Online Marketing Business Etiquette

Hey Everyone,
I recently did two former business colleagues huge favors with absolutely no thank you at all. As a huge fan of business etiquette (being humble, grateful, and thankful got me where I am today), I’d like to share my recent experiences and make the case to think twice about the "small" stuff. Rising fast in the world of online marketing requires etiquette. If you master the numbers and the game, your online marketing career will seriously thrive.

Bad Business Etiquette: New Job, No Thank You

Thank You Note

It’s all about your network. I have invested substantial time over the years building my network, both in person and also on LinkedIn. Why is my network so strong? I like to do favors for other people and help them out. The more you give, the more you receive – It really is as simple as that! I truly care about others and enjoy growing careers in this great industry.

So, when I noticed that one of my bright former business colleagues was out of work, I went out of my way to leverage my network to help them out. I ended up landing them a really sweet job! Here’s the problem: I got absolutely zero thank you. Can you believe it? I sure find it hard to believe! No thank you note, no dinner, no lunch, no thank you at all. My advice to you: Never take a favor like this for granted. No matter how busy you may be, take the time to really say thank you.

Bad Business Etiquette: Letter of Recommendation, No Thank You

I recently spoke about online marketing at Stanford GSB. I was thoroughly impressed with the strong caliber of students at Stanford. As a Stanford Computer Science major, I aspire to attend Stanford GSB one day. As a fan of business school and higher education in general, I always am more than happy to write strong letters of recommendation for old reports and co-workers!

This year, I have enjoyed writing several letters of recommendation. Most of the time, I will get a sincere thank you note, lunch, dinner, or at least an in-person thank you. Recently, however, I wrote a really strong letter of recommendation and got absolutely no thank you! I really can’t believe it, can you?

My advice to you: Always take the time to write a heartfelt thank you note. We’re in a crazy industry where time is at a premium. However, I can tell you for a fact that the leverage of focusing on etiquette is extremely high. I always place etiquette at the top of my list because it has totally fueled my career. I now have an army of friends and colleagues ready to help me out. Focus on the small stuff and your network will propel your career to the next level.

Bad Etiquette Has Negative Leverage

It’s important to really focus on leverage in online marketing. Getting more done with less will exponentially impact your career. However, leverage works in both directions. Bad etiquette can really add negative leverage to your career. Just think about it: Not only will I be reluctant to help out these individuals again, I’m sure their bad etiquette has also impacted other situations with other people. People like to talk in general and this type of stuff can really start spreading! My advice: Be humble, grateful, and thankful – It will work wonders for your SEM career!

All the best,
PPC Ian (Ian Lopuch)

P.S. My blog commenting contest is almost over! However, it’s definitely not too late to enter. You have a few more days and I’ll announce the winners on June 30th. The comments have been amazing and I can’t wait to review the winners.

Image of Thank You Note © iStockPhoto – DNY59

PPC Ian Wins A Cool Bing T-Shirt

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 21 7

Hey Everyone,
Today I wanted to highlight my cool new Bing t-shirt (see picture below). A few weeks ago, I noticed that @bing was running a Free T-Shirt Friday contest on Twitter. They simply asked folks to message @bing with a description of their search activities on Bing, specifically how people were using Bing to plan their weekend. At the time, I was searching on Bing for cool new online marketing blogs to learn some new pay per click strategies. I’m thrilled that I won the t-shirt and it’s really great quality. I’m a huge fan of the upcoming Yahoo-Microsoft Search Alliance and an overall huge fan of Bing. Bing team, thanks for the free t-shirt!

All the best,
PPC Ian (Ian Lopuch)

P.S. My blog commenting contest is going extremely well, but it’s not too late to enter! You still have over a week left to win a free review of your blog or website here on PPC Ian. To everyone who has participated so far, I sincerely thank you for your support.

P.P.S. I have been getting a lot of positive feedback about Jonathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide. It’s not too late to pick up your copy. Start implementing Jonathan’s proprietary strategies now before they become commonplace!

P.P.P.S. I’ve been winning a lot of stuff lately! Check out John Chow’s latest episode of Dot Com Pho and you can see yours truly winning a pack of Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards live on Dot Com Pho. Scroll down on that post and you can see my blog commenting strategy hard at work. It’s blog commenting like this that has put PPC Ian on John Chow’s top commentors and propelled my traffic to new levels.

