PPC is like the GRE !!!

Let me explain exactly what I mean, and then I will show you how to use this fact to your advantage. First let me explain what the GRE is, for those of you who do not know it is the Graduate Record Examination . It is a placement test for people looking to go to Grad school. I was flipping through one of those “Beat the GRE” books when I noticed one of the biggest pieces of advice across the board was that the very first question is the most important.

The GRE test is taken on the computer and unlike other tests where questions get progressively harder, the GRE adjusts in difficulty based on weather you got the previous question right or wrong. Below I put together a chart explaining this. Both of the patterns are the same the only difference between the green and red is that the greet dots assume you got the first question right.

Please note that if you get the first question wrong it will be much tougher to climb back towards the top. Now you might say what does this have to do with PPC… the answer is EVERYTHING.

All you have to do is replace Question Difficulty with Quality Score and Question Number with Number of Clicks (QS x #Clicks). Just like the first question when you first launch the campaign the PPC engines assign an average score for you. Depending on how you do initially they adjust accordingly just like the GRE. If you have a bad start it will be very hard to climb back out of your whole, on the flip side if you do well to start to you can make a mistake and still rebound quite quickly.

This might not be anything new to some of you, but for the rest of you here are three ways to take this knowledge to SUPER CHARGE your PPC campaigns and give you the best fighting chance.

1.) Prime the Pump – Simply put click on your own ads, better yet get people to click on your ads. It sucks that you will burn some of your money, but it will put you in a good place when you are getting started and make things easier moving forward.

2.) Day Parting -  Launch the campaign during peak CTR hours not necessarily peak Conversion Hours. Lets face it CTR is still one of the most important elements in determining how your PPC campaign does.

3.) Outlier Method – This strategy is a little more advanced and was initially discovered on Facebook Social Ads. While creating a bunch of ads I messed up and instead of having an ad for each age, I created 100 of the same ad. They were all approved and launched at the same time. Something very interesting happened, some of the ads had INSANE CTR while others not even one click all with the same impressions. I thought how can this be? Then I remembered my Econ classes from college. Here is a graph illustrating Normal Distribution.

What had happened is out of those 100 same ads there were a few outliers in that 2.2% section. These outliers performed amazing, but slowly started to die down over time with more and more impressions they got closer to where they really belonged. By then I got a ton of cheap clicks making the campaign a success.

This can also be used on PPC engines like Google. When you launch 100 ads, even if they are the same one, some of them will perform very well. Quickly ax the ones that don’t then you can start the traditional split testing.

Anyway, hope this helps someone think bout PPC and GREs in a new light. Leave a comment if you like this post.

The following is a list of how affiliate marketing mirrors the poker industry.

Gurus Both affiliate marketing and gambling have their gurus. These are people who claim to be the best. Sometimes they really are good, but many times they had one success and because of their vocal nature get tons of publicity and ride the wave. Most of these guru’s don’t even practice what they preach, but make their money from selling “education” to n00bs and the like.

Heroes  These are the guys who aren’t selling anything, but are people you can look up to. In both affiliate marketing and gambling there are a few guys who trully are great at what they do. They serve as the driving force behind your own addiction with thoughts like … “If he can do it, why can’t I.”

Money Distribution Just like poker in affiliate marketing there are only a small number of super affiliates who can make large sums of money doing what they do. The rest of us are barely making ends meet and many end up loosing tons of money.

Adrenaline When you launch a new campaign your heart races same as when you throw in a stack of chips. The addreneline is the reason most of us do it and is why both industries are male dominated.

The more I stay in this industry the more I realize that affiliate marketing is just poker. You don’t know what cards your competitors are holding. At the end of the day someone is going to walk away with the pot while the rest of us will put our tail between our legs and come back the next day to try it all again.

At the end of the day no matter how much you know, strategies, techniques, tips, etc the only thing that can help is LADY LUCK. All you can do is give yourself the best chance of getting lucky.

I sought out places where I can learn more about online marketing. Below you will find my review of some of the resources that I found that will hopefully help you on your path to making money online.

SEOBook – This is the book that started it all. Aaron Wall has been an inspiration for some time, and the things he does for SEO community are amazing. He no longer sells the e-Book, even better, he sells SEO Training full of amazing information. You can spend your time reading free information online that is full of outdated information, or you can go to the source and join a community that will help you grow organic ranking of your online business. You can read a sarcastic 10 Reasons Not to Buy SEO Book .

StomperNet – These guys are damn expensive, but some of the things they come out with blow my mind. They hire some of the best usability, sales, psych, etc people around to analyze online consumers to give you a leg up on your competition. I have not joined because I am poor, but even their free stuff is gold. Some of the things that blew my mind from them include, how to get indented results, Google PPC embedded match, and visual anchors for e commerce.

30 Day Challenge – Not to be confused with 30 Sites in 90 Day is from the same guys who bring you StomperNet, but it it is a free resource. I encourage n00bs to join the challenge of making the first dollar profit online. Some of their tactics are a little shady, but as long as your OK with it go for it. Oh and use an email you don’t care about because they will send you an email every freaking day.

Court’s Internet Marketing School – It is great when you follow someone’s blog for some time and watch them grow right before your eyes. This is the case with Courtney Tuttle who along with his partners is offering some amazing training on his methods. The great thing about court is he breaks concepts which seem complex into easy to follow steps. His Keyword Sniping methodology is a big influence on my own challenge.

The Black Ink Project - Brought to you by Jeremy from Quit Your Day Job . This is a free service that covers everything having to do with online marketing from registering your business, to a business plan, to SEO, PPC and beyond. There is some basics, but also some advanced stuff in here. This guy knows how to do online marketing and uses the “freemium” model to its fullest. He gives away great content but adds affiliate links throughout disguising them as redirects and “tinyurls”. BRILLIANT – but hey who minds signing up for things when the intention is good.

BONUS: Uber Camp – Paul started what he calls an UberCamp. If you are a top online marketer you may want to apply to join similar minded people. Can’t really evaluate this training because I did not join, too rich for my blood, and I won’t get much out of it yet. If you have checked it out please write your review in the comments.

Hope this helps and please leave your comments if you want to review any other online marketing training.