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!

• Where Have You Been?
  I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since June…well, I guess I can believe it. Here is a quick summary of what I have...

Lately I have found myself getting less willing to share knowledge, insights and tricks in the ppc space or even some of the cool stuff I have learned in the SEO space…and to that end, I feel like I have chosen to hide underground for quite some time. This is clear by the amount I wrote last year…this year I would like to turn a new leaf, but we’ll see what I feel like I can share vs not.

I like sharing, but I have to admit that I’m not going to share super edgy secrets or expose any awesome loopholes that I find unless I’m physically with somebody and we’re chatting over lunch or if somebody has me in their IM list…I help as many people as I can via IM.

That’s where the ‘code’ comes into play. Lot’s of people know the code, but it needs to be repeated again and again, especially with so many awesome conferences just around the corner:

DO NOT SHARE anything “secret” that you learn from somebody else over lunch, via IM or email or at ALL without their explicit permission.

Why am I calling this the Code of the Underground Marketer? Because these secrets are supposed to stay on the down low – in the ground – so they can be exploited as long as possible without having search engine employees, engineers, algorithms, spiders or contracted reviewers learn about it or know about it.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to communicate with some awesome link builders, ppc rockstars and more over the past few years. I shared some secrets and not others. Of the secrets I haven’t shared because of ‘the code’, few of them have been found out by the sites themselves or the search engines as of yet – only a handful have been exposed.

The code has a hidden side to it…if somebody shares something golden with you and you blast it to the world via Twitter, Facebook, blog or any other medium where dozens of people find out about it at once…you get black listed and hated on for quite some time. It’s rare and difficult to get back into the ‘inner circle’ so to speak.

I wish I could truly call myself part of the ‘inner circle’…but I am far from it. Perhaps I am at the fringe. Maybe not though. I still have to find out a ton of so-called secrets on my own through rapid/vast/expensive experimentation. Buy a link to one website, wait and see what happens to that site before getting a similar link to another website in my portfolio that is more important. I have had a few websites penalized and banned in the past few years and the exercise of removing the bad and learning more about the good has been purely fascinating…at the same time, if I were part of the ‘inner circle’ or the ‘underground marketer’ I probably could have avoided all of the stupid tests I did.

Part of my experimentation, and what I think the real underground marketer is doing too – maybe to a MUCH MUCH greater scale, is managing a nice portfolio of several websites, bank accounts, adsense accounts, ebay accounts, servers, hosts, other affiliate network accounts and more. In my mind, one of the only ways to discover some of the most powerful techniques being used today is through sheer intelligence and a world of experience that came through testing and learning the hard way. Most places don’t allow multiple accounts (except banks, they’re always willing to open accounts for you) so you get creative and use relative’s names and account information if you can.

The bottom line, or what I want to call the Code of the Underground Marketer, is definitely that of not sharing what others share with you…and not sharing everything you learn…and always be testing.

Good luck in 2010 and have a Happy New Year living the Code!

I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since June…well, I guess I can believe it.

Here is a quick summary of what I have been up to:

1. Growing the affiliate marketing side of my personal income…and have been doing quite well with it. In fact, I have launched or am in the process of launching 12 more websites in my personal portfolio. I must admit that affiliate marketing is very time consuming but I have effectively replaced my income from the agency so it is a full-time passion right now. I do not take on any clients anymore and haven’t for quite some time because of the affiliate side of things. Yay!

2. Playing around a lot more with the SEO side of things. Several of my sites are now in the top 3 for several competitive phrases…believe it or not, I do NOT do any ppc on my affiliate sites yet – although I am successfully moving into that side of the income stream given that it is something I think I’m great at. As far as SEO goes, I started practicing it quite a while ago…3 or 4 years I think. My very first ‘ranking’ was for ‘Internet Marketing Professional’ and the plural version too…that’s what got me hooked. Lol!