Image In This Post © PPCIan.com (An IJL Productions LLC Website)

Contest: Your Blog Reviewed For Free

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 16 20

PPC Ian has really been taking off thanks to all of you. Because my blog has been ramping so quickly, I wanted to take some time today to share some of my favorite PPC Ian posts from the past while also introducing PPC Ian’s very first contest! If you scroll down a bit and look at my blog’s right sidebar, you can see my favorite posts. I highly recommend checking them all out. You’ll notice that all of these posts have lots of comments. Today, however, I’d like to take a different approach and share my top 10 favorite posts that got 0 comments. These are posts that may have been missed because they’re a bit older, before my blog started getting a lot of traffic. First, however, I’d like to talk about my contest!

PPC Ian’s First Contest

Favorite Online Marketing Posts

I’m a huge fan of blog commenting. As highlighted in my last post about SMX Advanced, I just met up with the Unique Blog Designs team. I’m actually working with these guys right now to make some enhancements to PPC Ian! One of those enhancements is an awesome top commentors section where I link to those of you driving the comments on my blog. I can’t wait! However, we’re just in the planning phase now (there will be a whole bunch of items on the checklist) and this process could take a bit of time. As such, I started brainstorming ideas on how I could drive more comments on PPC Ian now and an idea was born: Run a contest to drive blog comments!

So here’s the deal: Starting right now, this exact moment, I’m going to run a two week contest. This contest will reward the top three commentors over the next two weeks with reviews of their blogs (or websites). The reviews will feature each winner’s site with deep links to the top features on their sites. This is an awesome opportunity to get free press (and links) to your site!

Every comment that you make between now and two weeks from this exact moment will count towards a comment in the contest. I highly encourage commenting on the 10 awesome online marketing posts featured below for the simple fact that they have 0 comments right now. I would love to get your opinion on these posts. These posts are hidden gems on this blog in my opinion. At the same time, please do feel free to comment on any posts you’d like – all comments count. Two weeks from today, I will tally up the comments by commentor. The top three commentors will be featured in a follow-up article. That article will review the blogs (or websites) of the top three commentors and will provide several links to each site! The only restriction: To be eligible for this contest, your blog (or website) must be "family friendly." There you have it! I’m excited about this contest and looking forward to reading everyone’s comments!

10 Awesome Online Marketing Posts With 0 Comments

Following are some of my favorite PPC Ian posts. All of these posts received 0 comments. Even so, I feel like these posts are true hidden gems! I posted them before my site started getting a lot of traffic and I sincerely feel that you’ll learn some great stuff from these posts. I’ve divided them up into four broad themes: Search Marketing Career Tips, SEM People Management, Domaining, and Affiliate Marketing. I’m looking forward to reading your comments!

Search Marketing Career Tips
SEM People Management
- SEM Career Progress and Your Manager
- Celebrate Your PPC Team’s Success
Domaining
- Search Marketers Make Excellent Domainers
- PPC Domain Strategies
Affiliate Marketing
- Moonlighting Will Accelerate Your SEM Career
- Review of eBay’s Quality Click Pricing

Image of Favorites Remote © iStockPhoto – Whiteway

SMX Advanced Seattle 2010 Rocked

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 11 14

I attended SMX Advanced Seattle this week and had an awesome time. I really enjoyed the venue and met up with a lot of old and new friends. I even learned a few new tips and tricks from the esteemed group of presenters. In short, this was a superb conference. Today, I’m going to discuss my personal experience!

SMX Advanced Overview

Bing Team

I’m a big fan of online marketing conferences. Back in January, I thoroughly enjoyed the domaining conference TRAFFIC. More recently, I attended SMX West Santa Clara (but didn’t blog about it). The next conference on my list is SES San Francisco, coming in August. Search marketing conferences are a great place to network, learn, and stay in tune with a quickly evolving industry. It’s very easy to get stuck behind your computer and work long hours, losing sight of the bigger industry. My advice to you: Get yourself and your team out of the office and attend a few conferences!

This year, SMX (Search Marketing Expo) Advanced was held at Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle. You can see a few pictures of the venue at the end of this post. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed beautiful Seattle. I stayed at the convenient Edgewater Hotel right next to the conference center, the official hotel of the conference. I enjoy getting my sleep so the convenience of the hotel to the conference was a true gift.

