Writing good headlines is key to getting your ad noticed and a clickthrough. Your headline is your ‘first impression’ and contact with the outside world. Miss this and you will let opportunity slip by. In the world of paid search and on the content networks a sloppy headline can literally make or break a campaign. So how does one write effective headlines?

Fortunately for you, there is a place where you can go where thousands and thousands of headlines are tested everyday. Digg.com. The whole concept behind digg is to make stories popular or bury them all based on one thing … the headline! This mass social experiment is very beneficial to us affiliates.

It’s simple to use, just enter your core keywords into digg and hit search. The most popular headlines that match your phrase come up. This is definitely not an exact science and is not a piece of software that will spit out perfect ads for you every time, but it will definitely get your juices flowing and make you more creative. Feel free to play around with the advanced search features as well.

For example take ‘weight loss’, below are 7 of the top 10 results given:

Notice anything special? 6 of these seven all have numbers in their headlines … Hmmm that must be important. Anyways, just wanted to throw this out there. I’m sure some of you can use this. You may also want to check out my post Ad copy: rational vs. emotional.

I know there are a handful of other tools on the web that are similar to help you out with ad copy, feel free to share if you have any.

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Have you ever wondered why old sitcoms have canned laughter or laugh tracks? If you watch an old rerun of Seinfield you’ll know what I mean, someone makes a joke and you hear that ‘laughter’ in the background. Funny thing is, if you ask what most people think about this they’ll say it is dumb, fake, and useless. So why did these top TV executives do it?

It is human tendency to see an action as more appropriate or acceptable when they see others doing it

The idea of this herd behavior or social proof is very powerful and is often used in business and marketing. ‘Social proofing’ your campaigns can give the end user that little extra push to take action, hit the buy button, or fill out a form. It is very simple to incorporate this into your affiliate campaigns, and there are 2 primary ways of doing this: testimonials and taglines or sub headings.

Testimonials

Most people would agree, sprinkling your landing page with testimonials can only help your conversions. The idea of social proof is when someone is in a situation not knowing what to do, they look to others for guidance. Seeing and reading other people using the product and taking action makes them more comfortable.

Taglines and Sub Headings

Taglines are a great way to social proof your landing page. There have been many studies done that people really do read taglines and sub headings. The best places to put them are directly under your main heading or just under your call to action button or hero shot/main image. People will read them.
Here are some samples that I’m sure you have seen before on other people’s landers:

• Join 5,267 other members …
• Over 100,000 sold …
• Amaze your friends …
• Over 1 million downloads
• etc …

Don’t think this works? Take a look at the tagline below:

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When expanding your campaigns you may find using phrase and broad match useful and profitable. However, along with these match types comes unwanted searches which can wreak havoc on your campaign.

The most notable ways it can affect your bottom line is: inflated impressions this can lower your CTR, which lowers your quality score and can raise your CPC. Not good. Another way is directly getting a lot of clicks, which will drain your budget. Enter negative keywords. Crafting a well developed negative keyword list can bring your campaign back in sync and give you a better ROI.

Below are 7 tips to help you in your negative keyword research:

1. Use the Search Engines

Take some time to search in google/yahoo/msn your core keywords and skim the results. Sometimes you will find sights that have different themes than what you are after. If it doesn’t match your product or service you might consider adding it as a negative keyword. For example search abs in google. Most people immediately think of 6 pack abs. But skim the results and you will find the organization of American Bureau of Shipping, site on anti-lock braking system, as well as ABS being a type of plastic … who knew?

2. Check out Google Suggest/Keyword Tool

Google suggest and their keyword tool are excellent ways to uncover phrases you’d never think of. You may also want to do a quick search in google news to make sure nothing current relates to your offer.

3. Thesaurus

Use this to get your brain juices flowing. It can also be a good tool to expand your keyword list and add parallel themes to your campaign.

4. Run a Search Query Report

Few people utilize the reports section in Google. Don’t be one of them. A search query lets you know the exact keywords being searched for in your campaigns. It does have an annoying category of other unique queries. Most tracking software can flesh these out …

5. Other Keyword Tools

There are a handful of keyword tools out there, some paid others not.

• WordTracker
• Keyword Discovery
• KW Map

6. Ebay!

Ebay sells anything and everything. If you’re doing retail type products, this is a good way to see if other product descriptions are similar to yours. Take for example “Maximizer” which is the product of a popular CRM (Customer Relationship Management - these things are very pricey) software. however a quick search in Ebay will also show curling irons, vitamins, indoor tanning lotion, audio plug-ins, pool cues etc…

7. Don’t forget your brain

This is your #1 tool hands down. We all want some fancy software where we type in a few keywords and *bam* it spits out everything we want. If you just take the time for a few hours to sit and think and brainstorm, both your keyword list and negative keywords will be much more accurate and worthwhile. Don’t be lazy!

Got another way of getting negative keywords? Share it with us ..

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Not. I remember when I was growing up, a good family friend would always get flustered and uptight when tax season came around. Now I can understand why. Having setup my corporation last year and 2008 being the first full year with significant profits, it stinks having to write out a massive check to hand over to the government.

I guess having a big tax bill is a good problem, but what is the government going to do with my money but throw it away after some failing company or how about into the black hole of social security. That is one good thing though, about having your own entity as a business instead of self-employed. You can save a lot on social security taxes. (Here are some standard deductions for small businesses)

I have an S Corp., and the way it works is, say you drew a $50k salary throughout the year from your company while your business made $200k in profits. That 200k flows through to you ultimately but is not taxed on social security which is about 15%+. So you just saved about 30 grand on taxes because you had a business entity setup. Same with the LLC I believe.

If you are heading into the realm of doing this full time or are starting to make decent money with affiliate marketing, it can only help to setup a business entity. Choosing an LLC or S Corp. is up to you, but the benefits are mostly equal.

(Disclaimer: I am not an accountant and know nothing about taxes so do your own due diligence)

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If you’ve never heard of Jeff Walker, his name is synonymous with very successful product launches. Anyways, he has a video out about a guy who went from food stamps to six figures with a tiny list in a very obscure product niche.

Interesting to say the least. If you have a list of your own, own a product, or are thinking of creating your own product, you should really check out this video. I’ve had a chance to look at some of his material and it’s pretty solid. Just wanted to throw this out there for you guys who are going down this path. Watch the video here

I have some plans to develop my own product …. someday, it’s just that I got a million other things to do before that