Before we get started, let’s briefly run through the differences between Yahoo and Google pay-per-click.

Differences between Yahoo and Google Ad Networks

The main difference between Yahoo and Google is search volume. Yahoo gets less traffic so you’ll usually find that you get fewer clicks compared to Google. That said, in some markets, such as dating, the conversion rate is significantly higher than Google and the cost per click is lower.

In terms of the ads themselves and the ad set-up process, Yahoo is now very similar to Google. There are only a couple of variations:

• Yahoo’s content match advertising is limited. You can’t pick the sites your ads are placed on and image ads aren’t available.
• Yahoo’s geographic targeting is less flexible than Google’s. You can only target one market per account, such as the United States & Canada or Japan, which can be a bit frustrating if you wish to market in several countries. You then can either choose to target that entire market or specify a region or postcode.
• You may need to credit your account before you get started if you live outside the United States. Setting up Yahoo Pay-per-click

To begin, visit http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com. Note that if you live outside the US, you will need to go to the Yahoo Search Marketing International page.

If you haven’t got a Yahoo account already, then you will need to create one before going any further.

Once logged in, select the option to set up your own account.

Step 1: Target your customers by location.

Choose the geographic area in which you would like your ad to appear.

Once you have chosen a geographic location, choose whether target the entire market or specific regions.

Step 2: Choose your keywords.

Select words and phrases relevant to the products and services your business provides and receive additional keyword suggestions.

Step 3: Set your maximum bids and budget.

Determine the maximum amount you are willing to pay per click, along with your target monthly budget. We recommend bidding the same or lower than what you bid in Google.

Step 4: Create your ad.

Write the ad text that will be displayed when customers search for your products and services.

An ad consists of a title and description of what you offer and your URL. See our lesson on pay-per-click ad writing for more about this.

Step 5: Review your ad and activate your account.

Read over your ad before entering your contact and payment information.

Activate your campaign by entering your billing information and your ad will start showing up in Yahoo search.

Click here to learn more about how to set up a Yahoo advertising campaign and Yahoo ad network.

Conversion tracking is the process of placing a small piece of code in your ad, landing page or thank you page to record the movements of your visitors. The recorded data can be used to find out what aspects of your advertising and website design are working and what ones aren’t. Tracking allows you to test multiple ads, keywords, landing pages and offers and compare the results.

Why should you bother with tracking? Because simply knowing how many sales you are making isn’t enough.

If you are spending a lot of money on a particular pay-per-click campaign or you’ve spent quite a few hours setting up what you hope is a killer email blast, then it’s nothing less than basic business sense to use some sort of tracking to find out whether that time and money is paying off.

Let’s say you start promoting a learn guitar product like Jamorama. After about a month, you can see that you are making on average, 10 sales a day. If you are making a profit, that’s good. But what if you’re not? At this point, you have no idea whether that’s because your pay-per-click ads aren’t very good, whether your landing page is putting people off, or whether you are spending too much promoting the wrong keywords!

On the other hand, let’s say you are making a profit. In this case, tracking might not seem so critical — but consider how much more profit you could get if you found that, for example, your pay-per-click ad for the keyword ‘learn how to play bass guitar’ was getting twice as many conversions as your ad for the keyword ‘how to play acoustic guitar’. You could then reduce your spend on acoustic guitar ad, and increase your return on investment!

How Tracking Helps You Make More Money

• At the most basic level, tracking helps you find out your return on investment and where money is best spent.
• It helps you discover what keywords, adgroups and campaigns are most profitable.
• It allows you to test new ads and conversion pages more effectively and more quickly.
• It lets you find out how much each visitor is costing you.
• It helps you discover any leaks in your landing page or website.

Types of Tracking

There are several different methods of tracking.

If you are a Clickbank affiliate, then you can use Clickbank’s tracking codes to precisely follow a visitor’s path to purchase. By assigning a unique tracking code to different adgroups and promotions, you can exactly which ad or promotion bought you the sale.