For those of you newer to the industry, SMX conferences are organized by industry guru Danny Sullivan. Danny owns Third Door Media which publishes the world famous Search Engine Land. I always enjoy SMX conferences and this one took it to the next level, in my opinion. Why, you ask? Simple: I walked away empowered with a few new tips and tricks. As someone who’s been a PPC pro for over six years, it’s sometimes hard to find new, interesting ideas! I personally attended all of the sessions on the PPC track and enjoyed all of them.

SMX Advanced Was Great For Networking

Before we even get into my experience in the sessions, I have to highlight the awesome networking opportunities that SMX Advanced provided. I’m a huge fan of the Yahoo-Microsoft Search Alliance. It’s one of the most exciting events in our industry since the Yahoo Panama transition several years ago. As such, I definitely wanted to spend some time with the Bing and Yahoo teams. You can see some photos of me with my friends from Bing and Yahoo above and below.

Second to the end below, you can see me hanging out with my friends from Kenshoo. As you may know, I’m a huge fan of SEM automation. Kenshoo is one of the premier SEM tools out there. The team is amazing (I have known these guys for a few years now) and they are growing rapidly. Their success makes perfect sense to me, the tool is awesome! Stay tuned, I will be interviewing Kenshoo in a future PPC Ian post.

Not pictured in this post, I got to connect with several old reports and co-workers. It’s a small industry and always great to see old friends. Also, I got to meet up with some of my newer friends. I enjoyed meeting Chris Guthrie from Make Money On The Internet and also Matt, Josh, and Nate from Unique Blog Designs. Unique Blog Designs designed and built PPC Ian! I worked extensively with them over the phone and email, and now I finally got to meet them. Good times for sure!

A Few Cool Takeaways From SMX Advanced

I took pages and pages of notes at SMX Advanced. Throughout the conference, I enjoyed emailing tips and tricks back to my team. I’ve been in the industry for over six years so it’s not often that I walk away from a conference with action items. SMX Advanced was different, however, and I now have a few new strategies to try. The presentations were great from the standpoint of sparking new ideas while also helping me re-engage old ideas that I had but filed away. I’d like to highlight just a few fun takeaways from the event:

Craig Danuloff, Founder and President of ClickEquations gave an excellent presentation on Google AdWords quality score. I walked away with an awesome white paper and a few new quality score tests. In particular, Craig piqued my interest with his hypothesis that display URLs with fake subdomains and folders (to improve CTR) are considered different from the root URL for quality score history purposes.
Wister Walcott from Marin Software proved that conversion rate does not vary by position! There has been an ongoing debate in our industry about this topic forever. It was great to see Wister independently prove this concept, further validating the findings of Google’s chief economist Hal Varian (I recently heard Hal speak on this topic at Google’s Think Finance event). As you know from my recent Marin Software Interview, I’m a tremendous fan of this amazing SEM technology company and give them my top recommendation.
Siddharth Shah, PhD from Efficient Frontier discussed portfolio theory versus profit maximization bidding models and how one may leverage the concepts of portfolio theory even with an unlimited budget. I really enjoyed his talk and walked away with an awesome white paper as well!
Several awesome presentations on mobile PPC. Mobile is going to be huge in coming years and now is the time to start testing. Of particular interest, I enjoyed learning that shorter queries perform better in mobile and that catchy abbreviations such as "4" (instead of "for") and "ur" (instead of "your") are accepted by Google. I feel empowered to start some mobile tests.
The idea of microconversions was covered several times. I’m a big direct response guy. However, when you’re building out awareness, branding, and social media efforts, it’s not always practical to look at the entire funnel. However, one should assign a dollar value to microconversions such as number of Twitter followers, white paper downloads, and Facebook fans. An old concept that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but great to put it in font of me again and remind me to take action!

Couldn’t attend SMX Advanced this year? Don’t worry! SMX conferences are frequent and SMX Paris and SMX East are just around the corner. One thing is for sure: I will be attending SMX Advanced again next year! I will tell you, there was one huge downside to this conference… My two hour flight home turned into a six hour flight home. High winds in San Francisco forced my small United plane to turn around and land in Sacramento (lack of fuel to circle and wait for landing clearance). After waiting a long time on the Sacramento runway, we finally took off again for SF. The second time around, we had to circle like crazy until we finally landed. Upon landing, there really were some seriously high winds so I do appreciate that United put safety first and didn’t rush the landing.

