) authority by any means, but I have “dabbled” in it for awhile. So I think I was a pretty good test subject . . .

I downloaded the software tonight, viewed the instructional videos, and tried it for myself . . .

The “short of it” is that I was able to create 50 ad groups containing 8700 keyword phrases, and 300 keyword-loaded text ads in about 30 minutes (hey, I know the site claims to do a lot more in just 12 minutes, but I’m still getting familiar with this software!)

But that’s just the beginning of what this software will do . . .

I recorded a short “Overview” video you can watch to get my take on the whole thing . . . just click here to view . . .

Best,

Paul

P.S. Or just read about it by clicking here . . .

Hmmm, “meanderings” — an interesting word. While I intended it to refer to my own meandering, I suppose it could also be interpreted as “those who meander”, just like “earthlings” are those who are from the earth.

Anyway . . . I’ve always liked that word.

Last week I told you about a new AdWords tool, “SiteSniper Pro” — as you may recall, I had only about a 0.2% clickthrough rate on those ads, and I assumed it was because of the poor quality of my image ads.

However, after going back to my AdWords account, I found that almost 100% of my ad impressions were text ads — and 95% were from the home page of the same site. AND when I looked at that site, I discovered that the text ad was clear down at the bottom of the page. So very few even saw it.

So I consider myself just plain lucky for getting that first $297 sale. But I’ll take it.

Squidoo Offers

Earlier this month, I also purchased a 4-week “Squid Offer” as a test. The idea is that you have your “offer” in a given category, and people “vote up” the ads. If my ad is one of the top 5 ads, then it appears on ALL Squidoo lenses that display Squid Offers for that category.

It’s an interesting concept, and I figured I’d just give it a go to see what happened . . .

Mine was in the “Computers, Gadgets & Tech” category . . . I was offering software resale rights (the “Pregnancy Sale“, I believe I’ve referred to previously), and I figured this category might be viewed by people who put together websites. This product would be a natural for professional webmasters, in my opinion.

Well, my month is almost up. I checked today and my ad IS in the top 5 (with only 10 points!). BUT, so far this month I’ve received a whopping 43 visitors from the ad (at a cost of $100).

Now here’s the problem . . . I have no way of knowing the reasons behind this low visitor count. It could be any of the following:

1. It’s a poorly targeted ad — put in the wrong category
2. The ad itself is poor
3. The ad is getting very little exposure

I have no idea what kind of exposure the ad is getting, because Squidoo doesn’t offer much of anything in the way of ad stats . . .

So keep this in mind . . . you may want to try Squid Offers yourself, but when you’re done all you’ll be able to give is a “pass/fail” grade based on your visitor and/or sales counts — there’s no way of determining impression or clickthrough stats. Still, for only $100, it may be worth testing with your own offer.

BTW, Squidoo is okay with you promoting your Squid offers and soliciting people to “vote” for your ads. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some “Squid Offer Clubs” popping up, where you would get everyone in the “club” to “vote up” your Squid offer. If I had more time, I’d form one myself!

As long as we’re on the topic of advertising . . .

ClickBank Marketplace Ads

I just found out that ClickBank is going to be adding more paid advertising to their site, starting August 1.

If you have a product you sell via Clickbank, this could be a golden opportunity for you. There are only 8 ad spots available for each of the 9 Clickbank marketplace categories, and the current pricelist shows they’ll sell for $300-$700/month . . . go to the ClickBank “Advertise” page for details (you’ll have to send an email to the address listed on that page).

Have a great week!

Paul

Just a couple of items real quick . . .

There may be times when you want a submit button to NOT look like a submit button, but rather look like the blue underlined link text everyone is programmed to click on. Here’s an example (this is actually a submit button):

All you have to do is use a bit of CSS code on the submit button, like so:

<input type=”submit” name=”submit”
style=’font-size:12.0pt; border:0; background:white; color:blue; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline; cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;’ value=”Click Here To Order Now!”>

(Note: You can copy/paste the above code, but will need to make sure the quotes are the right characters — Wordpress is converting the double- and single-quote marks to some other character set…)

This CSS code (the “style” settings) does the following:

1. Makes the button background white
2. Gets rid of the border button border
3. Makes the button text blue and underlined (like a link)
4. Makes it so the cursor changes to a “hand” as you would expect to happen when you put your cursor over a link

That’s it — pretty simple, but it can be very nice to have when you need it.

I recently recommended the “Adword180” book. The really interesting part of that publication was its treatment of site-targeted Adwords ads. The problem with site targeting is that it takes a long time to build up a good list of URLS to target — there’s just a lot of manual research required.

Well, no more — enter “Site Sniper Pro“. I wish I had an affiliate link for this puppy, but no matter.

Basically this tool does all the hard work for you, and identifies all the pages that come up in the search engines “natural search results” (and are relevant to your keywords) that have adwords ads on them.

I used it to target several “resale-rights” web pages to promote my “Software Resale Rights” package — it took me about an hour to get everything setup in Google Adwords. After two days I’ve had about 11,000 impressions and 20 clickthroughs.

Doesn’t seem that great, I know. The clickthrough conversion is about 0.2% — I attribute this to my AWFUL image ads — they’re basically just text banners. Very plain. No creativity or imagination whatsoever. Ugly. My bad.

BUT, I’ve only spent about $22 (average CPM of about $2, average cost per click of just over $1.00) and have already had a $297 sale. I know it’s not statistically valid, but it’s definitely a good start.

I’m going to work on my image ads (actually, I’ll pay someone else to — I don’t DO graphics!) and we’ll see what happens. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, check out SiteSniper and if you didn’t check out Adwords180 before, get that too — I DO get an affiliate commission on that one

Paul