I’m stoked to be going to Affiliate Summit West this year!

I’ll be getting in late Sunday night but I’ll be there all day Monday and Tuesday. I’ll probably be tweeting a bit – I’ll tweet out my location, etc sometimes so I’d love to chat!!

Ads on this blog

I will be experimenting with ads on this blog in the very near future. I’ll post my findings if they are interesting! I’ll also post my tactics on how I plan to monetize the blog, show screenshots of the results, etc.

This will be a fun adventure!

Oh, wait, why am I monetizing this blog? Because I love to share but I need to monetize my sharing a tiny bit since I do not take on clients anymore and semvironment is no longer an agency but an educational resource for search marketers and affiliates everywhere. I truly want to ‘empower advertisers everywhere’ and I think two of the best ways to do it are 1) solid, real information and opinions from somebody in the trenches all the time and 2) products and services that help those of us striving to make a good living online!

Hope you don’t mind the ads!

And I’ll see you at ASW if you’re going!

The Link Builder “Spread The Love” WordPress plugin tracks the websites and pages you link to in your blog and sends an email message to that website owner/administrator notifying them of your link. You have the option of selecting which links not to send notifications to before you send all that love out! It’s like tipping your hat to someone when you give them a link. Hopefully this will encourage them to visit your blog or even subscribe or link back!

Download Spread The Love from Semvironment today!

Chrome is insanely fast – I’m already a huge fan. Can’t wait to develop plugins/add-ons for it. I am also excited to see a Linux version… I’m actually writing/publishing this from Chrome.

One upcoming BIG post is going to start a new training series – as much for our own new employees as it is for you. I’m essentially opening up the book of instruction here on ppc management theory, reports, duties, etc. that we cover as an agency. This will be a review for some but might open a few doors for others. We will be using this series as a training guide to new employees so please contradict, review, enlighten by adding your voice to these posts when you see them. I plan on posting one every week or two…but you know that can change any time.

This is one of our most productive accounts as far as volume of conversions goes, and our cost per conversion is staggeringly low. Out of curiosity, I took a look at what Google’s recommended budget for us was:

If you squint, you can see that our current budget is $250/day, and the recommended budget is $889.28/day – an increase of 355%! You may also notice that clicks increase by 100%, from 5,480 to 11,944.

Wait a second! So I can increase my budget by 3.5 times and get 2 times as many clicks? Awesome! Not. I’m glad I thought that one through rather than just taking the recommendation no questions asked.

I’d like to try this tactic with some of our clients: “Hi, I was just analyzing your account and I recommend that you pay us 3 times as much as you are now. . .”

All Google-mocking aside: Could there be times when increasing your budget by x amount in order to get 1/2x amount more conversions would be a smart thing to do? The answer is yes, but it depends on your profit margins. If you make $10 per lead, then paying an extra $1 per lead in order to get 100 more leads could turn out to be a great move for you. However, if you make $3 per lead, paying that extra dollar might really hurt your bottom line. They key is to find the optimal solution to the following equation:

Total Profit = Net Profit * Volume

If Volume * Net Profit is greater at a higher volume and lower net profit, then you’re good! If Volume * Net Profit is lower at a higher volume and lower net profit, then you’re not.

All I’ve got to say is Google is smart. . . I just hope I’m not as dumb as they think I am!

Rand just published a “Headsmacking Tip” this morning about the importance of researching and optimizing your blog post titles and content before hitting ‘publish’…and roughly 24 hours before he published the post, I wrote to our lead wordpress programmer about developing a plugin that let’s us do exactly that!

We planned on using the KeywordDiscovery API – and still will – but we wanted to capitalize on Rand’s suggestion and simply make the free keyword research tools easily accessible from WordPress while you are writing a post!!!

Download the Keyword Research WordPress Plugin here!

How to install:

1. Upload the file `post_keyword_research.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Simply write a post and note the research links below your submenu and to the right below the ‘save’/'publish’ button.

Here are a few screen shots of where the research links show up (2 locations) – these links open in new windows so you can simply click on them while you are writing and begin your research! Hooray!

Under your submenu:

Under the “Save”/”Publish”/”Related” section:

The Link Builder simply tracks the websites and pages you link to and sends an email message to that website owner/administrator notifying them of your link.

Download the Link Builder for WordPress here

Then watch this video (update: haha – if you turn up your volume, you can hear a ‘darth vader’ breathing effect from my mic…sorry!) to learn how to configure and use the plugin:

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can read the readme.txt file for installation instructions here.

UPDATE: Reminder - you MUST remember to edit your config file! And this is not a 100% automated tool – it is designed to be personal while simplifying your link building efforts.

Other Plugins that are built for SEO/Link Building from WordPress

Internal Link Building by SEOROI – This looks like it’s an awesome tool although it didn’t work with our admin/theme/template for some reason…haven’t had a chance to look at it but it’s received rave reviews so we recommend giving it a shot yourself!

All In One SEO Pack – One of our favorites. You control title tags, descriptions and keywords for every post and page or you can let the pack update them automatically!

Two Excellent Guides To Optimizing Blogs

WordPress SEO – The Definitive Guide To High Rankings for Your Blog

The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization – Aaron and Giovanna Wall of SEOBook.com fame wrote this awesome guide…a must read!

About the Programmer: The programmer that was our lead dev on this plugin is Simon. We own the copyrights, programming and design – but Simon is a fantastic resource and he is freakishly fast with WordPress dev stuff if you need him.

Fresh, vibrant, green and fun!

Shane Snow is the genius behind the new design – and in fact, we have given him a new official title to add to his box of titles – lol – he is now our copywriter and creative director. That’s really where his best experience and expertise is…he has already rewritten some of our ads for clients and they are decreasing costs per conversion even more! I have asked him to start blogging about copy writing ads for ppc, landing pages, etc. Let’s hope he posts something awesome soon!

And if you’re reading this via feed, swing by the site at www.semvironment.com/blog to take a look at our sweet new design!

We just became a ‘dofollow’ blog – all author names and links included in comments are now dofollowed…however, there is a caveat to having this privelege.

Here are the rules:

1. After 3 useful comments with the same email address, all future comments coming from the same email address will be dofollowed…the author and links within those comments, as long as they’re relevant, will be dofollowed.

2. After you follow rule number 1, all of your trackbacks to our posts are also dofollowed! Lot’s of love goin’ on ’round here!

3. Akismet is pretty good at capturing all the spam…but we will also ban bad use of our dofollow system. There are rules to the system…for example, authors must be legitimate handles or names less than 25 characters in length – but you can use text rich links within your comment if it is useful. In fact, we encourage a better web by using good text links in your comments. Remember, only useful, relevant conversation will be dofollowed. Ultimately, the choice is ours…so play nice.

Thanks for subscribing and participating!

This is a work in progress…

But here it is!

The SEM Daily Reading page at semvironment!!!!!

I plan on adding 15 – 30 of the top blogs in the industry to this page – obviously leaning towards pay per click marketing with a healthy dose of SEO.

Yes – it is similar to p*purls while significantly different. What do you think?

Visit every day for your daily SEM fix…enjoy!

NUDE: AdWords Keyword Data Exposed With Google Analytics

Create A Dynamic Landing Page in 15 Minutes or Less with PHP

70 Quick Tests to Get More Conversions Out of AdWords

There are others but I think those are our top 3 most popular posts…enjoy!