Since this has always been a bit of a black hole for me - I’m still working on my landing pages for my coffee site. I’ve not yet bothered to look at stats, since I’m not actively doing anything with it… yet. I’m feeling like I’m falling behind on deadlines, but I’m looking at it as I have a month to do it - and I’m not going to rush things only to really screw it up at the end. Hell, my money is at stake with the PPC campaign I’m looking at starting when my landing pages have been finished up.

Then I’ll worry about tweaking the pages and dropping those underperfomring words.

I’ve got the plan - I’m just taking my sweet time getting to the finish line.

I’ve been working on getting a new-ish theme for this site up and running. I’m looking forward to maybe changing it up a bit. I’m never really happy with just one look for a very long time - and this poor site needs a bit of a face lift. So I’ll be getting some of that done in the next little while as well.

Ohhh!  Before I forget, I’ve also added the “Sociable” plugin for this site.  About time - since I’ve been able to maintain my anti-social status for over three years.  I figure I better get off my butt and get a little more social and see if it will affect the site in a positive way - make it easier for readers to share the information… that’s what I’m hoping… we’ll see how it goes

Popularity: 33% [?]

Ah yes, minor hiccup to a chaotic day - I didn’t manage to get ANYTHING done :)  Woo me.  Ah well, today is a new day and I’m working towards emailing Jon about PPC, working on my first landing page, thinking that there’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to beat the number one position on Tyler Cruz’s little promotion using MarketLeverage (ah yes, those fun fun competitions).

It’s funny, I usually steer clear of competitions - but this one was interesting for me and I entered it - because I thought I needed that extra push of “competition” or I would sit around and think about the possibilities all day long and then just walk away from it.  It’s hard work and it’s also working on something I don’t know a lot about - so I’ve been reading blogs, CPA blogs - anything and everything lately, where I can learn a thing or two about PPC advertising and working that all into CPA offers.

Is that where the money is?

Well, we’ve seen those people out there who are making a good living doing the PPC/CPA thing - and I am still not sure if it’s because they got in on it early… and learned when it wasn’t “all the rage”.  I don’t know.  They’re still doing it.  They’re still flashing the cash about.

I’m also a bit tired of waiting.

Organic search is great for the long-term.  Absolutely.  Content/Keywords - vital.  But for the short-term … is PPC the way to go - more risk.  Hmmm… starting to sound more like the stock market!

So that’s the plan for today.

What are my long-term plans for this CPA Project - I’m going to work with it for 30 days.  See where it takes me.  From there I’ll be making adjustments for month #2.  I may or may not bore you with the daily details :)  But I figure if you’re thinking about diving head first into PPC marketing, you might want to see someone doing it right along with you.

Popularity: 34% [?]

It’s like a tall cool glass of lemonade on a hot July afternoon

Yesterday I made some headway in my research on landing pages. It was interesting to read about how Google interprets landing pages. A big one is that you need relavent and original content. You would think that would be a no brainer right? But I’ve seen it done and honestly I’ve done it before I knew better… is that I would go a head and copy/paste content from the affiliate site that they recommended to use on my site to promote their product. I know they were trying to make it easier for their affiliates to create content - quickly and without really having to think about it. I thought that was the cat’s ass. I just copy/pasted and went on my merry way, oblivious to the fact that the same content I copy and pasted was now not only on my site but probably on 1,000’s of other affiliate sites. People thinking the same thing as me - easy-peasy…. now where’s my money?

Problem was, there was no money rolling in - or for that matter traffic. 12 visitors a day does not make someone rich. Unless you can get all 12 to convert into buyers and that your product is moderately expensive that you get a good payout at the end.

Ha. Good luck.

So with that experience sitting in my back pocket - I’m not that naive anymore. I know I need good, original content. I need to bring the landing page together with the offer of the ad. I need the content to sell the product. I need to provide a direct path from the landing page to the product I’m selling. (It even says so at Google!) - I know what I need to do.

Now the daunting task of actually getting down to it and writing the content. I’m planning on using the same layout I’m using for my main site - keep things consistant for one landing page and then for my second landing page I’m going to change it up a little and try a different sort of layout.

With the different layouts - do I do the same sort of offer. That would be a good starting point for the testing. From there use the better converting template and then start tweaking the text/offers. If I need too..

Man, I need to talk to Jon about this PPC stuff. I am a bit freaked out with the money aspect of this - as I’ve seen plenty of people try the PPC and lose money. Then come back and say - hey that’s not so bad… but still be in the hole. I don’t want to be in the hole. But I can’t really afford to play it safe any more.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Well as you know last night I started a new CPA project where I’ll be pushing Coffee.  I love coffee and I don’t think I’ll find it all that boring to write the content and get things going with the design of the site and all that good stuff.  In face I just bought the domain, set up the hosting and now have a site live.  It took me about an hour to put it all together.  Now I’m writing the content.

