Jamdo Marketing Blog

Useful and free software is the best kind.

I use a lot of quite expensive tools in my day to day online activities, but there are a lot of less-polished pieces of software that are also pretty handy. Many of them can perform a lot of the tasks their more expensive counterparts can do too.

So, I thought I would compile a list of useful (and free) desktop applications for those of us who like to build websites and blogs.

There are probably better paid versions of most of these, but if you’re
on a tight budget, these programs can save a bit of time and have the right price tag.

Keyword Research:

Good Keywords - saves a little time on keywords and can do a quick site analysis too.

Domain Name Analyzer - handy little desktop application that helps you find which URLs are available for purchase. Stick in a few keyword rich terms and you should come up with something that’s pretty good.

Competition Analysis

Backlink Analyser - once you have your keywords and a list of competitors for those keywords, you can plug them into this tool to see how they are getting
their rankings.

HTTrack - a little piece of software that will copy entire websites to your harddrive so you can view them later on (while you’re offline). This is especially handy if you want to go down to the coffee shop and take some notes on your competitors, but you don’t have mobile wireless.

Ad Management

Adwords Editor - the desktop application from Google to manage your Adwords campaigns. Again, this is very handy for working remotely when you don’t have an internet connection - just remember to upload your changes when you get home.

Content Generation

PDFCreator - a very handy tool to create PDFs. As I am sure you are aware, “white papers” or “special reports” in PDF format have a higher perceived value than a lot of other content formats and can draw a lot of interest (and links). This program lets you take advantage of that.

NVU 1 - if you don’t know anything about coding HTML or any other languages then this free little editor will let you get your website online without any of that. It’s a WYSIWYG editor for website builders so you don’t need any coding skills. Basically like an anorexic Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Primetime Podcast Receiver - free utility for creating podcasts. Very popular.

Utilities

CoreFTP - if you need to transfer files to your server, you need an FTP program. This is the one that I use and I like it.

Coffee Cup Free Zip Wizard - zip your large files so they’re easy to email! Now with extra zippiness!

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Now, I am sure there are a bunch of other really cool downloads that I don’t know about (or possibly just forgot about) so feel free to list them here if you know of any.

The ones above should, however, get you off to a good start and help you on your way to blogging and internet glory.

Technorati Tags: downloads, blogging, internet tools

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Towards the end of last year, the hottest thing in the affiliate marketing blogosphere was Andre Chaperon’s eight part series on marketing Clickbank products by driving PPC visitors to a landing page and capturing their email address (which was subsequently used to make a sales pitch to them).

If you didn’t read it then you really need to.It is quite simply the best single source of information on the subject (including paid ebooks etc) and it is free.

Read it, study it, understand it implement it. You will be successful.

A powerful thing about Andre’s course is that you can track the customer all the way from the original PPC click through to your landing page, from the email and to the ClickBank sale. (This is awesome for figuring out the most profitable PPC keywords and ad groups).

However, one thing about Andre’s course has been bugging me for a while.

In his course, he suggests putting your affiliate URL straight into the email (with sub tracking ID so you can track which Adwords ad group the sale came from).

The link in Andre’s email would look something like this:

http://XXXXX.productID.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=redwidg

That is an ugly link and not an ideal scenario as the click through rate (CTR) on affiliate links is lower than on trusted links.

I have been trying to think of a way to offer the prospect a link that is trusted and hopefully increase the chances of them clicking on it while still being able to track everything. I think I have found it.

If you use Aweber, (as I recommend you do) then when you build a form, you are able to put an ad tracking ID in the optin form.

You can then also insert an ad tracking ID within the body of an email dynamically using the variable {!ad_tracking}

That variable will obviously be different for services other than Aweber.

If you then create a sub directory on your site and name it with the same ad tracking ID as the form, then you can add a dynamic URL and present it to the prospect in an email.

Simply create a subdirectory with a redirect (via your affiliate URL which also has a sub tracking ID).

Now, I have probably made that sound a lot more complicated than it really is, so let’s mock up an example.

Let’s say I want to sell a great product from CB about red widgets.

I set up a landing page at www.widgets.com/red.htm using an Aweber email optin form and I give it the ad tracking ID “redwidg“.

Then I go to AdWords and set up an ad group targeting the keyword “buy red widgets” pointing to my new page.

The prospect searches for “buy red widget” and then clicks on my ad and goes to my landing page and signs up for my ecourse on red widgets.

In the ecourse, I tell the prospect about a great red widget resource worth buying and just to click on www.widgets.com/{!ad_tracking}/ but the prospect will actually see www.widgets.com/redwidg/ as the ad tracking variable is dynamic.

That is a pretty and trusted URL for them to click on.

Now, at www.widgets.com/redwidg/index.htm is a redirect to my clickbank affiliate URL, also with the CB sub tracking ID “redwidg“  (It must be under 8 characters for CB and I try to keep the same tracking ID (redwidg) on everything from my Ad Group name to my Aweber tracking to my Clickbank tracking for the sake of uniformity).

