Successful daytraders use many different trading strategies, but one thing they all do well is manage their money. Applying these same ideas to your PPC campaigns can really improve your success.

We’ll look at a few daytrading concepts and then discuss how they apply to PPC:

• Each trade should only be a small portion of your total capital - Good money management dictates that you put only a fraction of your total investment (PPC spend) in any one trade (campaign). As you experience success, you would increase the amount you would spend on any one campaign. If you have a series of losses, you would decrease the amount you would commit to any one campaign. Using this approach will allow to “stay in the game” much longer. The smaller the percentage you commit to each campaign, the more losing campaigns you can have before you are forced to stop advertising.
  • Ex. - You could allocate 10% of your new PPC spend to each campaign. If you started with $500, you allocate $50 to each campaign. If a series of profitable campaigns increased your spend to $600, you would allocate $60 to each campaign. If a series of losses dropped your spend to $400, you would allocate $40 to each campaign.

• Have a stop loss - For each each campaign, you should have a maximum amount you’re willing to commit to find out if the campaign will be successful. Generally, you should use the allocation amount from preceding paragraph

• Cut your losers - Daytraders are notorious for going into “hope” mode on a losing trade. They become emotionally attached to a trade and hope the loser is going to become profitable. Don’t do this with your PPC campaigns! If you set an adequate stop loss in the previous step, you’ll know when it’s time to shut down a campaign. Remember, losing campaigns tie up resources that could be used to investigate new PPC opportunities.

• Ride your winners - This rule is even more true with PPC than it is with daytrading. In trading, you never know when a profitable trade might turn south on you. With PPC, once you’ve established a profitable campaign, you can be comfortable increasing your investment in that campaign. Having said that, I would definitely keep an eye on the money-making campaigns to look for signs of weakness (declining profitability).

There is no perfect answer for new campaign spend, stop loss, or campaign reinvestment. However, if you follow the general money management principles outlined above, your PPC efforts will be rewarded with more profitable campaigns and less stress about PPC spend decision making.

Stay tuned.

Image by kd5ftn

Just when I think I have everything figured out, I find out how much I still have to learn.

Since I started Cliqpreneur, I’ve been reading and learning as much as possible about successful blogging. I thought I was at least competent at writing compelling headlines and valuable, unique content. I got to a point where I was comfortable with my blog, so I decided to submit some posts to social sites. I decided to limit my submissions to Digg and Sphinn.

The first post I submitted was Increase Your Google Quality Score in 5 Minutes. That post got a lot of traffic from both sources, and I was excited as you can imagine. I submitted another post which was mostly a marketing ploy. I felt a bit guilty about that one, so I decided to limit my submissions to my most valuable content (in my opinion).

I next submitted these posts to Digg and Sphinn:

1. A Better Way to Choose Your Domain Name
2. What Most Internet Business Products are NOT Telling You

I thought these two posts were fairly equal with respect to value, but the response was very different. Can you guess which one had the higher number of views? It was # 1. As a side note, neither of these posts matched the views from the first submission.

I am definitely not an expert at writing titles (or writing in general), however, I think I can pick out what makes the post headline for # 1 better than the post headline for # 2.

The benefit to the reader is more specific and clear in #1. In #1, the reader knows the topic of the post and what the benefit will be from reading the post. Post #2 was my attempt to create a “curiosity” headline, but there was not enough tension created to grab the reader. The topic (and benefit) was too vague and the “hook” was not compelling enough. In hindsight, I can imagine the reader thinking “Why do I care what they are not telling me?”

Here are the takeaways:

• Make sure the reader knows how the post will make their life better, or…
• Make sure the topic is compelling enough that the reader will want to click through to continue reading the post.
• Reviewing clicks from social site submissions is a great way to discover what is and what is not working.

For the most part, I am going to write headlines that explain the benefits of the post. I’ll experiment with the “curiosity” approach on a lesser basis to master that approach.

Stay tuned.

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“I can show you how I made $100,000 in month on the internet!”

Does that sound familiar?

We have all seen claims of this sort on the internet. The author promises to teach you how to make a gazillion dollars on the internet…just the way they did it…guaranteed! In almost every case, they also have screenshots of their payouts from Google, Commission Junction, Clickbank, etc.

I don’t necessarily doubt the truth of these earnings statements, but by themselves, they tell you nothing about how good the business model is. In fact, you could “make” a $1,000,000 a month on the internet and still fail miserably.

Why? Because it’s not what you make, but what you keep that makes a business valuable. Real businesses have revenues (what you “made”) and expenses. The of your revenues and expenses is profits (what you keep). Profits is what makes you bank account go up in the long run.

I understand that this terminology is standard convention and meaning on the internet. I “made” $xxx means I had that many dollars in revenue. However, the author never tells you the expenses that went along with the revenue. So, you don’t really know if their bank account went up or down. The difference is very clear to me ( I have a CPA background), but to others, revenues versus profits may not be clear. This is especially the case given the way numbers are presented in sales copy.

Having said all that, I actually believe that most of the information being sold on the internet is potentially very valuable. If you discover the one idea that gets you past a hurdle in your business, then the benefits far outweigh the costs.

However, when you read sales copy that makes claims like this, be aware that they are really talking about revenue (in most cases), and your results will almost always be less (due to expenses). It’s what you keep, not what you “make” that counts.

Stay tuned .

If you’re like me, you want the best domain name for your online business. You probably did some brainstorming sessions yourself and possibly asked for opinions from friends, family and/or associates. You narrowed your choices, selected the “best” candidate, and then registered the domain name for your online business. However, if you’re like me, you probably agonized over the final the selection after you narrowed down the choices.

You can avoid some angst and most likely make more money by picking more than one domain name and letting your customers make the final choice.

Start by having a brainstorming session ideally with some other people and even better if the group has diverse opinions. Give each person a Post-It note pad and have each person write down as many different domains names as possible within 5 minutes. Place all the notes on a table, wall or white board and review all the alternatives. The first brainstorming session may initiate further creative ideas, so have a second session of similar length to pull out additional possibilities. At this point, you should verify which domain names are available. Also, you will potentially discover additional choices during the verification process if you use a tool that makes domain name suggestions like www.GoDaddy.com .

Let’s assume you want to finish with five domain names. Give each person five votes, and allow them them to place their votes next to the alternatives they prefer. You can give one vote to 5 choices or five votes to one choice (or any other combination totaling 5). Any ties can be decided by repeating the process for the options that received equal votes. You complete the process by selecting the alternatives with the 5 highest votes. If you have a lot of alternatives, you could start with 10 votes and work down from there. Once you are finished, register the winning domain names.

Using the domain names from the previous step, start a Google AdWords campaign to find the final winner. Set up separate ads for each domain name and use identical ad text except for the different domain names. Run your campaign until a clear leader or leaders emerge. If you have several very close front runners, you might try changing the ad text a bit and run a new ad for the front runners again changing only the domain names.

Split testing potential domain names will:

• eliminate some of the stress (and potential procrastination) of picking the “perfect” domain name
• let you know which domain name your customers respond to the best
• increase your profits by selecting a domain name that is proven to drive more traffic to your website

Another variation would be to test conversion for each domain name name and use that option as your winner. Experiment a bit, and you’ll be confident that you’ve made a good choice for your domain name.

Stay tuned.