Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

I’m sure many of you already heard about the recent changes made to Google AdWords. Advertisers logged in to see their keywords disabled with huge minimum bid prices in order to reactivate their campaigns. Personally none of the campaigns I look over were affected however based on the amount of emails I received flying around about it, there were a lot of other people who got hit hard.

Google’s intentions, as always, is to increase the relevancy for it’s end users - the people conducting searches - so that when they click advertisements they get answers to their questions or solutions to their needs. Logically then the recent changes made were designed to increase ad relevancy, but what surprised me was the lack of any official instructions from Google on how to deal with the changes. The first I heard of the changes were from the Internet marketing email lists I subscribe to.

Then again, if Google did release advice on how to deal with the changes they wouldn’t really have any effect, since the campaigns they want to penalize - those with poor relevance - could manipulate the system to remain active. I think Google intends for advertisers to figure things out for themselves, always with the notion that to win with Google AdWords you need to have the most relevant advertisement for the end user based on the keywords searched for. If you can do this, you don’t get penalized.

AdWords is not my specialty and more experienced AdWords experts have done the research and provided advice on how to deal with the changes. I’m not going to look at this problem in depth - I’ll just draw for you the conclusions I have reached based on what emails I have received from the experts.

As expected, Perry Marshall was the first person to provide me with a real credible answer, which I believe was sent out to his mailing list, however I have heard that it may have only been his Renaissance Club (aff) members who got the email about it. No matter what, his information pretty much summed up why the changes were made and how to combat them so your campaigns don’t get penalized.

I also received some great information about dealing with the problem from Daryl and Andrew’s mentoring program. John Reese sent through an email but it largely just said he was still “looking for answers”.

Why Did Google Make These Changes?

In a nutshell it appears Google instigated this round of changes mainly to deal with the relevancy of landing pages. Basically if the content on the page that your Google AdWords ads click through to - the “landing page” - has poor relevancy to the keywords you include in the campaign, you got penalized by having your keyword minimum bid prices shot through the roof to prices Google doesn’t expect you can pay.

This largely affected two groups of advertisers -

1. Those who use namesqueeze style pages, with very little content on them (designed just to capture an email address or some other form data) and standard Internet sales pages, again with little content besides sales copy.
2. And people with AdWords campaigns set up poorly where keywords aren’t broken down into niche keyword groups, often resulting in the relevancy of your keywords not tightly enough matching the content on your landing page. For example if you only have one adgroup and pile all of your relevant keywords into the one campaign. This obviously is a poor tactic to begin with and would normally result in low click through rates and even worse conversion rates.

Essentially what I took away from the advice I received was that if you build your campaign well and really drill down your adgroups into sub-niches with small sets of keywords and highly targeted adcopy that - and here’s the most important part - clearly matches the keywords on the landing page you use to go with that adgroup, you will be fine.

Of course the smaller the landing page the less content you have to play with so it’s always going to be most difficult with a namesqueeze style page since they often only have 50-100 words. My Blog Traffic King page is a namesqueeze but as you can see it has a lot of content and I only use very focused keywords in my AdWords campaign to drive traffic to it. Consequently it was not penalized.

If you are having problems some possible solutions include breaking up your AdWords ads into even more focused groups, adding more keyword relevant content to your landing pages or making sure your landing pages are hosted on full websites with lots of content. Google doesn’t just look at the content on the landing page, it reviews the content on the entire domain, so if you have a landing page sitting as a subpage on a large content site or blog, you can get away with the landing page itself not having much content. As Perry said though, you have to experiment and see what happens, we are dealing with Google AdWords afterall, the one place were testing really makes a difference.

Dazed and Confused

If all this is flying over your head it probably means you haven’t studied up on Google AdWords yet and you aren’t a disciple of Perry Marshall like me. The only reason I could even explain as much as I just did regarding this problem is because Perry keeps me updated with all the Google AdWords changes. I have bought his book, taken his free course and I read his Renaissance Club newsletters.

