If you have been following this blog for a while, you probably know how strong an advocate I am for testing all the time. The concept of “always be testing” is not something new but a lot of companies cut corners when it comes to setting up sophisticated tests for their online campaigns. Don’t get me wrong. You can get lucky and make a lot of profit from a campaign that is not fully optimized, but you are leaving money on the table if you don’t test often. Worse, your luck will run out eventually, and you’ll be left with campaigns that are not optimized, and you may lose a lot of money in the process as well. It’s OK to be skeptic about the whole testing process, but once you start giving it a try, you are going to realize why testing is important.

Always Be Testing is a super book that shows you why you should be testing all the time, and how to go about doing it. It’s one thing to know the importance of testing your campaigns. It’s a whole other thing to know how to go about doing it. The book is very well written and designed for anyone interested in the science and art sides of online marketing. It shows you how to define objectives for your campaigns, what metrics you need to pay attention to, and how to meet your goals with your online campaigns. Some people like to pay more attention to CTR while others focus more on EPC or ROI. There are advantages and disadvantage for each of these approaches and not every business works the same. But reading this book will let you know what you should keep an eye out for and what metrics apply the best to your business model.

So what is testing really? It’s more than a word. It’s about honing every aspect of your campaign and optimizing your landing pages in a way that let you convert the most. It’s not just about how your landing page is designed. It’s about layout, colors, fonts, and even the copy on your landing page. You should test everything. One way or another your tests will tell you if the changes you are making are working in your favor.

Here are the must-read topics covered in this book:

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Hate to be dramatic about it, but there was no question in my mind since I tried Google Adsense for Videos that the service won’t last too long. YouTube has not been the cash cow Google hoped it’d be, which is why it’s getting a makeover to move a bit away from user-generated content to generate more revenue for Google. Google Adsense for Video was a bad waste of ad space at best and a torture for publishers at worst. Google didn’t make enough money with them either:

… we frequently review our products and features to ensure their effectiveness. After reviewing our AdSense video units feature, which allows you to show YouTube content and ads on your pages, we’ve found that it hasn’t had the impact we had hoped for. As a result, we’ve decided to retire this feature at the end of April so we can focus our resources on other opportunities to help publishers earn from their sites.

It’s noble to try new things and test things out to figure out what works and what doesn’t on your website. But Google Adsense video units were truly atrocious. That doesn’t mean there weren’t people who were having success with Google Adsense Video. It’s just that it wasn’t making enough money for Google to continue the product.

If you have read popular Adsense books such as Adsense Secrets, you know that your goal should be to integrate Adsense into your pages in a way that it doesn’t screen “I am an Ad!” People are mentally blocking ads these days, and I didn’t think it was going to change with video ads. If you still enjoy displaying videos on your blog, you don’t have to necessarily remove your Adsense video codes from your site. They will automatically show YouTube videos on your site:

Once video units are retired at the end of April, any remaining Leaderboard or Skyscraper video units on your pages will direct users to YouTube.com, while other video unit sizes will automatically be changed to standard embedded YouTube players. These standard video players will display top YouTube videos, but you won’t generate earnings from them once this change occurs. If you have less than three ad units on your page, you may prefer to replace your video unit with a regular ad unit.

Of course, you may want to replace your video units with something that actually pays you in the long run. YouTube is great but who would want to display YouTube videos in hot ad spots?

Google Adwords is the cash cow for most online marketers. You can always make money with other networks, but if you are concerned with traffic, Google Adwords is a must try. In order to get the best out of your Adwords campaign, you need to have tight AdWords and the right campaign structure. Not only that, you need to be bidding on the right keywords to get the most out of your budget. No two keywords are created equal, and you’d be surprised how conversion rate could differ between two almost identical keywords. You can always use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to start your keyword list, but there are a lot of decent premium keyword tools that let you optimize your keyword list and find keywords that convert like crazy.

