RoyalRadande.Com

Here is a list of 25,000 cities and towns in the U.S. I’ve added the city/town’s full state name and abbreviation. Use it to expand your keyword list. The list is in excel format. Column A contains the city/town name. Column B contains the full state name. Column C contains the state abbreviation. I got the list from the U.S. Census Bureau’s website. I was made aware of the list after reading Jeremy Palmer’s High Performance Affiliate Marketing ebook, which is now available free of charge.

• us-cities.xls - 2.73mb

Affiliate Marketing

I just got an email from Yahoo Search Marketing stating that in the next several weeks, the minimum bids for a number of Sponsored Search keywords will no longer be fixed at $.10. The minimum bid for Content Match keywords will remain at $.10.

Is this good news or bad news? For one, it could mean that Yahoo has worked on their quality score system, which could be good or bad news, depending on how you see it.

Anyone who’s advertised on YSM knows that it’s extremely easy to get a great quality score. Getting a good quality score on YSM is as easy as creating a new ad group. I swear, every campaign/adgroup I’ve started on YSM always had a good quality score. I have yet to see a quality score of 3 or less in any of my campaigns.

If this is the case, this would truly suck for all of us who like to test the waters on Yahoo before moving on to Google. I always start my campaigns on Yahoo because it’s very easy to start advertising. You never have to worry about paying a minimum of $5 per keyword because of a poor quality score. If they’re removing the minimum bid because they’ve tweaked their quality score algo, this could be a big slap in the face for all of us, a Yahoo slap.

If the price is being reduced, but the quality score system remains the same, this will be great news for everyone. But I just don’t think it could be that easy. You just don’t lower minimum bids without letting some people suffer and pay more.

Here is how the new model will work:

Keyword minimum bids are going to be set individually and will vary depending on different factors such as how much the keyword is worth. Yahoo will determine the value of a keyword by the number of bidders and bid amounts in the marketplaces, amongst other things.

Your keyword and ad quality will also play a great role in the minimum bid along with the relevancy of the keywords and ads, mixed with your ad’s CTR compared to your competitors’ CTR. Minimum bids will not be based on conversion data.

For your ad to display for a particular keyword, its bid will need to be greater than the minimum bid. If your minimum bid were set to increase, you will be given a warning with a grace period of up to several days to make changes to your bid before deactivating your keyword.

That’s interesting that they’re going give us several days to make changes to our bids.

Here is a copy of the letter that was sent out:

Pricing Update:
Minimum Bids will no Longer be Fixed at $.10
Starting in the next several weeks, the minimum bids for a number of Sponsored Search keywords will no longer be fixed at $.10. Your new minimum bids can be lower or higher than $.10. Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at $.10.

This update is intended to align your minimum bids with the value and quality of your keywords. It also is designed to help improve the overall search user experience by rewarding advertisers for better quality with lower entry points into keyword markets.

The amount set as your minimum bid on a keyword in Sponsored Search can vary depending on multiple factors, such as:

• The relevance of your keywords (as measured by the quality of the ads associated with them)
• The number of bidders and bid amounts in the particular keyword market.

A keyword term becomes “active” — switched “on” in the system and eligible for display — when your bid is equal to or greater than your minimum bid. If your bid falls below your minimum, your keyword will not be displayed. You’ll be notified of such changes and will have some time to adjust your bid.

What You Should Do to Prepare
• Get to know your keywords and their value.
Since minimum bids can vary by keyword, it is important to know which keywords work best for your business. Remember, you can check and set your bids at the keyword level. Learn more.

• Improve ad quality to potentially receive lower minimum bids.
Your minimum bids generally take your quality into account. In some instances, higher quality means that you could have a lower minimum bid. Learn more.

• Learn about updates to the account interface.
Become familiar with new tools that can make managing your keywords simpler.. Learn more.

For more information on this change, please read our FAQs.

Yahoo Search Marketing

After seeing all the fun that I am currently missing by not attending Affiliate Summit West, I have decided to sign up extra early for the next conference set to take place on August 10-12 in Boston.  I officially bought my full conference pass tonight. Yay for me!
By registering this early, I was able to get a full conference pass for $759. If you are like me, and have never attended any of the conferences, I would suggest that you go ahead purchase your pass as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more likely you’ll come up with reasons not to attend. My number one reason for not attending was the price tag.