If you use Google, Yahoo or MSN pay-per-click, then you can set up tracking to find out which keywords and adgroups are most effective.

Or, you can use a third-party tracking software, such as Xtreme Conversions, which will combine data from all affiliate networks and pay-per-click advertising to show you exactly what keywords are the most profitable.

Click here to learn about the best conversion tracking software and Google, Yahoo and MSN conversion tracking

How to advertise with microsoft adcenter

To get started, go to the Microsoft Adcenter website at:

https://adcenter.microsoft.com/

Microsoft Adcenter is very similar to the Google and Yahoo ad networks. However, there are a couple of minor differences:

• It costs US $5 to sign up.
• If you live outside the US, you must go to Microsoft Advertising Worldwide to get started.
• Add-ons let you target your ads based on gender and age and particular times of the week or day.

Setting Up Your MSN Ad

Step 1: Target your customers.

Select the language and region you wish to target. As with Google, MSN allows you to target all countries, or specific countries and regions. And just like Google, we recommend selecting New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, UK, USA, Germany, France and Canada to begin with.

Step 2: Create your ad.

Write a text ad describing your products and services.

Step 3: Choose your keywords.

Select up to 100 keywords that your customers are likely to search for.

Step 4: Set your budget.

Set a monthly budget that reflects how much you want to spend and then set a default maximum bid per click. You can change this amount as often as you want after your ad is set up.

Step 5: Confirm and activate your ad campaign.

Check over your ad details and make any necessary edits.

Create your MSN account by setting up a username and password.

Then get out your credit card and enter your billing information.

Once you’ve imparted your vital numbers to the folks at Microsoft, you campaign will be activated.

Click here to learn about how to set up a Yahoo advertising campaign and advertising with Google Adwords.

How to advertise with microsoft adcenter

To get started, go to the Microsoft Adcenter website at:

https://adcenter.microsoft.com/

Microsoft Adcenter is very similar to the Google and Yahoo ad networks. However, there are a couple of minor differences:

• It costs US $5 to sign up.
• If you live outside the US, you must go to Microsoft Advertising Worldwide to get started.
• Add-ons let you target your ads based on gender and age and particular times of the week or day.

Setting Up Your MSN Ad

Step 1: Target your customers.

Select the language and region you wish to target. As with Google, MSN allows you to target all countries, or specific countries and regions. And just like Google, we recommend selecting New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, UK, USA, Germany, France and Canada to begin with.

Step 2: Create your ad.

Write a text ad describing your products and services.

Step 3: Choose your keywords.

Select up to 100 keywords that your customers are likely to search for.

Step 4: Set your budget.

Set a monthly budget that reflects how much you want to spend and then set a default maximum bid per click. You can change this amount as often as you want after your ad is set up.

Step 5: Confirm and activate your ad campaign.

Check over your ad details and make any necessary edits.

Create your MSN account by setting up a username and password.

Then get out your credit card and enter your billing information.

Once you’ve imparted your vital numbers to the folks at Microsoft, you campaign will be activated.

Click here to learn about how to set up a Yahoo advertising campaign and advertising with Google Adwords.

Setting up a Google Adwords Campaign

Step 1: Creating a New Keyword Targeted campaign

Login to your Adwords account and click ‘Create your first campaign’.

Step 2: Choose English

Step 3: Choose which countries to target

We suggest starting with New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, UK, USA, Germany, France and Canada.

Don’t target ‘all’, because not every country is equal in terms profitability. For instance, you might get 1,000 clicks from India but no conversions, and it would be easy to assume from those results that the search term isn’t profitable.

Yet this probably isn’t the case.

It’s more likely that people in India simply don’t have the disposable income or the credit card necessary to make a purchase. If you really must experiment with some other countries, then give Hong Kong, Korea and China a try.

Step 4: Create your ad

Here are some tips for a well-written Google ad:

• Always include your main keyword in both the title and description. This is because when someone searches for that keyword phrase, the matching words in your ad will appear in bold, which makes it even easier for people to see the ad’s relevancy to what they are looking for.

