If you haven’t heard of PPC Classroom before, you probably should check them out already! PPC Classroom is training course for advance PPC marketers that shows you how super affiliates go about making money with Adwords and other search engines. PPC Classroom 2.0 was not a free course when it was released, but the guys behind it have decided to give the product away. The catch? Try their membership club for 30 days for free. If you are not satisfied, just cancel your order, and you won’t owe anything. PPC Classroom and PPC Inner Circle are both wonderful products. If you are making a living off of PPC, you should definintely consider getting PPC Classroom 2.0.

Nobody is born with all the Pay Per Click knowledge in this world. Everyone has to start from somewhere. The problem is a lot of folks end up banging their heads against the wall more than they have to. Some of these folks have gotten their basics wrong. That’s why they keep failing with their campaigns. But there is another group of folks who actually know what they are doing but don’t pay attention to the smallest curve balls that Google throws at us marketers.

There is no question that traffic is one of the most important success factors when it comes to PPC marketing. You can have the best converting landing page and a very sophisticated sales process, but if you are not able to get a decent amount of traffic to your website, you are setting yourself up for failure. A lot of folks put hours into setting up their landing pages and optimizing their back-end sales process, but you really need to focus on getting traffic to your website to avoid struggling in this field.

A lot of people treat Adwords as a gambling machine. They keep throwing money at it without any real strategy, and they pay the price big time. It’s not really that hard to go through thousands of dollars every hour with Google Adwords. But you’ve got to have a real strategy to get it right. Here is how you should go about building your business on Adwords:

• Have a business plan: you’ve got to have a plan to succeed online. Adwords is too complicated a system to leave anything to chance. You’ve got to come up with strategies that bring you the most traffic with the least cost. But don’t forget your success factors (EPC, CPA, …).
• Know your position: a lot of people want to be No. 1 on Adwords. It may pay off for you but you shouldn’t just choose a magic number and try to get there. You should test rigorously to figure out what positions work for you.
• Avoid Google Slaps: it constantly amazes me to see people surprised by Google slaps. If you read Google guidelines and pay attention to what’s going on in this industry, you can see slaps coming from a mile. And if you know something’s coming, it’s easier to avoid it.
• Choose the Right Keywords: not all keywords are created equal. You’ve got to catch folks while they are in buying mode. That’s where you convert the most.
• Choose the Right Keyword Strategy: a lot of marketers tell you that you should focus on the long-tail. It may work for you but getting enough traffic from these keywords could take a while. Don’t set yourself up for failure by being a one trick pony.
• Use Negative Keywords: you should try to qualify your traffic by using negative keywords. Not only that, be prepared to use embedded matching to get your game to the next level.
• Organize  Your Ad groups: a lot of marketers don’t pay attention to this, but your ad groups organization can hurt your business seriously if you get it wrong.
• Write decent Ad copy: your CTR matters big time. You should always try to write ad copy that is catchy and makes people want to click (buy from you).
• Be Aggressive and Smart: it’s one thing to throw too much money at Adwords. It’s another thing to throw money and be smart about it. If you are making $2 per $1 spend, who cares if you are spending $100 a day or $100,000 a day.
• Learn from competitors: if your competitors are spending money on Adwords, they must be making money off of it. Use the tools available on the market to figure out their exact keywords and ads to see what they are doing right.

There are many other things that you should consider before throwing your life-savings away on Adwords. You need to be aggressive on Adwords. There is nothing wrong with that. At least be smart about it.

Adwords Manifesto is a world class PPC training course that is designed for PPC marketers who want to stop the bleeding and actually make money online. Adwords Manifesto provides you with everything you need to know to succeed online. If you are looking for someone to teach you how to get PPC done properly, consider signing up for Adwords Manifesto.

One thing that affiliate PPC marketers complain about is the constant wave of Google slaps that come their way. Since Google introduced its quality score for ads, there hasn’t been a day that has gone without someone complaining about something. Some of those complaints are not justified but there are some valid arguments that can be made against Google. Google has been awfully tough on affiliates. For some reason, affiliates are looked at as a bunch of spammers who don’t care about providing value. That is obviously not true, but Google sets the rules and we all have to live with them.