The redirect would be to: http://XXXXX.productID.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=redwidg

So the code for the redirect would be:

< html>
< meta http-equiv=”Refresh” content=”1; URL=http://XXXXX.productID.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=redwidg”>
< /html>

and you would save it as index.htm in the “redwidg” folder on your site.

Now the prospect can be tracked all the way from the initial click on my Adwords to my signup form, to their email to my redirect all the way through to the sale.

But the CTR on the URL in the email will be vastly improved because it comes from a trusted URL - the same URL that the prospect signed up for their ecourse at.

It’s only a small part of the puzzle, but I though a few of you would find it useful.

If this makes no sense to you, I would advise heading over to Andre’s blog and reading his 8 part course. It will take you a while to understand what he is talking about, but it is well worth taking the time to study the techniques he teaches.

I hope I didn’t aid the onset of dyslexia.

Resources:

Andre’s Course:

• Step 1 - ClickBank: Market Research »
• Step 2 - ClickBank: Product Selection »
• Step 3 - Keywords Research, Segmentation & Grouping »
• Step 4 - AdWords Landing Pages & Keyword Channels »
• Step 5 - Testing & Tracking »
• Step 6 - Selling From Your Autoresponder »
• Step 7 - Getting Targeted Traffic from AdWords »
• Step 8 - Update: Analyzing The Data »

Technorati Tags: andre chaperon, aweber, email, redirects

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Trackback spam is when someone leaves a trackback to a post on your blog without bothering to link to you in the first place.

It is considered quite rude and certainly it’s not something you should be doing to other bloggers (unless you want to get a bad reputation).

But people will persist in doing it to you.

Usually, to make sure you were not the victim of trackback spam, you would have to manually visit the blog that had left a trackback on your blog and manually search for the link that they should have given you.

Depending on the theme of the blog, that could take quite a while - especially if the links were the same colour as the text or the layout was a pain to read.

Well, as of yesterday, there is a very handy new plugin that can take this headache away.

WatchMyBack24 is a great little plugin that will automatically check that there is a link to your blog from the other blogs that leave trackbacks. If the link is not there then the trackback will fail and you will have no illegitimate trackbacks on your blog.

That is a great little time saver.

Technorati Tags: watchmyback24, spam, comment spam

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Well I just got back from Ad:Tech in Sydney and one thing stuck out more than anything - especially with the online marketing companies.

Of the companies that offer Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services, not a single one really bothered to emphasise their unique selling proposition (USP) and thereby differentiate themselves from the other SEM marketing companies at the event.

I mean there was really no discernable difference between those companies which I thought was odd considering that they all knew each other would be at the conference and displaying in the exhibition hall and they would therefore be competing for customer’s attention head to head.

Displaying your USP is really the only way to differentiate yourself when you go head to head in these types of situations.

Oh, well..

There were a few companies that were worth taking note of at the event.

Facilitate Digital had a small stand, but are developing a cool little reporting system that plugged into the APIs of Google, Yahoo and Sensis so that you could analyse your search spend. They could probably afford to get a designer to make it a bit prettier, but the utility of the reporting system was very nice. If they had been able to include MSN, it would be very cool. I’ll be keeping an eye one what these guys come up with in the future.

KeywordDiscovery had a couple of cocky young reps talking up the comprehensiveness of their data. Basically they are working 35 billion keyword database (as opposed to WordTracker’s 300 million). They are a fair bit more expensive than WordTracker, and offer a minimum weekly subscription for $69.95 I’ll probably check them out in the next month or two and write up a review.

JSA Digital is a web development company, but I thought I would mention them because their brochure pack really stood out. It’s an odd size, a lime green colour and has various well laid-out pamphlets of their portfolio and really stands out from all of the other stuff I picked up in the exhibition hall.

The main Australian affiliate networks were all represented with DGM having a very impresive presence. clixGalore and Commission Monster were also there. To be honest I didn’t spend much time at these stands as I know what they all have to offer pretty well and I had a limited time to spend at the conference.

Will probably go back tomorrow and see what’s brewing and maybe catch a keynote if I get there early enough.

Always good to put faces to the names so if anyone is about, drop me a note and we can catch up!

Technorati Tags: ad-tech, keyword discovery, dgm, clixGalore, Commission Monster

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I have been realising how addicted I was to the Overture Keyword Tool over the last few days.

It has been down for a while and rumour on affiliate forums had it that it was going to stay down as Yahoo! have intimated that they are going to stop supporting the tool at some time in the future.

In the meantime, I reverted to using the free keyword tool from WordTracker which is also pretty decent.

But my worry that the Overture Tool was down for good was ill-founded.

As of now it seems to be working fine again. Yay!

You can read a bit more on the shenanigans over at SEO Roundtable, but the short of it is they’re back in business.

Even so, this is a good lesson that it is wise to have a backup option that you are familiar with using and understanding.

I know what the general rule is for converting Overture results to how much traffic I could expect, but to be honest, I am not sure of that with WordTracker’s keyword tool.

Time to do some research!

Technorati Tags: overture, wordtracker, keywords

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