Archives for 2012

My Weekend Musings

My good friend Morgan Linton has one of the absolute best blogs on the Internet (if not the best one) about domaining. I have been reading Morgan’s blog forever and frequently commentate there. One of my favorite posts he does is his weekend musings (here’s a link to Morgan’s most recent Weekend Musings). Also, my good friend Jason Thompson has an amazing blog about domaining (on a Dot Co domain name) that I read every single day (I can’t get enough of it). Jason also frequently writes about his weekend musings. The week is so hectic that I too like to reflect back on things and think at a higher level during the weekends. Today is my first weekend musings post, inspired by Morgan and Jason, the first of many!

It’s really hard for me to say “no”. Sometimes I wish I did a better job at this. That said, I’m an ambitious guy and want to do it all. If you’re waiting on my for something, hang tight, I will get through everything. So many amazing things to get through in 2012!
I Worked This Weekend again! I didn’t work all day Sunday, but worked all day and night Saturday. It honestly felt like all weekend, however, because I slept half the day today recovering from my big day yesterday. I had an important deadline that I just had to hit (others depended on me). It’s the beginning of a new year and I’m trying to start the year aggressively. I don’t plan on doing this every weekend, but the beginning of the year is a good time to invest the extra hours, in my opinion (since you enjoy the benefits of the work all year and beyond).
I really enjoy working on SEO, as much as paid search. The project I worked on all weekend was actually an on-page SEO one which is quite fun. My advice to those in the PPC career path: Explore related fields such as SEO, display, email, and affiliate marketing. You don’t have to spend a ton of time, but even a small amount cross-channel experience will add greatly to your perspective.
Posts about commentating get a lot of interest. I decided to write my post about how Blogs With Top Commentators Are Now Rare as a follow-up to my very popular Blog Commentating Strategy. My new post got a lot of comments and interest. This just goes to show that I’m not the only one who’s passionate about commentating.
I’m starting to see Six Sitelinks show up on my paid search ads, not only for trademark/brand keywords but for generic keywords too. Make sure you have at least six sitelinks deployed in each of your Google AdWords campaigns.
SMX West San Jose is coming up in late February. If you haven’t registered yet, I highly recommend doing so. Here’s my recap of SMX West 2011. I’m particularly excited about joining my friends at Marin Software for a San Jose Sharks game after the conference.
Hip hop is the best. I keep discovering great tracks. I’m listening to this Slum Village track right now called “Hold Tight” that features Q-Tip. I really want to see Q-Tip / A Tribe Called Quest in concert one of these days.

Image of TGIF © iStockPhoto – KLH49

Fun Times At Anchor Brewing With Google

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 13 3

Today, I had an amazing time. My team and I visited Anchor Brewing with Google! You might recall that I recently watched the SF Giants game at Google’s Luxury Suite. Our Google account management team is truly unparalleled. Not only do they provide the highest possible level of service, but they have made a tremendous effort to build a lasting relationship with us on a personal level. That’s what it’s all about in my opinion. Successful networking and business relationships are all about the long-term.

Anchor Steam San Francisco

Have you heard of Anchor Steam before? Here in San Francisco / Silicon Valley, Anchor Steam is quite the popular beer. They have been making amazing beer since 1896. Importantly, they make beer the old fashioned way, and it’s absolutely some of the best tasting beer you can find.

Today at Anchor Brewing, we enjoyed a really great tour of their facility. It’s super impressive. The facility is huge and is the central location where Anchor Steam makes all their beer, right in downtown San Francisco. Aside from seeing the facility, I enjoyed learning about Anchor Brewing’s history. The company certainly faced challenges over the years. However, despite all odds, they made it due to persistence and of course quality. This is an important lesson for any business, and is quite the motivational story. The tour ended with some great beer tasting, with my favorite beer being the “Breckle’s Brown Ale”.

Anchor Summer Beer

I also enjoyed today’s tour because it was the perfect excuse to take it a little easy. Pay per click is a very intense career path. Since the beginning of the new year, I have been working around the clock. I’m thankful for that, it has been fun. That said, I need to remind myself to take a little time off. The Anchor Brewing tour provided the perfect opportunity to do so.

Of course, the best part of today was spending quality time with friends. I couldn’t think of a better group to spend time with outside of our normal work environment. Thanks so much Google for arranging this event and making it happen, you are the best! Want to visit Anchor Brewing yourself? Make sure to make reservations in advance, it’s a very popular tour and fills up quickly.

