Diorex

Have yet to really see anyone screaming about this, but then again I have not been looking that hard…

I was in SF this week meeting with both Google and Facebook and as a throwaway Google dropped the bomb that they are no longer allowing multiple domains in the same adgroup. Adwords Blog talks about it here.

What this means to the average affiliate marketer is that you no longer can test which Display URL (DURL) works best for you.

Lets take an extreme made up example of a dating site with the goal of a credit card sign-up.

If your DURL is FreeSex.com then you will get lots and lots of clicks which Google loves and thus your CPC will go way down but your conversion rate will be horrible since the DURL implies free when a sign-up is required.

What about a DURL of FatUglyChicks.com? You probably get very few clicks, meaning your CPC goes up, but someone desperate enough to click on that ad is probably pretty likely to convert since they have been somewhat pre-qualified.

This is nothing more complicated than an algebra problem - does lots of cheap clicks with a bad conversion work better than more expensive clicks with great conversion. As a marketer you really only care about the bottom line here.

This is an extreme example, but for a dating site there are literally millions of different possible combinations for URLs - some of which are naturally more likely to succeed than others.

Google used to allow you to test lots of URLs in a single adgroup and rotate those ads to get equal impression so that you could determine which URL worked best for your metrics.

The new revised version of the DURL policy now requires you to set up different URLs in different adgroups - meaning that even though you might be bidding on the same keyword that Google’s algorithm now decides your quality score and will not evenly rotate them and ultimately end up serving the ad that meets Google’s best interest.

Unfortunately this is short sighted for Google. I have a URL that is awful - no one would think it would win in a test, yet for some reason it resonates well with consumers and qualifies them and induces them to click frequently as well as convert - great combination.  Without testing, we never would have found this hidden gem that allows us to pay Google millions of dollars per month. Without testing, Google would have chosen a better clicking DURL and I would have never optimized my business - which ultimately optimizes Google’s business.

Any one else concerned about this change?

After my last post about the abundance of Google Cash and Obama Money schemes showing on Facebook, I had a really strange conversation with the girl who cuts my hair yesterday.

We were talking about what I do and then we drifted to Facebook and she asked the question - Can a normal person really make money on the internet like those ads say? My immediate response was “no, not really”.

I spent the next few hours thinking about this and came to the conclusion that a normal person is destined to fail.

My thoughts in no particular order:

• The average person does not have a few thousand dollars of risk capital to test with that if lost does not affect their standard of living
• The average person making money in the internet business might be a dumbass, but they are typically highly intelligent dumbasses.
• The average person has almost no technical acumen of how anything internet related works
• The average success on the internet failed many times before succeeding - I am one of the rare guys I know of who made the first website and domain I ever started work - most people give up too quickly to succeed.
• The average person is unwilling to learn the math behind testing as it is “too hard”
• The average person is probably unwilling to break out of their shell and push hard for a payout, white label, and other requirements to succeed
• The average person is not creative enough to find a new way to succeed - not saying you need the baility to draw, but rather the ability to think outside the box.
• The average person wants to be shown how to do something rather than figure it out - almost no one who buys ebooks makes any money - sellers maybe?

I am sure I had lots more thoughts/opinions about this, but as I write this I solidly believe that most of the people succeeding in the internet have traits that make them not the average person - not even the average person trying to succeed on the internet (put internet marketer in place of average person above) - intelligence, analytical ability, perseverence, critical thinking, and lots more.

To be honest, by definition a successful person is not average and thus someone who is average has the cards stacked against them from the start. For every 10,000 people who sign up for adwords or wicked fire or the Google cash system or buy a book on internet marketing - the vast majority never even had a prayer of success from day 1. Hundreds who did have a shot will fail out of laziness or stubborness or lack of capital etc. The few who do succeed were probably not lucky.

I have gotten a lot of email about my RSS feed subscription button not working… In my typical I dont know anything about technology approach, I have no idea how to fix this and spent a little time trying before giving up. If this is simple to fix, leave a comment saying how and I will try and do so and even throw you a link in gratitude- if this is not easy to fix it will probably just stay broken.