• Be sure to capitalize the first letter of each word in the display URL because it’s easier for people to read. We’ve tested this over 50 times, and in about 49 of those tests, the capitalization made a noticeable difference to the click-through rate.

• The display URL can end differently from the real URL as long as the first part of the website address is the same. For example, if the real website address is http://YourCatSite.com, then you’re allowed to write the display URL as http://YourCatSite.com/StopCatShedding to indicate relevancy to the user.

Step 5: Choose your keywords

To begin with, a list of 1 to 10 similar keywords and keyword phrases will do fine. We don’t recommend that you go over 10 keywords in your first few campaigns.

For ad quality reasons, it’s very important that all the keywords within an ad group are very similar. To demonstrate exactly how similar they should be, here is an example list of keywords words for a ‘stop cats scratching’ keyword group.

• Stop cats scratching
• Stop cat scratching
• Stop cat scratching furniture
• Stop cat scratching carpet
• Stop cat scratching door
• Stop cat scratching sofa
• Stop cat scratching rugs
• Stop cats from scratching

As you can see the variations are very slight. In fact, for the phrase ‘stop cat spraying’ we would suggest setting up a separate ad group. This shows just how precisely targeted your keywords need to be.

Step 6: Set the Budget

This comes down to what you can afford. A good starting budget for new affiliates is around $25 or $50, but obviously you don’t want to make it any more than you can afford. You can always raise it later on when you start to earn more money.

Step 7: Set Maximum Bid

For some reason, Google always recommends a very high maximum bid and in our experience, you don’t need to bid that much to rank well.

We recommend setting your maximum bid at about 50% of what Google suggests.

When it comes down to it, what really matters is the click-through rate on the ad and the relevancy of your landing page – not how much you pay.

Step 8: Review your selections and activate your account.

Well, that’s it for setting up your very first Google ad group.

The key to writing and placing Google ads successfully is making sure that you create very targeted adgroups around similar keywords. We recommend creating lots of different ad groups rather than one big ad group with piles of keywords. You can then create precisely targeted landing pages for each ad group. Not only will you get a better click-through rate with this technique (because the ad and landing page will be so relevant to each other people will think "That’s what I’m looking for!") — but Google will also see your landing page as more relevant, and so you’ll get a lower minimum cost per click.

Click here to learn more about how to set up a Google adwords campaign and Google adwords campaign management.

Before we get started, let’s briefly run through the differences between Yahoo and Google pay-per-click.

Differences between Yahoo and Google Ad Networks

The main difference between Yahoo and Google is search volume. Yahoo gets less traffic so you’ll usually find that you get fewer clicks compared to Google. That said, in some markets, such as dating, the conversion rate is significantly higher than Google and the cost per click is lower.

In terms of the ads themselves and the ad set-up process, Yahoo is now very similar to Google. There are only a couple of variations:

• Yahoo’s content match advertising is limited. You can’t pick the sites your ads are placed on and image ads aren’t available.
• Yahoo’s geographic targeting is less flexible than Google’s. You can only target one market per account, such as the United States & Canada or Japan, which can be a bit frustrating if you wish to market in several countries. You then can either choose to target that entire market or specify a region or postcode.
• You may need to credit your account before you get started if you live outside the United States. Setting up Yahoo Pay-per-click

To begin, visit http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com. Note that if you live outside the US, you will need to go to the Yahoo Search Marketing International page.

If you haven’t got a Yahoo account already, then you will need to create one before going any further.

Once logged in, select the option to set up your own account.

Step 1: Target your customers by location.

Choose the geographic area in which you would like your ad to appear.

Once you have chosen a geographic location, choose whether target the entire market or specific regions.

Step 2: Choose your keywords.

Select words and phrases relevant to the products and services your business provides and receive additional keyword suggestions.

Step 3: Set your maximum bids and budget.

Determine the maximum amount you are willing to pay per click, along with your target monthly budget. We recommend bidding the same or lower than what you bid in Google.

