Do you want to virtually guarantee your success in this business? Then work really hard at being an Expert in your niche.

If you have found a good market niche, you are driving Adwords traffic and making a few bucks… one of your next steps especially if you want to expand into this niche is to develop a plan to become the expert.

Now I know there are many, many niches that you’ll think I could never be the expert in this niche. From my perspective I believe that you don’t have a choice. If you want to be SUPER successful in any business, you MUST become the expert.

This doesn’t mean that you have to go back to school, read every book on the subject, and spend years becoming an expert.

This is mostly perception. People must at least perceive that you know what you’re talking about and that you are somebody they can trust. You have to establish that the minute they hit your landing page!

There’s a lot of people that I see struggle because they never get out of the newbie mindset and they are timid. They never start acting the part. You must act the part! Be the expert.

Deliver your content like you are an expert.

Answer questions like you are the expert. Don’t ever be wishy-washy. Be confident. Even if you’re wrong… Be confident with your landing page reviews. Be confident in your follow up e-mail systems. Be confident in the reports you write. Be confident with every article you write on the topic.

From day one!! Most things on the net do not go away… you don’t want to have someone find something 2 years from now that reflects poorly on you.

Overtime you can learn. Remember it doesn’t matter what profession, business or expert you’re talking to, the chances are they don’t know everything. Even in this niche that I’m in here — Adwords — I see perceived experts in my own field here provide advice that is inaccurate or doesn’t make sense in every market or situation.

I see people getting advice that contradicts the Blast Method. Why? Because the advice comes from a source that is providing it out of context. The source may never have Blasted.

Experts are still perceived as an expert even though they are dishing out some nonsense advice; not everyone agrees with them, but they are still seen as an expert.

You still buy their stuff. You may make buying decisions based on their recommendations.

Even though not everything they say is right (and no one can possibility know everything) they are still perceived as an expert and you follow them.

Part of that is reputation.. but reputation is built on a person’s perceived Expert-ness.

No one knows everything… but to do really, really well in this business you must be perceived as an expert or you’ll never make the conversions or money that you deserve.

– Matt Levenhagen

If you want to end the struggle and actually start to get GREAT RESULTS with Adwords advertising, there are a couple things that you need to really learn to do besides just manage your Adwords account.

If you are failing to get the results that you desire, learn how to track your clicks and conversions. And how to split-test your ads and landing pages.

Personally I want to make sure I’m tracking everything down to a keyword level. This way I know when I get a conversion exactly where that conversion came from and what keyword(s) to concentrate on. So you don’t just want to know what ad group or what campaign a conversion came from. You want more detail then that!

This will help you trim your costs and focus on those things that are making you money. Sometimes you’ll only get one conversion.. if you have thousands of keywords and don’t get a conversion again for a while, you might waste a lot of money trying to get that second conversion again. If you knew the exact keywords, then you could pause or delete what didn’t convert (and save massive costs sometimes) and concentrate your efforts on the winner!

And learn how to Split Test… this is very, very important!

I have to wonder how many marketers set up a campaign, point it at a landing page and didn’t get the results that they desired. And how many just shut down that campaign deeming their efforts a failure!?

Your next step should be to create identical copies of that landing page, and then modifying those copies and making a lot of different variations until you do get the results you desire; even changing the offer and message! For instance if I’m going to send traffic to a squeeze page, I want to have multiple versions of that landing page so I can split test them continuously until I get the results I desire - or beyond!

If that squeeze page is performing at only 5% conversion rate, I’m not going to just dump it. I’m going to figure out why it’s not performing well.

Don’t just give up! I think too many people do!

Also, I think what happens sometimes with marketers online is they are taught certain methods and ways of doing things, they are given templates to apply to their business and shown how to approach things.. but unfortunately not every approach works in every market or situation; you still need to test!

Everything that you’ve been provided or have learned in the past is just a guideline. It is your job to start there, but then to adapt it and improve it until you get the results that you desire or need.

If you are tracking and split testing, you will learn a lot more about your traffic, you’ll know what to concentrate on, and you will have more control over your results and in the end your profits!

– Matt Levenhagen

P.S. If you want to get serious about testing check out: Small Changes; Big Profits! (at least pick up the free 20 pages… I guarantee it’ll be worth the effort)

No it doesn’t… Myself and 1000s of others are enjoying outstanding incomes today.

So is it Adwords that sucks or your business model, strategies, planning and attitude?

The reason I’m posting this is because I was browsing some of the forums in my forum routine and this was a title of a thread that has been around for something like 2 or 3 years. And there is someone that always finds it and posts to it..