I was out of the country for a week and when I got back my Facebook account was covered with hundreds of deceptive “Get Rich Make Money Online” schemes. I started reporting them just to get them off the screen and stopped after about 20 minutes as I kept getting new ads to replace the ones I flagged as spam i gave up.

I have no doubt that these ads work and are making affiliates, networks and the advertiser a pile of cash and Facebook is probably giddy with the cash, but there is a very real downside to this kind of saturation - It attracts unwanted attention!

The very reason Google is so successful is because of their depth of advertisers and the focus on relevancy. Facebook provides neither of these and in the interim is setting itself up to be the asset the FTC will go after once these less than truthful ads are come to their attention.

There are truth in advertising laws and I suspect that many of them are being broken and repeatedly and blatantly.

In the interim, Facebook is probably losing the faith of consumers who are being inundated with irrelevant and somewhat offensive ads.

Don’t get me wrong, I am jealous I did not come up with the idea, because a few people are absolutely banking on this stuff, but with this blatantly deceptive type of ad the big bad wolf will come knocking on their door. Either in the form of a trial lawyer or the FTC - not entirely sure which is worse, but neither is good.

I really think the ultimate losers in this deal are the networks who are not vetting the advertisers - more and more totally hollow offers with little to no product fulfillment are showing up. Both the affiliates and the advertisers can pretty much close up shop and be in another country tomorrow(if they are not already) - not the case with the networks - they have assets and I strongly believe that their claim of middle man/broker is pretty thin. Not to mention that as soon as the FTC shuts em down, the advertiser may just walk on a few million in payables, which ultimately will mean a lot of affiliates wont get paid either.

Long run I think this does Facebook more harm than good and a few networks go out of business… Just my thoughts, not a lawyer and dont know the relevant laws, but just cannot imagine this is all legit.

Well I finally made it back home from Affiliate Summit, had a good time and glad I was finally able to meet some of you guys. Lots more asked to meet-up but I just ran out of time. Hopefully next time.

I spent very little time at the conference and attended exactly zero sessions so I dont have much to comment on there - I basically spent 5 minutes walking around the show floor and then went back to meetings.

If you went to this (or any) conference with the idea of what were the best parties to attend or who are the coolest people to hang out with, I would suggest that your focus is a little off. Yet almost every one of my blog readers I met with or talked to was intent on trying to see what parties I would be attending etc.

Interestingly in the 15-20 other meetings I had that were about real business this did not come up a single time!

Not suggesting you should not attend parties etc, but I had 2 or 3 conversations about how great this or that party was or how they wished they could get invited to X party followed up with how much someone was struggling in the business.

I try not to be critical, but it is hard to have a lot of sympathy for someone who comes to these conferences and their primary concern is getting party invites. Several of the struggling “party” people had zero business meetings other than a few forum-type meet-ups.

Conferences like Ad-tech and Affiliate Summit can and should be fun, but the primary purpose of them is to meet as many people as you can who can help to make you more money. Sometimes that will happen at a party, more often that is a scheduled meeting.

Just my $.02 but that was one of the insights of my experience at the conference, those I met who were banking were far less concerned with partying than those I met that were struggling.

I will be in Vegas Sunday and Monday for affiliate summit, mostly in meetings with clients. Would love to try and arrange a few times to meet with those of you who will be there - drop me an email or leave a comment and hopefully we can arrange to grab a drink.

I have been asked by several people in the past about doing some consulting work and have always refused. Mostly because I don’t think my insight is worth the hourly rate I would charge to do the consulting. But someone I had corresponded with via email and met at a conference asked very nicely and was persistent enough without nagging that I scheduled a call with him a few weeks back.

We logged into his account and as I saw areas for improvement I pointed them out,  looking through and sharing some of the high level strategies we use for testing and landing pages etc. was a fascinating process because I realized that I had to quantify and justify to myself why the way we do things might be better before I would share it with him.