Some Photos From SMX Advanced Seattle

All Images In This Post © PPCIan.com (An IJL Productions LLC Website)

Facebook Ads Do Not Work!

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 5 22

Hey Everyone,

I used to think that Facebook Ads do not work, but was wrong (it happens from time to time)! I’ll certainly say from personal experience that Facebook Ads can be quite challenging for certain verticals. However, after reading Jonathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide, I’m convinced that there’s serious money to be made in Facebook advertising and am personally empowered with some new ideas that are going to make Facebook advertising work for me. Today, I’m going to review Jonathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide and my key takeaways. If you leave with only one message, I sincerely urge you to purchase your copy of Jonathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide. It’s only $79 (limited time discount) and you owe it to your career in search engine marketing! If you’re in the corporate world of SEM (like me), you may even be able to expense this charge to your company (every company should own this guide in my opinion)!

Who Is Jonathan Volk and Why Do I Trust This Guy?

I’m going to start out with a brief introduction of my friend Jonathan Volk. Jonathan Volk is another San Francisco Bay Area marketer who has generated $3,693.21 per day for over 10 months in his personal Facebook advertising account! Aside from Facebook, Jonathan runs one of the most successful blogs on the Internet about how to make money online. I was actually honored a while back when Jonathan personally interviewed yours truly on his blog. Put simply, Jonathan is a force to be reckoned with in the world of online marketing and is the go to guy when it comes to Facebook Ads.

I Changed My Mind On Facebook Ads

I recently presented online marketing tips to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The presentation couldn’t have gone any better! During the presentation, I remember getting questions from GSB students about Facebook Ads. I also remember telling them that Facebook doesn’t work! If there’s only one part of the presentation that I’d like to change, it would be my response on Facebook Ads. At the time, I think it was super advice. Now that Jonathan’s guide exists, I’d like to reframe my answer: "Facebook Ads don’t work… Unless you first read Jonathan Volk’s guide!"

Facebook Ads are challenging because the strategies and tactics are quite different than the tried and true Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter ones. In fact, some of the winning strategies directly conflict with what you’d do on the major search engines! Heck, Facebook even had Jonathan Volk stumped for a while. However, he devoted himself to making it work. After investing substantial time and money in testing, Jonathan finally cracked the code.

I’m now convinced that Facebook Ads work and personally walked away from Jonathan’s guide with a wealth of actionable tips. More than anything, I’m excited to know that I can benefit from Jonathan’s investment and not have to invest the same time and money in finding winning Facebook Ads strategies.

My Key Takeaways From Jonathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide

Now, I’d like to briefly highlight some of my major takeaways. Of course, I can’t go into too much detail (you’ll want to buy the guide to learn the secrets), but I will definitely give you a flavor of what impacted me the most.

First and foremost, I learned tremendously from Jonathan’s ad copy suggestions and tactics. He breaks down Facebook Ads into two components, image and text, and goes into micro detail on how you can optimize both. I was really enlightened by Jonathan’s tactical tips and walked away with some great strategies. These strategies are definitely out of the box!
Second, I’m a big fan of bidding strategy. There are two major bidding models on Facebook: CPM and CPC. Jonathan goes into the nuts and bolts of both and exposes winning strategies. I was surprised to find that some of his strategies conflict with my own best practices from Google AdWords!
Third, I really benefited from Jonathan’s discussion of Facebook Ads budgets and Upper Hand Techniques. This is where Jonathan really exposes some clever ideas that will take your campaigns to the next level. These are all out of the box strategies that took Jonathan substantial time and money to discover.

As some constructive feedback, I will say that the first part of the guide was a bit too basic for me. The first section discusses the basics of affiliate marketing and how to apply for affiliate networks. I’m a pro when it comes to online marketing so I was able to skip this section. At the same time, I’ll definitely say there was more than enough new stuff in this guide (most of the guide, in fact) to empower my Facebook advertising game! Moreover, I think this first section is great for those that are new to affiliate marketing.

Your SEM Career Will Fall Behind Without This Guide

To close out, I really want to highlight the fact that we’re in a dynamic industry. PPC Ian is all about educating and empowering online marketing professionals. Many of you guys are in the corporate world of SEM. I’m here to say that corporate success is all about keeping your winning edge and bringing that next big idea to your company. In my opinion, Facebook Ads are the next big thing. Facebook hasn’t blown up just yet (in the corporate world), so now’s your chance to stay ahead of the curve. Jonathan’s guide is a small $79 investment (limited time offer) that could fuel substantial gains in your online marketing career. If you’re an affiliate marketer, you’re going to make a ton more money. If you’re in the corporate world, you’re going to bring to the company strategies that will get you promoted!

