Compass Mall Blog

10 Tips for successful Adwords advertising

2009-06-13T22:22:00.004-05:00

AdWords is a way to advertise on Google's site. These ads show on the right side of your screen when you run a search. Try it. Go to Google and search on anything. When the list refreshes you'll have a list of website matches for your search in the main area of the page. Now, look to the right.

Here you will see a list of ads that also match your search. These come from the Google AdWords advertising tool. This is not free and will cost you to use, but if used properly can be a very successful way to make some money.

The key is using it correctly. You can easily throw money away if you do not understand how to set up your campaigns or if you try too broad of a target audience.

Here are 10 tips that will help you create a successful AdWords advertising campaign.

1. Learn how AdWords works. In your AdWords account you will find links on how to do general setup steps to your account. With step by step tutorials this should be relatively easy. You can have one of two types of accounts. A Starter Edition and a Standard Edition. If you are new, begin with the Starter Edition. Once you learn the ins and outs you can graduate to the Standard Edition without loosing any data or paying any kind of fee.

2. Find a product. For most people the way to do this is through Affiliate links. You can get those easily by creating an account at any one of a number of sites, but I prefer www.cj.com (Commision Junction). Once you set up your free account, you can search for a company to work with and then find a product to advertise.

3. Determine your audience. Take some time to think about who would buy your product. Are you looking at a mature audience or a younger crowd. Keep that in mind as you write ads and select keywords that will had a real impact on your success.

4. Select Keywords. At first you might think that you want all kinds of search terms so your ad will popup in front of everybody. That would be wrong. You really want your add to popup in front of people that are looking for your product. Ads are only a couple of lines long. You are unlikely to convince someone to buy something they weren't planning to buy. So, select keywords that are specific to your product. You pay for each time someone clicks your ad, so you want to get the best chance at a sell that you can. Example: Your product is Antivirus software. That should be your first keyword phrase, etc. You should not choose keywords such as games, gardening, woodcutting, etc. as those don't relate to your product at all.

5. Write your ads. With the Starter Edition you get to use one campaign, but you can have many ad variations for that campaign. In this example you have one product, so one campaign is fine. Using the same affiliate link, you can write different ads and test them to see how well they are working. Google provides reports so that you can easily see where your activity is coming from. Keep ads that perform well, and remove ads that don't.

6. Fine tuning. As mentioned in #5 test your ads to find the best variations, but you should also check your keywords. You'll find that to show your ad on page 1, which is what you want to shoot for, you'll have to bid a certain amount to get there. Monitor the position your ad is appearing on average. If it doesn't hit the first page, think about raising your bid amount. You have to balance this with the amount of money you can spend. If you are only spending $30 a month, you likely aren't going to be hitting the first page or you will run out of money too quickly.

7. Return on Investment. When you start out you should expect only a 1% return on your investment. This will grow as you get more experienced in writing ads, selecting keywords, etc. The more time you spend researching what works and what doesn't the better this will be.

8. Use negative keywords. No, this isn't picking out insulting words. The idea is to target those people that are looking for your product. So, if your product is sunglasses and you choose the keyword 'glasses' you would get show to people searching for wine glasses, prescription glasses, plastic glasses, etc. You don't want that, so as keywords you can select '-wine', '-prescription', '-plastic' to keep those from triggering your ad.

9. Place Keywords in the title and description of your ads. Remember, if someone is searching for angel figurines they will respond to ads that talk specifically about 'angel figurines' vs. 'gift ideas', 'statues', etc.

10. Don't fight for the number 1 spot. Not a problem if your budget is low, but you shouldn't get into bidding wars with others to get that extra spot. That being said you don't want to be buried on page 10 that no one will every see. Look for positions around 5-8. You can fine tune this as you go based on results.

There are many more tips and approaches on the internet. These are just some that I have found useful in my own AdWords campaigns.

Can you Blow Dry a Dog?

