Note: Some Links may be out of date.

Blitz Ezine # 233 January 5th, 2004
Easy Pay Per Click Setup - Setting Bids & Finding Keywords

Note: This is an archived issue. Some links and/or content may be outdated

The Blitz-Promotions News Letter
Issue no. 233, Jan. 5, 2004

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Blitz Comments
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Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I'll have to apologize because we had such a wonderful time that I didn't get a chance to complete the full article on Optimizing your pay per click campaign, so you'll be able to find part two in our Feb. Issue which will be coming on Feb. 2nd - Ground hog day.

We're also working on completing an eight week search engine optimization course - this will help you regain any losses that might have occured to you since the Florida update. You can help us test it and save $100.00 off the normal price of the course. Take a peek by going here -

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/seo-class.htm

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In this Issue
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- Pay per click campaigns.
- Finding broken links.
- Upgrading your business
- more..

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Food for thought
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If I had three hours to chop down trees, I'd spend two hours sharpening my blade.
Abraham Lincoln

Success doesn't come from one brilliant idea but from a bunch of small decisions.
Roxanne Quimby

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Pay per click campaigns
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Pay per click promotions are great - if - you do them in the right way. Your goal should be to make more money on your sales than you spend in advertising. This seems like a no brainer but many folks totally miss the boat. If you spend more for the advertising than you make in sales, then you need to tweak or change something. We have about five steps that you need to complete in order to optimize and make a profit from pay per clicks.

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Step 1 - Figure out your Max Bid

The first thing we need to figure out is the most that we will bid for a keyword. For this step you'll need the following -

a) How many unique visitors you have had for the past six months.
b) Your total amount for sales in the last six months. (Number of sales and $$ amounts).
c) What was your profit from the last six months.

We'll use some examples then we'll work on finding the numbers.

a) Visitors - 10,000 - it is important that this number is for unique visitors and NOT for hits or files accessed.
b) 100 sales for a total of $5,000.00
c) Profit - $2,500.00

So are you still with me....

Now we need to find some other important numbers.

1) How many visitors do we need before we make a sale?
10,000 / 100 = 100 - - > so we need 100 visitors to make a sale.

2) What is the average profit for our sales?
$2500.00 / 100 = $25.00.

3) Now how much of that profit do we want to spend in order to make a sale, after all we don't want to just make sales we want to make money. For our example we'll use 75%.

75% of $25.00 is $18.75

4. So how much can we spend?

Profit to spend / Vistors for a sale
$18.75 / 100 = $0.1875 - so the most we want to spend for a click is 19 cents.

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How can we increase the bid amount?
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There are a couple of different ways we can increase the bid amount.
1. Increase the number of folks that buy.
2. Increase the amount of profit per sale.
3. Increase the average amount for each sale.
4. Decrease your cost for each product.

We'll be talking about each of these in depth later this year.

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Step 2 - Find your keywords

Now we need to find some good keywords.

First follow the steps on this page -
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz225.htm

Don't stop until you get at least a hundred or so good keywords.

Next do a competitive search using Overture - this will present you with a list of the keywords and the prices that Overture is charging. Print this list.

Cross off any keyword that costs more than 19 cents at the sixth position.

Use your word processor to make a list of the keywords.
Use the list to figure out how much you're going to bid for the keywords.
Try to get in position 2 - 6. Position 1 usually gets quite a few more lookers than buyers, so we want to stay away from there when we can.

When you're finished you should have a list of keywords and the amount you want to bid on them.

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Step 3 - Setup your accounts

Now we need to setup an account in Overture and Google.
You already have the keywords and the amount that you want to bid, so this should be fairly simple. When we set up keywords for Google's AdWords we always do five or ten keywords to the campaign. That lets us tweak the keywords a bit more. Some things to remember -

1. In Overture try to keep your keywords in position 2-6.
2. Turn off any expanded matching. We want to get clicks from only the keywords we're choosing. This will help us tremendously later on.
3. In Google make sure to put in a daily click limit.
4. When creating your ads make sure that you make the ad descriptive enough to weed out the lookie loos.

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Step 4 - Track your campaign

Coming in Feb.

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Step 5 - optimize and tweak.

Coming in Feb.

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Search Engine and Business News
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Florida Update - One of the best explanations for what I think happened / reasons behind the Florida update can be found here -

http://www.jimworld.com/gazette/issue-208/

Internet sales tax is on hold for now -
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32424.html

MSN drops Looksmart on Jan. 15th.

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Quick fixes
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The internet changes a lot. Today while you're thinking about it, why not check out the links on your site.

1) First find any broken links - we use xenu sleuth -

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

2) Especially on your links page make sure to visit every link. Many times folks don't renew their domain name and other people may renew it and you may end up linking to someone you don't want to link to.

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Guest Articles
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When Was the Last Time You Upgraded Your Business?
By Michael Angier

It seems that we constantly have to upgrade our computer software and equipment. We only use our programs and computers a few months before it makes sense to replace them. It's not that they're completely obsolete; it's just that there's usually something much better and often for only a bit more cost. Do we treat our business models that way? Not very often. If we're lucky enough to find a business model that works, we usually keep on using it--to our detriment--with little modification.

Why should our business be any different than the tools and equipment we use? It's critical that we make regular changes that will keep pace with our customers, our competitors and the market. Business is changing more rapidly than ever before. What worked last year may not work any longer. Entire industries are emerging and fading in less than a decade. To be competitive, we must be able to change with everything else that's changing around us. Tweaking and improving what we already have may be sufficient. But often we need to make more radical changes.

