Slightly Shady SEO | Blackhat is Back, Baby.

Ok. So those of you who know me know I’m an SEO guy. It’s how I promote. PPC is not really my thing. However, lately I’ve been giving a decent run to some PPC campaigns, and I’m getting relatively proficient with it. My progress has been slowed a bit because I hate feeling like a newbie and asking stupid questions(though it’s inevitable I suppose when just learning). But I thought I’d share my experiences thus far.

There will definitely be a Part2 to this post as long as the credit card bill and utter fear of my redirect webserver crashing don’t make me stroke out.

I’m stepping out on a limb here, and talking about something I’m new at, and not the best at. Any constructive criticism is welcome, but no abuse here please. I really prefer discussing stuff I know well haha.

My Stages as a PPC Newbie Thus Far

• Stage 1: Naivety
  • The Concept
    Thinking to myself “if I’m buying my way into the top slots of a search engine, why not target the big traffic niches I’d have trouble ranking for with SEO?” I set myself onto the task of ringtones. This is how I learned I do not give PPC affiliate marketers enough credit. I launched a scraper site with all the keywords I could find about them, and built up a decent keyword list from the resulting hits. Then I launched the campaign with a few ads, no ad groups.
  • The Result
    Utter destruction of my cash reserve I set aside.
• Stage 2: Back to the Drawing Board
  • The Concept
    I decided to port my campaign over to MSN, reasoning that there would be less competition, and I would have less ability to demolish my budget so quickly. Not to mention, MSN’s PPC is one of the places I’ve had experience before. I through out my old list of ringtones, loaded up a huge list of artists, and launched a campaign where the artist name was rotated into the body.
  • The Result
    Slight profit. Not enough of those terms actually get searches, and I’m becoming aware I’d need to dynamically generate a landing page for each artist to turn a profit. Users dislike not seeing their specific artist on the landing page for a specific artist search.
    Also, MSN’s quality robot is being a pain in the arse disabling keywords for the low-content landing page. The ad gets disabled eventually due to this, and I decide to not revive it.
• Stage 3: I Get Learning
  • The Concept
    • I begin to frequent Wickedfire forums more, and associate more closely with PPC based affiliate marketers. I also begin reading UberAffiliate a fair amount, and picking up on a few tricks, and more importantly what it takes to profit. Sliding around IRC helps a bit to.
      I begin launching some campaigns for Joebucks and experience some initial profit. Initially these die off though, and I’m a bit in the red. I decide to take the advice I’ve picked up a bit more and split into seperate ad groups, targeting the ads really tightly to the keywords. I’m skeptical at first, but the results pick the earnings back up considerably. I then switch the landing page to the order form rather than the homepage(I know, should’ve done that before), and it picks up a bit more. Still not a huge ROI, but I’m not hurting from it anymore. I begin to fine tune the campaigns every day or two, killing off the lowest performing ads and keywords.
    • The Result
      A tentative success. The money isn’t really worth the maintenance at this point, but hopefully it will grow.
      I get Rick Rolled for the first time. Life goes on.
• Stage 4: Some Success!
  • The Concept
    I’m still running this, so forgive me if I’m a bit light on details I give out.
    I launch a campaign at location xyz (where I’m doing this, I’ll let your imagination decide) at the urging of Nicky Cakes. I discover a few [moderately nefarious] tricks to compete in an area where few others can, with a high CTR.
    Initially, while feeling out which niche to hit with this trick, I’m rupturing money like 300 pound hemophiliac with a 10 inch hole in his stomach does blood.
    But then, everything turns around. I hit the right niche! A nice ROI(compared tomy previous attempts), lots of traffic, and it’s love at first click. Currently it’s profiting $250+ per day, with no signs of slowing. I’m a bit afraid of saturating my market, or worse yet gaining attention of other marketers who will emulate my trick, but so far so good.
  • The Result
    I’m flipping out pretty constantly. The rewards are high, but I’m running up massive credit card bill, and fear what will happen if my hosting goes down while I’m asleep. However, it has restored my faith in PPC marketing. It’s a complicated market, but it’s all in the niche, and the rewards can be huge. I realize the need for an LLC here so I can get a business credit card.

What I’ve Learned
Just because you’re comfortable in one area is no good reason to restrict yourself to it. Look at any niche where people are promoting, or running affiliate marketing campaigns. Why are they doing this? Because there’s profit to be had. You may not make as much as them(I’m still light years away from even medium level PPCers) but chances are you can cash in on a decent chunk of the change if you put your mind to it. Restricting yourself does nothing but hurt you, and coming from a background where you’re good at least one kind of marketing, it takes only a bit of ingenuity and effort to learn what you need to turn a profit through other methods. Explore the web, see what you can do.

It’s all in the niche.

Adios Ladies and Gents!
-A very excited(and somewhat humbled) XMCP

PS: I’m looking for some new SEO related articles you guys would like to see. Anything blackhat, standard SEO, or social related is in the ballpark so long as I haven’t covered it a dozen times. Drop a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

Posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 11:52 am in the category:Grow Some Balls, SEM, affiliate marketing. Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment it , or trackback this post.