Depending on where you are, you could easily pay over $2,000 to attend when you factor in airfare , hotel, food, etc. On the same token, the information you will learn, the people you will meet, and the fun you will have will justify the big price tag for the event. It will also be tax deductible since it’s for business purposes.

So if you haven’t done so already, sign up for Affiliate Summit East before tomorrow (2/26/08) and get the full pass for only $759.

Affiliate Marketing

To all of you going to Affiliate Summit West this year: have a great time, and bring back a lot of information for all of us who couldn’t make it to Vegas this year. I truly wish that I could’ve made it. This would’ve been my first Affiliate Summit. I plan on attending Affiliate Summit East in Boston on August 10-12. I honestly can’t wait.

And also, in case you haven’t noticed, Shawn is offering full passes to ASE for $759 if you purchase it between February 24-26. So grab them now for a nice discount.

Peace!

Affiliate Marketing

Something is up with ebay’s tracking system. I signed into my CJ account today to see how my ebay campaign did over the weekend only to be shocked by the numbers. On a typical $400 sale, the commission is usually between $10-$20. For the past 2 days, I’ve been getting less than $1 on sales ranging from $250-$475. Something is definitely not right.

Has anyone else experienced this today? Does this happen often to ebay affiliates? The reason I ask is because I’ve only been an ebay affiliate for about 3 weeks. The last thing I want to do is keep spending money on PPC and not being properly compensated.

If you are experiencing the same thing, or have experienced this in the past, please drop me a line.

Ebay

If you aren’t running any zip submits offers, you’re probably missing out on the chance to make a few extra bucks. Just in case you don’t know, with zip submits the user only has to fill out one field in order for you to get paid. Many people don’t run these offers simply because the payout is low; around $.90 - $1.50 per zip. You will find a lot of the zip submit offers on Azoogle, CPA Empire, RocketProfit, IncentaClick and other CPA networks.

Profit from Popular New Stories

One of the easiest ways to make money with zip submits is by creating polls around popular news stories. Think about all the crazy shit that’s happening in the news today. Everyone is making money from it, why not you? The last time I ran a zip submit offer was when the rapper T.I was arrested for buying or trying to buy machine guns. I ran the ad on yahoo for a few days and while the story was hot and was able to make a $50-$100 profit every day.

When ever a big news story breaks out, create a simple webpage with a simple yes or no question regarding the news story. For instance, one of the biggest news stories going around now is the whole Roger Clemens steroid scandal. To monetize this news story, do the following:

1. Find a zip submit offer that relates to baseball. If there isn’t one, you could always use the “free $500 Visa Gift Card” offer. That seems to work well with any news topic.
2. Create a page on a website with the poll. In this case, your poll would besomething like “Did Roger Clemens Use Steroids? Vote yes or no and get a free $500 visa gift card” Or,” Did Roger Clemens Lie? Vote yes or not and get a free $500 visa gift card.Link the yes and no buttons to a page that redirects to the zip submit landing page. You want to mask your affiliate link because if the user thinks they’ll remain on your site, they will most likely click the link. If they hover over the link and see that it takes them to a completely new site, they might not want to click on it. Hide it anyway you can/know.Keep the page as simple as possible. Put the question above the fold so that reader is presented with it upon entering the site. Below the fold, include information about the headline, such as an article from a credible news source. Also, grab some info about Clemens from other blogs or even Wikipedia.
3. Once you have your page ready, it’s time to start getting traffic. I recommend advertising on Yahoo Search Marketing and Google’s content network. You want to advertise on yahoo because they’re more likely to approve your ad and won’t hit you with a stupid $5 quality score bullshit penalty.When it comes to Adwords, skip the search network and go directly to the content network. You will be able to get low bids without worrying about stupid quality score bullshit.With zip submits, you want to pay the least amount of money per visitor. I keep my bids below $0.10. It doesn’t make sense to try to bid $0.50 or more. It just won’t work.

Once you have this set, just rinse and repeat. Wait for the next big news story and do it all over again.

Affiliate Marketing