Click here to download the latest version of the PPC Management Software
 

The Keyword Calculator can be accessed by clicking the “KW Calc” button on the toolbar of the PPC Management Software tool.

Here is a screenshot of the Keyword Calculator application:

Here are some of the operations that can be performed with this tool:

• To get started, copy/paste one keyword list into the textbox      on the right and copy/paste your second keyword list into the textbox in the middle of the application. You can also simply drag/drop your .txt files containing the keywords into any of the textboxes.

• Adding Keywords: Click the “1+2″ button to create a single keyword list from list 1 and list 2 without any duplicates.

• Subtracting Keywords: Click the “1-2″ or “2-1″ button to subtract one keyword list from the other. For example, if keyword list 1 contains a, b, c and list 2 contains b, f, g  – then “1-2″ would result in a, c

• Multiplying keywords: Click the “1*2″ or “2*1″ button to multiply one keyword list with the other. For example, if keyword list 1 contains a, b and list 2 contains c, d  – then “1*2″ would result in a c, a d, b c, b d

• You can also perform various other operations, like: transforming keywords into lower case, sorting by keyword length

• Using the buttons B, P or E you can transform your keyword lists into Broad, Phrase and Exact match keywords.

You can also create a file that contains a list of adgroups with various keyword permutations by dragging & dropping a special adgroups template file onto the button labeled as “Drop AG File Simple” or ” Drop AG File All”
 

A sample template file can be accessed by clicking the “*T*” button. The template file contains a list of words that will be added in front of your actual keywords (for example words like: buy, purchase, order…). You can also provide a list of words that will be added at the end of your actual keywords, like: review, manual, guide… or whatever you want.
 

This will automatically create an AdWords campaign file for you, which you can drag & drop into the “Many Keyword Campaign” section of the PPC Management Software in order to create a complete AdWords campaign.
 

For detailed step by step instructions with screenshots, please take a look at the user and instruction manual that comes with the PPC Management Software Tool.
 

The PPC Campaign Manager is free and you can access it by clicking this link

Click here to get the latest version of the new Google AdWords Tool
 

The new tool now allows to create so-called “Many Keyword Campaigns” which can be used for the Search Network and the Content Network.
 
 
Here is a screenshot of the “Many Keyword Campaigns” section:
 

Here is how this works:

• Drag & drop a list of your keywords into the “Keyword Grouper” section of the Google AdWords Tool and create your Adgroups simply by dragging & dropping closely related keywords into the appropriate Adgroup window.

• Once you are done, export the result into a .group file.

• Drag & Drop this group file into the “Many Keyword Campaigns” section of the Google AdWords Tool.

• Provide your ad titles and descriptions and a few other basic campaign parameters.

• Export the campaign, so you can later modify it easily if you want.

• Once you are happy with all the settings and ads, click the “Create Google” or “Create MSN” button in order to generate your PPC campaign file (a .csv file).

• Open your Google AdWords Editor, go to File and Import CSV and select the .csv file the Google AdWords Tool created for you. You can do the same with MSN AdCenter campaigns – the Google AdWords Tool allows you to create .csv campaign files for both PPC search engines.

And that’s really all it takes to setup potentially huge PPC campaigns with thousands of keywords in only a few minutes.

For detailed step by step explanations with screenshots, please check out the user manual that comes with the Google AdWords Tool. You can also watch the short demo video to get a better idea on how to use this tool.

The old version of the Google AdWords Software Tool also allowed you to create campaign files, but instead of one .csv file you had to import 4 different text files into the AdWords Editor in order to setup your campaign. So, this makes it much easier and faster to setup your AdWords and/or MSN PPC campaigns.
 
 
As with the old version, I decided to keep the new and improved Google AdWords Tool completely free.

Click here to download the new Google AdWords Software Tool
 

Testing new things doesn’t necessarily require a huge amount of creativity, time and effort. In fact, it’s often the simple things that can lead to the most amazing results. It’s the kind of things of which you might be tempted think that they aren’t even worth giving a try, because they won’t make any difference anyway.