The content writing hasn’t gone too badly for me so far - I’ve got a big list of keywords that look to have good competition - both from advertisers and searchers.  So I’m hoping that I can strike gold with a couple of those keywords and start bringing people to the site through organic searches.

Of course taking this route also means that I’m going to be sitting around and waiting for a while.  Who knows how long it’s going to take this little site o’mine to actually start ranking well for these keywords I’m plugging in to the content.

Seriously, I’m thinking a very long time.

So now I’m thinking I’ll need to start shelling out a little cash to do some PPC advertising.

Now this is where I start to panic.

This is also the hard bit.  This is where you make it or it breaks you.  I’ve tried PPC advertising before and haven’t really had any profound success with it.  I know that it takes a lot of tweaking to get it right.  Some do it well and see 200% to 400%  ROI.  Wow… imagine that - that’s what I’ve been reading.  Crazy.  I am not shooting for that sort of success - breaking even at this point would be success to me.

So now where do I start … what do I need to do to prepare myself and my site for PPC advertising.

The Plan:

1. Content for site. - Currently I’m working on this and have 4 articles up.  I also have a shop page offering a few coffee related items.  Don’t want to dilute the ad pool too much by offering from various affiliate networks.  This site I want for MarketLeverage’s CPA offers.
2. Landing Pages. - I would like to set up landing pages for my PPC offers to my site that will draw in the interested party and have them click to the offer.  I don’t know if you can direct link to an offer through Google Adwords.  Going to have to check that one out.  But landing pages seem to be the route I’ll be taking.
3. How to go about creating landing pages. - Yes, I’m debating on how to do this.  Should I create a site that is filled with content and have pages created within the site that would serve as the landing page.  I’m not going to be putting the PPC campaigns up and pointing to my index page - wouldn’t convert well.  I want a nice compact page that will filter people through to the offer to buy the product.  I want to be able to convince them.  So do I create separate pages within the site itself or could I create a 1 page landing page … lets say on a sub-domain.  Maybe a link at the bottom back to the main site - the offers are there as well… I’m not sure.
4. Don’t want to confuse the potential buyer with lots of offers. - pretty much explains itself, which is why I’m leaning towards the one page sub-domain for each offer.

So the game plan for the next couple of days is to create landing pages.  Then set up the PPC and see where it takes me.  As far as PPC goes - I’m leaning towards Adwords.  Bidvertiser might be another possibility.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Well I think I owe Stu a beer…  I’m not going to get the Ninja Affiliate cloaking thingy - I’m going to try out the free WordPress plugin Monty suggested and see if that works.  If not I’ll be back at it wrangling with PHP code to make that cloaking work on that site damn it.

I’m also taking the plunge and signed up with MarketLeverage to try out some of their CPA offers - I was going to give them a go a while back but they’ve got this thing where they phone you first before they approve you.  Perhaps to know that you’re “real” and not some bot floating around the ‘net.  So the first time I signed up I didn’t manage to get approved… because I wasn’t around for the calls.  But this time I made sure I had my phone with me all the freakin’ time and finally made contact with them and now I’m an affiliate.

So why MarketLeverage?  Well, I’ve seen them around and I am always looking for new CPA sites and I’ve not done a CPA site of my own in like… forever.  So I thought I’d give them a whirl.  So last night I sat down and took a look at some of the offers and decided to try my hand at Coffee - yes there are about a million sites out there about coffee, but they’ve got some great offers going with big payouts so why not.  So I got started last night and realized why I’d not done this in a while.

I’m not sure if the way I’m going about it will work.

I’m not pushing the site with PPC.  No budget - so I’m going organic - which will take a while to be seen in the search engines.  But I’m doing it smarter this time.  I’ve made a list of the keywords that contain “coffee” and I’m going to work my way through some content adding some of the keywords to the site - and then watching them on my DigitalPoint account for Keyword tracking.  I’m hoping by being more keyword focused this time around I will be more successful than I have been in the past.

Also I love coffee - so learning about it and writing about it isn’t a complete bore.

Now because of the CPA offers - I’ve got the site set up with ads.  Now I’m wondering if I should have posts specifically directed towards the content of the CPA offer - that way I have a “landing page” if at sometime I have a bit of cash to flog to a PPC campaign?

I’ve never been overly successful with CPA sites… so it’s a bit of a learning curve.  Any suggestions or hints you could throw my way that have worked for you?

Popularity: 5% [?]