If you are planning to do anything with online marketing Google AdWords is your first port of call to start driving targeted traffic to your site and Perry Marshall is the master of this topic. Try his free 5 Days to Success with Google AdWords E-Course and then upgrade to his Definitive Guide to Google AdWords E-Book (aff).

I’ll have a full review of the Definitive Guide sometime soon, but you can rest assured it’s going to be a glaringly positive review because it is a top class book.

Yaro Starak
AdWords Campaigner

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Review of Marketer’s Choice - 1ShoppingCart.com Shopping Cart/Online Marketing System

1ShoppingCart Online Shopping Cart, Email Autoresponder, Affiliate Manager and more.

Name: 1ShoppingCart/Marketer’s Choice
URL: www.1shoppingcart.com or www.marketerschoice.com
Purpose: Shopping Cart, Email Autoresponding, List Management, Affiliate Management

Let me start out by saying I was very excited when I first started my 30 day free trial of 1ShoppingCart. I logged in and was blown away with the potential - the possibilities - my young Internet marketer’s brain started churning away thinking about the products I could launch and all the cool things I could do to market them, all through 1ShoppingCart.

The problem, which I must admit even as I write this is still a problem, is that I didn’t have any of my own products to sell! However I signed up for 1ShoppingCart because I was looking for an email autoresponder to start managing my Business client lists with and I figured since my path was taking me down the Internet marketers road then no doubt I would make use of the rest of the 1ShoppingCart features eventually.

What Does 1ShoppingCart Actually Do?

Okay, let’s cut to the chase - what can you actually do with 1ShoppingCart?

Online Commerce

First, the obvious - it’s a Shopping Cart - which means you can set up products for sale and copy and paste forms into your website to set up a fully functional ecommerce system. 1ShoppingCart works with a whole range of payment processing providers including the ever popular Paypal and 2Checkout, so you shouldn’t have too much difficulty setting things up to start taking orders.

The actual shopping cart module in 1ShoppingCart is quite robust and you can stipulate all the tiny details about your products, including shipping, taxes, recurring payments, commissions for affiliates, landing page, thank you page - everything! I feel comfortable telling you that almost any product will work fine with 1ShoppingCart. There is a learning curve though and I was certainly intimidated initially looking at all the customization options, but the 1ShoppingCart team provide a ton of help files and videos. It’s all very intuitive and after the initial set-up and I doubt you will need to make very many changes again.

Client Management

1ShoppingCart is not a CRM system but it does have a fairly standard client database management system. You can see which autoresponder clients are on, search the database by different fields, import and export client lists and all the rudimentary features you would expect. It’s not exactly a relational database, so beyond seeing which autoresponder clients are on you won’t be able to do much analyses, but it does the job well enough for a small online business.

Email Autoresponder

1ShoppingCart has a very good email autoresponder. This is the main module I made use of until I switched to AWeber. I switched because I only needed the email autoresponder module and I was paying a high monthly fee with 1ShoppingCart for all the additional features, which I didn’t make use of. AWeber offered a specialized email autoresponder service at less than half of what I was paying for 1ShoppingCart. As I have stated previously, if you just want an email autoresponder, go with AWeber or GetResponse.

The 1ShoppingCart autoresponder is a little bit clunky compared to the dedicated email autoresponder providers I have used but it’s not really a fair comparison since 1SoppingCart isn’t *just* an autoresponder. The fact that you can plug it straight into the shopping cart and affiliate management system is fantastic and if you plan to need all these features I would strongly recommend choosing 1ShoppingCart. As I have recently discovered it’s damn hard to integrate different third party providers if you want to have different companies handle your email autoresponder, shopping cart and affiliate system - at the moment it’s not really possible at any price even close to what 1ShoppingCart charges.

The 1ShoppingCart email autoresponder will do exactly what all good autoresponders do - you can set up a sequence of emails to go out at set time intervals. You can automatically move clients from one autoresponder to the next as they take different actions, for example from the “prospects” email list to the “clients” email list once they make a purchase.

Top Internet marketers have been using the 1ShoppingCart email autoresponder for many years. That was the original reason I chose 1ShoppingCart. When I saw at the end of emails from Alex Mandosian and Perry Marshall (etc) that they were using using 1ShoppingCart - that was all the recommendation I needed.