Anchor Steam Google Trip

Images in this post © PPCIan.com

Hearst Media Services Has a Neat PPC Strategy

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 11 4

Hearst is one of the largest traditional media empires around. I’m talking about major brands such as Car and Driver, ESPN, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and more. As a savvy media company, Hearst is now involved in online marketing. It makes perfect sense, the statistics are staggering. More and more online media is being consumed each year. Of particular interest, Hearst now operates an online marketing agency and I feel that the way they are marketing their agency via PPC is quite unique.

In the screenshot below, you can see that I searched for “PPC Ian”. I like to search my own name from time to time to make sure my PPC ad is displaying properly. You can never sanity check things enough, and that’s why I have Six Essential Campaign Checks that I run multiple times each day.

The search results in the screenshot show both myself and SF Gate showing up. What is SF Gate? It’s a cool, local website here in the SF Bay Area. I’m quite familiar with SF Gate and have been to the site before. I was surprised to see SF Gate displaying on a PPC-related term and I assumed the SF Gate ad broad matched to the “PPC” in my name. After seeing who was advertising, I started reading the ad and it piqued my interest. I had no idea that SF Gate offered online marketing services.

Upon clicking the ad, I landed on a page within the SF Gate website illustrating the Bay Area Hearst Media Services agency (you can check out the landing page here). I guess SF Gate is owned by Hearst. I personally feel the landing page could target a higher conversion rate, maybe with a prominent email capture. However, that’s not the core takeaway here.

Hearst Could have just sent this traffic to their core website for Hearst Media Services. However, they instead decided to send the traffic to a local brand, SF Gate. I think this is quite the strategy. Here in the Bay Area, I’m sure more people have heard of SF Gate than Hearst Media Services. They are leveraging their well-known, local brand name to draw the user in and then introduce them to Hearst Media Services. I really like this strategy and feel like it’s a great way to leverage an existing portfolio of local brands for improved click through rates. Way to go Hearst Media Services and I hope to run into you at one of the upcoming industry conferences!

SF Gate

Download The 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEM eBook

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 9 1

I’m a huge fan of SEM eBooks and whitepapers, I try to read them all. Today I’m thrilled to share one of the best search engine marketing eBooks I have read, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEM by PPC Associates.

PPC Associates, one of the top SEM agencies around, is on a roll. If you work in the Silicon Valley like me, make sure to keep an eye out for the PPC Associates Billboards on 101 near Palo Alto. They absolutely rock.

PPC Associates co-founder and CEO David Rodnitzky wrote the 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEM. This 25 page eBook is quite detailed, it’s single-spaced and offers specific strategies on how you can improve your paid search campaigns. In my opinion, this is a must-have guide for both beginners and advanced SEM gurus alike. It’s truly in-depth, one of the most comprehensive around. Following is an outline of the 7 Habits that David covers.

Habit #1: Choosing the Right Search Engines
Habit #2: Choosing the Right Keywords
Habit #3: Creating the Right Ad Text
Habit #4: Setting the Right Bids
Habit #5: Creating the Right Landing Pages
Habit #6: Setting Up the Right Reporting and Tracking
Habit #7: Creating the Right Targeting

It’s the beginning of a new year. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEM includes great strategies and tips that will spark ideas to grow your search marketing program in 2012 and beyond. After clicking this link, you simply need to enter your name, email, company, phone, and monthly budget. Upon doing so, you will be able to download the 7 Habits guide immediately. I hope you enjoy this great eBook as much as I do!

Image of 7 Habits eBook © PPCAssociates.com

An Example of Great Ad Copy On Google AdWords

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 8 3

Ad copy is one of the single biggest campaign levers on Google AdWords. Optimize your ad copy and you will experience an increased CTR (which means more traffic). Ultimately, that higher CTR will translate into a better quality score and therefore decreased CPCs with increased ad position. Increase the effectiveness of your ad copy and your ads will also display more sitelinks.

I’m always testing new ad copy. Today, I wanted to share the competitive landscape from the people search vertical (check out the screenshot below). I used to work at Inflection, one of the hottest startups in the Bay Area and a leader in the people search space.

