We all know headlines and taglines are key to keeping the reader on the page and convincing someone to take action. I recently read a piece on how throwing in a rhyme can actually increase credibility.

Memorability and Impact

The first is obvious. The reader is more likely to remember and can have more of an impact at first glance. It makes it easier for the reader to process information, which is important. Here are 4 examples:
Don’t get mad get _____
The quicker picker upper

How about:
My life my card
Safe happens

While the first 2 slogans are a little outdated they are still more memorable, GLAD and BOUNTY. The bottom 2 are American Express and Volvo.

More Accurate

The next reason is that rhyming can appear to make the statement more accurate. Having a statement, slogan, or headline sound a little more accurate can be the difference between a sale and a lost customer. For example, which sounds more believable:


Caution and measure will bring you treasure
or
Caution and measure will bring you riches …


How about the famous quote for you OJ fans:
“If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit”


I wonder why he didn’t just say
“If the glove don’t fit, you must let him go free”,
it was clear he made that rhyme for a reason … interesting to say the least

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Wow, I didn’t realize how long its been since my last post! I honestly wouldn’t have known that, yet I was getting those emails ‘domain ppcfool.com expires in 21 days’ etc… from my host

I apologize for just disappearing, I got a handful of emails asking where did I go. Nothing special, just that I really wanted to focus on my affiliate business. Back when I was writing, I was spending a lot of time trying to make my site look pretty, checking my RSS stats, optimize my site for SEO, etc… In terms of ROI, that really amounted to nothing, compared to time invested in building campaigns, testing new offers, and the like. Lesson learned.

Anyways, giving the blog another shot.

So what have I been up to?

After Affiliate Summit in Boston in August, I hunkered down and started to build some big campaigns. Before that I had plateaued for awhile. But since then, I have been able to more than double my net income, which was a huge milestone for me Looking to do even more than that in 2009.

Been working on acquiring premium domains/websites to supplement my affiliate business. I’ll try to talk more about this in a future post.

My wife and I just got back from a 10 day adventure trip to Costa Rica … Amazing experience! We went with GAP adventures, which was nice because with them you can pick and choose which activities you would like to do, and it is not a set schedule throughout the whole trip. We got to go rafting, kayaking, canyoneering, zipline and canopy tour, nature and wildlife hikes, etc …

Here I am rappelling down a 200ft waterfall

Ok, I trust everyone is working hard, especially in this economy!

Good to be back

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I recently watched a webinar on the importance of split testing. Very convincing to say the least. The presenter talked about in one example how a 3 word change was basically worth millions for Dell. Take a look below at the screen shot courtesy of FutureNow.

Changing the Learn More Link —> Help Me Choose Link made a huge impact on the bottom line. The reasoning was since the customer was already in buy mode, people are not looking to learn anything. But helping them choose is what was needed.

Here are 5 simple things you can immediately start to test:

• Headlines
• Images
• Call to Action
• Landing Page Layout
• Copy

Ok just another rant on the importance of split testing, mainly for me
So are you doing it?

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Ok it’s Friday, here are some thoughts for you guys:

Ever heard of Jean Paul Sartre?

He was a French philosopher, other than that I don’t really know too much about him. Anyways, he believed that people become confused or uncertain when faced with too many choices. The more choices we have in front of us the more paralyzed we become by our own anxiety. “When we are faced with too many options a confused mind will do absolutely nothing!” Is this you?

When I started out in affiliate marketing, this was me. Even sometimes now, I have so many ideas in my mind or campaigns I want to test out, sometimes I can spend an entire day active but not productive. What has helped me is writing down a to do list every night, what I want to accomplish the next day. Nothing big, just small tasks I know I can most likely get done. Example: Make new landing page for X Ad group, setup outsourcing project for web content, upload remaining keywords to Y campaign, move Z campaign from adwords to Yahoo and MSN, etc…

Optimizing Your Headlines

I listened to a great webclinic put on by Marketing Experiments about the importance of headlines. If you struggle with headlines, this is a good intro in writing effective copy as well as a a good refresher course on how headlines can help or hurt your business. Here is the link.

Develop Your Own Niche

Chad over at CDF Networks made a good post, about how to use your skill of marketing and paid search to create your own niches. I’ve actually thought about this before, good to see someone actually putting it into action. This is something I’ll have to just write down on my future to do list! Check it out here.

US Economy Kaput?

I love to follow the equity and currency markets and read a handful of blogs about various financial topics. If you’re into this take a look at the following article Treason at the US Treasury about the takeover of Fannie and Freddie. Interesting read. Either way I hope you guys are protecting all those PPC profits you’re making I’m pretty pessimistic on the US economy & the dollar overall.

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Gagan over at Niche Affiliate Marketing, recently asked this question: “How long do you give keywords before you pause or delete it?” It’s a good question that every affiliate should have an answer for. If you never pause or delete non-performing keywords you could be losing lots of money.

Assuming your ad copy and lander are optimized, three things come to my mind when thinking about dropping keywords:

The Revenue Rule

A good rule of thumb that I follow is to wait until that keyword has accumulated about 2-3 times in cost what the payout would be. Example, if the payout is $30, then if a keyword racks up over $90 in clicks with no conversions. Time to cut it loose. Now if the keyword is in the top 3 positions or you really think the keyword has potential, you may want to lower the bid and wait it out. Dropping just a few positions can drastically cut the cost per click.

The Click Rule

I’ve read in other places waiting until you reach a certain number of clicks. Same concept as above. Waiting about 100-200 clicks will definitely get you some significant data. This is no exact science, but after 200 clicks most likely it’s not worth your time. This may also depend on what your target conversion is. If you’re assuming a 2% conversion, then 200 clicks is enough. But if you’re only counting on .5% conversions, then maybe not.

The Worthless Keyword Rule

Apart from above, you should be trimming your keyword lists every so often, especially in the beginning. 1-2 weeks after launching a campaign, go back over those keywords with 0 impressions and get rid of them. The same with getting lots of impressions with 0 clicks. Now that could be because your ad position is in 8,9,or 10 or maybe your ad copy is off. Raise your bids a little and double check your ad copy, but if still after 1 more week and no clicks my suggestion is to drop it.

I’m sure there are other ways of doing this, would love to hear your thoughts. To be honest, I always kind of do this on the fly and just eyeball it. It’s always good though to have some general rules