Affiliate Management

Here is one of the areas 1ShoppingCart really excels. The affiliate module, while once again a bit daunting at first to comes to grips with, provides a powerful suite of options that even a single individual can make use of to manage their entire affiliate system. I know many online marketers, including Andy Wibbels, Joel Comm and Brad Fallon, who use the system to affiliate sell their products. In fact many of the affiliate promotions I run through this blog go through 1ShoppingCart.

In a nutshell the affiliate module allows you to take on affiliates, manage them, and set up promotional tools for them to use to promote your products. You can set up banners, text links and the usual range of affiliate resources. You can also customize the look and feel of the affiliate area and brand it with your own custom logo in the header (etc).

For me the best feature of the affiliate program is the fact that you can integrate it with the autoresponder module. That means that you can seamlessly use your affiliates to build your email lists, pay them commissions on sales and keep everything all in one place in a nice and tidy interface. There aren’t many other services out there that can boast this feature at the price 1ShoppingCart charges.

Other Features

I’ve covered the main features and now I’ll just briefly mention what else 1ShoppingCart can do. It has a solid ad tracking system which you can use to track and test any online advertising campaigns using media such as text links and banners. It has a custom form builder which you can use to create the input forms for your customers and email list subscribers to join or purchase from. There is also a pop-up generator which you can use to have an input form pop-up on your website.

Most of these features are available in other places, for example Google has a fairly reasonable ad tracker in it’s Google AdWords program which is handy because you can use it alongside your AdWords PPC campaigns to test PPC against other online advertising media. The thing with 1ShoppingCart is once again, it’s all integrated in the one place, so when you combine ad tracking with email autoresponders and affiliate promotions you have a pretty powerful set of tools for optimizing your online sales process.

The Good, The Bad and…Well that’s it!

The only problem with 1ShoppingCart is that it does a lot. It’s a complex system that requires some learning to get the most out of, but as I stated there are plenty of help files and audio and video teaching tools too. One potential risk with a “jack-of-all-trades” service like 1ShoppingCart is that the individual modules may fall behind in overall features and quality when compared to specialist providers, which is the argument you could use when comparing the AWeber email autoresponder to 1ShoppingCart. However the gap is not that big and if you do want the extra features 1ShoppingCart wins hands down.

And herein lies the true strength of 1ShoppingCart…There is no other completely integrated set of tools like it for the online marketer. It really is the “marketer’s choice” when it comes to selling goods online. If you know how to make use of all the bells and whistles, you actually have a need for all the bells and whistles or you plan to in the near future, it is actually mind-boggling to think about how truly powerful 1ShoppingCart is.

That being said - for me, it’s too much right now so I don’t need to spend the monthly fee for all those bells and whistles. If you are in the same situation and you really only need a shopping cart or perhaps an autoresponder there may be cheaper alternatives. However if you plan to grow, which I am sure you do, and no doubt will eventually need an affiliate module, ad tracking and all the other features then perhaps starting out day one with 1ShoppingCart will save you from the pain and anguish if you have to later move your email lists and client database into 1ShoppingCart.

Trial Period

The best thing about 1ShoppingCart is that you can try it for a 30 trial period so you can make the choice whether it is right for you after actually playing with it. You can sign up right now from here - www.1shoppingcart.com or www.marketerschoice.com

I hope that helps with your decision making and good luck with your online business.

Yaro Starak
Online Marketer

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This is a little off topic but you never know, maybe you have a student friend who might suit the work.

I have two casual student jobs on offer at BetterEdit. One is in Hawaii and the other in Vancouver, Canada. You can get the full details be clicking the links below.

Honolulu: http://www.betteredit.com/jobs-rep-honolulu.shtml

Vancouver: http://www.betteredit.com/jobs-rep-vancouver.shtml

Please forward this to any appropriate friends or family members. I’ll have similar jobs in Toronto and Montreal coming up soon too.

