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One of the mistakes people make when advertising on Google Adwords is not testing their Ad copy. The first Ad you come up with is rarely the one that pulls the most clicks! This is why wise advertisers run simple A/B split-tests to improve their Click-Through Rate (CTR).

With an A/B split-test you show one version of your Ad to half the searchers and a different one to the other half. Google can rotate the two ads for you and they will show how many clicks and conversions each ads gets.

You can (and should) run a split-test for every Adgroup in your Campaign. These are the steps you need to take to set up your first split-test.

1. Change Your Campaign Settings

If you miss this step, you are going to base your decisions on the wrong data. If you run two ads, by default Google will start showing the one with the highest CTR more often. Don’t let Google take control of your campaign: you want to wait for each Ad to get at least 60 clicks before you decide which one is the winner.

To modify the default behavior, access your Campaign settings (click on the checkbox next to the Campaign name, then on the “Edit Settings” button), then look for the section called “Advanced Options”. As you see in the picture above, you need to change the Ad Serving from “Optimize” to “Rotate”. This will tell Google to keep rotating the ads evenly.

2. Add A New Ad

Now that your campaign settings are correct, you can click on the Adgroup you want to work on. Once you are shown the Adgroup details, click on the “Ad Variations” tab, as indicated in the picture below.

In this tab you are going to see the Ad that is currently running. In order to add a new variation, just click on the “New Text Ad” link.

You can now enter your new Ad. In my next article I will give you some ideas on what you should test. For the moment, just try to change as little as a single word (find a synonym for that one, such as “download” instead of “get”) and save the new version.

Mark today’s date, so that you will know how to filter your data when you analyze the results.

3. Pick The Winner

Check your stats regularly, to notice when each Ad gets to 60 clicks. Some people wait for 30 clicks only, others (like me) wait until 100. The more you wait, the more reliable is the statistical sample.

To pick your winner, you need to access the “Ad Variations” tab. Next to each ad, you will see something like this:

Focus your attention on the Click-Through Rate (CTR) and the Cost Per Conversion (Cost/Conv.). If you don’t see anything appear under the Conversion columns, that’s because you didn’t install the “Google Tracking Code” in your thank-you page.

Your goal is to create an Ad that pulls more clicks, that is with a higher CTR. In the example above, the first version pulls more clicks.

Some people base their decision on CTR only, but you are a smart advertiser and will look at the Cost Per Conversion too. As you see, with the first Ad the Cost Per Conversion has increased: the Ad is pulling more clicks, but those extra visitors aren’t converting.

In this case, I would keep Ad number 2 active (which has lower Cost Per Conversion), pause Ad number 1 and create a new Ad trying to beat the control (the winning Ad).

Going The Extra Mile

As in many things in life, the people who go the extra mile get the best results in the long run.

It takes you only a few minutes to set up a split-test and over time you will see your CTR go up and your costs go down.

If you are looking for Video Tutorials and Articles that can teach you how to Drive Traffic to your Website and Convert it into Sales, then your search is over. Head over to www.TechSavvyMarketer.com and meet Vittorio Bosio, the author of this article.

I thought I’d offer my facebook application “Drinks” to one of NBBs readers before I put it on Sitepoint.

Application Name - Drinks

Current Stats and Valuation This values the app at over $13k but I’m pricing to sell so I’m going to let this great little app go at a good price. It’s ready to be monetised and should take upto $10 per 1000 impressions. You don’t need a developer to run this application. It is very easy to add drinks (no coding required) and I will tell you exactly how to do it.

Details:
- 26,693 users & counting! / 300-500 daily active users.
- The App is written in PHP/FBML (the facebook html markup).
- Add drinks via PhpMyAdmin (simple)
- To advertise on the app you only need to adjust the index.php file with your ad code.
- You need your own host to host this app (as it does not sit on Facebooks Hosting) I can help you with this.

The best ad network right now in terms of Revenue is VideoEgg but there are others like, Cubics.com, fbExchange.com and Lookery.com.