In the screenshot below, check out the first ad for Intelius. Intelius is leveraging the “1) 2)” ad copy strategy. I really like this ad because it illustrates the simplicity of Intelius. I’m definitely not the only one. The fact that Intelius has four sitelinks displaying on a generic term like “people search” means that their CTR is quite high. If your company offers a streamlined service, I highly recommend testing the “1) 2)” ad copy yourself.

Blogs With Top Commentators Are Now Rare

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 5 41

One of the most popular posts on PPC Ian is my Blog Commenting Strategy. I’m a huge fan of blog commentating for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it’s fun! It’s great to be part of the conversation. Second, it’s a great source of traffic. Write an insightful comment and you will quickly gain new readers. Third, blog commentating can be a great source of SEO-optimized dofollow links. That is, if the blog you comment on has a top commentators widget (like the one I have here on PPC Ian in my footer).

Comment

I used to do a ton of commentating. I originally purchased my iPad so I could commentate on the go. I would write comments on the train to and from work. I would bring my iPad to lunch and would write comments during my meal. I would even commentate on my mobile phone while away from my computer. I got a little bit obsessed.

These days, I’m still commentating but not quite as much. Why? Many of the big bloggers such as John Chow and Jonathan Volk have done site redesigns and have removed their top commentators widgets. I used to comment on these blogs multiple times per day because I got my name in the top commentators lists. This gave me thousands of dofollow inbound links, from blogs closely related to mine by topic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a huge fan of both of these fine blogs, it’s just that I don’t comment quite as much since there is less of a reward.

So, you may be wondering, why are these big bloggers removing their top commentators widgets? If I had to guess, it probably comes down to preserving link juice (5-10 outbound links on each page of your blog can add up). It probably also comes down to comment quality. When you have as top commentators widget, the comments can sometimes be of lower quality. I particularly saw this happening on John Chow’s blog, although not anymore now that the widget has been removed.

As a blog owner, I’m a huge fan of having the top commentators widget. In addition to my top commentators widget, I even ran a Blog Commenting Contest. I feel passionately about rewarding those readers who support my blog by commenting. It takes time to write comments and I do my best to reward those supporting my blog.

The moral of the story: My blog commenting strategy is still very viable, but it’s more difficult finding blogs with top commentators lists. They still do exist, however, and I highly recommend seeking them out. You can even search on Google for directories of blogs that have dofollow top commentators lists. Moreover, don’t give up on blogs without top commentators. You may wish to throttle back your comments, but I still write many comments to this day on blogs without the widget.

Image of comment © iStockPhoto – pagadesign

PPC Associates Billboards On 101 Rock

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 4 8

Have you heard of PPC Associates? Based here in the Silicon Valley, they are one of the best SEM agencies around. My personal friend David Rodnitzky started PPC Associates back in January, 2008. Now, PPC Associates has 25+ employees and manages SEM operations for some of the most powerful advertisers on the Internet. If you’re looking for an SEM agency, I highly recommend Contacting PPC Associates.

Geoff Shenk (Kenshoo), David Rodnitzky (PPC Associates), and PPC Ian at SMX Advanced Seattle 2011

I was absolutely floored when I saw the billboard pictured below driving home from work today! PPC Associates actually has two billboards on 101 in Palo Alto right around the University Avenue exit. This is prime billboard real estate and PPC Associates clearly went big.

While I’m all about online marketing, I’m also a big fan of offline marketing. Just check out my posts about WebEx’s Caltrain Station Takeover and Showtime’s Photo Booth in Las Vegas. You may also be interested in the guest from Vito Glazers about Offline Email Capture. Vito is CEO of CPA Tank, one of the top affiliate networks around, and his guest post is one of my favorite posts on PPC Ian.

In addition to being a cool case study in offline advertising, I’m thrilled about the new PPC Associates billboards because they officially put pay per click on the map. PPC as a career and industry is getting hotter and hotter. It’s advertisements like this that create huge awareness for our entire industry. Nice work David and the entire PPC Associates team!