Sincerely,
Ian Lopuch (PPC Ian)

PS – You may be wondering, why would Jonathan give this all away for only $79 (limited time offer)? If he has such great strategies, why wouldn’t he keep them secret? My answer is simple: Jonathan wants to help people (just like my own philosophy)! Moreover, selling eBooks is a great way to diversify. Jonathan originally focused on Facebook to diversify his Google AdWords revenue streams. Now, he’s diversifying even more by selling an eBook. Not a bad strategy in my opinion. It’s a strategy that I respect very much and one that I envision myself taking in the future!

PPS – The guide comes with a bunch of amazing extras as well that will help you set up your Facebook Ads campaigns!

Image In This Post © JonathanVolk.com

My Blog Commenting Strategy

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 1 44

In my opinion, it’s all about PPC. At the same time, you can be even better at PPC if you learn other marketing opportunities and channels as well. Just last week I wrote all about offline marketing and specifically the WebEx Caltrain Station Takeover. Today, I’m excited to share one of my new blog marketing strategies: blog commenting.

Growing PPC Ian’s Traffic Base

Jonathan Volk Top Commentors

I launched PPC Ian, my first blog ever, back in October, 2009 and it has been an amazing learning experience for sure. My marketing strategy originally revolved around my extensive network of friends on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. As the months passed, my strategy shifted to an SEO and PR one with a little PPC mixed in. My traffic stats are now at an all time high thanks to loyal readers like you! However, I’m an ambitious guy and definitely want to grow my traffic quite a bit more. Moreover, realizing that blog marketing requires a whole different skill set than my portfolio of static websites, I’m now experimenting with some new marketing strategies including blog commenting.

Why Am I Commenting On Blogs?

There are many reasons I decided to start commenting on other blogs with the following topping the list. First, I noticed my friend Jeremy from Profit Addiction commenting everywhere! In tandem, I noticed Jeremy’s traffic and comments on his blog spiking. Blog commenting seems to be a strategy working quite well for Profit Addiction so this definitely piqued my interest in running my blog commenting test.

Second, I realized that blogging is a very social phenomenon. It’s all about conversation. If you don’t participate in the conversation, you’re not going to get as much attention. I realized how important it is for me to join the conversation. This is a very different philosophy that the one I’ve historically leveraged with my portfolio of SEO websites and one of the key differences between a blog and static website, in my opinion.

Third, I realized that blog commenting is a great way to get quality inbound links to my blog. Many of the great blogs out there have a top commentors list in their sidebar or footer (meaning the list shows up on every single page of these blogs). Moreover, many of these top commentors lists are real links. Unlike links in the actual comments you make, the top commentors links do not contain nofollow tags so search engines respect these as legit links!

Fourth, and most importantly, it’s just plain fun! I’m commenting on other blogs because I very much enjoy it. There are a number of amazing blogs out there about online marketing and it’s fun to join the conversation.

Where Am I Commenting?

There are two images in this article. The first shows me as the number one top commentor on Jonathan Volk’s Blog. I’m a long time fan of JV and enjoy his blog quite a bit. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may know that JV interviewed me a while back. I can always count on JV for quality posts and enjoy interacting with others on his blog. Moreover, his top commentors list gives me that great inbound link I was just discussing. I’m currently reading JV’s new eBook about Facebook advertising and hope to review it here in the coming week or so.

The image below shows one of my comments and also shows that I’m a top commentor on JohnChow.com. In the world of online marketing, JohnChow.com is a man who needs no introduction. I actually just reviewed John Chow’s Book and was also reviewed on John’s blog a while back. Like JV’s top commentor’s list, John’s also provides a quality inbound link.

Want to learn about more of the blogs which I frequently comment on? Make sure to check out my blogroll and also my post from a while back about PPC Ian’s favorite online marketing blogs.

Some Closing Thoughts

While my experiment is still in progress, I wanted to leave you with a few interesting closing thoughts. First, I must say that commenting requires time! Not too much for me at this point, but the commitment is definitely there. Longer term, I may decide to outsource some of the work if I further build out this strategy.