“They are testing various price points, but the low end seems to be around $0.30 for each user they sell to another application, and they believe they can get as much as $1 over time. The effective CPM (or revenue per 1,000 pages) is a “multiple of $20? he says. This make them possibly the first Facebook application to have found a real way to monetize users and pageviews”

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook applications are extremely valuable because of extremely targeted advertisements. The owner of the application knows his visitor’s Network (City, Collage, etc), age, sex, relationship status and more!

Because of time and other business interests, I have to sell this app for funding. Payment is accepted in the form of PayPal and Escrow.

If you’re interested, just leave a comment and I will get back to you.

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I’ve started a series about capturing attention in the overcrowded internet. I’m basing the series on the book Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Thrive and Others Die written by Chip and Dan Heath. This book has 6 great principles that will help your site stick in people’s minds. Today we’ll talk about the 1st principle, Simple.

Complicated things are hard to remember. Simple things stay longer in people’s minds.

In this interview, Dan Heath talks about the stereotypical IT guy who can’t give a clear answer to a computer question. He’s not clear, because he doesn’t make the computer concepts simple enough. His own expertise and computer vocabulary get in the way. He needs to do the hard work of understanding non-computer savvy people.

My physics professor in undergrad college was super smart. He knew physics inside and out. But he couldn’t teach effectively because he couldn’t bring his concepts down to our level.

Simple is about figuring out the essence (or main idea) of your site, communicating it in easy-to-understand words, and cutting out all the extras that distract.

Aaron Wall sells SEO Book. He didn’t get much sales whenever he wrote about theoretical, high-level topics like trends and search economy. However, when he made short videos the covered SEO basics, his sales increased.

Whenever I write about SEO, I find that my more simple posts get more votes in social voting sites. Also, they get more traffic, links, and comments.

Simple is effective because it reaches both the experts and newbies. The experts like simple content because they can link to it as a resource for their readers. And the newbies like it because the content is accessible and clear.

Repetition is important. People are easily distracted. Keep repeating your main idea so that people will remember your site. The key is to use different methods and formats while communicating the same basic concept. For example, add video and audio to your site. Use different examples. Tie the basic concept to current news and culture. Write about the main idea for different angles and perspectives.

Simple doesn’t mean dumb. But it does mean cutting out all the extras so that people are clear on your main idea. You can see the power of Simple in clean site designs. Those designs have higher sales conversion rates than cluttered site designs. Give people too many choices on a single page and they won’t make a choice. They’ll click the back button.

Think about some great brands today. You only need few words to describe them. And because they only need few words, they’re memorable. For example:

Southwest Airlines: Cheap flights
Nike: Just do it
John Chow: Make money online rockstar
Copyblogger: Write better to make money
SEOMoz: Rank better

What are some other examples of Simple?

Coming from an eCommerce background usability is fundamental to me, but a well designed site is much more important in 2007 and most store owners need to think about the overall satisfaction of a visitors experience. Look superior to your competitors and this will further increase sales also making people remember your site (this is also counts for all those awful looking Blogs out there).

“I think Amazon is still messy but continues to drive millions of traffic through their checkout year in year-out”.

Amazon I feel, was started with a concept to make it easy to purchase a product not worry about how the store looks. This was back on the 90s, things have changed and design is just as important to a users web experience.

Here are just a couple of my favourite designs taken from the whole list CSS Websites Take ideas and try to incorporate them into your site design.

I have just come away from one of the forums I frequent. It all started a few months ago when I decided I wanted to do something I presumed was a fairly simple procedure.

For business and personal reasons I wanted to do a simple “username” change at the very popular DigitalPoint forums. (I don’t fancy linking to them really)

It was like I was being held to ransom, what the hell is going on in this online world!!? With feable excuses as, “it slows the forum down” “the forum will crash” “we would lose money doing a username change” My eyes are still sore after they rolled out of my head when a Moderator sent me this Private Message, and I quote -

“Your only option for having info removed from DP is to serve the owner of this forum with a court order”

What more can I say…this online world has gone slighty crazy!

Your thoughts are appreciated…

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Attention is king.

One of the thing I’ve realized as an online marketer: the internet is super crowded. Unless you’re in an obscure niche, there are going to be many strong competing sites in your niche.