2009-05-20T12:47:00.005-05:00

Yes. This is how groomers do it. Things to keep in mind while blow drying your dog/animal.

1. Don't let the air get too hot. Dogs are more sensitive to heat on their skin than humans. Let the air blow over your hand while drying to assess the temperature.

2. Use a blower for animals if you can, but hair dryers for humans are fine, just remember #1 above.

3. Brush, Brush, Brush. Whether your blow dry or not, make sure to brush the dog's hair afterward to keep matting to a minimum. (don't use combs to brush out your dog, it hurts)

Different coats will need different techniques to dry. A thick coat will require more drying and if you purchase a dryer for animals you will also get a few attachments to make this easier. Thin coats are easy to dry, but you do have to be more thoughtful of the temperature of the air as there is less fur covering the skin.

For other pet products see this link.

Submit Bugs

2008-10-17T23:40:00.004-05:00

Have you ever been doing something on a website and get an error?

Some programs will give you a little reward for reporting problems with there site.

Here is an example:

One of the Traffic Exchange programs I use, had a bug (or problem in their code) that I stumbled across. The problem was that when you added a website to your list, you had the ability to assign a percentage of your credits automatically to that site. The problem I found was that if you entered the percent sign with a number it would give you an error, i.e. 40%.

I submitted a support ticket, some programs may not have a ticket system and for those I would send in an email, with my findings.

A few days later they responded that they were looking into the issue, and gave me a free account upgrade for 60 days.

That was so cool. I'm a software tester by occupation, so this was just something natural for me and I didn't expect anything from them in return. So it was a nice surprise.

The upgrade increased my view ratio, so for the next two months I got a 3:2 ratio vs. a 2:1 ratio.

You never know when a suggestion, or bug report will get you a reward. So if you find a problem that isn't related to "user error", then feel free to report it to the site owner.

Check Terms of Service

2008-10-13T16:28:00.003-05:00

Top Surfer was one of my favorite traffic exchanges in the past. I haven't used them in a while and signed up again recently.

My wife, who also has a site, also signed up and Top Surfer cancelled our accounts. Based off their response to my questions on this my assumption is that in their terms you can only have one account per household.

In my opinion, that is a very old approach to internet accounts, as anyone with multiple people in a house on the internet will come through the same IP address.

Due to this, I have removed them from my list of Traffic Exchanges, and caution you as well. Make sure to read all the terms for these programs (assuming you can get through all the BS). I generally take the approach they are all the same, but this is the only program that I've had this problem with.

In the end, it pays to take a few minutes and check the terms of service so you don't loose time and credit over silly things.

Traffic Exchanges

2008-10-13T15:52:00.004-05:00

What are Traffic Exchange programs?

Traffic exchanges are programs that facilitate people browsing other sites and earning credits so that their site gets shown to others as well. Some programs also display text links and banner ads.

Good:
These programs are very good at getting your site in front of people. You'll get lots of hits and feel good about getting some traffic. By referring others, you can even start getting more and more traffic without having to surf much yourself.

Bad:
Depending on what you are selling, the audience may not be very good. Most likely these are people that are doing the same as you, surfing for traffic. They aren't in the "I'm going to buy something" mode, but you never know. Also, check for which are auto vs. manual surfing. Auto surfing means the person doesn't have to manually click to go from site to site, so it raises the possibility that they aren't even paying attention when your site is shown.

I generally don't buy hits from these programs due to the items discussed in the Bad section, but as mentioned you never really know who will buy what, so it shouldn't be out of the question.

You can find a list of programs I've used here. I've used a bunch of these over the years, but have only recently gotten back into them, so my list is growing as I check them out.

Getting a Free Counter

2008-10-03T21:34:00.003-05:00

When you have a site ready, you'll want to get a counter. A good counter will do more than just record visits to your pages, but also will give you the pages they saw, what site referred them, how long they stayed, and their geographic location.

All this information can help you in determining where your traffic is coming from, what pages are more popular, and even what pages they leave from.