Step 4: Create your ad.

Write the ad text that will be displayed when customers search for your products and services.

An ad consists of a title and description of what you offer and your URL. See our lesson on pay-per-click ad writing for more about this.

Step 5: Review your ad and activate your account.

Read over your ad before entering your contact and payment information.

Activate your campaign by entering your billing information and your ad will start showing up in Yahoo search.

Click here to learn more about how to set up a Yahoo advertising campaign and Yahoo ad network.

A landing page is the page that your visitor arrives at after clicking on your AdWords ad. With the way AdWords is structured, it’s possible to serve different landing pages for each ad you have running.

While it’s not important that your landing pages are indexed by the search engines or search engine optimized, they do require a different kind of optimization: They need to be optimized to ensure the highest conversions possible. If you’re spending $100 a day on getting visitors to your site, you at least want to be making $150 back.

There are a number of different tried and tested landing page models that work well for getting maximum conversions. We’re going to look at four favorites.

The Single Product Review Landing Page

The name pretty much says it all: this style of landing page contains a review of one product and nothing more.

Check out this example, a review of Joanas Horde Leveling Guide.

http://www.wowblackbook.com/joanas.php

This type of landing page works particularly well for products with high brand recognition — for example, ‘Toshiba laptop’ or a popular Clickbank product such as ‘Forex Autopilot’.

High brand recognition means that quite a number of people will be familiar enough with the brand name to search for it specifically.

Because people searching for a review of a specific product tend to be quite interested in buying already, this type of landing page usually converts well.

One thing you’ll notice about this example is that it’s quite short. It gets rid of a few reservations that people might have about the product, it lists the contents of Joanas’s guide, and then finishes off by saying what a great product it is and here’s the link to learn more.

What it doesn’t do is reveal too much. Somewhat counter intuitively, the more comprehensive the review, the less likely it is the reader will click through and buy.

The reason for this is that in a longer review it’s possible that you might unintentionally say something that puts the customer off. For example, you might mention that the product comes in red or white. But the visitor thinks: "Oh, but I wanted the yellow one I saw so and so with!" and clicks away. Whoops!

Yet if you had just kept the review short and hadn’t mentioned the color, they would have probably still clicked through and the product owner may have been able to convince them that red is actually better — that the yellow version is actually an outdated model or whatever… etc etc.

All in all, a single product review should aim to be tantalizing, but not comprehensive. Leave it up to the product sales page to do the actual selling.

The multiple product review page (table form)

The multiple product review is another winning landing page style, but for different reasons than the single product review. The table form review landing page works well for people who aren’t sure what brand or version of a particular product they should be buying.

For that reason, the table review is good for affiliates who want to promote a number of related products.

A search for ‘best electric blanket’ or ‘compare digital cameras’ will lead visitors to your landing page, where they can view between 3 and 10 of the best options available.

The table-form review doesn’t require a great deal of detail. Just give each product a rating and list the stand-out features, price and quality. Because you can compare a number of features quite easily in a table, this style of review works especially well for electronics and software.

The site Best DVD Burning Software Reviews is a good example of a table-style review. Note that the site owner has used a tick to indicate whether a product contains a particular feature, and a blank space to indicate that it doesn’t. Just a small tip for you: Blanks are better than crosses, which can unintentionally give a negative impression.

Click here to learn about 2 other types of landing page designs and how to choose a landing page.

What is the quality score?

The quality score is a variable used by Google to reward good quality ads that link through to valuable and relevant websites.

Why does it exist?

Google’s reputation rests on its ability to match users with the best and most relevant content for whatever they are looking for, so they can’t afford to have people clicking through to shallow sites, or put off by trashy ads — otherwise the whole system would quickly crumble and both Google and advertisers would lose out.

To ensure people who click on ads have a positive experience, Google checks the quality of each and every ad and the site that it links to.

If either your ad or landing page are found to be wanting, Google will give you a low quality score and punish you with what is vividly dubbed the ‘Google slap’!