3. I was also recruited in-house for a couple different companies…they made offers that I didn’t want to refuse. I love both companies and the people there – so I’m still going strong with one in the home based business space (super competitive, i love it!) and the other helped me make a lot of great connections plus jump started me into the scrum engineering process and gave me major insights into growing a company really fast. It was and is really cool to have some ‘in-house’ experience…now I really can see and understand the benefits of agency AND in-house arrangements.

4. Thinking of all the people who are leaders and participators in the community. I can’t believe I ignored the urge to write so many times…but hundreds of you are still subscribed to my blog and I am honored to be in your company. There are so many genius people out there writing and sharing information freely! Don’t worry though, I have been lurking through over 100 blogs daily and 6 or 7 forums…I’m around, and appreciative of your work.

Other than that, I feel like it’s time for a vacation.

So, that’s what I have been up to! How about you? What have you been up to for the past few months?

• Quick Update: Affiliate Summit West and Ads on this blog
  Affiliate Summit West 2010 I’m stoked to be going to Affiliate Summit West this year! I’ll be getting in late Sunday night but I’ll be...

Students have been dropping by the office more and more as the year moves along…they are looking for internships, jobs or simple career advice. Some of the best questions that have come up so far are: What can I do right now so that you or somebody like you would hire me? What do you look for in a job candidate? What can I read or where can I learn more?

Most of these students are absolute beginners when it comes to pay per click advertising and web marketing in general. I am a fan of learning directly from a blog post, but I think a beginner needs to go out and DO instead of just READ…so the following thoughts are action oriented (or I am lazy…) I want and expect people to leave this page to learn directly from a source.

Here are my thoughts on what a person should know and/or do as a beginner:

The lay of the land

Study the writing, the placement and the style of the ads you find in the search engines, on regular websites or on social media platforms.

Natural/Organic vs Sponsored/Paid

Investigate the search results at a variety of search engines. Learn how to spot the paid vs the organic results. Some of these aren’t obvious believe it or not! Dogpile comes to mind…do you think a normal user can tell the difference there? Yahoo has paid inclusions scattered throughout their ‘organic’ results too. Go check it out!

Content Networks, Image ads & Social Network Ads

Explore a variety of websites and pay attention to the banner ads, text ads and their locations in the website. The publishers (the people that own and operate the website) typically put ads in the most visible, highly trafficked areas on their websites. You can learn a lot from these placements…here are a few very popular places that host content ads, image ads and/or social network ads: Facebook (duh!), MySpace, Gizmodo, New York Times, Digg and MSN.

Know The Basic Acronyms and their Definitions

PPC = Pay per click. You pay when somebody clicks on your ad! Yes! Basically, every time your ad appears it is free. When somebody clicks to see your website, you pay. Simple, right?

SEO = Search engine optimization. The marketing behind a website’s natural organic/natural ranking ability. SEO is NOT PPC and PPC is NOT SEO. Please do not confuse the two.

SEM = Search engine marketing. Search engine marketing is any marketing on the search engines. It is not just PPC and not just SEO. It can be both…

CPC = Cost per click. The amount you pay for a single click. I listed this here because there are several iterations of this metric out there. You might see eCPC which means effective cost per click. eCPC simply divides your total cost for the run of the ad divided by the number of clicks you received. Example: You buy a flat fee ad on a local chamber of commerce website for $250. The ad was live for 30 days. You received 78 clicks from that ad; therefore, $250 divided by 78 clicks gives us your eCPC of $3.21.

CPM = Cost per thousand impressions. An impression is simply a single instance of your ad being displayed on a website. There are several banner ad networks out there that still charge based on impressions. Or you get the choice: you can buy based on impressions or clicks. The industry standard is to price or bid based on a per one thousand impressions basis. You may run into CPMM which is cost per thousand thousand impressions – or cost per 1 million impressions.

CPA = Cost per action. Advertisers pay a publisher or a company based on a desired outcome. This can be for a lead, a page view, a sale, etc. The most common CPA model is the affiliate marketing model. Google ‘affiliate marketing’, you’ll learn a lot.

