PPC Shadow is the newest Adwords spying tool that has been released to help affiliate and pay per click marketers simplify the process of managing their CPAs. The concept behind the tool is very simple yet powerful at the same time. If you have been in the Adwords game, you know that most successful pay per click marketers track everything. They track ads, keywords, URLs, and everything else you can think of. If you want to lower your costs and achieve higher quality scores, you better have ads that not only get a high CTR but also bring you money. Would you spend money on Adwords if you are losing money?

That’s the philosophy behind PPC Shadow. It is an Adwords tracking system that allows you to figure out what you competitors are doing and how long they are running their ads for a specific keyword. That’s probably one of the best way to figure out who’s making money from what.

There are many ways to make money using Adwords, but spying on others is probably the easiest one. You don’t have to work that hard, and you let others test offers for you before you jump in and grab a piece of the profits. That’s exactly why an automated tool such as PPC Shadow comes in handy. The only downside to this tool is that it is only available to a limited number of folks (I guess the server load is too much to handle after a certain point). Let’s hope they make this available to all of us in the future.

I have been taking shots at Google for the past few months now. I find Google to be terrible in applying the same standard to all advertisers. I have seen to many folks get away with spamming their ad system, and top advertisers get preferential treatment or so it seems. But what I haven’t criticized so far is Google’s customer service. These guys take time to answer all our questions and they are the unsung heroes.

Google understands that a good customer service allows you to keep your clients happy. Google understands that clients are always wrong, which means you can send them the same standard reply asking them to take a hike. Now, if you are a big advertiser and spend a lot of money on Google, you can have your complaints heard. But if you are a smaller client, you don’t need to have your issues heard. It’s all probably your fault anyway. That’s why complaining about others cheating the system often goes nowhere.

To be fair to Google, there are folks in its customer service department that actually want to help clients out. But based on my interactions with Google, I have come to conclusion that you’d have to be very persistent to get anything done with these guys. Do I feel bitter about all this? No. I understand Google’s strategy. Google is a great company but I wish they would provide better customer service for its cash cow.

Are you, too, frustrated with Google’s customer service? Please share your stories here.

The economy keeps getting worse, but life keeps getting better for Google. With Microsoft and Yahoo! struggling to making a serious run at Google’s market share in the Search Industry, Google is taking the next steps to become the dominant global force that some of us have been predicting for a few years now. As someone who has been reliant on Google to make a living, I find it hard to imagine life without it. But sometimes you have to express what is right from wrong – Google is not the white knight we have all been waiting for!

Google has been dominating the Internet industry (just to generalize) for quite some time. Many have tried and failed to get anything going against this giant. But cracks have started to appear in Google’s armor. Not that their dominance is in any danger, but Google’s quality of service has deteriorated in the past few months. Google still has the best search engine around, but SE-gamers have taken the fight to Google in recent months. Google Adwords is just a mess, and one has to wonder why Google applies double standards when dealing with its users.

Microsoft was once in Google’s position. A company at the top of the world, putting competitors to sleep, and seemingly impossible to stop. But they have learned that you can’t endure your dominance without becoming agile and providing value to your customers. I have no doubt Google has every intention to bring value to customers. But Google’s obsession to extract money from its users at any cost has simply taken away from the “White Knight” image that Google has been trying to portray. Google’s goal may be to “change the world,” but actions speak louder than words. What kind of change is it that Google aims to bring upon us?!

If you have advertised affiliate products on Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine for that matter, you have probably faced this fundamental question. “Should I build my own landing page or should I use the ones provided by the merchants?” A few years ago, you could just redirect traffic to your merchant’s landing pages, and you could make a lot of money without having to worry too much about making a landing page. But even then, smart marketers were developing their own landing pages.

There is this tendency among some online marketers to be lazy. Everybody wants to make $1 M online in 24 hours. But the online marketing business takes hard work. As always you should test your landing page against that of your merchant to figure out which one performs the best. It’s true that some merchants spend a lot of time and effort optimizing their landing pages. That’s great. But that doesn’t mean their landing pages will convert the best with your audience, does it?

You should always try to create, test, modify, test to find out the best you can get from your landing pages. It take a lot of time and effort but even if you improve your conversion rate by 1%, that could make a big difference in the long run. By the way, don’t for a second think that building a landing page requires a doctorate in programming

Recently, I had a chance to play with the free version of PPC Web Spy by Brad Callen, and I’ve got to admit it’s one little cool Firefox Plug-in. First I was a bit skeptical about the product. After all, not many free plug-ins live up to the expectations (SEO for Firefox is one of few that does). But I was quite impressed on how easy this tool makes it to spy on others.

Once you download PPC Web Spy, you are going to be asked to restart your Firefox. That’s when great things are going to happen. Once you log back to Google and search for a phrase, you are going to be presented with the following:

The view keywords button allows you to find out the keywords that each advertiser is using to display their ads. Talk about hitting the jackpot.

As you can see in the above image, you get the keywords, the average position, the average CPC, Max CPC, and all that good stuff. You can also see ad per keyword, which should give you an idea about the techniques used by your competitors to achieve a higher CTR.

But that’s not all. You also can expose the destination URL used by these guys (see below).