Image of PPC Associates Billboard © PPCAssociates.com

PPC Ian’s 2012 Goals

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 2 19

Happy new year! Yesterday, I wrote a Recap of My 2011 Goals. Excitingly, I was able to achieve 4 out of 5 goals, not bad at all. Today, I’m thrilled to continue my tradition of setting goals at the beginning of the year with PPC Ian’s 2012 Goals. Before I get into the specific sub-goals, I want to lay out my high level framework. Overall, I am working on three major areas this year:

2012 New Years

Getting closer to complete financial freedom (setting myself and my wife up to eventually live off of passive income, mainly financial instruments such as dividend-paying stocks)
Giving back in a major way (large charitable donations and giving back to the online marketing industry)
Having fun (more personal time and more time with my wife)

Following are my sub-goals that roll up into my high level goals…

Goal 1: Save Money and Invest Wisely

Nicole & Ian 2011 Holiday Party

For me, the investing wisely part is quite easy. I’m a pro. The hard part is saving money. I like to go big. I spent a lot of money in 2011. I’m actually happy about the expenses as they were one time charges/investments in happiness.

2012 is going to be all about saving. It’s time for PPC Ian to get frugal and put every dollar to use. Specifically, I will grow the amount of money I have invested in dividend-paying stocks by at least 30%. I already have a solid base (I have been investing since high school) so this is going to be a tough feat. It’s going to come down to funneling money into stocks, both from my job and from my affiliate marketing operations.

On the affiliate marketing side, I’m going to need to deliver another year of solid revenue growth (50% or more) with high margins (70% or higher margins). Instead of investing money in my business, I’m going to overcompensate by investing sweat equity. I’m going to continue to extract serious money from my business and move it into dividend-paying stocks. (I’m a huge champion of Robert Kiyosaki’s “velocity of money” strategy.)

Long term, it’s my opinion that true financial freedom comes from living off of passive income from dividend stocks and passive investments. I’m a long way away from that, but that’s ok. Time and compound interest are on my side. Want to learn more about my passive income strategy? Check out my Money Map.

Goal 2: Grow PPC Ian To 2,500 Visitors/Day

Currently, I’m getting about 1,400 visitors/day here at PPC Ian (based on December, 2011 stats). Thanks so much for reading! This year, I have decided to divert most of my free time towards PPC Ian. I’ll spend about 70% of my free time blogging here about online marketing and the other 30% running IJL Productions. Why the shift? I have found that focus is everything and I’m starting to see some serious traction. My goal of giving back to the industry is largely dependent on my ability to reach lots of people and provide valuable content and perspectives. PPC Ian is my channel for doing so. I plan to give back to our industry in a major way by blogging more frequently and providing amazing PPC and online marketing tips. If there’s anything you’d like to see on PPC Ian, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m here to help!

Goal 3: Donate a Record Amount To Charity

I’m pleased to say that Nicole and I donated a record amount of money to charity in 2011. 2012 is going to mark another year of record donations. Specifically, I am pledging to donate a record amount of money to Second Harvest Food Bank. I truly believe that we are all put here for a reason. Currently, I’m in a very fortunate and favorable position. As such, it’s my duty to give back and assist those less fortunate, especially people who live here in the Silicon Valley and are hungry. Put another way, when it’s my time to go, I want to rest assured that I made a major impact here on Planet Earth. I cannot think of too many other accomplishments that will make as large of an impact as donating to charities.

Goal 4: More Hip Hop and Jazz Concerts

Hip hop and jazz have been my passion for as long as I can remember. I’m truly fortunate that Nicole also enjoys the same music. On the hip hop side, we attended De La Soul (Nicole took me for my birthday) and The Pharcyde concerts in 2011. On the jazz side, we also attended a Norman Brown concert. In 2012, I want to attend even more concerts, both hip hop and jazz. What a great way to enjoy San Francisco while getting inspired. Every time I see one of my favorite artists perform, I walk away truly happy and inspired.

Goal 5: Run and Lift Weights 4 Times/Week

It wouldn’t be a PPC Ian goals list if I didn’t include something athletic. I don’t have any huge milestones this year such as the half marathon. However, I want to keep up my health by running twice per week and lifting weights twice per week. Also, I definitely want to run several 5K and 10K races. It’s amazing how much better you feel (and think) when you’re in great shape. This goal ties into my overall happiness and also allows me to spend more time with Nicole.

Goal 6: More Time With Family

It’s all about family. When you’re in the world of online marketing, it’s so easy to get tied up in your career and forget about the big picture. This year, I want to make a conscious effort to spend more time with my amazing family. This last goal will tie directly into my own happiness.