Keywords

Research

Go search for good keyword research tools. I recommend Google’s keyword tool, Keyword Discovery has a free one – Wordtracker does too. Use them all, compare and contrast them and get familiar with them.

Intent

There are a lot of good articles on the intent of a search query. I think students and beginners that read this are smart enough to determine what the intent of a keyword is…is it transactional? Will it lead to a sale? Does the word lean more towards discovery and research? Is it a branded keyword? Think like your target. What will they search for when they’re ready to buy? What will they search for if they are just starting to discover the product or service you offer?

Writing

Sales copy

I require at least 3 writing samples from each prospective employee. Why? Because writing is essential to success in this industry. If you can’t get a thought across with few grammatical errors or spelling mistakes, then this is probably not the right place for you at this time.

Learn to write well, learn to communicate quickly and efficiently. You are working with severely limited space to convince somebody to visit a website. Attention spans are shorter than ever, so you need to learn to write powerfully, simply and effectively.

Get Experience

Experience is one of the biggest requirements that I am interested in when I am hiring somebody. If you have your own skin in the game, and you can prove it to me by showing me your account/your website/etc, you are much more likely to get hired. I will not accept anybody that hasn’t spent at least $100 advertising something – anything!

Use your own money

Using your own money proves that you are dedicated to learning the trade. You have your own skin in the game, that takes dedication and courage.

Use your own website

If you have a website already or a marketable skill, it is nice to see that you have taken the initiative to do it yourself – it means that you are further along the learning curve than almost every new applicant or student that I meet with.

Use your mother’s uncle’s best friend’s website and money

If you don’t have a website or your own money, at least start working in a relative’s account or a friend’s account with your own user ID so you can see and measure the changes you make on the account via change reports, etc. Being able to show me that you know your way around is better than anything – and the ability to show me the changes you have made is a good sign that you are willing to try things out.

Just do it for at least 30 days on your own and on a tiny budget

A beginner can learn soooo much by doing exactly what they want to learn. Just make sure that you are working on a daily budget, not monthly when you start. If you can afford $3 a day, then make sure everywhere you see ‘budget’ that it shows $3 per day. Don’t lose your shirt with this, just experiment with it.

Don’t get certified

Meaningless

Getting certified used to be cool. It’s not anymore. If you can show a business owner or a website owner what you have DONE, show them your work, then you are showing more competence than one who simply learns the material to take a certification test.

For me, seeing a certification on a resume is meaningless. I. don’t. care.

Reading

Start by reading all of the offical blogs and learning centers. Go google ‘AdWords Offical blog’, ‘Yahoo Search Marketing blog’, etc. Find the offical blogs and subscribe to them. Read through the official learning centers to get a basic background of best practices, search engine editorial guidelines and more. Here’s a freebie…I’d start with the Google AdWords learning center.

PPCHero is an excellent pay per click blog…you’ll accumulate more blogs to read as your knowledge grows. I don’t want a beginner to get paralyzed with too much reading.

This is about DOING. Formulate your own opinions – every piece of advice you read may or may not be true, so test it out yourself if you can.

Show me, don’t tell me

If you can’t tell, the bottom line is that I want beginners to show me what they have done and what they can do. Don’t tell me. Show me. Showing me is more convincing than telling me. The account doesn’t have to be clean or employ 100% of all the best practices out there. What’s important is that you simply know your way around a little bit and that you have the initiative to DO it.

Ok! Get out there and get ready to start at an internship level with PPC…it should take you 30 to 90 days minimum. Good luck!

semvironment has been going through a shiny new internal transformation lately…here’s the latest:

semvironment is now a one man show. I (James Zolman) realized that during this economic turmoil, it is easier to be flexible and strong as a service provider if the people that help me can maintain their sense of freedom to work for others while we have the strictest agreements of confidentiality and non-disclosure in place between our contractors and our clients. Every one of our contractors worked in-house for us at one time so they are trustworthy, smart and entrepreneurial people. Yes times have been difficult here, but every single one of my prior employees is doing great and not a single bridge has been burned because of these times. I am excited to press forward independently with the use of awesome ppc software, the best contractors and the best clients ever.

semvironment is focusing more on education and coaching. I am going to revive the blog a bit with at least a weekly blog post unless I am on vacation with my beautiful family. The blog will cover more SEM stuff while still emphasizing and maintaining a healthy dose of PPC management posts.

