Many people ask me how I find a winning niche. Obviously, if you are looking for an offer in a network like clickbank or CJ (commission junction) you can look at the data they provide like gravity and EPC, but is that enough?

I take things a step further. If i’m researching a niche, I will actually analyze the competition. I will go to Google, type in a couple keywords related to that niche, and see who is promoting it on search, and then identify adsense sites and see if there are any competitors there as well.

Once I identify my competitors, I determine if they have their own site, or simply direct linking. If they have their own site I will manually scope it out and determine how long they’ve had it by doing a whois search. If they’ve been up a while and scaled it over time, there is a very strong chance this market is viable for large scaling, and profitable.

I do one other thing too. I’ll use a site called the “way back machine”. I have provided a video below explaining how and why I use this tool:

A lot of people think there is some magic tool out there that will dump money into your bank account and hand things to you on a silver platter. That’s not the case. While admittedly, there are some cool tools out there that can help immensly, I believe there is always going to be old fashioned work and genuine thought involved in this process.

As i’ve stated many times before, any super-affiliate i’ve ever met or talked to have one thing in common. They work really hard, and put thought into everything they do. Don’t get stuck looking for that magic pill. Trust me, it doesn’t exist.

If you work hard and always put your best effort into it, you’ll be surprised where it will take your business.

I’d love to hear your thoughts below…

Hello everyone… I’ve had some questions from people asking how they can quickly duplicate campaigns to test different countries quickly. When I tell people who don’t use AdWords Editor to target one country per campaign, and test different countries in different campaigns later, they get totally confused and think they have to do it all by hand. Not so…

I’ve made  asmall video that explains how to do it… If you haven’t used AdWords Editor before, or if you have and have never tried to do this I think you’re going to be  really surprised at how easy it is…

That’s really all there is to it! If anyone wants to download AdWords Editor you can do so from my tools page. I only charge $997 for it… JUST KIDDING it’s absolutely free direct from Google. Just click the “Tools” tab above and scroll down a bit and you’ll see the link.

That’s about it for now… until next time…

So you’ve got a successful content network running, and one day you notice the traffic slowing down to a trickle. What is happening? There isn’t a quality score on the content network right? I beg to differ.

Direct from Google, here is there definition of how they calculate quality score on the content network:

“Quality Score for the content network is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your ads. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your ad is to a particular page in the content network. The higher an ad’s Quality Score, the more likely it is to appear on a content page and the higher its position will be.

Quality Score for the content network is based on the following factors:

• The relevance of the ad and the keywords in the ad group to a content page
• The ad’s performance history on the page and similar pages
• The quality of your ad’s landing page”

And also, here is what Google says happens if you’re slapped with a poor quality score on the content network:

“Quality Score also affects your eligibility to enter the ad auction. Lower-quality ads may require a higher bid to compete in the auction. Fewer impressions on the content network may mean your Quality Score isn’t high enough for your ads to be shown at your current maximum CPC or CPM bid. If you’d like to receive more impressions without working to improve your ad quality, you’ll need to increase your maximum bid.”

Many affiliates i’ve talked to lately have mentioned they are seeing their content network traffic dry up. There are two reasons this can be happening. First, maybe competitors are using CPM bidding on high traffic/converting URL’s and this is taking the whole ad block leaving your ads on the wayside.

It’s a fact that image ads produce a much higher click through rate than text ads, especially if you take up an entire ad block. Think about it, Google has one thing of value to them. Ad space. They want to maximize this ad space by showing ads that get the best possible CTR… oh and by the way, Google considers your CTR a “vote”. A vote telling them that users are finding your ad relevant. That’s what they are looking for.

The second reason is exactly what we’re talking about in this post. Quality score. Now, it’s a fact that Google grades quality score “on the curve” that is, you are compared to everyone else for that particular keyword, or in this case, URL.

If someone has a kick butt CTR on a particular URL, guess what? Sorry. It’s over.

I’m sure you’re wondering how you can tell your quality score on the content network? Google really doesn’t say however, I have found something interesting. If you use AdWords Editor you can “seemingly” see what Google has you rated.

Now, I can’t officially say it is 100% the way to tell, but all my stats prove that I believe it does.

First, download all your campaigns in AdWords Editor, then download the statistics for all time.

Next, click on a content campaign on the left, and select the Keywords tab and you’ll something interesting. Just like search, you will see a content network quality score.

Now, here’s a screenshot of a current campaign I am running that has loads of traffic:

And here is a screenshot of a past campaign that dried up:

Now the thing is, the bids really aren’t sure high on a lot of these keywords, and it still says active however, I can tell you first hand my traffic went from stellar to almost non-existent. So you tell me?

The key here is to run placement reports and get rid of URL’s with tens of thousands of impressions, even if you get a sale or two. It’s worth the trade off! I’ll sacrifice a couple sales a month and a profitable URL if it helps my overall campaign CTR.

What good are those measily sales if Google puts the hammer down and dries it all up?