Second, I am already seeing some results. I’m getting direct traffic by participating in the discussions out there about online marketing. At the end of the day, that was my goal so I’m thrilled.

Third and most importantly, I wanted to call out the great fact that I’m learning. If you’re in the corporate PPC world like me, you’re probably laser focused on PPC all day long. That focus is a good thing because it creates a guru level mastery of PPC. At the same time, it leaves little room to learn other stuff. Most of my personal knowledge of SEO, email marketing, and now blogging has been self-taught. If you’re in the corporate world of online marketing, I highly recommend dabbling in a few side projects such as blogging. Your knowledge will skyrocket and will start paying dividends in your corporate career.

Images In This Post © JonathanVolk.com and JohnChow.com

WebEx Caltrain Station Takeover

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 26 4

I was having lunch with my old Stanford pal Alex today, fellow online marketer and owner of The Hamburger Phone, a website where you can buy that super cool Hamburger Phone featured in the movie Juno. Alex has some other sites, but this one is my favorite because I can’t get enough of the hamburger design. Maybe I just like hamburgers, but I digress…

WebEx Caltrain Station Takeover

We both agreed that the pay per click corporate world is hot right now. In fact it couldn’t be hotter. Despite an overall crazy economy, careers in SEM are recession proof. However, as with anything hot, it’s important to plan for the long run. What happens when search engines get really smart and start abstracting a lot of the day-to-day work? What happens when SEM becomes super easy and large teams are no longer needed to manage campaigns?

Simple! Search marketing professionals will need to rebrand themselves across marketing channels: offline, display, email, and others. The search marketing career path may become a well-rounded one. For this very reason, I’m a big proponent of diversifying one’s skill set. In fact, I joined my current company to learn all about television and radio advertising, disciplines none of my prior companies participated in.

With this very long introduction, I wanted to take some time today and share a very cool offline campaign that I recently noticed, one that took a lot of creativity: WebEx’s San Francisco Caltrain Station Takeover. While SEM in its current form is here to stay for a very long time, it’s never too early to start diversifying your skill set into the offline marketing world. This will not only round out your toolkit but will also make you Director or even VP material!

I Really Enjoy Taking Caltrain To Work

I spend the majority of my time in my company’s San Francisco office. It’s conveniently located near the San Francisco Caltrain station and I take Caltrain to work. For those of you new to Caltrain, it’s basically a train that goes all the way from the South Bay to San Francisco. It’s an amazingly convenient, cheap, and fast form of transportation, one that can save you thousands of dollars of wear and tear on your car while allowing you to relax (or work) on the way to your job.

The Demographics of Caltrain Are Top Notch

As marketers, we all know that demographics are important. Target the right group of individuals and your returns will be through the roof. Caltrain, in my opinion, offers amazing demographic targeting for savvy marketers. Most of the folks I see on the train going to and from work are very similar to myself: Decision makers and executives in the Bay Area corporate world. If you’re selling B2B solutions like WebEx, this is the group you’re after!

WebEx Completely Takes Over the San Francisco Caltrain Station

A month or so ago, I got off the train in San Francisco and noticed that WebEx took over the entire Caltrain station. Everywhere I looked, I saw ads for WebEx. It’s hard to miss them! You can view just a few photos below of the WebEx’s banners, clock, pillars, and even advertisements on the floor! For the reasons mentioned above, I personally feel like this offline campaign is pure genius. WebEx targets the right demographic audience at the right time! Not only are they targeting decision makers, but they are targeting these decision makers as they arrive at work in the morning.

So there you have it, one of the really cool and innovative offline marketing campaigns of the last few months. While the charter of my blog will always be online marketing, I’m looking forward to sharing other great offline campaigns as I come across them! As a closing tip, I encourage you to approach your CMO as you come up with great offline strategies. You don’t want to do this too frequently (you might dilute your brand as a PPC expert), but the right tempo can work wonders for your career.

All Images In This Post Taken By PPCIan.com Exclusively For PPCIan.com (An IJL Productions LLC Website)

PPC Ian’s New FeedBurner Feed

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 23 5

Hey Everyone,
I’m pleased to announce that PPC Ian is now leveraging FeedBurner to syndicate my full posts! It really hit me when I was reading Make Money Online, John Chow’s new book. John clearly calls out that FeedBurner is important for two reasons.

