“I Definitely Need to Learn How to Do More Traffic Generating…”

@AuthorMissMae on Twitter said she needed to work on Traffic Generation. She mentioned she was trying some gimmicks that weren’t working for here. This was my response:

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My *Traffic Generation* Advice: I personally stay away from gimmicks and “swarms”.. haven’t tried what you are doing, but I don’t need to because what I do works already.. keeps me busy.

My advice is to stick to time tested methods.. These areas are what I spend most of my time on:

1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which includes link building.. (develop optimized content, utilize platforms like blogs)

2) Pay Per Click (PPC), Placement… Adwords, MSN, Yahoo.

3) Social Media.. as you are. Which includes driving traffic direct to your content pages and offers… and building relationships that can in themselves, indirectly, drive traffic (JVs etc).

2 of those don’t have to cost you much money; just time..

Gimmicks either don’t work, drive terrible, untargeted traffic or are short lived; these other methods will sustain you long term and when implemented properly can generate a lot of targeted traffic long term.

Also.. I haven’t seen your sites, but work on how you are monetizing them and focusing your traffic to pages that are ready to receive and convert traffic. Improve your conversion processes and funnel; test, test, test!

I’ll leave you with this, you can have all the traffic in the world, but if it isn’t targeted and you don’t have a good process to convert that traffic or a good offer, then it’s worthless.

All traffic is not created equal.. the same traffic can react differently depending on the landing pages they land on.

HTH!

-Matt Levenhagen

P.S. We cover the PPC here in the Blast Membership (geared towards testing markets with affiliate programs). If you want more training in these other areas like SEO and social media, we cover those areas at Xtreme Profits!

P.S.S. If you have a question about PPC that you’d like to throw at me on Twitter, follow me! And ask! My account here: Matt Levenhagen on Twitter Note though, I won’t promise I’ll be able to answer every question; I am a busy guy. My thinking is a few a week max?.. or more depending on their complexity.

Is it Better to Focus on a Few Successful Keywords?

This was a question posed to me on Twitter.  It demanded a longer answer than 40 Characters allow so I decided to post it here for her and everyone else’s benefit.  Here’s the question:

Twitter PPC Question

This is a question that deals with time and resources right?  You have only so many hours to put into an account.  And it is reasonable to conclude the more keywords you have the more work you’ll spend on non-performers or junk.

So to answer this question, generally, yes, having too large of an account of keywords can be more challenging and time consuming to manage; it can take away from more important tasks, management and expansion efforts.   Obviously the more time you put into a lot of non-performers, break evens or unstable keywords, the less time you have to manage the cream.. the best keywords.

That’s not saying not to have any other keywords though and not to test every possible keyword or variation that have a chance of succeeding.  But do that with the thought in mind to scrape the cream out of those and add to your top performers.

Every accounts different, but I know I’ve done this myself and have advised others to. If you have campaigns or keywords that aren’t performing well or you don’t have time to manage them all, pause them.  Sacrifice keywords that are only doing so, so.. to focus and master keywords that are doing awesome for you.

Focusing your energy on getting the most out of your top performers is just smart.

Depending on a wide range of variables and environments.. and markets.. a keyword can be demanding; especially if you aren’t the only one that knows that keyword is profitable.

You don’t necessarily want to get into a bidding war and compete against automated ranking systems etc, but at the same time, you do want to manage positions because they matter from a conversion and volume perspective.  That along with split-testing ads and all the other things that go into increasing performance and ROI can really improve your bottom line.

If you are spending all your time on difficult keywords, you won’t have the time to do the above.

Beyond that, where is your time better spent.  You also have to consider that landing page.  Work on your sales system and funnel.  So if you are managing too big of an account, that can take time away from other essential elements of your sales processes and business.

And even if you pause so, so performers, you can unpause them at a future date when you have the time.

Continue to test new keywords, trends etc in your market, but always be gaging what your time is worth and prioritizing your efforts.

The only other alternative to add to what you can tackle is to get help.  To hire or outsource..  even then you still want to focus their time as well.

Also, as a side note, this may also help you improve your profit margins.  Cutting the fat will not only make you more profitable because your time is spent on more profitable activities, but sometimes keywords can have an impact on costs and make your income more unstable.

Hope this helps!

-Matt Levenhagen

P.S.  If you have a question about PPC that you’d like to throw at me on Twitter, follow me!  And ask!  My account here:  Matt Levenhagen on Twitter Note though, I won’t promise I’ll be able to answer every question; I am a busy guy.  My thinking is a few a week max?.. or more depending on their complexity.