Here are a few ideas of simple things you can test for your PPC ads, for your landing pages, sales pages…

• Use capital letters for the first letter of a word
• Use lower case for the first letter of certain words, like to, for, and, of…
• Put a dot, a question mark or an exclamation mark somewhere in your phrase
• Replace the word “fast” with “easy”; “quick” with “simple”… you get the idea.
• Replace certain words with a synonym.

That’s all simple stuff that can be implemented with a minimum amount of effort – you can even do this 5 minutes before going to bed when you are already half asleep.

Now you might think: “What’s the point of making these ridiculous changes – they surely won’t be able to increase my conversion- or click through rates”

But I tell you, it very well can! This actually could have a huge effect. I’m not saying, this will work for each and every little change you make, but it will work for quite a few of them. And believe me, in the long run this will make a huge difference to your bottom line.

Here is a very interesting example that shows what a tiny, little change in a Google AdWords ad can do:

AdWords Ad #1:

Spiritual Healing Guide
Learn To Control Your Mind, Body &
Intuition Through Spiritual Healing

CTR: 1.13% ; Conversion Rate: 16.4%

AdWords Ad #2:

Spiritual Healing Guide
Learn to Control Your Mind, Body &
Intuition Through Spiritual Healing

CTR: 1.61% ; Conversion Rate: 18%

Ad#2 shows a staggering 42% increase in CTR and a 12.5% increase in its Conversion Rate over Ad#1!

But, what’s the difference between these 2 ads? The “to” (in Learn to Control Your Mind…) in Ad#1 uses the letter “T” in uppercase, whereas Ad#2 uses a lowercase letter “t”. That’s all! A tiny little change that causes a huge effect.

Amazing isn’t it? I got this one from Roger Hall’s book 37 AdWords Secrets. And by the way, if you are already a somewhat advanced AdWords marketer I highly recommend you get a copy of this book – there is tons of great stuff in it.

It’s really simple:

• For each adgroup, always use 2 different ads that are split-tested (equally rotated) against each other.
• Once a day, or every few days, check the stats in your AdWords account.
• Before changing any ads, make sure you have enough clicks (at least 30-40) so that the result is statistically relevant.
• Make a tiny change to the losing ad and try to beat the control.

Again, making these little changes takes only a few minutes a day, but in the long run it makes all the difference. These simple things allow you to increase your click through rates, to generate more traffic, to get cheaper traffic and to convert more visitors into leads and sales, with only a minimum amount of time and effort.

There are tons of techniques and strategies to increase your landing page conversion rate. In this post I would like to tackle on one of them: The use of short videos to increase the effectiveness of your landing pages.

And because there are already thousands of articles and blog posts on how videos can improve your landing pages and why this is so and what you should do… I will keep the generics short and focus mainly on the following parts:

• Where you can get a good, free and easy-to-use video player.
   
• And what exactly needs to be done to display videos on your web pages – as quickly and painless as possible.
   

I decided to write this blog post, because when I created my first video landing page, I had several problems that made me lose quite a bit of time and that caused me some headaches:

• I struggled finding a good, free video player that I could use for commercial websites.
   
• Most of the “free” players are only free if you used on non-commercial sites. However, if you are collecting leads, recommending affiliate products, displaying AdSense… you have a commercial site and you need to get a $49, $97… license ! That’s not what we want.
   
• When I found the right player, I was a bit overwhelmed with all the instructions and information that were presented. I didn’t really know, where to get started, what’s essential and what’s not.
   

Ok, but before we jump in here are a few general tips:

• Keep the video relatively short: 2 – 5 minutes should be enough for a simple newsletter signup landing page. For a sales page, this can be longer and will depend on the product and service you are selling.
   
• Don’t be too “corporate”. Be personal, friendly, relaxed, natural, likeable and trustworthy … – be yourself.
   
• Still, the goal of the video is to sell something – even if it’s only a signup. Speak directly to your visitor. This is all about him/her and not about you. Primarily, your visitor is interested only in one thing: WIIFM – What’s In It For Me? So, talk benefits. Tell them what they get. Let them know how you can solve their problems, ease their pain, make them more money, buy them more time… you get the idea.
   
• Keep your landing page relatively simple. The video needs to be above the fold. The signup form should either be next to the video or directly underneath.
   