First and foremost, it gives all of you the opportunity to receive full PPC Ian posts right to your email inbox! This is a super convenient way to enjoy PPC Ian articles as soon as they are posted. Want to sign up? Simply visit PPC Ian’s Feed and click the option at the top of the page to receive email updates.
Second, FeedBurner offers advanced RSS feed statistics. I’ll get a better picture of how many people are subscribed to my feed, a great way to understand the growth and success of this blog. Curious about my subscriber statistics? I’ll definitely post them on here in the future.

I sincerely thank you for visiting and supporting my blog! I encourage you to subscribe to PPC Ian’s FeedBurner RSS Feed as the best way to get up to the minute PPC Ian posts.

I wish you an awesome week of online marketing!
All the best,
PPC Ian (Ian Lopuch)

PS – Existing RSS subscribers, this should not change anything for you. If you notice any unexpected changes, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Of course, if you’d like to receive updates via email, that new option is now open to you. Simply visit the PPC Ian Feed and select the email option toward the top of the page. Thanks again!

PPS – In addition to my FeedBurner RSS Feed, I highly recommend signing up for PPC Ian’s eBook highlighting my top five secret PPC career strategies. When you sign up for my eBook, you will also receive my PowerPoint presentation from my recent Stanford GSB Presentation in addition to my exclusive newsletter. The newsletter and extras only go out to eBook subscribers!

PPC Ian Runs The 5K San Carlos Fun Run

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 23 5

Hey Everyone,
Hope you’re having a super weekend! I’m always talking about PPC and online marketing around here, a good thing considering the name of my blog is PPC Ian and online marketing is a fascinating topic. However, today I’d like to break things up a bit with a very exciting update from my personal life! Today my wife and I ran the 5K San Carlos Rotary Club Fun Run. We had an amazing time and thoroughly enjoyed the event. I’m looking forward to sharing my experience with you.

PPC Ian’s 2010 Goals

Ian Lopuch San Carlos Fun Run

If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you probably know that I’m huge on goal setting. I’m really excited because I recently spoke about online marketing at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, one of my big 2010 goals.

In addition to participating in one major public speaking event, I also have the 2010 goal of getting six pack abs. In terms of achieving that goal, my wife and I have been diligently working out with our trainer, attending boot camp, and also working out on our own each and every week for months! I can definitely see results and am thrilled!

Taking the fitness goal to the next level, we decided to participate the in the San Carlos Fun Run. The 5K race sponsored by the Rotary Club spanned the beautiful foothills of San Carlos, a small city close to our home on the San Francisco Peninsula. The race spans all age groups and included several hundred participants. As someone who’s a bit out of practice in the world of competitive running and who has gained a lot of muscle, I went into the race with a goal of breaking 30 minutes. I’m thrilled to report that I came in at 28:19, well ahead of my goal!

We Plan To Participate In More Runs

After the event, my wife and I were thrilled. It brought back the sense of excitement I experienced during my high school varsity cross country and swim team days. In those days, I was able to finish 5K in the low 20s. However, I also had about 30 pounds less muscle to carry around and two hours per day to practice. Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to pushing it and getting down to the 25 minute level by next year’s run! Moreover, we’re looking forward to participating in more 5K or even 10K runs in coming months. Another PPC Ian 2010 goal: Spend a lot of time with my wife. Running and training has been a great way for us to spend quality time together and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Fitness Brings Great Results In Pay Per Click

I wanted to close out with a quick tip: Take time to exercise regularly. PPC and online marketing in general is a crazy career. It’s incredibly rewarding and exciting, but also very time consuming and addictive. I’m often completely glued to the computer. However, it all comes down to productivity and longevity. I’ve personally found fitness to be an incredible driver in my long term happiness and also productivity. After today’s run, I’m definitely pumped up and excited to head into a productive work week tomorrow!

All the best,
PPC Ian (Ian Lopuch)

PS – It’s a crazy small world. I ran into one of the top executives of Inflection (formerly People Search Media) at the run today! As you may know from my about me, I worked at Inflection before my current gig. The moral of the story: Keep your eyes open, it’s a small world and great opportunities to network and run into friends are plentiful!