Google Shadow is a PPC training course that is designed to help affiliates get over the hump that has become Google Adwords. Google Shadow shows affiliates how they need to go about designing their Adwords campaigns to save money and achieve higher conversion rates. In essence, you learn how:

• top affiliates make money from ClickBank and PayDotCom products without doing too much work. There is some work involved but after doing it for a while, you’d think you are running on an autopilot.

• to properly design you affiliate PPC campaigns so you are not slapped by Google left and right. If you have worked with Adwords for a while, you have probably seen how frustrating it is to have Google slap your campaigns and increase your bids. If you have a specific CPA in mind, Google can throw a wrench in all your plans by increasing your minimum bid ten folds.
• to run your Adwords business as a profitable business. When I say as a business, I mean like a real corporation. A lot of folks treat Adwords as a hobby. They spend money on it but don’t spend time finding ways to make their campaigns profitable. You are going to learn exactly how to handle multiple campaigns like a pro.

But perhaps the best of Google Shadow package is the software that you receive with your service. Not only you learn how to implement Google cash methods (driving traffic directly to affiliate landing pages), you also have a software that allows you to automate the process of running a profitable business on Google Adwords. As you know, Google Adwords system is a sophisticated system that calculates your quality score on the fly. But there are things you can do to increase your quality score. For instance, you can use LSI keywords to give your pages more relevance. You can use keywords dynamically in your adds and display URLs to improve your scores dramatically. That’s what makes Google Shadow software great. The software allows you to create your campaigns fast with every little tweak that allows you gain maximum quality scores on Google.

Google Shadow also comes with a set of case studies that show you how to use the system to make cash via affiliate marketing. The software is very easy to use, and as long as you know your basics, you should be fine. Don’t expect Google Shadow to make you a millionaire if you don’t know what affiliate marketing is. This software is designed for folks who have been in this business for a while and want to move their affiliate business to the next level. If you are new to affiliate marketing, you’ve got to start somewhere, but don’t make Google Shadow your first stop.

Verdict: A-. Google Shadow may be a bit pricey, but it is a worthy investment for anyone who’s stuck in the affiliate marketing world. What do I mean by the word “stuck?” I don’t necessarily mean folks who are not making any money. If you are struggling to take your affiliate business to the next level, then you should definitely give Google Shadow a chance. It’s not for everyone, but those who use it the right way can see dramatic improvements fast.

A while ago I had a chance to try PPC Web Spy by Brad Callen. It’s the latest innovative piece of software that allows you to complete your PPC market research without having to leave your browser (you can read about my early thoughts here). I was pretty impressed with the original release, but things have changed a bit in the past few weeks, and an updated review is in order. PPC Web Spy can be very useful in the right hands. But you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know what you were getting with the software.

PPC Web Spy Review

PPC Web Spy is an innovative software solution that allows you to spy on your pay per click competitors without too much fuss. If you have been involved in the Internet marketing business, you have probably realized by now that the cost of doing business through PPC has been rising. You are probably stuck with a bunch of keywords that are not driving traffic to your website. And those keywords which bring traffic to your website do not convert well, leaving you with hefty PPC bills and nothing to really show for it.

If you have been in business for a while, you at least know which keywords do not work for you. If you are planning to promote a product from scratch, you are going to have to come up with a keyword list and probably go through a trial and error period to optimize your campaigns and find keywords that provide you with the biggest bang for the buck.

The best way to find keywords that actually do work is by monitoring folks who are making money online from pay per click marketing. And how do you go about finding these folks? Simple. By tracking who’s displaying ads online over a period of time. Once you find these guys, you can use their keywords as your own and join them in making money online.

PPC Web Spy is designed for folks who use Adwords heavily. The software enables you to see the exact keywords that Adwords advertisers are using to drive traffic to their websites. PPC Web Spy not only allows you to conduct market research fast, but also create large keywords lists to drive even more traffic to your website. Here is what Web Spy allows you to discover about other advertisers:

• Adwords ads
• Cost per click
• Average Ad Ranks
• Average Daily Spent

This information is very powerful as you can figure out how much your competitors are spending everyday and how much bang for the buck they are getting by keeping their ads at a specific position on Google (that’s right! Being the No. 1 advertiser on Google may not be the best idea).