Ok, now let’s have a look how you can get your video on your landing page. We’ll make this really quick, easy and painless.

So, here are the steps:

• Go to: http://flowplayer.org/download/index.html download the free video player ( click the “Download Now” button) and unzip the downloaded file.
   
• You only need the following files: flowplayer-3.1.5.swf, flowplayer.controls-3.1.5.swf and flowplayer-3.1.4.min.js
   
• Copy these 3 files in the folder where your video landing page is located. Later on you can change the location of those files – this is just to show you a quick and easy implementation of the video player.
   
• Click Here for some sample HTML code that shows the easiest possible implementation of the video player. Simply copy and paste the code sections in your own landing page.
   

That’s all to get a nice, free and powerful video player on your landing page.

If you are having any problems getting the player to work, you can also check out the minimal installation instructions on the flowplayer site: http://flowplayer.org/demos/installation/index.html
 

But there is actually lots of other cool stuff you can do with this video player. Here are some ideas:

• Download page for a different controlbar plugin: http://flowplayer.org/plugins/flash/controlbar.html (click the Download button). There are also some configuration examples you can copy/paste and play around with.
   
• How to change the skin of your video player: http://flowplayer.org/demos/skinning/index.html
  This example uses one of the controlbar plugins (flowplayer.controls-tube-3.1.5.swf) you can download from the link above. To make this work, do the following:
  * Replace ” flowplayer(“player”, “flowplayer-3.1.5.swf”);” from the code example I gave you above with the code listed underneath of: “Flowplayer configuration”.
  * In the new code, replace “tube” with “player” and delete “/swf/” from the 2 places where it appears.
  * Copy the file ” flowplayer.controls-tube-3.1.5.swf” in the folder where your video landing page is located.
   
• 2 examples for different player skins: http://flowplayer.org/demos/skinning/skin-examples.html
   
• A wizard to change the style of your controlbar: http://flowplayer.org/documentation/skinning/controlbar.html?skin=default
   
• How to use an initial splash image: http://flowplayer.org/demos/installation/splash-image.html
   

You can find much more stuff on the flowplayer website, but I think this should be sufficient to help you increase the conversion rate of your landing pages.
 
 

Now, it would be a bit cumbersome to check my sales stats every few hours and to send a thank-you email with download instructions to each customer who bought from my affiliate link.
 

To get around this, I use a simple notification script that does the following:

• Whenever someone buys from my affiliate link, I receive an email to a specific email account (for example: clickbank-sales@mydomain.com)
   
• This email contains all transaction infos, like: Earnings, Product Name, Vendor, Transaction Type (Sale, Refund, re-bill…) and others.
   
• I typically put the transaction type and the Product Name in the email subject line. So, this might look something like: “SALE – Keyword Elite 2.0″
   
• Additionally, the notification script sends a customized email to the customer thanking him/her for the purchase and indicating the download link for the bonus items. This happens immediately after the purchase.
   

I also realized, sending a “nice” email with free bonus items to the customer greatly reduces the refund rate.

 
Now, here is how you can do the same:

• In ClickBank, go to Account Settings – My Site
   
• At the very bottom of the page, go to “Advanced Tools” and click Edit
   
• Provide a secret key: This must be ALL CAPS and can be up to 16 letters or digits.
   
• Provide a vale for “Instant Notification URL 1″. For example: http://www.yourdomain.com/clickbanknotification.php
  Click “Save Changes”.
   

Now you need to upload the notification script (clickbanknotification.php) to your web server.
Here is a simple script you can download and customize: Clickbank Instant Notification Script

The script mentioned above is a simple text file. So, in order to use it you need to rename it into a .php file. I decided to give you a .txt file, because some antivirus programs might complain if you try to download a .php script.

The script is fairly simple, but you still need to make some modifications: You need to provide your email address, your email messages and some other parameters you want to have customized.
 

Here are some indications, what needs to be modified:

• Replace the value “YOURKEY” at the top of the file with your proper clickbank secret key
   
• At ~line 70 you see: mail(“youremail@domain.com”,… – replace this with your own email address. That’s the email address where you would like to have sales notifications to be sent.
   