Much of the global online traffic comes from Google, but there are only 10 spots on the front page of Google. That’s not a lot of spots compared to all the sites in a given niche.

And the saturation of commercial sites will only get worse.

The general public will get more online savvy. And many people will find out about the low barrier of entry in online business and build their own commercial sites.

Offline-based businesses are still not using the internet optimally. This will change as business owners realize the profit potential of directing more resources to the online portion of their business.

Getting noticed is the name of the game. If you don’t capture attention, you’ll get lost in the crowd. Not only that, but you need to keep your readers’ attention for the long term or you’ll get ignored because the next fad will overshadow your site.

So, what can you do to grab attention and be remembered for the long term?

I just listened to an interview with Dan Heath. He’s the co-author of an excellent business book called Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Thrive and Others Die.

In this book, Dan and his brother Chip (the other author) talk about 6 principles that can definitely help sites:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Story

These principles form the acrostic SUCCES. And in the next couple of days, I’ll talk about each of the principles along with examples. Stay tuned.

One of the things that got me into blogging for bucks is its simplicity. You find something you’re passionate about and then you write about it consistently. Simple.

However, as I’ve realized that the paid content model earns more money than the free content model (I know, duh!), I’ve looked into creating an information product.

It’s been hard though. It’s been hard to even get started. Why? Because most of my writing has been blogging. I’m in blogging mode.

Blogging mode? Well, for me and I bet for many other bloggers, blogging mode is writing about what’s on your mind that day whenever you write the post.

Check out my post topics in September, my highest traffic month. See if you can see a pattern.

• How’s The Packaging And Formatting Of Your Site?
• Blog Design: Improve Your Site Packaging
• Increase Your Profits Exponentially By Targeting Popular Bloggers
• Beat Writer’s Block With These Super Practical Tips
• The Secret To Getting Search Engine Traffic
• Stealing Feed Counts Is Lame
• Positive Online Business Experiences
• Usability and Navigation: Improve Your Site Packaging
• Why Building One Site is Better Than Building Multiple Sites
• Top Blogs Linkbait (Or Why Mark Wielgus Is A Genius)
• 5 Ways To Increase BlogRush Traffic
• 10 Outsourcing Tips That Actually Work
• Spend 37% More Time Writing Your Headline
• 22 World Class Headline Templates
• Are You Using Your Strengths?
• Rookie Blogging Mistake: Posting on the Weekend
• September Recap - Site Design, One Site Vs. Multiple Sites, Outsourcing, and Headlines

It’s a bit random, right? Other than all the posts being about net business, it looks like I didn’t have a plan.

I go from site design to promoting to popular bloggers to writing to SEO to BlogRush to outsourcing to headlines. I’m all over the place.

This is okay with blogs. People expect blogs to cover a lot of topics in the niche. Also, blogs oftentimes cover the news in their niche. And news covers a lot of topics.

I’ve written for five blogs in the last four months. I’m used to blogging mode. Therefore, it’s been hard to focus on creating an information product that’s organized and planned out well.

Blogging is very different from creating an information product. It’s easier to write when you can write about anything in your niche. It’s takes much more mental effort to take one topic and create a quality information product about it. If you’re a blogger and are thinking of selling your content, make sure you know what you’re getting into. The learning curve is steeper than you think.

Here’s what great though. Once you create the product, you’ll have an income stream that’s usually more profitable than ad revenue. Also, you’ll earn good money because bloggers make great salespeople.

I’ve written about aggregating and organizing content already.  Here’s a quick case study to help illustrate the value of doing these things.

I was asked to write about SEO on Performancing. At first, I thought of writing a really in-depth SEO guide that would show off my SEO expertise (I work full-time as a search marketer).  However, I realized that an in-depth guide might not be the best post for Performancing. It wouldn’t fit the audience well.

Performancing is about helping bloggers make money.  Their audience is commercially-oriented bloggers. I put myself in their shoes. What do they want in SEO?

In my experience and market research, most bloggers don’t focus much on SEO. They’re much more focused with social media marketing, networking, and writing quality content.

I realized that whatever SEO tips I give would have to be simple, easy-to-understand, and most importantly, easy-to-implement. Bloggers already have a lot on their plate. I didn’t want to add too much more to their busy lives.

So, I collected simple but effective onpage SEO tips. Here is the article I wrote:

Onpage SEO: 7 Tips That Are Easy to Implement

I got some positive feedback in the comments section. Without doing any marketing, my article got a couple links including links from two popular SEO sites (Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land).  Someone submitted the article to StumbleUpon and it got 24 stumbles.  15 people bookmarked it on del.icio.us.

What’s interesting is that experienced search marketers already know about these tips. However, I added uniqueness and value to the tips by aggregating them in a way was relevant to bloggers.

Here’s the lesson: You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be unique and get noticed. Oftentimes organizing pre-existing content in a unique, useful way can help you reach your target audience.

Too many web publishers don’t keep their audience in mind when they write. They just write what they want to write about without putting themselves in their audience’s shoes. But one of the hallmarks of good online business is knowing your target audience well so that you can write content that meets their needs and helps them reach their goals.

Have you ever organized pre-existing content in such a way to add value and reach a specific audience? If you have, please give examples.

This Guy is Amazing on the flute, just had to post it. I loved Inspector Gadget (the Uk cartoon) and the Axel F tune from Beverly Hills Cop. Have a Good weekend!

A friend of mine Adnan over at Blogtrepreneur.com got in touch to say he was selling his blog. Blogs are hot property and very sort after right now, selling for great prices. This takes me on to what you should look for when buying and selling any website online through sites such as Sitepoint.

I think I am perfectly poised to offer advice in this area having purchased over $19k worth in websites over the course of this year all from Sitepoint a website and other from Sitepoint this year..

For me, buying sites is a fun activity (when I have the cash of course). I made a decision earlier this year to start buying sites instead of starting one from scratch, personally because I no longer enjoy the start up process involved in making a successful site (some might say that is exciting) because I have been online for years I find it tedious and boring now and would rather leave that to someone else. I actually enjoy the day to day running and looking for new opportunities once a site is established.

When browsing Sitepoint, I like to see how much money a site is making (like most do I would imagine), take a quick look at their marketplace, make sure I can see long term potential value and then make a decision to purchase. I do not waste much time on this, I have found I can spot great opportunities quickly by summing up a few important factors. I also love the speed at which you can spot a site for a good price, workout their marketplace (numbers of consumers etc) then ball park their exact revenue based on traffic and product/service for instance. This for me is by far the easiest way to make money online.

Like anything though experience matters I think, having been online for many years I feel I can sum up a good site from a bad one easier than I could of, let’s say 5 years ago. I love it that it takes only a matter of hours to do some research and then buy a site. I have decided to outline what I deem as important factors you should look for when purchasing a website online.

Here is my Checklist “Due Diligence” for a website Buyer.

1. Website Validation

So much you can do here really ecompasses the whole amount - Check Whois first, name, contact email name of ownership, look at the date of the site as this is a great indication of (has it just been built last week) and is currently earning $100k per month (alarm bells) leave this one and move on. Check traffic data making sure to check for valid URLs (is it false paid for traffic, visit the URLs yourself to see) speak to the owner via instant messenger or other, even better phone to get a solid understanding of the sale and why they are selling.

Note: PR is not as important as it used to be, just make sure the site has the traffic is states and you’re happy with that. Do not purchase a site purely on PageRank!

2. Seller Validation

On sites like Sitepoint do a thorough check on the seller to see who he/she says they are, search their name/username/forum name etc…(ask them for this if you cannot find it) in Google this should bring up valuable data on sites they may own and if they have left comments on blogs or forums.

3. Managing the Website

Make sure the seller is going to set up the website and/or offer some form of after support in the price of the sale. Databases are commonly used on many sites and problems will arise if they are not transferred to your hosting provider correctly. Also the seller may use third party scripts to enable functions on their site (you need to have a full understanding of how they work and how to use them).

4. Understand how the Site Makes its Money

(be anal about this). Make sure the seller is going to guide you through how they sell their service/product, to who, from who, where too, everything you can. If they cannot do this do not buy the site. Unless you understand their market very well and have ties to the same industries as them you should be ok, otherwise this will cause you major headaches.

4 (a). If the site just sells a product that anyone can buy and you can order it from a certain wholesaler (for instance) that is fine (simple process). It will get more complicated If the site uses Affiliate Marketing to make its revenue. This is where you will need to join Affiliated Networks to set-up your own Account, you need to find out if you can you join the same one’s to make similar money. If for some reason you cannot get an account with the same provider (say you’re in the UK and they only offer their service to US residents) that would mean a serious problem for you and your earnings.

5. Design and Usability

Website owners overlook this important aspect their website(s). A well designed site can and will improve usability for your visitors/consumers ten fold. A site that states it is making lets say $3k per month can jump to $4.5k with a simple re-design that may cost you $500-$1000 USD this is money well spent. Always make sure to see the value in a well designed an usable site.

6. Revenue - this is most commonly over inflated in website sales. Never completely believe their revenue details as they will always inflate this to a certain amount to get more visitors to their sale.

Disclaimer: The following guide is not a 100% full proof way to work out the amount of revenue a site is making, but, It will give you a ball park figure to set against a Seller is he or she is inflating the revenue details a little too much to get the sale.

How I work this Out

Hit Google and search the sites product/service, if it makes money from Advertising search the Network it uses. Get information like Retail price for products, Average Service prices comparing three other Services in the same arena and for Advertising you want information on CPA, CPC, CPM, like if a visitor visits their site one they get paid $0.01 cents etc.

Working it out Approximately

For products it is easy - My false product is weight loss pills so say this website just sells this one product and the owner is stating he makes $20k per year selling this one product. Without asking them any questions you can do some due diligence on their revenue claims. I would visit a wholesaler (plenty online selling this type of product to get a rough purchase price) I get a cost price of $10 I know by looking at competing retailers this product is selling at $24.99 for 100 tablets.

I can now work off a margin of 40%. So here we have a product that has $10 to buy and sells for $24.99 (this is gross) without advertising costs. They stated in their sale, all traffic is organic so costs are Zero apart from a Hosting charge which is $300 per year. Ok, so they would need to have sold (approx) 1350 units over the year at $24.99 to make roughly this type of revenue after costs.

Now to work out how many visitors to their site based on this product. Google the product name “weight loss pills 100n” (example) find out how many times this has been searched for in a month say 40,000 times and their Google listing for this term is on the first page. This could give them at least 5% of that traffic per month (if they are above the fold in first three results) which would amount too (approx) 66 visits per day (this is conservative) product names will not get many searches per month but are much more targeted unlike a broad keyword like “loss weight”.

In this market it is safe to say they would hit a sales conversion rate of 3% (I would like to think) So we have 66 visits converting at 3% which is almost 2 people at $24.99 this would be over a year period $17,892.72 (less hosting cost) USD per year. They are almost spot on with their evaluations of revenue, therefore I would be happy to take this website on without even asking any further questions.

Websites that make money are summed up like this “Numbers Game” put more faces to your Places! that is it for the most before looking at the quality of service or product etc.. they are selling.

Never, Ever think you will make the same money a previous owner made, they are different to you and have different desires, determinations for making their site a success. You may take it to another level or you may make less money. All sites and owners are not created equal, remember that…

Also, Never, Ever presume you can leave things in the hands of the Seller as nine times of ten you cannot. They will make mistakes and forget important things you need (I promise) - not being able to get hold them for after support when you need their help is a major problem.

When a site is fairly old the previous owner may have joined (lots) of online services under their name. This can and will cause issues unless they tell the service owner you are going to join up under the same domain name for instance. If this is not done correctly you will have a problem of ownership, this will mean you having to prove ownership. This has proved a problem for me even now and has annoyed me a tad and wasted countless hours messing about when all I needed was a list of what service the previous owner used to promote the website and username/passwords etc.

I did name this post “How to Buy and Sell Websites Online” seeing as I haven’t yet sold a website I will leave this for a later post, as I am planning to sell a site before the new year.

Good Luck!