Regards,

Yaro Starak
BetterEdit Manager
http://www.betteredit.com

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Here’s the last post I’m going to make regarding the launch of the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript. If you are reading this post the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript is now live and you can buy your copy for instant download from here -

TheButterflyMarketingManuscript.com/

If you haven’t made up your mind yet you can read my review of the book here - The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript Review.

You can also download the free sample Leaked Chapter [PDF]

As I stated in my first post about this product - The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript Prelaunch - I am taking part in this prelaunch process because I really received a lot of value from this book and think you will too if you are an online marketer, and of course as an affiliate this is one of my main sources of income from blogging, so I do appreciate it if you choose to buy from my link.

My Special Bonuses

I’ve never done this before, so I thought it was about time to implement one of the lessons I have learnt and offer you some extra bonuses directly from me if you do decide to buy The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript via me.

As a special offer, for the first 10 people who buy from my link - http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/yaro-recommends/butterfly-marketing-manual/ - and then email me a copy of your receipt I will add you to my BETA testers group for Blog Traffic School. That means you will be the first people to take the course and get in for 50% off the full price. You will also go on to my VIP email list.

Once you have purchased the manuscript send me an email with your name, email address and your receipt showing your purchase to yaroATblogtrafficking.com. The first 10 people to email me based on the time stamp in my inbox will receive the VIP bonus.

Good luck and enjoy the manuscript if you purchase it!

Yaro Starak

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When the full home-study Butterfly Marketing package (aff) was originally launched I spent quite a bit of time researching it before deciding to buy. I wanted to assess whether the software would do what I wanted it to do, so I read the prelaunch blog, tried to find reviews on other websites and blogs to get an independent opinion and basically devoured every piece of information about it that I could find in the time I had allocated for research.

In the end one thing was the final swing vote that lured me into making a purchase - the leaked chapter. Yes it is a marketing tactic to give away a free sample of the final product, and Mike Filsaime has admitted to it and of course teaches the technique as well in the manuscript, although in this case the story behind the leaked chapter really involved someone “leaking” some info before it was meant to go live. Like Mike says, it’s lot more fun and makes for a better story to hype the fact that it was “leaked” and of course, it sells better as a story of a leak rather than simple saying “sample chapter”. Marketing is about selling right?

I didn’t care if it was leaked or not, for me the sample chapter convinced me that the content was good so I decided to buy. Mike knows that it’s a good tactic to give away your best stuff in the free sample and that is exactly what he did when he released Butterfly Marketing. The sample chapter was great and tipped me over into the “buy” category.

Download The Leaked Chapter

Once again Mike has allowed for the leaked chapter to go live and I’ve been given permission to have it available from Entrepreneur’s Journey as a direct download in PDF. You can download the sample chapter here -

entrepreneurs-journey.com/butterfly-marketing-manuscript-leaked-chapter.pdf

This file is in PDF so you will need Adobe Reader to view it.

The leaked chapter shows you a complete table of contents from the full Butterfly Marketing Manuscript (aff) so you can see what is in the book plus you get to read the entire section called - The Post Launch Phase – Keeping Momentum.

This section is all about the Viral Exponent or Vx and Mike calls this the heart of Butterfly Marketing, but really it’s just a neat way of explaining viral marketing and the copulation rate. Butterfly Marketing is all about getting the Vx or copulation rate above 1.0 so your sign-ups continue to grow or at least maintain a certain level without the need for further promotion. So in other words your site continues to grow and make sales despite the fact that you are not paying for advertising, or pay per click or search engine optimization or anything - it grows because all the little things you have done to encourage viral activities keep new members coming in perpetually. The current members bring in more members at a stable or increasing rate. That, in my mind, is a beautiful thing.

If all this sounds confusing then download the sample chapter. Everything is explained in it and after reading it you will completely understand the principles behind viral marketing.

Please note that the links in the e-book contain my affiliate ID so as I have been stating under my transparency clause, if you decide to buy I get a referral payment and I thank you for the support. If you do decide to buy any of the Butterfly Marketing products please send me an email after you purchase to let me know so I can get you on my VIP email list.

Yaro Starak

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