There are many more sub-goals that did not make this particular list. You may remember that one of my big goals is setting myself up for VP of Marketing at a large company. That’s definitely still on the list, I couldn’t be more passionate about the corporate marketing career path. However, it’s just not in the top 6 short list for this year (mainly because that goal is already ingrained in my subconscious). I enjoy referring back to this list each week so I’m able to stay on course, and these are the top 6 goals I wanted to remind myself of each and every week. What are your 2012 goals?

Happy 2012 & Recap of My 2011 Goals

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 1 15

Happy new year everyone, happy 2012! It’s my favorite time of the year. If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know I’m always thrilled to share my goals for the new year around this time. Two years ago, I shared my 2010 goals and last year I shared my 2011 goals. Since I’m so big on goal setting, I want to make the process a bit more formal this year. In today’s post, I’m going to reflect on my progress towards my 2011 goals. In one of my next posts, I’ll share my 2012 goals. You’ll definitely want to stay tuned – my 2012 goals are quite different from my 2011 ones. In 2011, I had 5 main goals…

Goal 1: Continue To Set Myself Up For Vice President of Marketing

Finishing The Half Marathon

I’ve now been at the Director level for over three years. The last 2 years and 4 months have been at a large, publicly traded company. When I was exploring my current job opportunity, I actually had a VP level offer from a 60 person startup (now larger). This goal is not only about achieving VP (if I wanted to do that, I could have joined that startup 2 years and 4 months ago), it’s about achieving VP at a large company.

Going from Director to Vice President at a large company takes time. It takes persistence. More than anything, it takes the consistent delivery of stellar results. In 2011, I spent a considerable amount of time delivering stellar results while broadening my corporate scope. In my affiliate business, IJL Productions LLC, I have always employed a broad marketing strategy. I regularly leverage all online marketing channels and even a few offline ones. In 2011, I expanded the scope of my corporate focus. In addition to pay per click, I focused on the following channels in a major way: Landing page design, SEO, social media marketing, display, and other marketing channels.

I hit my goal in 2011 of continuing to stay the course, I’m setting myself up for VP at a large company. Moreover, I did a few other things in 2011 that position my career quite well.

Goal 2: Grow My Affiliate Marketing Revenue By 5x

Check out my Money Map and you’ll quickly understand my financial strategy. Affiliate marketing is absolutely critical to my long term strategy. In a nutshell: I’m building up passive income above and beyond the income from my job. I’m reinvesting that money in other passive instruments (such as Lending Club). Long term, the passive income will balloon out of control and fund my family’s life.

While I did not hit my ambitious goal of growing my revenue by 5x, I did increase revenues by 79%. Moreover, my margins were the highest ever. I expanded them from non-existent (I made a net investment in my business in 2010) to 67%, the benefits of an SEO-focused portfolio of websites. I’m quite happy with my results, but at the same time have much higher goals. Stay tuned for my 2012 goals, I will definitely be discussing this one!

Goal 3: Focus On Fewer Websites

Out of my personal website portfolio 120+ websites, I actively focused on about 5 of them in 2011. I believe that is one of the main reasons I grew my affiliate marketing revenue so dramatically. Looking back, I started seeing even better results in recent months due to a two site focus (PPC Ian and one of my authority websites). The end result: I achieved this goal.

Goal 4: Half Marathon, Here I Come

It all started with the 2010 San Carlos Fun Run. After that race, I was hooked and started running all the time. I quickly set my sights on the half marathon and, as you can see in the picture above, I did it! I completed the half marathon in 2011, a long-time personal goal. I ran a strong race (the “Run With The Jets” race at Coyote Point in San Mateo) and did not walk at all. After the race, I felt quite bad, but that’s because I did not hydrate properly. I learned the hard way that it’s all about hydration when preparing for something like this.

Goal 5: Great Vacations With My Wife

Nicole and I really enjoy Hawaii. We enjoyed the Hawaiian Islands each year for the last three years. In 2011, we had Major Fun Times In Maui. We really went all out and had a super vacation. In addition to Hawaii, we visited Las Vegas. Also, we just got back from a holiday vacation to Carmel. Goal achieved!

So, there you have it. I achieved 4 out of 5 goals, not bad! Stay tuned for my 2012 goals. I have some incredibly exciting things in store for 2012 and can’t wait to write about my plans. Also, my sincere thank you for reading and for your support. I’m wishing you an amazing and prosperous new year!