I am looking for small business owners, in-house teams, ppc management agencies, ppc software companies or individuals that want or need an external opportunity report. Basically, I would spend two or three days reviewing the account, the history and your analytics reports and write a report for you with ‘next steps’ for helping your team or you improve your ROI with paid search!

And a little plug about the latest for me (James Zolman) outside of semvironment:

You might have heard of Click Walrus a little bit in the previous blog post…I have been investing heavily in this attribution tool designed for small businesses, affiliates and bloggers. I’ll make an official announcement about it soon but sign up for updates early so you can be in on our alpha tests! w00t!

I am starting a personal blog at www.jameszol.com in the coming weeks. The blog will discuss a lot of different topics…family, business, computers, advertising…just a little bit of everything.

Looking forward to a bright and shiny future for everybody!

• Where Have You Been?
  I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since June…well, I guess I can believe it. Here is a quick summary of what I have...

I am entering a master’s program at the Columbia University School of Journalism this August, and I’m taking the rest of the summer off to surf and move to Manhattan. I’ll still be hanging around semvironment-ville every so often, but things at the company have been changing, and James himself is taking semvironment in a little bit of a different direction, as he will shortly be explaining. Additionally, I’m pursuing some of my own work with my web design company more heavily, including the promotion of my new social gadgets and products sharing website www.Scordit.com, and my new site where you create your own quizzes and earn prizes at www.Quizzem.com. Of course, I’m also helping James Zolman with Click Walrus, which is a revenue and click attribution web analytics tool that is WAY AWESOME.

So good things are happening all around, and I’m excited for what’s to come for me at Columbia and with Scordit et. al., and also for a new era at semvironment. I’m sure I’ll make an appearance at the occasional web conference here and there (or more likely at the occasional punk rock show in NYC), so maybe I’ll see you there. Until then, goodnight and have a pleasant tomorrow!

[Note from James: I personally recommend Shane for his design skills, his website creation skills, his superior and engaging writing style and most of all his ability to educate and teach. If you ever attend a conference where Shane is presenting, you should attend his session and I kid you not, you will be blown away - he is literally the best presenter I have ever encountered...I have attended at least 50+ "big name"conference sessions. Shane's presentation and speaking skills blow all of that out of the water. Shane has been independent for quite a while - building up the projects he mentions above, building out his design portfolio a little more and wrapping up ambassador projects for semvironment. Shane is going to pursue his dreams - and I am honored to have played a tiny role in helping him along his way. We're going to miss him a lot!]

Google AdWords for Mobile

If you’re ready to trudge out onto the PPC battleground, AdWords is a logical place to start. With mobile ads integrated into its regular search and content campaign management, AdWords can be a great place for mobile advertisers to begin as well. To enable ads on mobile devices, just indicate so in your campaign settings:

Our advice: Separate your mobile campaigns from your regular search campaigns, just like you should be separating your content network and search campaigns.

Lots of people use Google on their phones, so get a piece of the advertising action by trying AdWords for mobile search!

Yahoo! Mobile Advertising

Yahoo! also has mobile advertising, although it requires a separate application to enroll. (Sorry all you who already use Yahoo! Search Marketing).  The application is short and easy. This is another really great place to start your mobile ad campaigns, as Yahoo is a very large mobile search property.

Yahoo! Mobile Advertising also has a very cool demo, which you should check out:

Admob

One of Fast Company’s top 10 most innovative companies in advertising and marketing, Admob has been serving mobile ads since 2005. These guys specialize in iPhone and Android ads, and they’re really, really good. And, Admob has a pretty impressive mobile analytics beta out now:

Definitely check them out if you’re considering going mobile with your marketing.