• At line 88 you see: “$ctranspublisher == “PUBLISHERNAME” – replace this with the publisher name of the product you are promoting.
   
• Line 90: $body – provide the desired email body text with the download link.
   
• Underneath, line 93: Insert the corresponding product name and your email address that should be displayed to the receiver.
   
• The line underneath sends a confirmation email to the email address you specify in the first attribute.
   
• Do the same for all other products you are promoting – simply copy/paste the code block we just discussed and modify the product names as well as the details in your email messages.
   

ClickBank of course isn’t the only affiliate network that provides the ability to use notification scripts. The script I provided can be easily adapted to work with other affiliate programs. You will have to update the variable names at the top of the script (like: $_REQUEST['ccustname']…)
 

Here are again some of the advantages of this technique:

• Save time: No need to send an email manually to each and every customer.
   
• Get immediately informed via email whenever a sale, refund, re-bill… occurs.
   
• Greatly reduce your refund rate by promptly sending a nice thank you message with free bonus downloads to your customers.
   

By the way, you can easily use the script above to automatically add all these highly valuable buying customers to your double opt-in email list. But that’s a subject for another blog post
 
 

One of the key-points of setting up a successful content network campaign is the compilation of a list of web sites that are capable of generating a high volume of targeted traffic to your landing page.
 

Usually this will take some time, because:

• You have to find web sites that correspond with your niche.
   
• You have to verify if those sites are getting a sufficient amount of traffic
   
• You need to verify if they display AdSense ads
   
• You have to make sure that the selected sites are sufficiently popular (have a good enough Google PR) and provide quality content. Otherwise you might attract a lot of traffic that only costs you money without converting into sales.
   

The Advanced Google Site Targeter makes the entire process of finding suitable sites for your content network very easy. You simply provide a few keywords that correspond with your niche, you click the “Start” button and the tool provides you with a list of suitable websites.
 

Below is a screenshot of a search I did for the keyword “learn guitar” (click on the image to zoom):
 

 

After only a few seconds of research, the tool returns for each keyword you provided a list of very useful parameters for each returned website, like:

• Information if the site displays AdSense ads
   
• The Alexa Page Rank – this parameter indicates the amount of traffic the site is getting
   
• The page rank on the search engine results page
   
• The URL of the site
   
• The Google Domain PR
   
• The WHOIS information of the website – this allows you to easily contact the site owner for JV’s, partnerships…
   

The first thing I usually do is to sort the returned results on the “Found on URL” column. This column either specifies a specific URL or the mention: “No AdSense ads found”. You will focus only on those sites that display a URL in this column.

Next you will check the column labeled: “Alexa”, which indicates the amount of traffic a site receives. The lower this value, the more traffic the site receives. Additionally, you can also have a look at the “Domain PR” column. A high PR value indicates is most cases a high quality site with a higher probability to send you “profitable” traffic that is more likely to convert into sales.

Finally, I also recommend you click the URL in the ” Found on URL ” column and verify how AdSense ads are displayed on the site. Some of these pages might contain a lot of content and you will have only one or two AdSense ads somewhere hidden at the very bottom of the page.

This of course is not ideal, because these kind of sites will generate a large number of impressions, but only a few clicks.
 

All in all, this tool allows you to quickly research a list of high traffic websites that correspond with your niche and that display AdSense ads. Now all you need to do is to copy/paste these URL’s into your AdWords Content Network campaign.
 

The AdWords Time Machine is only one of eight different tools that are part of Keyword Elite 2.0. Click here to check out a complete review of Keyword Elite’s strengths and weaknesses.
 

If you are interested in Keyword Elite 2.0 and if you buy it from my affiliate link, I’ll also give you immediate free access to a huge package of various PPC- SEO- Traffic Generation-… tools and products. Find out more at: Keyword Elite 2.0 Bonus Pack
 
 

Certain keywords generate a lot of traffic, but don’t convert into any sales. You better delete those keywords from your campaign, because they only cost you money. On the other hand, there are also keywords that convert like crazy – they are called buyer keywords. I have keywords that show conversion rates of up to 15%!

