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I have a couple of quick updates for you today as I have to run away from the house with the cleaning lady here.

Help! My Business Sucks!

Andrew Lock who I refer to as the eBay expert with the cool British accent, has recently started producing a web based television show called Help! My Business Sucks!.

The show focuses on entrepreneurship and Internet marketing, with Andrew as the host. If you are looking for another example of a new way to use Video online to spread your message, educate and entertain, take a look at what Andrew is up to.

The show can be found at - http://helpmybusiness.com/

Perry Marshall AdWords Update

Next, some important advice from Perry Marshall - the only AdWords expert I follow. I’ve been on his newsletter for years now, it was one of the very first I subscribed to and one of the only ones I remain a subscriber.

Perry sends out actual advice to his newsletter and rarely promotes any other products than his own. I’ve never seen him participate in an Internet marketing product launch, so if you are sick of “launch emails” and you are looking for a great newsletter covering Google AdWords, general Internet business, lead generation and conversion advice, you can’t go wrong with Perry’s Newsletter.

You can join his free AdWords e-course, which is great, and that will get you on to his newsletter too.

Google AdWords New Feature: Automatic Matching

Perry recently sent through something I thought was critical for anyone currently running a Google AdWords campaign, regarding a new feature called Automatic Matching. Perry presented a warning regarding this feature, so if you have never heard of Automatic Matching, here’s some advice you need to read…

Google is phasing a MAJOR feature into the AdWords
program. If you log into your account you’ll see a notice
that says,

“New! Automatic matching has been enabled in your
account. Your ads will now show for additional relevant
search queries based on the keywords, ad text, and landing
pages in your ad groups. You can opt out by visiting a
keyword-targeted campaign, and then clicking on edit
campaign settings.”

If you edit your campaign settings, you’ll see a check box
that says:

“Automatic matching: Show ads on more search queries
without adding keywords.”

And in your ad groups at the bottom of your keyword list,
you’ll see a new column labeled “Automatic matching total.”

What this means is, if you’re bidding on a keyword like
“dog grooming”, Google may show your ad for a keyword
like “pet grooming brush” even though you’re not bidding
on it at all.

The question is, do you want this?

First of all, there’s no way to know for sure unless you’re
using conversion tracking.

In fact, you should disable this feature immediately unless
you have conversion tracking enabled and hold Google
accountable for the quality of traffic they’re sending you.

***DO NOT USE THIS FEATURE UNLESS YOU TRACK
THE CONVERSIONS FROM ‘AUTOMATIC MATCHING’
TRAFFIC.***

Automatic Matching traffic will seldom be better traffic,
except maybe for people who simply do not know what
they’re doing in AdWords.

AdWords advertisers who learn this game from me are
always control freaks. They don’t want to just take what Google
gives ‘em. (Hey, that’s how you gain an advantage that Google
doesn’t have.) The ideal way to do this would be to use
the bootstrapping technique I’ve taught for years, which is:

-Campaign 1 has bids set at, say, $1.00 with Automatic Matching OFF
-Campaign 2 has bids set at, say, $0.75, with Automatic Matching ON

This will shift all the Automatic Matching traffic into Campaign
2 and you’ll have complete control of it.

Source: Perry Marshall Newsletter

Perry went into more detail than the above excerpt, but I don’t feel right publishing his entire newsletter here (although I almost did!).

Unfortunately I’m not sure if you can get back-issues of Perry’s newsletter, but if you want more info along the lines of the above, take his free e-course and you will never miss another newsletter.

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I’m in the middle of madly recording some videos so I don’t have to worry about video set-up while island hopping from Brisbane to Fiji to Hawaii then on to Canada. It’s crazy all the things you have to do when you leave home for six months.

I have a great post coming up later this week on the topic of Internet business and travel freedom, but it’s not quite done cooking yet. I’ll have it out to you before I board the plane next week.

In the meantime, a couple of short updates for you today…

AdSense Secrets For $10

Joel Comm zapped me an email a few days ago to let me know he’s got his new updated version of AdSense Secrets, his very popular book on making money with Google AdSense coming out today.

He’s decided to drop the price from $97 to $9.95 for the latest version, which in my opinion is a darn good price. When you order there is a membership continuity program you are automatically enrolled in (the first month is free), so just be careful to read everything when purchasing (you don’t have to spend any more than $9.95 if you don’t want to).

I’m not an AdSense specialist, but Joel is definitely someone who has been in the AdSense game for a long, long time and I’ve heard good things about his previous books on the subject. It’s also worth checking out the order page to see how Joel presents the video (you have to expect something polished from the guy who did the Next Internet Millionaire web reality show).

To grab a copy of the book go to www.adsense-secrets.com

Two Forums Merge And You Get Prizes

Lee Dodd, who I call “the forum guy” is pretty much the only person I refer to when it comes to monetizing forums.

