If you have been in the business of online marketing for a while, you know the importance of tracking anything and everything. Marketers don’t like to fly blind, and that’s exactly what you would be doing if you didn’t track your advertising links. That includes your affiliate links as well. Many newbies just grab affiliate codes from their affiliate programs and post them on their blogs or websites. While you can track a lot of things with Google Analytics, it’s always nice to have a way to figure out how many times each link on your website has been clicked and by whom.

Think about it. Let’s say you have acquired a sponsored link on a top blog or website. You don’t want to just look at the number of people who have come to your website. You also want to know the referring URL for those links and maybe the number of impressions it has gotten as well. Besides, you want to make sure you can break-down your data all the way back to each individual link. (more…)

There are plenty of ways to make money online. In fact, a lot of people are doing it already. But online marketing is not a walk in the park career. There are many things that an online marketer or business owner has to take into account and master to maximize profits. You can always use services such as Google Adwords to drive traffic to your website, but that’s not where the story ends. You’ll also have to watch your analytics data to see how others are interacting with your website, and how you can get more out of your traffic.

Web Analytics is one of the most underrated aspects of making money online. Without it, you are essentially operating blind, and that is not the way to run a business. Before throwing money at your problems with your online business, you want to make sure you have all the data you need to figure out ways to improve your business’ online performance. That is precisely the reason the below 4 analytics books are must read:

Web Analytics 2.0: one of the most exciting web analytics books in years. It shows you how to conduct advanced analysis on the data you get from your analytics software. Best of all, it teaches you how to develop actionable strategy from that data.

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is being used by many bloggers and website owners these days. Even some of larger organizations rely on Google analytics to optimize their online campaigns. This book covers everything you need to know to get started with Google Analytics. (more…)

The art and science of landing page optimization is not something that you can master in a day or a year. No matter how optimized your landing pages are for conversion, there are plenty of ways to test things out and improve on your existing results. Whether it’s offering multiple choices on a landing page, optimizing your font, or adding conversion friendly images to your landing pages, you almost never run out of ways to optimize your landing page and improve your conversions.

One of the most popular ways to improve conversion rate on landing pages and web pages in general is by targeting your traffic based on the place from which they come to your website. Let’s say someone is searching for something on Google and just happens to land on one of your blog posts. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could reach out to them, give them an incentive to sign up for your newsletter, or share something exclusively with them?

There are obviously more ways to use this tactic to increase conversions. Many top affiliate marketers have struck deals with their affiliate programs to display a logo or brand on the top of the merchant’s landing page when people click on their landing pages. These marketers have spent time building a brand, and they want their visitors to go about completing landing page forms with more peace of mind. Implementation could always be an issue, but if you have a decent coder, it’s pretty easy to get it done with server-side scripting.

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On this blog, I have talked about the importance of consistently testing every aspect of your landing page and offer to make sure you maximize your PPC opportunities. But a lot of people have come to believe that the more bells and whistles you have on a landing page, the more you are going to sell. That can’t be further from the truth. I have seen many ClickBank products that convert very well despite not having too many bells and whistles. Top affiliate offers often connect with prospects on a deeper level, which means even if you don’t have a killer landing page design, you can still make a lot of money promoting these offers.

Take Adword Booster. The landing page is not exactly earth shattering. But it does come with proof of concept and a promise that is too hard to refuse to many prospects. People who read this landing page can put themselves in place of the author and figure out they could be making lots of money from Google Adwords as well.

Another surprisingly powerful landing page belongs to Twitter Traffic Machine. It probably has the worst design I have ever seen for a landing page, yet it converts like crazy. It just goes on to show you that by using video the right away to communicate your product’s values with your prospects effectively you can achieve great results.

By no means do I intend to take anything away from the above products. They are both very successful and have very successful entrepreneurs behind them. And they show you that cute doesn’t necessarily mean the best when it comes to landing page design. Could these guys get more from their offers with a better landing page design? Who knows! That’s why we marketers test things.

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.