I know I did not share anything proprietary, but rather things like the best way to setup an ad copy test, or landing page test or how to best setup adgroups etc.

Anyway, the interesting thing about this 30 minutes session was that it really got my creative juices flowing. We are in totally different verticals and I was doing nothing other than commenting on ways to improve his account, but I walked away with 2 ideas that I have put into production for both my personal and corporate accounts, one of which is very lucrative ($1500 per day) - the other is much more promising but I am having some bandwidth issues getting it implemented.

Just a note, I did not steal any ideas, the ideas were my own and not in his account in any way.

The interesting thing for me, was that I believe he found good value in our conversation, and as an unintended consequence I walked away with this creative energy that brought me some very lucrative results.

I guess the morale of the story is that teaching other people what is seemingly obvious to you can make you take a fresh perspective on things and find new opportunities. As an “ideas guy” finding new sources of inspiration is always a welcome thing. I dont think if I consulted for free or on a regular basis that this would work, but I am going to give it a shot every month or so and see if this was a one-off type of event or if it persists.

Idea generation is hugely important in affiliate marketing, “me too” type strategies almost always fail. Take your girlfriend or best friend or mother and sit them down and try and explain to them what you are doing. See the kind of questions they ask, dont dismiss the question, but rather really try and answer them, perhaps you will learn something by teaching someone else like I did.

As a test, because I love to test my theories, I would love to hear your results (good or bad) for those that give it an honest try - maybe this does not work for everyone - maybe it does…

It has been so long since I have had a new account at Google, that I have not had to deal with many of the day to day hassles that many new marketers have to deal with. My team starts a new account, or a new ad group or make some changes and they get approved immediately, for as bad as my customer support level is compared to my spend it is world’s better than what the average marketer is getting.

Recently, I had an idea that led to us starting a test that produced low volumes of very high converting keywords at CPCs about 10% of what we normally pay because there is virtually no competition for those ads. It is worth high 5 figures annually to us, worth bending over and picking up, but not a home run. For most starting advertisers it would be a gold mine.

I took a look at the idea and realized it should work for other really long tail stuff outside of our particular niche and with the extraordianrily low CPCs I could probably make it work on standard affiliate commission payouts and maybe make some real money by automating and scaling it.

So I fired up a brand new Google account, paid my $5 and then uploaded a bunch of keywords as a test. Got an initial burst of traffic, then had the ads frozen by Google. I have seen this before, it typically means the ads are under review. So I did not panic, and waited.

3 weeks later, the account has not gotten a single impression since the first day.

I know google’s rules better than they do, all my ads are fully compliant, I am in programs that allow me to use search etc etc. My ad quality score is 8 or 9 across the board with a very few 7’s and nothing lower. I am not doing anything other than what Google wants advertisers to do - bid on keywords that are specific to the product and land customers on relevant pages about that product.

I can almost certainly get this fixed with a single phone call linking this account to my corporate ones, but since this is a side project I am hesitant to do so.

This post is not really about the fact that this is not working - it is that I know I have jumped through Google’s hoops and it is not working. I can only imagine how many countless plumbers or lawyers or affiliate marketers have been through this same process. Go to the trouble to create a website, open a google account and then have nothing happen and conclude that internet marketing does not work.

Internet marketing does work and those plumbers and lawyers should not be discouraged because Google has a screwed up ad system that they themselves dont understand. I sent a concise description of the problem to Google support thinking maybe I fell through some crack - the response I got back was - SURPRISE a canned response to a question I did not ask which told me to go to a page that was full of useless and vague information - fortune cookies are more specific.

I have done some searches and looked at some forums, and this seems to be a fairly common occurrence. I am having a hard time understanding how a company basically refuses to accept advertisers money?

Once again I know I can get it fixed because of my other activities but should I have to spend millions to get it fixed? How many profitable campaigns to Google and advertisers never get any traction? How much revenue is Google leaving on the table a few hundred dollars a month at a time?