These are the kind of keywords you want to pay special attention to. You put each of them into a dedicated adgroup, you constantly split test your ads, you create dedicated landing pages for them… In short, you do everything you can to further improve the conversion rates of these keywords.
 

Now, the big question is: How do you know which keywords convert into sales and which don’t?
 

In the past, you basically had 2 possibilities:

1: You setup conversion tracking in your AdWords account and you ask the product merchant to copy/paste the conversion tracking code on the products “Thank You” page. I didn’t always had the best experiences with this approach. Many merchants simply never reply to your request. Others say, they will paste the code on their website, but never do it… It can be quite annoying.

2: You use ClickBank tracking id’s (tid’s): This can work somewhat, but unfortunately the setup is a headache and also, it’s not very reliable. I often had conversions that weren’t counted using tid’s.
 

However, a while ago ClickBank implemented what they call: “Integrated Sales Reporting” and that’s absolutely fantastic. It allows you to setup conversion tracking for Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Yahoo Search Marketing in less than 5 minutes.

The setup is quick and easy, it works very well and it allows you to determine exactly which keywords generate conversions.
 

Here is a quick overview of the steps that need to be take to setup Google conversion tracking in your ClickBank account:

• In your AdWords account, click Reporting -> Conversions -> Create a New Action
   
• Provide an action name (for example: MyProduct Order Completed); Select Purchase/Sale; set the conversion page security level to http://
   
• Click Save and copy the tracking script into a text file.
   
• Log in to your ClickBank account. Click on the Account Settings tab, then My Account. Then click Edit on the right side of the Integrated Sales Reporting box.
   
• Click Add Tracking Code and select Google AdWords from the Type field.
   
• Enter your Google AdWords Account ID from the script you copied into the text file and paste it into the field “Google Account ID”.
   
• From the same script, copy the value from the label “google_conversion_label” and paste it into the “Purchase Label”.
   
• Click “Save”.
   

That’s all! Now you are ready to evaluate which of your keywords generate conversions and at what rate.
 

You can find a more detailed description of the setup process on ClickBank at: http://www.clickbank.com/help/account-help/account-tools/integrated-sales-reporting
 
 

Here is what you would normally do:

• For each adgroup, you split-test 2 ads against each other. You delete the losers, you write better ads…
   
• You keep on modifying your ads to achieve the best possible click through rate.
   
• You do pretty much the same with your landing pages.
   
• You identify those keywords that only cost you money without converting into sales. You add new ones that hopefully convert better.
   

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach, the only problem is that at the beginning you will probably lose a few weeks of your time and some money – the time and money it takes to optimize your campaign.

But what if there would be a way to avoid losing time and money each time you launch a new AdWords campaign?

And there actually is a way: The AdWords Time Machine (which is part of Keyword Elite 2.0) allows you to spy on other advertisers who are already running successful campaigns for the product you are trying to promote.

Here is how it works: You simply provide a keyword that corresponds with your product, niche, solution… and the AdWords Time Machine provides you with a multitude of extremely useful and time saving information:

• You get a list of all advertisers that have been running ads within the last 6 months on the keyword you provided.
   
• You can easily identify those advertisers that are already running successful campaigns.
   
• For each advertiser, you can retrieve a list of keywords they are currently bidding on. In other words, you can get an optimized list of keywords that will mainly contain converting and profitable keywords.
   
• You get access to those ads that are already optimized and that have a high conversion rate.
   
• You get immediately access the successful landing pages. You can analyze them and write similar ones for your own campaign.
   

All in all, this tool allows you to have an optimized and profitable campaign up and running within 2-3 hours (writing the landing page is probably the most time consuming part here). The AdWords Time Machine takes out all the guesswork. It provides you right from the start with a list of profitable keywords and with optimized ads and landing pages.
 

Now, the big question is: How does this work and how do you find profitable ads, keyword lists and landing pages?
 

Take a look at the screenshot below (click on the image to zoom). This is the result of the research I did for the keyword “learn guitar”:
 

 You see the blue bars on the top right of the screen? Each bar indicates that the corresponding advertiser (represented by the URL on the left) was running ads on the keyword you provided initially for the indicated month (see header: April – September).