MSN Mobile Advertising

Although their tagline indicates that its searchers are “affluent customers,” MSN Mobile is a very large mobile destination. Their ad platform serves banner ads next to their “premium content”, and also now serves ads on Windows Live Mobile search. At over 62 million page views a month from MSN Mobile users, this can be a pretty good place on which to throw your own ads.

Third Screen Media

Third Screen Media by Platform A is AOL’s mobile ad network. Not only do they have some mesmerizing javascript at the bottom of their website, but they also do ads for some large provides Verizon and Virgin Mobile, and partner with some big publishers like Mapquest, Traffic.com, and CBS Sportsline, not to mention AOL.com. Premium pubilshers aside, they have a pretty good sized publisher network, which is grouped handily by content channels for easy ad buying.

Nokia Interactive Advertising

Nokia calls mobile advertising a “medium advertisers can no longer afford to ignore.” Boasting 40% of the handset market, Nokia can really deliver your advertisements to a lot of people. While their program is geared toward huge sponsorships and banner campaigns (noteworthy clients include MTV and Hyundai) rather than PPC for search like some of the other platforms we’ve discussed, if you have a lot of mobile advertising to do, you should definitely contact Nokia Interactive Advertising. These guys acquired enpocket.com, a huge mobile ad player, somewhat recently.

Quattro

Quattro claims to be “North America’s Best Performing Mobile Ad Network,” which is, as they say, pretty awesome. From media planning to analytics to even SMS advertising, Quattro offers really extensive services for advertisers, and they are a powerful company to work with.

Millenial Media

Millenial Media is another huge player in the mobile advertising business. They boast some big publishers like Myspace Mobile, RottenTomatoes, and Fox. They have some huge reach, and are known for their MBrand and Decktrade networks.

Again, mobile advertising is growing at an almost alarming rate. Advertisers are seeing huge returns on their investment, partly because the medium is not as saturated as others. So jump in!

What other mobile ad networks are wicked hot?

• Keyword Research for Mobile Search
  I’ve only recently started exploring the power of mobile and search…specifically paid search – and noticed a cool tool in Google AdWords that I wanted...

While setting up a mobile campaign last night I thought “Wouldn’t it be great to see the mobile search volume for these keywords? I bet Google has a tool…let me go to AdWords Help and see.”

Kablam! Here was the 1st result. Google’s search technology is pretty dang good.

And because I don’t think Google does this tool justice, I’m going to give you step by step instructions with screenshots! Woot!

1. Log into Google Adwords…set up an ad group with mobile ads – you can leave it paused if you’re not ready to start advertising on cell phones. The tool will still work.

2. Click on your keywords tab in the ad group.

3. Click on ‘Keyword Tool’. The ‘Keyword Tool’ link is above the ‘pause’ or ‘resume’ button and below the date range.

4. Start searching! Note that “Results are tailored to mobile searches”.

I found a TON of niches where I can bid around $1 per click OR MUCH LESS and sit at the number 1 mobile ad position…when I know for a fact that the regular avg cpc we see in regular search ranges from $2 to $65!

Anybody know what mobile conversions are like? Have you had success with mobile?

• Wicked Hot Mobile Ad Platforms You Should Try
  Have you been thinking about mobile advertising? If you haven’t, you probably should. Mobile advertising can be an extremely profitable part of an integrated Internet...

We’re going to SMX West next week – and we’re speaking at a few awesome sessions!

Register to attend if you haven’t already, it’s going to be a blast!

The sessions we are speaking at:

Advanced Landing Page Strategies

Writing Killer PPC Ad Copy

Analyzing & Converting Paid Search Traffic

Let us know if you’ll be there! We’d love to meet one and all!

• Quick Update: Affiliate Summit West and Ads on this blog
  Affiliate Summit West 2010 I’m stoked to be going to Affiliate Summit West this year! I’ll be getting in late Sunday night but I’ll be...

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I just started noticing this tonight…how long has this been going on? What determines when a result will have 1 or 4 description lines? Thoughts? Please see this screen shot…it’s a big file/image – please click to see the big picture: