John Hasson

Well after a little back and forth on my end (I was having second thoughts at first) I decided to go ahead with it. I’ll be speaking about PPC related topics at Affiliate Summit East in Boston. Shawn gave me a fancy image for this.. lemme find it…

There we go. I’ll be covering 2 topics. Which PPC engines are worth using (aside from the big 3) and how to manage lots of PPC campaigns with just 1 person. I may end up cutting some things out in order to keep things under 45 minutes. If there is something specific you want me to cover I’ll listen to your suggestions (I already have a version of the presentation totally done but it needs some editing because I was pretty harsh against some PPC engines that don’t give good traffic) That, and it leaves zero time for suggestion about managing big ppc campaigns across multiple networks. So it will have to be split up a little differently.. And I suppose I should provide a link to sign up

Affiliate Summit

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I haven’t updated things here (or twitter much either) because I have been crazy busy with all my different projects. So by the time I get to writing a blog post (which I just do for fun) I am out of steam. It has been.. what.. about a week since my last post?

I am making progress all my little projects :). My next projects will be in the lead gen host-n-post space. I have a few providers that I have found that are already setup for host-n-post. So I will be building the necessary databases and websites for running a bunch of different lead gen campaigns across a bunch of different verticals. I’ll probably do a basic tutorial on how to do this after I get it up and running and have all the kinks worked out. So you can always look forward to that.

Oh wait.. before I do that I have a bunch of leads I’ll be building sites around that aren’t host-n-post. They are more of the iFrame type. But if you build a real website for them (not just 1 or 2 pages) it should be fine. I’ve been doing a test run with them using a direct PPC traffic to them, just to see if they are viable and to get an idea of converstion rates, which keywords work and so on.

I almost hired somebody full time. He is an affiliate of mine (I do a few small private lead gen offers that I run through a select few affiliates). After talking about it and comparing his goals to my goals, we decided to leave things as they are. He doesn’t really want to work for someone else long term. I totally get that, so I am back to just me doing all this… well my wife occasionally writes content for me.

I am still traveling to Denver weekly for my last client I had before affiliate marketing started to take off. The weekly travel and dealing with all the stuff that goes along with that is getting pretty old. The project is supposed to be done soon, then I’ll have more time to decide what I want to do next.

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1. .Mac seems like a rip off
   (I don’t use it, but if I could point it to my own server for storage and so on… that would rock)
2. Command + C vs Ctrl + C and all the other shortcuts I have to relearn
   (yes I know there are ways to make it mimic windows, but I figure I should learn it the right way)
3. Resume From Suspend Is a Crapshoot
   (fixed with a perm hibernate hack–but still annoying)
4. Hibernate not easily accessible
   (fixable within the command line, but it should be a choice)
5. No good native development IDE
   (I really like Visual Studio 2005, haven’t find anything close on the mac, I run it via parallels)
6. Installing new apps could be a little more obvious
   (I have it down, but many others don’t seem to get that sometimes you copy it to apps, other times you just run a package, or sometimes you have to open apps in the finder first to copy it…..)

That is about it. If I want to play a windows game, I just reboot into XP and am fine. Other then that I am in OSX/Parallels XP 100% of the time.

Hints for windows users

Command+Tab for switching apps
Command+~ for switching windows within the app
Ctrl+F4 for switching all windows within all apps (I am not making this one up)

But why not just use the fancy Expose window thingy?   With 30 windows they are too small to really pick the one I want quickly.

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These days it seems all my spare time is spent working on projects. I’ve been writing down new ideas as I get them in Google Notebook (a great firefox plugin IMHO). This way when I am done with everything I can go back and see if any of my ideas still have merit.

I am slowly dipping my toes in outsourcing some things. First things to go are the things I am not good at. (Pretty designs ) It is really easy for me to say if something looks good or ugly. However creating something that looks good takes me too long and frustrates me. I’ve got a few projects out there being outsourced. Here is hoping it works out well.

Currently Listening to Offspring - Original Prankster.

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Well we are slowly moving towards full mac cultness. I wonder if we need to dress in all black now…

Mine is on the left. Hers is on the right.

Now I need to figure out how to have wordpress make real thumbnails…

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Mark says people are being too serious. Especially in their blogs. I don’t really think I fit in that.. but just in case. This video clip will seal the deal.

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Ok, well it isn’t that bad. I left my car in Denver while I was at Affiliate Summit since I commute to Denver for one of my clients. It was in covered parking and all that.. but look at the dirt and grime!

It is fine, but sooo dirty. This is what it looks like clean. (Picture taken right before I bought it)

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I found this one from Mark’s 45n5 site. He listed the PPC people he liked in a recent post. Man I wish I had met Chad. He has some really good information on his blog. I will agree with his stance on 7Search in the past, but lately they have really been performing much better (consistently) vs Miva–for my campaigns.

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I thought I would update my list of PPC engines that we talked about at the Ask an Expert ASW08 session
(This updates my previous list)

1st Tier:
MSN AdCenter
Yahoo Sponsored Search
AdWords

2nd Tier:
SuperPages
7Search
AdSonar

3rd Tier:
LookSmart
Enhance
SearchFeed
goClick
Miva

PPC Engines that I have consistently lost money using:
Ask
Kanoodle
IndustryBrains
ChaCha
AdBrite
ContextWeb

Anything in the 3rd Tier I will test for a niche, but I won’t spend much time on it. 1st and 2nd Tier I will spend more time testing a niche.

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I’ve been doing this about a year, and never did quite get CJ’s EPC. Earning Per Click?? NO F—in way it is generating $230 per click! (I would think to my self)

Well turns out that is earnings per 100 clicks (or so I was told at Affiliate Summit).
It kinda makes sense in the sick twisted way CPM makes sense.
CPM (Cost Per 1000 Hits — 1000 = Roman Numberal M)
EPC (Earnings per 100 — 100 = Roman Numberal C)

So.. EPL = Earnings Per 50? LMAO

Ok so anyways, this is useful in setting your starting PPC. (Price Per Click — Normally Pay Per Click… but w/e)

Lets say a program on CJ has earnings of $235 EPC.
This would mean they make 2.35 per click on average.

Say the payout of the offer is $55.

We now know how to get the conversion rate.

(If my math/logic is wrong tell me)

100 Hits Results in $235 in sales
$235 / 55 = 4.27
Which means 100 Hits Resulted in a 4.27% conversion rate (sounds about right…)
Lets cut that in half. (cuz I think conversion rates and things like that are ALWAYS inflated by merchants — and it helps boost profits for me by giving me a different goal to reach for)

So now I have my conversion rate of 2.135%
Multiply That by the Earning Per Action (in this case $55)
$55 * 2.135% = $1.17425 (pretty decent starting price….)
Now I cut it in half
$0.587125

My starting bid for this offer would be around 60 cents.
And then I would adjust up or down once I had my own statistics.

Now an easy formula.

EPC = Earning Per 100
CPA = Cost Per Action
PPC = Starting Pay Per Click (Adjust later)

PPC = EPC/CPA/2/100*CPA/2

And if you play around with the math you can drop out the CPA

PPC = EPC / 400

I’ll be revisiting this since it looks too simple.

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