issue #18, March 2005. Google Cash News & Basics for Success

Dear Colleague,

I hope you had a good week and you´re feeling great today ! Weekend´s around the corner and predictions are that we´ll have two sunny days here in southern Germany, so I´m looking forward to spending a lot of time with my kids on the playground.

The biggest amount of emails I get from subscribers asking for advice is from those who are just starting an online business or those who are already trying for some time but don´t get anywhere and are stuck in information overload.

Therefore I want to pay special attention today to those of my readers who are fairly new in the online marketing business and need some pointers that lead them on the right way, helping them to get into the right business.

Enjoy !

The basics of finding the right business model and becoming successful.

I strongly believe that a very important factor for any success in life is the motivation behind your actions. If you ever felt the strong burning desire inside you to reach a certain goal, then you know how easy it is to do all the required work to accomplish that goal.

Have you ever asked yourself what your real motivation behind starting an online business is ?

Please don´t misunderstand me, I don´t mean just "making money", of course this is one driving factor in any business we pursue.

Look - there are many people who have heard online success stories and how easy it would be to get rich on the internet, to cut off a piece of this big trillion dollar internet business pie for them.

So they study a couple of e-books and courses about all the different ways to build an online business (for example: affiliate marketing, starting an online newsletter, selling physical products through auctions or from an online store, creating information products, etc ...).

Having only in mind to find the shortest way to riches, many are led to try one system and jump to the next after a while, being cought in the misconception that building an online business requires little or no effort and that anyone who knows how to turn on a computer would be able to follow the system tought by guru XYZ.

If you are trying to leave a job that you hate and try any kind of online business in a market niche just because it seems to be the most profitable one, then you´ll end up with a new job that you don´t like either and you´ll get soon discouraged by the lack of success.

It´s true - there´s plenty of opportunity on the web and a lot of different ways for you to build a successful internet business.

However - a very important basic factor for success is that you must really know what you want before you start your business and be aware that a lot of work and dedication is needed. Know your long-term goal, know what you want for your life and how an online business can help you to accomplish your actual life goals.

It´s necessary that you have a clear vision of your long-term goals and faith to achieve them and when you do you´ll be successful.

Next you should try to find the right market niche for you. Many people say that you should choose a topic you are passionate about or have a certain expertise. I believe this is true, at least it will make it a lot easier for you.

Let me give you just three examples to show you why this is important:

1) You choose to start an affiliate business and build a website to attract visitors and guide them to the merchant websites. You´ll have to create a good deal of website content in form of product reviews and articles in order to get good SE rankings and the desired visitors. The better your expertise in your chosen topic, the better your product reviews will be for your customers (which means more sales and more affiliate commissions for you).

2) You want to start an ezine and build a list of subscribers to whom you can promote certain type of products from time to time. With so many newsletters available today, quality original content and time to respond to your subscribers´ questions are a must for a successful ezine. The more you like your chosen topic, the easier for you to write about.

3) Even if you think you can mine gold in a niche in which you have no expertise and try selling those "resell right type" info products ( ready made product, ready made sales letter, ... ) Be aware that you will get customer support questions and if you can´t answer them in a professional way, then you´ll end up in a mess damaging your reputation and your business.

I hope you see that a certain amount of expertise in your chosen market niche is definitely a basic requirement for a successful business. Or if you don´t have the expertise yet but are passionate enough about a certain topic, then you´ll also have the power and patience to study and acquire the necessary knowledge.

Another thing to think about is the type of online business you want to pursue: do you want to be an affiliate marketer, selling other people´s products, so you don´t have to care about shipping and customer support ? Or would you like to own an online store selling your own physical products, which also gives you the opportunity to have your own affiliate program ?

Study the advantages and disadvantages of several different business models, what kind of work they require and if it´s the kind of work you love to do. Many times, people jump into a business seeing only the positive sides of it and when they encounter the first obstacles they easily get frustrated and drop out. Don´t waste your precious time like that. It´s good to know the difficulties that you might encounter in the type of business you´re going to engage in and be prepared to overcome them.

If you still don´t know what type of online business is best for you, write me an email, tell me your situation and I´ll do my best to help you.

Google´s new AdWords policies and Google Cash:
the "game" goes on

Some time ago, on January, 12, 2005, Google changed its AdWords policies in a way that mainly affects affiliate marketers using the "Google Cash" strategy.

You can read the new policy here

Google says:

"With this new affiliate policy, we'll only display one ad per search query for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same URL. This way, users will have a more diverse sampling of advertisements to choose from. As always, your ad will be displayed based on its Ad Rank for given searches, which is determined by a combination of your ad's maximum cost-per-click (price) and clickthrough rate (performance)."

Well, that doesn´t mean that you cannot directly link to the merchant anymore. You still can use the "Google Cash" strategy, but if the merchant you are promoting has an ad running for the same keyword or another affiliate runs and ad for the same merchant under the same keyword, too, then only one ad will be displayed, which is the one with the higher Ad Rank (see above).

Why did Google implement this new policy ?

You´ll understand when you look at the following example:

last year, when doing a search for "posters" on Google, you could find up to 6 out of 8 AdWords ads from AllPosters affiliates pointing directly to AllPosters.com. If you were a customer, clicking on several ads to find alternative options, you´d probably get pissed off by always landing in the same store.

And as Google tries to deliver the best results to searchers, they needed to find a way to do away with this ad monopoly.

So what can you who´s playing the "Google Cash" game do if another one´s ad holds a higher position and you cannot afford to pay more for the click to beat your competitor ?

One strategy is to search for overlooked / low count keyphrases (many merchants and lazy affiliates only bid on main keywords).

Or you could try to find different merchants to promote and/or a different niche where the competition on AdWords is lower.

Another possibility is to finally use pay per click advertising in a way that you should have done ages ago: get your own domain, build a website and create so-called landing pages to which you send the ppc traffic.

The purpose of those landing pages is not only to redirect traffic to the merchant, but also to pre-sell your visitors through product reviews / recommendations and other means. Another advantage of sending visitors to your own domain is that you can try to get them on your list (whatever type of list that might be: newsletter, discount alert, e-course ), thus having the opportunity to sell even more products in the future to the same people.

Of course, some opportunities have gone for the common "GoogleCasher", but for many others who already have their own websites, a lot of competition has gone and some keyphrases have become cheaper now.

And another small detail has changed to the better: affiliates now can waive the formerly required "aff" mark in their ads. Without it your ads will look better and you have a few characters more space for the ad text, which is already pretty short in AdWords.

If you want to learn more about pay per click advertising from one of the masters in this field - Perry Marshall - I recommend you study his AdWords course, it´s the course that gave me the courage to try ppc advertising again and tought me the skills I needed to finally profit from Google AdWords, too.

Google AdWords Guide

I´m wishing you a happy weekend, enjoy the weather ...
... as it comes - you can´t change it anyway.

( even if it rains in your local area - let at least the sun shine in your heart. )

Yours,

Guido W. Stiehle
TheJungleMarketer

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Sincerely Yours,

Guido W. Stiehle
TheJungleMarketer

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