And I know there is negative sentiment out there. Google has been a pain in the rear-end these last couple of years with all their changes. And if you were hurt financially, I am truly sorry to see that; no one deserves to get hurt.. but this is business and it happens. It has always happened.. it happens offline as much as it happens online.

It got really serious when they added the Quality Score.. Then unsuspecting Adwords Advertisers that had never experienced something like an Algo before freaked out; and many got hurt and gave up..

But.. we only ever hear about the negative stories don’t we in forums and around the net? Kind of like news organizations.. we can’t hear enough about a negative topic.. something positive happens, it’s not much of a story..

The truth is many still flourished.. and flourish to this day (one only has to be a member of the Blast Membership to see that..). Maybe they were struck and their profits were impacted, but they understand that is part of the game and rebounded.

Overall Google has not hurt search at all… every time I saw a major shift in the Adwords algo, I saw all kinds of naysayers talking about how Google is going to hurt their business, people aren’t going to advertise with them anymore and they are going to hurt financially..

Oh, yeah… that happened.

The truth of the matter is, Adwords is WAY better then ever in my opinion. Yes, it’s harder sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that’s a bad thing.. AND the tools we have access to today compared to a few years ago has made a DRAMATIC difference. Both theirs, their interface and 3rd party tools.

The fact is, the changes Google has made DIDN’T hurt Google… They still command the greatest percentage of searchers BY FAR. This one fact alone is why I still specialize with Adwords.

According to Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, our friend Google accounted for 65.98% percent of all US searches for the four weeks ending Dec 31st, 2007.

And in some countries that percentage is much higher.. Globally I think it’s around 47% these days.

U.S. Searches for Yahoo! Search.. 20%.. MSN Search 7%.. All other search engines, much lower..

If Google Adwords Sucks so bad, then what the heck is going on!?

Truth is, Google has an ailment that advertisers in the past didn’t quite get. They are not focused on the Advertiser first… they know the money lies in focusing on the ’searcher’ first. All those people using their search engines.

And they are focused on creating the best, easiest search experience possible and killing spam and techniques that make for a poor user experience.

I don’t mind that… the more searching on Google the better in my book. The more eyeballs I can command..

In it’s wake, businesses get hurt that rely on Adwords, but that doesn’t mean it sucks. That means Google is adapting and changing.. and that means WE need to Adapt and Change with it!

Do you not want to be involved with a company that is stagnant and loses market share over time?

And if your business model relies ONLY on Google Adwords for your companies revenue with no way to balance anything that might happen, then you need to stop right now and rethink that strategy. You could be headed right off a cliff. Because… one of these days, Google will tweak their algo and you might see a significant impact on your profits. YOU CAN REBOUND FROM THIS! But preparation and excepting this will happen in the future is something to deal with today.

For Blasters like myself, it’s not much of an issue; most of us are highly diversified already, in dozens of markets.. and chances are not every campaign is affected by changes.. and we can easily just Blast more out there.

This doesn’t mean don’t use Google.. it simply means building a business that can be self-sustaining and have a backup plan.

• Learn how to capture traffic so you own it..
• Learn a few other marketing strategies to supplement your income.
• Have a plan to move to other engines if the going gets rough.
• Learn how to manage your account and rebound if something happens.
• Stay informed… Keep up on what Google is up to; understand what Google wants from you.
• Find a community that you can lean on to help you through troubled waters.. It doesn’t have to be a lonely business. Our forum at CBS is very valuable to my members.
• And have a reserve fund that will provide a cushion while you adapt to Google’s changes..

..because in MOST cases, you can rebound.

BUILD A BUSINESS… ROCK SOLID… Know up front how you will handle changes in your competitive environments and with Google’s Algo - have a routine laid out to rebound.

Yes, if you throw your hands up and cry, not much is going to happen. Are you going to waste all your time complaining in forums and to your friends instead of learning and rectifying your problem? Find ways to get the profits rolling again!

MOST CHANGES… don’t affect as many people as you think.. I’ve rode out many changes with out more then a scratch while others lost all income.

If you dig in and work your tail end of to figure out what happened and make changes so you can compete again, then you have a business, not just an income stream.

If you got smacked by Google, don’t blame Google for killing your business.. blame yourself. You built yourself a straw house when you should have been using bricks.

Google doesn’t owe you anything. Just like advertising in your local newspaper if they change the format and rules, there isn’t much you’re going to do about it… except adapt and change to save your business.

Remember This: “Remember Google is just an advertising platform; it can’t be your business.”

-Matt Levenhagen