Click here to learn how to increase your Google quality score

In this lesson you’ll learn about a few of the best affiliate networks to use to find profitable programs for pay-per-click.

Affiliate networks are databases of affiliate programs. They provide a safe and trusted transaction system, track sales and provide statistics and reporting. The advantage of using networks is that you can compare programs very easily to find the highest quality programs to promote.

We suggest that pay-per-click marketers use affiliate networks to look for products that pay between 60 to 75% for digital products or around 40 to 50% for a physical or a recurring billing product.

The difference between finding programs to promote via pay-per-click rather than SEO, is that the stakes are much higher. Now that you are spending money on getting traffic, you’ve not only got to make that money back again, but also make a profit.

Clickbank

It’s no secret that Clickbank is our favorite affiliate network and for a simple reason: it contains a lot of programs offering commissions of 60% or more. Why? Because Clickbank contains a huge number of digital products and digital products don’t have all the overheads of physical products, so the merchants can afford to be more generous.

Another great thing about Clickbank is that it is very easy to sign up to and use. So if you consider yourself a newbie, this is a particularly good network to start with.

Clickbank also have a very good reputation for customer service and we have used them ourselves for years.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction, or CJ.com, is one of the largest affiliate networks on the internet. Its reputation is such that it has attracted some of the most well-known affiliate programs in the world, such as Yahoo, Sony, eBay, Weightwatchers, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup. That said, a name brand is not a guarantee of making money. Although these programs have the power of name recognition, not all of them pay out very high commissions.

Shareasale.com

Shareasale is kind of like your friendly local pub around the corner. Although it doesn’t have the big name attractions of Commission Junction, it does have exceptional customer service and a user-friendly site. ShareaSale has won a number of awards for the way their business is run and they have a staunch following of loyal supporters.

Learn about other good affiliate networks.

Pay-per-click is an advertising model unique to the internet, that’s been around since about 2002.

A pay-per-click ad is a small, four line ad consisting of a headline, two short lines of text and URL. It doesn’t contain graphics, color variations, music, or video – and you can’t pay extra to get more space. Although they sound and look rather basic, pay-per-click ads are one of the most powerful ways of advertising today because they are so targeted.

Rather than just displaying to whoever happens to be in the vicinity, as with TV or billboard advertising, pay-per-click ads only display to people who have shown an active interest in the topic by either searching for information, or by going one step further and visiting a website. What that means is that the conversion rate of pay-per-click ads is much higher than other advertising models.

Another enormous benefit is that you only pay for the times when the ad gets clicked on. And while that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get a sale, it’s a lot better than paying merely for the privilege of having your ads on show, which is what used to be the case before pay-per-click was introduced.

Search versus Content ads

There are two different types of pay-per-click ads.

The ads that appear beside the organic search results in Yahoo, Google and MSN search engines are called ‘search’ ads because they are triggered by the words people search for. For example, someone’s search for ‘cat training’ will display pay-per-click ads targeting related keywords phrases.

The second type of pay-per-click ads are ‘content’ ads. These ads appear within a website or blog. Unlike search ads, content pay-per-click ads are based on the keywords within the website itself, rather than any user action. The trick with content ads is making sure your website or blog is well optimized for your topic, so that the most relevant ads possible are displayed. If you have a website about flamenco dancing for example and your site isn’t properly optimized, then you could get ads displaying for the DVD version of ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ for sale on eBay, or worse, something that probably has very little significance for your market, such as ‘Dance Studios for Under 5s’.

Types of Content Ads

Content ads can be in two formats: text — which is the traditional type of Google ad most people will automatically think of — and image ads. Image ads are animated banners in either gif or Flash format. They can be used for both placement-targeted and keyword-targeted campaigns.

If you thought that banner-style advertising was dead, think again. Our experiments have led us to conclude that image content ads are consistently more profitable than text content ads. And we’re not the only ones. Mark Lindsay goes so far as to claim that he gets triple the click through rates on image ads as he does from straight text ads!

Click this link to learm more about what pay per click advertising is.