Review: Make Money Online By John Chow

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 19 15

Today, it’s my absolute pleasure to review John Chow’s new book about blogging for money, Make Money Online. In the image below, you can see my very own autographed copy of Make Money Online. (Want your own? You can order your autographed copy of John Chow’s book directly from his blog for only $23.99. Of course, you can also purchase a non-autographed copy from all the normal venues.) At the end of this review, you can see an image of me proudly displaying John’s book. In short, I’m thrilled with this book and highly recommend you purchase a copy. It’s one of the best books I’ve read about blogging and I’m looking forward to sharing a few of my personal takeaways. First, however, I’ll start with a little background.

Who is John Chow?

John Chow Make Money Online Book

If you’ve been following PPC Ian for a while, you may know that I’m a huge fan of John Chow. Not only do I link to JohnChow.com in my blogroll, but I also enjoy commenting on his blog. Also of interest, PPC Ian was recently reviewed on John Chow dot com. The review was very positive and ended up driving a substantial amount of traffic to PPC Ian! More than anything, it was a milestone and honor in my career.

John Chow is one of the most celebrated Internet marketers around. In the circle of making money online, there are few bloggers that stand out as much as John, and I personally find quite a bit of inspiration in his blog. For that reason, I’m excited share with you some of my favorite takeaways from John’s new book! The following four takeaways are just a very small sample of the great knowledge I took away from John’s book.

Takeaway 1: A Non-Updated Blog Is A Dead Blog

I’m new to blogging. While I own a portfolio of domains and websites optimized toward affiliate cash generation, PPCIan.com is my very first blog! I launched PPC Ian back in October, 2009 and have been enthusiastically learning each and every day.

One of the trends I have observed with PPC Ian is a dramatic influx of traffic whenever I do a new post. As such, I always look forward to posting new, quality content. At the same time, it really hit home when John Chow pointed out (several times) that a non-updated blog is a dead blog. As someone with a very exciting and important PPC career, I find it essentially impossible to update my blog more than once a week. In terms of my blog’s growth, I know this is not ideal. As John also points out, it’s important to have a consistent schedule and to never compromise on quality – I’m definitely doing those two things right. However, I really do wish I could update at least twice per week.

In terms of solutions, I don’t see one just yet, but I must say this simple yet very powerful advice really struck home and got me thinking about how I can take my blog to the next level! After all, there will come a point when I hope to generate income from PPC Ian. I’m not at that point yet, but I do believe a faster-paced schedule will be critical in reaching my goal.

Takeaway 2: FeedBurner Is Essential

If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you may also remember when I was interviewed by super affiliate Jonathan Volk. This was quite the honor! In my interview, Jonathan pointed out that I should install FeedBurner on my blog. Similarly, John Chow devoted several pages of his book to this very topic (RSS feeds and their power).

I’m personally not a huge RSS consumer myself. Because I’m a big commenter on the blogs I frequent, I go the old school route and visit blogs directly. However, I should not assume everyone is like this. In terms of taking PPC Ian to the next level, I have officially decided to make FeedBurner a priority thanks to John and Jonathan’s advice. Please keep an eye out for this in the coming weeks. I hope to make it as easy as possible for you to read PPC Ian in the format that’s most convenient for you! John points out that number of RSS readers is an incredibly important statistic.

Takeaway 3: John Chow Will Save You Time!

As mentioned earlier, I’m newer to blogging. I have learned a tremendous amount over the past year. Most of my lessons have come the hard way for sure. I don’t mind it at all, this is how the best lessons are learned. At the same time, I sure do wish I had John’s book when I started. John Chow describes in detail solutions to many common blogging dilemmas such as duplicate content (and htaccess), WordPress SEO (where some of my hard lessons were learned), content generation, essential WordPress plug-ins, and so much more!

Regardless of where you stand in the online marketing game, John’s book is the perfect combination of high level theory and lower level tactical tips. It will save you a tremendous amount of time.

Takeaway 4: I’m On The Right Path!

As my last takeaway, I felt really good reading John’s book. While I certainly jotted down dozens of notes on how to improve PPC Ian (just a few of which I share above), I also realized that I’m doing quite a bit right and am very consistent with the strategies John describes. I started blogging in October, 2009 knowing a lot about PPC, but very little about blogging. In less than a year, I have been able to accomplish a lot with PPC Ian. I owe my success to very hard work, passion for PPC, trial and error, and much more than anything all of you – my loyal PPC Ian readers! I sincerely thank you for your support, it means the world to me! I recommend John Chow’s book and hope it helps drive success in your personal online marketing career.