As someone who has been involved in e-commerce start-ups as well as being a full-time affiliate marketer, I am able to help you get your business running smoothly and offer sound, prudent advice for most any situation. From fulfillment channels to advertising distribution to helping an affiliate work with data-feeds, I am able to offer my 10+ years experience in the Internet marketing industry to you.

Some of the areas where I can help are:

• Research and implementation of affiliate programs for merchants
• Recruiting quality affiliates for your existing program
• Helping set up fulfillment and customer service operations
• Web site analysis to increase conversions for merchants or affiliates
• General analysis of a web site considering starting an affiliate program
• General affiliate guidance and support
• Merchant selection and implementation for affiliates

Fees for consulting vary according to estimated time spent and the complexity of the specific task. Payment up front is appreciated. Payment can be made incrementally as long as payment is complete before the work begins. A rare few exceptions are made to this policy.

I offer a special consulting package for merchants who are considering an affiliate program and want an analysis and evaluation of their site from an affiliate standpoint. If you are a merchant and wish to have me review your site and give you a detailed report on changes that should be made in order to optimize it for a successful affiliate program, I charge a flat $200. This includes a thorough written report and a 25 point affiliate analysis with specific recommendations for your site. I do this in my everyday operations when considering merchant partners and I know what affiliates will look for. When a merchant launches an affiliate program with a site that is less than acceptable for affiliate activity, the first impression you cast is potentially a negative one. It is hard to recover from negative first impressions in a world where affiliates have so many choices of merchant partners to work with.

Please contact me if you wish to further discuss my consulting services.

A pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaign can get sales rolling literally within minutes in many cases. This is one of the fastest ways to generate sales while maintaining complete control of costs, therefore being able to monitor ROI in a near real-time environment. There is a delay of at least a few hours on most PPC portal reporting. That is the only reason that results are not seen completely in real-time.

I have been active in PPC advertising since 1999 and have witnessed the changes over the years in the area, which have been many. My PPC campaign experience has been gained from both the affiliate side and from the merchant side. Margins are different between these two so different advertising strategies can come in to play. A given merchant might be interested in using PPC to build a database of customers and not be so worried about a huge return initially. Customer acquisition campaigns are very effective when using PPC since you are able to make adjustments to the campaigns on the fly. Other clients may have an established brand and simply are interested in generating more sales from the PPC channel.

I have been active with Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture.com) since the origins of them all. There are many variables in the search marketing arena that can drastically affect the results a given campaign will produce.

I use two different payment models in PPC consulting, a performance model and a straight hourly pay model. I have been known to use a hybrid of the two in special circumstances. Each individual situation is assessed independently. A proposal is submitted and all payment arrangements are agreed to before the work begins. I have a Google Management Account and can easily access your account from my end.

For more information, please contact me and I will be glad to speak with you and submit a proposal. I generally like to start with Google Adwords since Google has the most search volume of any search portal. If you have not done so, please

now.

Most all of the networks have at least one annual event where their affiliates, merchants and network personnel can meet, network and work on relationships. In an industry where everyone is so scattered out over the entire world these conferences can prove to be quite fruitful in developing relationships with people you work with regularly.

One problem I have found is that for me to attend every network’s event requires extensive travel and time away from the office, not to mention the cost. What it comes down to for me is a matter of how much headway can I make at a given event at the cost of the time and money I spend to attend a given event.

Considering all affiliate events, I have to say that Affiliate Summit is the one event you should attend if you are limited in time and resources and not able to attend them all. Affiliate Summit has gotten huge in the past few years with more and more affiliates, merchants, networks and those who provide services to the affiliate marketing industry attending. At Summit you will be able to mingle with the people at the networks, your favorite affiliate managers and OPMs, other affiliates and a slew of those who provide services of all types to our industry.

Summit is scheduled as a 3-day event, but I would recommend travelling at least one day prior to and one day after the event is scheduled to end. My experiences have taught me that there is always something going on at either end of Summit, be it a party, networking session or something else that might not be officially sanctioned by Affiliate Summit but is worth attending. The hotel has always been accomodating in honoring their special rate for an additional night on either end of the scheduled dates.

The cost to attend Affiliate Summit is usually heavily discounted in the months prior to the show and is discounted even more at the previous show. In a word, it is worth every cent. Shawn Collins and Missy Ward are very aggressive in getting affiliates to attend the show so if you are an affiliate there is a chance that you will be able to get either a discounted admission or even a free pass. Summit is actually having a contest in April for free passes to those who create a video detailing why they should get a free pass. Not all videos are guaranteed a pass, but it looks to me like turnout is not real high and your chances would be pretty good.

My only suggestion to someone attending Summit for the first time is to dress comfortably including comfortable shoes. You will no doubt end up going who knows where but there will always be plenty of walking involved so make sure you are set for that.

