Entries from December 2007 ↓

I hope that you’ve had a Merry Christmas if you take part in celebrating the holiday. I just got home from visiting my family and overall I had a great Christmas in light of some unfortunate circumstances over the last few weeks.

Unfortunately a little over two weeks ago my grandpa passed away unexpectedly and it was definitely pretty tough for me. This was initially very hard for me for a couple of different reasons. I had a great relationship with my grandpa and I’ve got a ton of great memories that I’ll always hold dear to my heart. The hardest part though is the fact that I hadn’t been home in awhile to see him or my grandma and I think in a way that I took for granted that they would just be there the next time that I made it home. They last time I actually spoke to him was last August when he and my grandma called to wish me happy birthday. I spent the days after his passing feeling guilty for not keeping in touch more than I had been but finally I came to a realization. Even though I hadn’t seen him as much as I should have he knew that I loved him and we’ll always have numerous great memories of each other. Grandpa I miss you dearly and I look forward to seeing you again some day and I’ll cherish all of our memories until then.

Here are some best memories I have of my grandpa

1. My brother and I spending weeks at my grandparent’s house during the summer to go golfing with grandpa and our shopping trips for new school clothes.
2. He was at almost every organized sporting event that I participated in growing up to support me.
3. His funny stories - It didn’t matter if he had already told the story a 100 times he still told it each time with the enthusiasm of the first time.
4. The great vacation he and grandma took my brother and me on when we were young kids.
5. Going out to dinner with he and grandma. I could spend 2 or 3 hours just sitting and having a conversation with them after dinner.
6. The respect and appreciation that he should me each time the honor roll was released in school.
7. Seeing how proud both he and my grandma were at my wedding 3 years ago

So I guess my point is don’t ever take your loved ones for granted. Always take the time out to spend quality time with them. It doesn’t even matter what age because each of us never knows when their time will come. I know this has definitely changed my prospective on some things and I’m going to make a much stronger effort to spend more time with my loved ones and hopefully you will to.

I hope that everyone has a happy rest of the holiday season and I look forward to a great new year!

Well it’s been awhile since I’ve been able to update this lately, sorry I’ve been busy with some other ventures including Daily Deals. Currently I’m sitting here writing this as a major ice storm is just getting going here in Kansas City. It looks to be a major event and I’m guessing that most likely I’ll probably be without power tomorrow so if that happens things will really suck.

I’ve been putting alot of effort into affiliate marketing lately and I’m seeing some nice results so far. If you’ve ever considered trying it out I highly recommend signing up with NeverBlueAds. They’ve got a ton of offers to choose from including some really good ones that can generate some nice cash. They’ve just redesigned their site and it’s laid out very well and I find it extremely easy to use. If you get a chance go ahead and sign up!

Okay Now Lets Get to the Point of This Post
Ever since I started pay per click marketing I constantly heard horror stories about the Google Content Network. I’ve read so many things recommending that you turn off the content network on your campaigns because it’s wasted traffic that doesn’t convert into sales or leads. Well I actually believed this myself for the longest time until I actually did some testing.

Over the last month I’ve been promoting some affiliate offers over the content network and the results have been outstanding so far. Currently I’m seeing about a 400% ROI on my ad spend and I really haven’t even begun to optimize these campaigns because they’re just something I threw out there to test. I think that if I take the time to really put some work into them then I’ll definitely be able to see even greater ROI on my ad spend.

Now don’t get me wrong this may not work for everyone on their campaigns, but I’ve got a point that I’m trying to get across here.  If you automatically shut off the content network without even testing it out then you might be missing out on some very good traffic that does convert and converts well at a low price.

If  you do decide to do some testing here is nice method that I’m going to start using to constantly test my traffic from the content network.

1. Turn on conversion tracking in your adwords account and make sure that you’ve had the proper tracking code inserted on whatever affiliate offer that you you’re promoting.
2. Once that you start seeing conversions in your adwords account then run a placement report  to see what sites on the content network are converting for you and which ones aren’t.
3. Now that you’ve got that data to go off of you can exclude your ads from showing up on sites that don’t convert.  In order to do this click on the campaign and then look for the Excluded Sites option and then click add.  Now just add the sites here that don’t convert for you and you’ve easily taken an additional step to increase your profits!

So just remember the next time you’re planning on turning the content network off from the start you should really test it out first.  You never know but it actually may convert better than the search network and at a lower cost.