He’s busy again, this time merging two large forums together. Lee passed on this notice to me about the merger news and a special competition he is running to celebrate -

Two of the Top 10 webmaster forums have merged! Webmaster-Talk and Earners Forum have joined forces to create much more than just a forum – now users have access to an enhanced marketplace, informative articles, blogs, interviews, and valuable tools. Along with the new features, Webmaster-Talk.com has also gained thousands of new members.

And what better way to celebrate a huge merger than with a huge contest! That’s exactly what we’re doing, offering over $25,000 in prizes!

There will be 5 winners, and each one will receive this prize package:

• Macbook Air
• Flip Camera
• $500 Cash in Max Bounty Account
• iPod Touch
• Nintendo DS Lite from RevResponse.com
• $250 Cash in Pepperjam Network Account
• $500 Gift Certificate from Text Link Ads
• 24 Custom Shirts for the site of your choice from N Designs (4-color, you pick the color t-shirt, front side printing only)
• Revolution Theme Multiple Use Package from WordPress ($199.95 regular price)
• Interspire Premium Shopping Cart Package

The contest is at Webmaster-Talk.com, and ends May 13th at midnight.

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A quick short post today as I’m busy getting ready with my final preparations to head for Canada (more on this soon).

If you are into search engine optimization you know the importance of back links. In a newsletter I sent out to my email subscribers back in February (you have to be on my blog tips newsletter) I told you about a neat little software tool from Neil Shearing called Real Link Finder.

The software lets you search the blogosphere for blogs that do not use the “no follow” tag (which makes links near useless for search engine optimization purposes - see this for more). I had a play with it and while it was okay at finding blogs, it was a bit hit and miss with the how on-topic the results were.

Just this week the “Jasons” (Jason Katzenback and Jason Potash) released a very similar software tool called CommentKahuna. There’s not much different with this tool compared to Neil’s in terms of functions, but since it runs its own search engine and queries a few other sites, the results can be different.

If you are looking to run a comment marketing campaign to build links and traffic, or if you just want to isolate blogs related to yours that do not use the no follow tag, both these tools are useful. The creators of the software do ask you to opt-in with your name and email address, but the program itself doesn’t cost any money.

You can get CommentKahuna here.

The Jason’s have a follow up product (surprise!) released today called TrafficKahuna, which I haven’t had a chance to play with just yet, but is some form of community traffic building resource. It’s not free and since I haven’t had a chance to actually use it I will reserve judgment for now.

You can find out more about TrafficKahuna here.

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Sarah Lewis, a Blog Mastermind student who blogs at Blogging Expertise, sent me an email yesterday about a website she’s just released.

It’s called WordPress Theme Review and here’s how Sarah described it to me -

Because SEO can have a significant impact on overall traffic, I always encourage clients to get a blog theme design that’s optimized for search engines, even if they go with a free theme. The difficulty, of course, is for them to find a theme that’s optimized without knowing code.

The site offers thumbnail images of the theme in use, as well as info on whether or not it supports tags and widgets, if there’s a cost, etc., but the main feature is that each theme is assigned an SEO score (out of 100) that helps the average user know how optimized the theme is.

Continuing the blogging theme…

Blog Monetization Report

Matt from Blogging Fingers let me know he’s just released a free report titled Blog Monetization Strategies - Make More Money From Your Blog Without Increasing Traffic.

It’s a short and sweet read of 16 pages that cuts straight to the point about monetization tactics for blogs. If you are a veteran there’s nothing that new here, but it’s a good read and well worth investigating if you need ideas for how to best monetize your blog.

You can grab a copy of it here - Download The Blog Monetization Strategies E-book

A Crazy Competition

Gyutae from Winning The Web has put together what he calls the Craziest Internet Marketing Contest You’ve Ever Seen.

There’s over $7,000 up for grabs, including a nice chunk of cash, so you might want to check this one out.

I’m Off To Sydney

I’m heading down to Sydney tomorrow through to Friday and I’ll be popping in to the World Internet Summit, so if you are attending, say hello if you see me.

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This from Perry Marshall about the recent Microsoft buying Yahoo to beat Google news -

Unfortunately…. In My Humble Opinion, expecting Microsoft and Yahoo to be better than Google by getting together is like pairing up two people each with an IQ of 75 and putting them in a spelling bee and hoping that together they’re a 150 genius.

NOT. They’ll just argue with each other about how to mis-spell everything.

Source: Perry Marshall newsletter

Lol
I have to agree with Perry, I can’t imagine combining the Yahoo culture with the Microsoft way of life resulting in anything that could compete with Google. The enemy of my enemy is my friend just won’t work in this case.

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