Setting Yourself Up for Success with PPC Landing Pages

Hello!

There is a big stumbling block for some people starting out with Pay per Click Advertising and Affiliate Marketing. That stumbling block is learning how to build and launch landing pages.

There are ways to drive traffic without having to have your own landing pages and websites. And, in fact, people still do make money just going that route or using that in combination with other methods. Driving traffic direct still works if you know how to approach it.

But there are advantages, some big advantages, to building your own websites and landing pages. Even those that are testing markets Direct to Merchant could benefit greatly from having the option to expand with their own landing pages.

It’s something that shouldn’t be ignored.

The problem arises from the fact that there is a learning curve when it comes to learning how to build landing pages. Even simple landing pages there is some time involved to learn.

It seems overwhelming to many. And quite a few people want a shortcut to profits and don’t want to go through that learning curve.

And that’s totally understandable… and, in fact, the Campaign Blast Method has been teaching Direct to Merchant techniques for years now; it’s a great way to test a lot of markets quickly and to find profits; it’s a great starting point to learn about a market, it’s profitability and then to expand into it AFTER you know there are buyers in that market.

Many start Direct.. see there are profits.. and then expand using landing pages and more advanced methods. Before investing time and money into a market, they measure the potential with these techniques.

We still do this. And besides the fact it just works, the reason many go this route is because there are people out there that want to start out without having to worry about learning how to build those landing pages.

But I want to reassure those of you that are hesitant about going the direction of landing pages that the effort is worthwhile and that you can get a system down pretty easily that you can replicate and make successful.

I’m a big believer in systems. That’s what the whole Blast Method is built around. It’s a proven system to identify profitable markets to expand in to.

I encourage people to develop their own individualized and personalized landing page systems to get things done quickly and efficiently.

A system is essential with landing pages. Because you don’t want to be going through a process of fumbling around with each one you launch! You want to spend as much time as possible on marketing and launching more and more campaigns.

Once you have a good system to build landing pages… they can be easy and quick.

There are a lot of different ways to approach landing pages. There scripts you can use, web based dynamic solutions or you can build them as static web pages.

As a PPC Marketer your first duty is to choose a method and master it.

That’s the ticket!

There are ways to lay out your landing pages, develop the content on them, and things you should know to get great Quality Scores. In other words to get good rankings in the search engine results and for Google to love you.

Those are all things we teach in the Blast Membership.

But once you establish that and you have chosen a solution for yourself. Once you have a platform and solution established for yourself… Once that’s all in place, the actual launching of these landing pages is pretty quick and easy.

You’ll develop templates for yourself where you just flip out content, flip out the affiliate links and banners and flip out your tracking.

Their are things you can integrate to automate some stuff. PHP code to embed relevant keywords into your landing pages. There are solutions that can automate and speed up the creation of landing pages.

But you don’t need fancy solutions!

The most important thing is to develop a system for yourself. I don’t care if you are creating just static pages and using an HTML editor. Once you have a template, you can just duplicate it!

You ONLY NEED TO CREATE A TEMPLATE ONCE. And it can be used over and over again.

You will need to commit to some time developing that system and template, but YOU CAN! Anyone can!

Once you have a good template, you change, test different strategies, layouts.. and over time, you improve the effectiveness of those templates.

Over time, you’ll get better at launching them. You’ll find solutions to speed up the process. You’ll learn how to use outsourcing to your advantage.

Whatever direction you take with your landing pages, it all starts with taking the time. Start.

I challenge you to block off that time.

Depending on what foundation of knowledge you are starting with that might be a few hours, days or even a few weeks to figure it out. But it’s time well spent.

Even though some of the non-landing page methods are still effective today, they may not be tomorrow. And the additional time you put into landing pages will come back to you with more clicks.. more action.. and more opportunities to monetize.

• The One URL Rule melts away
• The ability to capture names is now available to you
• Additional opportunities to monetize traffic come into view
• The ability to track and analyze your traffic comes into view
• The ability to pre-sell comes into play
• The ability to even write better copy than the merchant to sell a product is available to you
• More affiliate programs will allow you to promote them because you have a website to send traffic to!

That’s just for starters.

Time is always a consideration.. the time to build a landing page is obviously going to cut into how many campaigns you can launch.

But if that extra time doubles, triples or more your traffic, it could be worth while. It’s a wash or better.

So if you are on the fence about learning how to build landing pages, let this be your motivation. Start now. Start today. And increase your potential for profits and results!

Good Luck!

-Matt Levenhagen