Now, for certain advertisers you will see only 1 or 2 blue bars. This might mean that the person tried to enter the market, lost some money (because of poor ads and landing pages…) and gave up.

For other advertisers you might see 4-6 blue bars. The more blue bars you see for a certain advertiser, the higher is the probability that he is running a profitable and highly optimized campaign.

I suggest you focus on those advertisers that show 4-6 blue bars. Copy their keyword lists and check out their ads (simply click the blue bar) and landing pages.

When you click the magnifying glass on the left, you get a list of all the keywords the corresponding advertiser is currently bidding on. The keywords are displayed at the bottom part of the screenshot.

In short, the AdWords Time Machine prevents you from losing money upfront and it allows you to skip weeks of testing and tracking – although I highly recommend you still do your testing and tracking – even great results can still be improved. And as a result you get a campaign that’s most probably profitable right from the beginning and that’s up and running within only a few hours.
 

The AdWords Time Machine is only one of eight different tools that are part of Keyword Elite 2.0. Click here to check out a complete review of Keyword Elite’s strengths and weaknesses
 

If you are interested in Keyword Elite 2.0 and if you buy it from my affiliate link, I’ll also give you immediate free access to a huge package of various PPC- SEO- Traffic Generation-… tools and products. Find out more at: Keyword Elite 2.0 Bonus Pack
 
 

I just added some new functionality to the PPC Campaign Builder that allows you to brainstorm, tweak, modify and finalize your ads in a word processor or text file editor and to simply drag & drop the final text file into the PPC Campaign Builder Tool. As a result, all adgroups with their associated keywords, 2 split tested ads and a list of negative keywords will automatically be created.

 
Below is a screenshot of the PPC Campaign Builder’s “Many Keyword Campaign” tool:
 

 
A new field with the label: “* DRAG/DROP AD FILE *” was added at the bottom. Simply drag/drop your ads text file into this field and all your adgroups (including keywords, 2 split tested ads and negative keywords) will be automatically setup.

Below is a screen shot of a sample ads text file that was used to create the 2 adgroups (Play Guitar & Learn Electric Guitar) shown in the screenshot above.
 

 

The file needs to follow a specific layout and contains the following information:

• The names of the adgroups that should be setup
• For each adgroup, a corresponding list of keywords
• 2 ads (that will be split tested against each other) for each adgroup
• A list of negative keywords that’s valid for the entire campaign.

 
If you are subscribed to my list, you should have already received an email with the download instructions. Otherwise, you can get the tool from: http://www.ppc-maverick.com/free-ppc-tool/

With the PPC Campaign Builder you also get a detailed installation- and instruction manual that explains exactly how to create the ad text file (as mentioned above) and how to use the tool.
 
 

Now, there was (and still is) a lot of hype around this tool. On some review web sites I’ve even seen some really scary (and completely wrong) stuff like:

* This tool will make you money day and night.
* Forget about spending hours studying Google AdWords – Keyword Elite will handle everything for you.
* Click a few buttons, lean back and watch the $$$ rolling in.
* I’m a complete AdWords newbie, I tried Keyword Elite 2.0 for less than a week and it already made me over $1678…
 

I think, Keyword Elite 2.0 offers some really amazing market- and competitor insights, it makes lots of things much easier and it can save you a hell lot of time. But, the tool has also weaknesses and by no means is it a miracle machine that will allow you to make a lot of money merely by clicking a few buttons and without the need of making at least a minimum effort and understanding the basics of PPC marketing.

 
I just did a complete review of Keyword Elite 2.0. Find out:

* Who would benefit from this tool and who would not?
* What are the real strengths of Keyword Elite 2?
* What are the weaknesses – what doesn’t really work as announced?
* How should this tool be used to take maximum advantage of it?
* And much more…
 

Click here to check out the review. I explain all of the different tools that are part of Keyword Elite 2.0, with all their advantages and disadvantages, their suitability for PPC marketers, screenshots of actual data and search results…

I also put together a great bonus package consisting of 22 different products, showing you how to maximize your profits with Google AdWords, how to improve your conversion rate, how to get more traffic, how to optimize your tracking… and much more. Find out how you can get the entire package for free!

Click here to check out the Keyword Elite 2.0 Review