There are many premium Adwords keyword tools out there. You can literally spend thousands of dollars each month to subscribe to these services, but at the end of the day, you want to make sure you get the right set of keyword tools that give you the biggest bang for your buck. If you have been using those free tools for a while and want to take your game to the next level, here are 5 killer keyword tools you should try:

SpyFu: the best tool to get some spying done on your competitors and find new good keywords to target. SpyFu Kombat makes it easy to compare your campaigns against others. Ad history helps you track your competitors and find out about their tendencies. And you can always export your competitors keywords and find out which ones you are not using.

Keyword Spy: another killer spying tool for online marketers. It also has a lot of awesome features for affiliate marketers. It’s a bit more pricey than SpyFu but does come with features for more advanced online marketers.

Wordze: WordTracker used to be the king of keyword research tools. But that has changed since the latest upgrade that Wordze has gone through. It’s hands down your best friend if you are into PPC and SEO. Provides you with all the metrics you need to find out whether a keyword is worth going after.

PPC Bully: one of the most affordable and more popular keyword research tools designed specifically for PPC professionals. It allows you to study other people’s campaigns and see what’s working for them.

Adwords Accelerator: another great tool to find high converting keywords for your Google Adwords campaigns. It provides lots of keyword ideas for your market, allowing you to expand the scope of your advertising and lets you quickly extract keywords from your competitors’ websites.

There you have it. Most of these tools are pretty cheap but they let you get more out of your Adwords campaigns fast. If you want to go beyond the free tools offered by Google and other players on the market, the above tools are a great place to start.

Pay per click is one of the best ways to drive traffic to a website. Whether you are an affiliate marketer or a business owner looking for leads, you can’t afford not to have a presence on search engine advertising networks. But pay per click marketing can be a challenge if you do not know what you are doing. You can spend thousands of dollars doing the wrong things and burn all your monthly budget targeting the wrong audience. That’s why it’s always better to do some learning before starting to spend a whole lot of money networks such as Adwords or Adcenter.

If you are fairly new to the world of online advertising, it is essential for you to get your hands on a training guide that teaches you the pitfalls and what you need to be aware of when setting up your advertising campaigns. You can always start from scratch and take your time with the trial and error process, but I rather skip that part and do some real campaign optimization. If you are an online marketer looking to get some good training in the field of PPC, here are 5 guides that you should consider reading:

1. Adwords Manifesto: one of the best Adwords guides on the market that teaches you how to properly set up your campaigns and test them to maximize your profits. Adwords is the top dog, and by mastering Adwords, you take a giant step towards increasing your business profits dramatically.

2. G Money Pro: learn Adwords from an Google Adwords Qualified Professional with G Money Pro. Learn how to set up profitable affiliate campaigns and avoid getting slapped by Google left and right.

3. CopyNProfit: so you have read online blogs and guides and still have no idea how to create a campaign. Believe me, that happens all the time. That’s the difference between knowing your theory and actually putting it into practice. CopyNProfit is a cool product that gets you started with optimized campaigns fast. It gives you the skeleton of what you need to set up profitable Adwords campaigns fast.

4. Clickbank Code: life would be much easier if you could just create a general PPC campaign and make tons of money from it. But depending on what you are trying to push, you need to adopt different tactics to maximize your leads. Clickbank Code shows you how to master the art of Clickbank. In other words, you are going to learn how to properly push Clickbank products.

5. CPA Arbitrage: if you are an affiliate marketer, the chances are you like making money with CPA programs. A lot of big time affiliate marketers push CPA offers and make a lot of money in the process. You can also promote these products on search advertising networks and increase your bottom line. You just need to figure out how to set up your campaigns to avoid Google slaps and get the most leads for the least money. CPA Arbitrage shows you how.

There you have it. Pay per click marketing may be a huge cash cow for a lot of companies but that doesn’t mean you should approach it without some prepration first. The above courses can get you up and ready with your online advertising campaigns fast so you can start dominating your niche.

Your turn: have you tried any of the above courses? how’s been your experience?