One of the best features about PPC Spy is that you can find out exactly the landing page that is used by your competitors. This is extremely valuable as you can find out how many landing pages your competitors are testing and how you can use that information to increase your own conversions.

PPC Web Spy comes in 4 versions. You can get the standard version for free. The paid version are gold and platinum. These versions provide you with a more complete list of keywords that other advertisers are using to drive traffic to their websites.

Verdict: B+.

PPC Web Spy is a great tool for PPC marketers who are addicted to Google Adwords. Google Adwords is the best traffic driver, but it would be nice to see the same features on Yahoo! and MSN. Also the free versions are pretty limited in what they do. The gold and platinum version are a little bit pricey but they allow you to make money on the side from affiliate products. PPC Web Spy is a great little tool that makes doing market research easy, but at the end of the day, you need to sit down and analyze the data.

I don’t know about you, but I have been in the pay per click marketing industry for years. And obviously, I must have been doing something right for not having gone bankrupt in all these years. What surprises me is when the so called superstars come out and claim, “it is proven NOW that you can make money with PPC.” Huh? That’s just a silly statement. Of course you can make money from pay per click marketing. A lot of folks are doing it on a daily basis. It’s also true that a lot of folks are burning cash everyday. But to come out and claim that it’s something new is plain stupid.

You can make money with pay per click. But you need to be diligent about your process. You need to test your landing pages to death to increase your conversion rates. You need to find products that actually sell online, and you need to think big. If you spend $1000 a month online, there is so much money you can earn. But if you spend $20,000 a week on the right offer, your earnings may go through the roof.

Earning money from PPC is possible. You just have to be careful not to burn yourself in the process. And you won’t need a guru training course to start making it.

If you have worked as an affiliate marketer or just a webmaster trying to push a product online, you have probably seen the issues that you may have with bidding on branded terms on Google. Let’s say you have a site about Macbooks, and you want to put an ad up and get folks to your site. Unfortunately, Google does not allow you to put the word Mac in your ads. What that means that your ads won’t be emboldened when somebody searches for the word Macbook. A lot of expert consider that to be a deal breaker as your ad going against branded ads can be a mismatch.

In reality, you should never give up trying to push branded terms in your ads. You can use “@” (e.g M@cbook) to get your ads approved under the radar. But some companies don’t even forbid folks bidding on their brands, so you should not just assume anything. Your ads may not show up in bold, but folks who are searching for a brand are targeted and more likely to convert. Think about it. Who’s more likely to buy: someone who is searching for a  laptop or a Macbook. The latter is not super targeted as “15 inch 2GB Ram Macbook” but it’s still pretty good. With a lot of other products, you can bid on the exact term and gain access to a stream of super-targeted visitors. Now that’s worth a lot.

At the end of the day, you shouldn’t be shy about doing things on Google and other engines. What have you got to lose? As long as you are not cloaking and doing sneaky things, Google won’t ban you for playing with your keyword terms. So just keep plugging away!

It feels like yesterday that I signed up for the Immediate Edge program. It was actually last August. Last summer I had a chance to review  the thirty day challenge, and I decided to give the Immediate Edge program a try. The program is designed for folks who are fairly advanced marketers. The community doesn’t wonder what Facebook is or how to use Twitter. They already get that. They are looking for super advanced tactics to build business using the social media, ninja SEO tactics, and PPC. Unfortunately, the program could not handle too many people at the time (hosting all those videos and audio content can be a challenge).

After months of being a closed program, the Immediate Edge is finally open to new members. But it won’t be for long. The last time the Immediate Edge closed its doors, it took a few months for the guys behind the program to allow new members, so if you want to give this program a try you may want to take your shot now. But make sure you know what you get yourself into .

P.S. read a review of the Immediate Edge program here.