I have had some change of heart on my Google Buy Reccomendation post and realized a small loss in getting out of my position - taking a loss is always better than thinking you will hold on until break even and is a hallmark of the difference between a professional and amateur trader - “your first loss is your best loss” is how traders talk about it.

Anyway, the reason for the change of heart are several:

• The prospect for an increased multiple is based on the growth of the company. How much growth is left for Google? They have utterly failed in creating any significant revenue stream other than Adwords and Adsense. YouTube is still up for debate and will probably work for them, but pretty much every other acquisition or new pursuit has sucked time and energy away from the core focus and failed to generate new revenues.
• Their acquisition strategy is haphazard at best - I dare anyone to see a pattern in what they have purchased - it is all over the board.
• Search is a pull technology - it is dificult to compel users to search more, sure the laser targetted ads have great rates, but is anyone in a developed country with internet access not aware of Google?
• Advertisers - 2 of the biggest online advertising verticals, Mortgage and Auto, are in the dumps. They are fighting for their very survival and are probably not seeking out new ways to spend money on Google (or anywhere else).
• Advertising Rates for search are up dramatically for roughly the same impression volumes as 3 years ago for us. No more or less people searching, but I have to pay significantly more for those clicks. This has drained the ROI from advertisers and made search yet another advertising tool rather than “The Tool”
• With lower ROI’s and limited reach combined with overall advertising slow down - other avenues like TV and direct mail are starting to look more attractive as those rates plummet - as they get cheaper and search gets more expensive I am strongly considering shifting some budget - even at a higher acquisition cost my reach is much higher - remember profit is volume X profit per sale, you can make less per sale and make it up in volume.
• For the first time, I am not in a buy all of it I can get position with Google - I now have other places to spend the money that get better returns on similar volumes - not really reducing my budget at Google, but not growing it either.
• Google’s arrogance - I have yet to meet a single Googler who really understands their system. Almost anyone reading this blog is smarter on Google’s advertising system than even the smartest Google employees. I would love to see comments with people saying - “No, google has made me lots of money with their on point and insightful reccomendations on how to better use their system.”
• Google’s over confidence - Here is a company that pretty much feels entitled to search. For 3 years, direct marketers who did not work with Google were not very good direct marketers. An entire industry was forced to work with them and has had collectively horrible experience with them - I dont know a single person using Google who would not like to have Google be a smaller piece of their business. That will bite them at some point when the next great thing comes along. I know guys who have far surpassed their Google spends in almost no time with Facebook and MySpace - whats next?
• Google has an employee problem - Google has tons of engineers who are the heart of the company who have either made tons of money or who are way under water, this disparity in wealth will be a growing problem. Why work at Google for below market wages when I can go to a start-up make about the same money and actually have a shot at being rich - the most talented are being woo’ed away every day.

I am not saying I would short Google, just realized after I made my trade a week or so ago that I did not like it. Dug into that intuition and saw a lot of things that did not mesh with my original analysis so I got out.

I have used this blog to post some job openings in the past and found several very good people that way. Through the grapevine I have heard that quite a few SEO/SEM type companies are getting the bad news about their accounts and are subsequently laying people off. We are still growing like a weed and looking for great people with SEO /SEM skills.

A few things I really need (not necessarily out of the same person):

• SEO experts or people who want to learn SEO - more SEO work than we can handle for our own accounts, entry level and more sr positions.
• Strong Analytical Ability for our paid search programs
• Past management experience (not at Dairy Queen)

I probably have about 6 positions we will fill for a training class starting in January.

We provide all the great stuff you would expect from an employer; health, 401k, paid time off, great location and office space, fun work environment, company paid trips (ok maybe that one is not typical) - basically we are probably the best company to work for in Dallas that no one has ever heard of.

So if you are in Dallas and have gotten some bad news, or are just looking for a new challenge then send me your resume and I will get it to our HR team.