Now, if you decide to go to with Gold or Platinum editions of PPC Web Spy, you also get a chance to download all the keywords your competitors have, which is pretty convenient. Now, you should be able to see most of the keywords that are used by your competitors, but the domain in question should be at least 45 days old in the Adwords system. This tool is very useful if you want to get a quick report on your competitors or folks advertising in a specific niche.

Download link: PPC Web Spy

Talk about a major launch.  A friend of mine told me today that there would a cool niche marketing out today around 12 EST. So I log on to the site and the next thing I know the browsers freezes on me. The problem was actually the site. The video that these guys have went viral, and I assume so many people rushed to avoid having to wait in line for their copy.

Niche marketing is one of the best pays to make a killing online, so I suppose a lot of folks are going to give it a try with this new course. I’ve got to say I was impressed with the presentation. Unfortunately, I don’t have my package yet, but as soon as I have it, I’ll right a comprehensive review on it. But the video was fun

I am personally tired of folks who come out and claim that you can make a decent living online without having to work hard. These folks claim to have made millions out of Adsense and eBay without having to work more than 4 minutes a day. The truth is making money with Adsense is possible, but it’s not as easy as it looks.

In order to have success with Google Adsense, you need to have:

• Content: it helps if your content is useful. But you want to make sure your content is optimized for search engines as far as the on-page factors go. Use a catchy keyword rich title and don’t forget your SEO basics.
• Traffic: driving traffic to your Adsense site is the only way to make the kind of money folks are claiming to be making these days. SEO is great but you will most likely have to spend some money to keep your momentum going.
• Form & Placement: ad placement is one of the most underrated factors here. Folks often learn from their past experiences with your site and start to ignore your ads. That’s not good if you intend to make money with Adsense. You should always test different forms of ads on different sections of your site to keep your visitors on their toes. You can’t just sit around and expect the cash to keep coming in.

Making money with Adsense is possible. But you’ve got to be smart about it. Try different ads, use different keywords, and move your ads around to make sure folks don’t get used to your ad positioning on your pages. And as long as you are testing and improving your landing pages, you should see the progress easily.

Your take: how much are you making with Adsense and what’s your 2009 Adsense goal?

You have probably heard the concept of red oceans before. In case, you haven’t heard of it, a red ocean is a market that is highly competitive and has a set of defined boundaries. Basically, the competitors try to outdo each other by grabbing more market-share in these defined areas. I believe, the Adwords game has become a red ocean strategy, and that is probably why folks are using other sources such as Facebook social ads to avoid paying a fortune for traffic.

Facebook social ads, Stumbleupon, and even LinkedIn ads are all great areas to explore. But folks who are going to these markets thinking that they are going to get a high conversion rate are highly mistaken. I am all for adopting a blue ocean strategy, but throwing money at social media hoping to get Adwords results is not a good strategy. The truth is, the audience is very different between these channels, and as such the conversion rate will be different as well.

I am not claiming that spending money in the social media is a total waste of time. You can get nice traffic from Facebook and Stumbleupon, but converting that traffic will be difficult. And you can say the same thing about Digg traffic. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t hurt to spend some money in the social media, but don’t go around throwing your Adwords budget at Facebook as that would only lead to heartbreak.

Google Adwords is the king of search advertising. A whole lot of folks use Google’s pay per click system to reach out to prospects. But with the state of economy getting worse and small businesses feeling the pain of their cash strapped customers, many have to find other ways to spread the word around about their services without breaking the bank. While you should approach some of these services with care, you should definitely give them a try to figure out if they work for your business.

Google Adwords Alternatives:

1. Yahoo & MSN: this is really a gimme here. A lot of folks start with Google Adwords and then graduate to other services such as Yahoo. Others, start will all there engines. I personally like the first approach, but I have done it both ways. Sometimes, it’s possible to get much lower bids on these alternative networks, but they are getting competitive as well.

2. Facebook Social Ads: I have been critical of Facebook social ads in the past, but you can’t question the innovative technology behind the social ads. For instance, you can target 55 years old folks who are small business owners and live in the city of San Diego. That’s extremely valuable if you have data on your audience. You can also create a Facebook page and advertise that instead of your own landing page. Definitely worth testing.

3. StumbleUpon: Stumbleupon ads can drive lots of traffic to your site. Not only you get what you pay for, but if folks give your site thumbs up, you are going to get free traffic. I remember spending $100 for a week on StumbleUpon. I am still getting free traffic from StumbleUpon without me having to actually do anything.

4. LinkedIn Ads: Linkedin DirectAds are made for small businesses who want to spend money on LinkedIn to reach out to business professionals. Folks on LinkedIn do not play around. My conversion rates are higher on LinkedIn than Facebook, but I suppose it all comes down to your product. DirectAds is still primitive in comparison to Google, and you will have to pay on a CPM basis. But nevertheless, you get nice exposure among some serious folks on LinkedIn.

5. ClickRiver: Clickriver can be a goldmine or just a waste of time depending on your niche. I have used Clickriver successfully on my technology sites, but I have heard folks who haven’t had that much success in some other niches. Being able to show your ads below Amazon products is too huge of an opportunity for me to pass by. It’s definitely worth the try.

There are thousands of other networks and methods that you can use to buy traffic to your site (see here). But you shouldn’t spend all your fortune on these outside-the-box ideas. You should always test, test, and test some more. When you hit the jackpot, you know it.

Did I miss anything?