Our business model must sometimes be scrapped and replaced with another.

Some Obstacles
It's easier to keep doing what we're doing. We're all creatures of habit and we have a tendency to dig holes deeper instead of digging new holes. This keeps us focused on what we're doing but not necessarily what we're attempting to accomplish. We think making a change labels what we WERE doing as wrong. Our stakeholders expect consistency. They don't like change any more than we do. And most business leaders are reluctant to let go of the old way and embrace the new because they fear being judged as having been doing it wrong. The staff doesn't like change. The owner or manager who is willing to lead and affect change often has a tough role because of a we've-always-done-it-this-way mentality. This resistance is a serious challenge. Customers don't ALWAYS know what's best.

Listening to our customers and attempting to fulfill their needs is a valuable practice. Certainly we need to help our clients solve problems and overcome challenges. But we can't DEPEND on our customers for this. If we do, we'll miss many opportunities to lead the market with products and services that our customers didn't even know they wanted.

A Few Solutions
Embrace change as a good thing and not just something to be tolerated. As long as we make what we were doing wrong, we thwart our ability to make good decisions. When we lock onto the old, we have little ability to welcome the new. Even a trapeze artist has to let go of one trapeze in order to catch the next one. Develop the attitude that we're making an improvement instead of not doing what we did before. Nurture a culture of creativity and innovation. A world class business leader knows that they must create an environment for creativity. They know they need to always reward thinking outside of the box. The safety to question anything and everything is paramount. Conduct 'What's Not World Class Meetings'. On a regular basis, small groups and large should be convened to challenge what's being done, what's not being done and how it's done.

Every aspect of the business must be looked at with a fresh eye and an open mind. What needs to be scrapped? What needs to be added? What no longer serves our customer? Where are we looking good and where are we looking bad? Establish priorities and take action. Make a habit of holding these meetings and you'll start to see real progress. You'll find that the process will continue even after the formal meeting ends. Recognize that your biggest expense is the money you DON'T make. Every business leaves money on the table. It's our job to discover ways in which we can maximize all of our revenue.

There's always a way to do this. Pretend your company is being bought by another corporation--what are some things they might do to uncover hidden revenues? Step back and away from your business and your industry. Critical to creating a world class business is to constantly gain new perspectives on what you do and how you do it. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If I had three hours to chop down trees, I'd spend two hours sharpening my blade." That's what getting away to conferences, symposiums, classes and master mind meetings can do for you--sharpen your upgrade blade.

Read, study, listen, explore. Take every chance to expose yourself to new ideas and be reminded of things you already know. And don't make it exclusive to your industry. If you're clear on your mission and your purpose as well as the major problems you're striving to solve, you'll get ideas from anywhere and everywhere.

Read something unrelated to your work. Study something dramatically different from what you normally do. See for yourself how your perspective will improve. We need to keep what works and change what doesn't. We need to stay fresh and have a better perspective and yet remain consistent with the things that support our mission. Being a business leader requires one to constantly balance the unchanging principles with strategies that need to be tweaked and updated. Constant and never-ending improvement is the watchword of business in the 21st century.

I urge you to look for what systems, models, departments, processes--and yes, even people--need upgrading.

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Copyright Michael Angier. SuccessNet.org and WorldClassBusiness.com help you and your business grow. Get their fr*e report 10 Pillars of a World Class Business by sending an email to wcb@SuccessNet.org No-cost subscriptions, memberships, eCourses, eBooks and SuccessMark Cards are available at
http://SuccessNet.org and http://WorldClassBusiness.com InfoPlease@SuccessNet.org

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Links you can use -
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An excellent case study on how a webmaster went from 10 subscribers to 500 new subscribers a day.

http://www.talkbiznews.com/conversion.pdf

Find out what colors would go well on your website with the color matcher.

http://color.twysted.net/

Tons of royalty free photos that you can use for your site.
http://pdphoto.org/

Find some useful links -
http://value-exchange.sitesell.com/blitzpromotions.html

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Fun and Games
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I have a really hard time getting up in the morning, if it wasn't for Lisa I would probably sleep till noon. But I think this alarm clock would wake me up. This clock features - a siren, flashes lights, and shakes your bed. Check it out for a chuckle.

http://www.hearingcenteronline.com/sonicboom.shtml

Want to be a leader of your own country - now you can.

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi

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Reviews
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I watched a great holiday movie the weekend before Christmas - The Christmas Shoes. Make yourself a reminder to watch it during the next holidays, but don't forget the tissues.

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Classified Ads
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Make sure to visit our sponsors.
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Want your ad in this spot for $25.00 for 12 issues. Send me a note and I'll send you the details. Email Us.

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Useful links to our site
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Find more useful promotion and design articles here -
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/articleindex.htm

Check out our archives for issues you may have missed.
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/ezinearchives.htm

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Next Issues
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Feb. - Part 2 of optimizing your pay per clicks.
March - Taxes and building your business.
April - Buying traffic
May - Increasing visitors to sales.
June - Increasing your profits - decreasing your overhead.
July - Increasing your average sale.
August - Getting ready for the holidays.

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Final Thoughts
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This month starts a new year - it is up to YOU what you do with the time, and resources that you have.

Tim and Lisa Hamblin
Tisa Enterprises
PO Box 221
Hazard KY 41702
http://www.blitzpromotions.com
http://www.crochetnmore.com
http://www.webpageplanner.com
http://www.ineedlinks.com