I have spoken with many affiliates who have used PPC to promote their web sites with miserable results. The landscape of today’s PPC arena has changed dramatically from that of the past few years. Here are a few tips to help you get started in search marketing:

Start Conservatively

When I started using PPC I set a budget of $10 a day. Start small, develop the results you desire then increase your spend incrementally. Granted, a small amount of clicks will not always generate enough traffic to be able to judge the effectiveness of the campaign, but you can generally get an idea of how you should proceed after your first 500 clicks or so. I have tried many campaigns as an affiliate that simply did not work. Whether it is a conversion issue on the merchant’s end or a case where the commissions are simply not enough to cover the necessary terms in a crowded vertical market, some work and some don’t. Which leads to my next point.

Tighten Up

Try to find a niche that is not over-exploited or too crowded. Generally speaking, the tighter the niche is the better results you will have on a PPC campaign. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. The product or service you are promoting must be popular enough to have adequate search traffic in order to monetize your campaigns. For instance, an effort to promote computer monitors will generally be less successful than an effort to promote LCD computer monitors. Better yet, an effort to promote 21″ computer monitors will be even more successful because you are targeting a more specific consumer. Again, tighten up but don’t back yourself into a corner with targeting so tight that you lose your search volume. There is a fine balance between the two.

Don’t Be Too Concerned With Position

If you can pay 12 cents a click in the #6 position and the top position will cost you 90 cents a click, you need to run both positions and find the “sweet spot” where your ROI is the highest. It will not always be the top position.

Many things determine ad position in today’s PPC landscape other than cost per click, which leads into the next sub-topic.

CTR CTR CTR

In search marketing, nothing happens until someone clicks on your ad. Generally speaking, a CTR (click-through-ratio) of 2% is considered good in a PPC campaign. Google, MSN and now Yahoo consider the CTR of a given keyword when determining the position of your ad. If you have a CTR of 8% and a bid of 31 cents, your ad will likely be displayed above the ad of a competitor with a CTR of 1% and a bid of 51 cents. CTR is very important as it is a determining factor in how your campaign performs overall and has a large impact on the price you ultimately pay for that click.

To increase the CTR of your campaign try to write ad text that is relevant to the item or service you are promoting and try to avoid any statement that does not give the consumer a reason to click your ad and buy the product. You have a very limited space to say as much as you can. Make every character count. Try several text ads for a given ad group. Let them run for a few days or weeks then evaluate the CTR of each ad. Keep the top performers and either eliminate or edit the lower performing ads. Statements in your ad like “Free Shipping”, “On Sale” or “Coupon Available” will be much more likely to entice the customer than a statement such as “Huge Selection” in most cases. If you are targeting a consumer who is searching for a Samsung SyncMaster 204T, for instance, the fact that the merchant you are representing has a huge selection is really not important. The customer wants that monitor and probably does not care about a huge selection of other monitors they are not interested in.

The Landing Page

Where you send the customer after they click is just as important, if not more, than anything else in the PPC equation. I see so many merchants advertising a specific product and sending the customer to their home page on the click. This makes absolutely no sense to me, but as an affiliate marketer this is an opportunity to outperform someone who has deeper pockets than you do.

If you are sending the traffic directly to the merchant, landing page quality should be considered during merchant selection. If a merchant does not have clearly-written and easy-to-understand individual product pages to send your traffic to, then you will probably not be successful with this merchant in a direct PPC campaign.

When creating your own landing pages, make sure you consider the ad you plan to write to promote the page. Use words on your page that you will use in your PPC ad. Make sure the page reads properly and don’t get carried away by creating a spammy page that looks like it obviously exists to tout a given keyword, but make a page that looks good, is uncluttered by irrelevant information and displays the product in such a way as to entice a click. For example, if you have in your ad that a coupon is provided, make sure the coupon code is on the landing page. Announce the coupon on the page and offer the details of the offer on your page somewhere very near the image of the product or the link to purchase the product.

Negative Keywords

Some consulting clients and friends whom I have worked with over the years have a hard time grasping the concept of negative keywords. If you are using phrase or exact match keywords, negative keywords are not that important. But if you are using broad match keywords, negative keywords are often more important than the targeted keywords themselves.

For instance, if you are targetting men’s polo sweaters, you will want negative keywords like:

• defective
• return
• photo
• picture
• image
• customer service
• mend
• fix
• repair

You do not want your ad to show to a customer who is looking for a way to return their Polo sweater nor do you want to show your ad to someone who is looking for a way to repair their lawn edger.

Generally speaking, try to show your ad to those who are searching for your keywords without including those with any motivation other than making a purchase. I know this only seems like common sense but this is an area where many affiliates and merchants alike drop the ball and spend money that they did not have to spend.

More to come on advertising your site later.

Happy Marketing!

Consulting and Personal Inquiries for Scott Hazard:

Affiliate Network Personnel, please do not use this form to contact me. Use email address I have on file with you or your network mail system. Thanks.