That’s why it is absolutely critical to monitor and optimize a content network campaign. You can’t let them run on autopilot anymore. You really have to continue monitoring and excluding, and also using the placement tab to bid higher on favorable URL’s.

Don’t let things become stagnant and remain active in your optimization, and remember CTR is a major factor in the success of a content campaign, more so now, than ever.

Over the past couple years, I have been using the content network to drive massive amounts of traffic to my offers. It’s no secret that the content network has made many super-affiliates multi-millionaires.

I remember when every guru would recommend that you opt out of the content network. While that was the case early on, it’s definately not the case now. Google has developed some really great tools to let you optimize your content network campaigns.

Not only can you run placement reports and exclude URL’s that are costing you money and not converting, you can also use the “Exclusion Tool” and ditch specific topics. Be careful here though.

It’s hard to believe but I’ve had great success with certain offers on parked domains and error pages, two topics most people will tell you to opt out of right away. While these topics may not work in every market, I find it worthwhile to spend the extra testing cash to see how they perform before I pull the trigger and opt out of them.

With all that said, what would be some good “rules of the thumb” for content network campaigns? Let’s take a look:

1) Use 30-200 keywords per adgroup, tightly themed. This has been a great debate, but I will tell you that my traffic is always a lot higher and better quality when I do this. The less keywords you use, the more of a “broad” URL list your ads end up on. It’s like telling google, “I’m willing to test on a wide variety of broadly semi-related sites”. When you add a lot of keywords, Google sees the theme you are looking for, and places you accordingly.

2) Use your placement reports to the fullest. Make sure you run a placement report after 7 days or so at the URL and adgroup level. This way you can be completely granular in your optimization efforts, and not excluding entire domains when really, it could have just been one URL on that domain that was losing you money. Also, add high converting URL’s as placements in the adgroup the conversion came from, and bid a lot higher on them. This will ensure you stay there!

3) Don’t pause your campaign. What I mean is, unless you want to stop it because you are losing a ton of money, never just flat out pause a content campaign thinking that when you restart, everything will be fine. It won’t be. When you pause a campaign, Google has to go and find people to fill your spots. When you unpause, those spots are gone and you’ll be starting over. You’re telling Google, “OK cool! Now let’s start all over”

4) Don’t be afraid to try CPM bidding on favorable URL’s. Seeing a URL getting a very high conversion rate? Look at the domain and see if the adsense ads are above the fold. If they are, target the page in a new campaign using the exact same ads from the profitable converting adgroup. You can also create an image that will take up the whole ad block on that URL which will skyrocket your CTR and give you massive sales. *Just make sure the placement is favorable because it could take a day or two for traffic to stop on a CPM campaign!! Imagine having your ad at the bottom and getting few clicks but paying $10-$15 per 1000 impressions… ouch!

All in all, if you find the right offer, and optimize your campaign properly, you can make a lot of money very quickly on the content network.

Just test test and test again until you find the right offer, and you’ll be surprised how much the content network can mean to your business.

One of the biggest strategies that really accelerated things for me was when I began to split test domain name URL’s. During one of my first one on one consultations with Perry Marshall, he told me I should be doing this and boy was he right.

I saw massive differences right from the start. We’re not talking 1-2% increases either. One of the first split tests I conducted, I doubled and almost tripled my CTR, and not only did I get more customers with this increased CTR, I quadrupled my conversion rate. Yes, the right domain can make the difference in a winning campaign, and a losing campaign.

Now that Google has tightened the knot once again, it makes it harder to split test domain names. Before it was easy… just put two ads in a campaign, one went to url1 and the other to url2. Done.

Now we can’t do that. We can only include one URL per adgroup. So how can we effectively test if that’s the case? I have been using a pretty straight forward technique and it involves using the “Ad Scheduler”.

First, set up two identical campaigns using adwords editor (it’s faster). These campaigns should be identical including keywords, ads etc. but the only difference will be that one campaign will use url1 and the other url2.

Once you have these two campaigns uploaded (upload paused!) simply click on campaign settings of one of the campaigns and then scroll about 3/4 down the page.. you’ll see “Ad Scheduling:”. Click on “Turn on ad scheduling”.

For the first campaign you’ll want to have it run every other hour. Turn it on from 00:00-01:00 and off from 01:00-02:00. keep alternating. BUT before you start, there is a little trick that you can easily miss. You don’t have to do this for all seven days… there is a link on the top left you can click and it will make these changes for all seven days… click on “all days” next to “Bulk Edit”.

As mentioned above, set up the campaign so it is running every other hour, and I think at this point you’re seeing where i’m going here. On the other campaign, set those times at just the opposite. That way you have one campaign on and the other off and it rotates every other hour.

Many people ask, why not just have one on from 00:00-12:00 and the other off, then vice versa. The answer is simple. You want an even sampling of traffic through the 24 hour window. Traffic can convert differently and react differently through various times of the day.

Testing domains is important, and we need to continue to figure out how to keep doing the things we should be doing when Google makes changes like this. This is what seperates the affiliate from the super affiliate.

Now go out there and start split testing domain names today… it’s really that important!