The one I use is called SiteMeter. They have a free version and a premium version, but you get quite a bit with their free version. You can sign up for one here.

You can customize it so it shows the number of visitors or just displays a graphic. For a business site my preference is to show the image and put it out of the way.

After signing up, you can get a snipet of code to include in your site. Put it on every page and SiteMeter will collect information on all the pages that get visited.

How do I get a site online?

2008-10-03T21:12:00.003-05:00

When you are ready, you can get a hosted site for a relatively cheap price. I've a link below to a page with a list of sites that you can use.

Hosting only gives you space to put a site, you also need to get a Domain Name. A Domain Name is what you see advertised all the time, such as www.compassmall.com. Each web host will have a place where you can get one of these and allow you to check the availability. If the one you want is taken, you'll have to thing of a different version of it or something totally different.

Web hosts list a monthly price for hosting, like $6.95/month, but generally you pay annually, so be prepared to pay for a full year. Also the domain name may not be included in the price, they usually go for about $13 a year.

Once you get that set up, you can work on building a site. Technically you can work on your site before you get a place on the internet, but either way if you aren't a techie then you'll want something relatively simple to use. FrontPage was a popular program, but its actually obsolete now, the new program to replace it is called SiteSpinner.

There are many different software packages that can help you build a site. Some of the hosting companies have a limited site builder you can use for free, so check out the companies and compare.

Hosting Companies

Real Men of Genius

2008-10-03T20:47:00.003-05:00

I haven't heard them in a while, but I love those Real Men of Genius commercials they used to play on the radio. They were so funny.

Well, I finally found a site that has them in mp3 format so you can listen to them online. Go check them out, they are hilarious.

"Here's to you Pet Toy designer."

Real Men of Genius

How to Improve Computer Speed

2008-10-03T19:28:00.004-05:00

How can I improve the speed of my computer?

Several things can impact the speed of your computer. Hardware upgrades will definitely help. However, at no cost there are things you can do to help your computer run faster.

This is specific to computers that run the Windows operating systems.

There are some applications native to windows that can help you maintain your computer's health. There is a simple three step process that will do wonders for the speed of your computer.

Do these steps in order:

1. Remove any unwanted programs.
Do this through Start>Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs.
Be careful what you choose to remove, if you are not sure, you should probably keep it until you find out what it is. Remove any old software that you don't use anymore. That will free up space on your hard drive, which will be useful in the next steps.

2. Run the Disk Cleanup application.
Do this through Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup
This application will scan your hard drive and list areas of files that you can safely remove from your computer. These are old install files, temporary files, etc. Choose to remove all the files found. (you can use the check boxes to select which get removed)

3. Run the Disk Defragmenter application.
Do this through Start>Program>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Deframenter
This application will scan your hard drive and take all the fragmented files and put them together so that they can be accessed quicker when your computer looks for them.

Doing those three steps once a month will help keep your computer running better.

What's a fragmented file?

Files get fragmented all the time. One example is when you open an existing Word or Excel file and modify it. When you save the file again it's bigger than it was, so the computer can't put it all back into the space it was using on the hard drive. You might think, "no big deal, it'll just move it to an area with enough space". In actuality it puts part of the file in the old location, and the rest in another location on the disk.

Now when the computer needs to access this file it has to find both parts and put them together to have a valid file to open. You won't notice any speed difference on one file, but as you can imagine there are files all over your computer that get updated and saved back many times. By doing the above steps you can bring all these files back together and your computer will not take as long to access them.

Educational Software for Children

2008-10-03T19:14:00.003-05:00

Have you been looking for educational software for your children?

Children love to play games and with such advanced technology today there are hundreds of different software titles available to help kids of all ages learn. Math, Science, Languages and more, you just need a safe and reliable place to purchase them.

Compass Mall can help you get in touch with some of the most reliable merchants on the internet, and we have a special section dedicated to children's educational software. Come check us out and get your child learning today!

www.compassmall.com