John Hasson

A week or so ago I had a quick chat with one of my readers.  Well the good news is he wasn’t mad and still wanted me to look at his site.  Now, I was going to post screenshots, etc.  But really in this case I don’t think it is appropiate.  I will let you see the advice I gave though:

Couple of things

1) This website is pretty ugly
2) There is no real focus with so many different products

To fix

1) Make it less ugly
2) (and this one is key) when you send someone to a url (I like [http://HIDDENURL] better cuz it doesnt look like a nested frame) don’t distract them.  the primary F (standard webuser eye movement heatmap) on the page has nothing about the offer.  It is all extra navigation stuff that will confuse the user, distract them or make them just close the page.  Get rid of the menu, etc and the header @ the top, move the offer up there so that is all the user sees.

Other things:

Is your content actually unique and helpful to the user? If not you will have a harder time.

He said cool and he would try to make the changes.  So I guess we are cool.  *crosses fingers*

Tags: Advice by John Hasson
2 Comments »

I’ll be going to Elite Retreat again this year.  Yes it is expensive.  Last year was my first year.  At first I wasn’t sure if the connections and the things I learned at Elite Retreat would pay off.  But recently it has paid off big time.  The attendees are very open and the presentations are of real data, not a bunch of marketing fluff.  Imagine somebody saying, “Here is how I make 150,000 dollars net a month” and giving explicit details, and you get a good idea of what goes on.  The attendees are just as good (sometimes better) then the scheduled speakers themselves.  And yeah this is an affiliate link.

See you in San Francisco.

Tags: Advice by John Hasson
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Ok, I tried. Really I did.  I’ve been on OSX for about over a year. Things that bothered me…

1. Firefox sucks on a Mac.
2. When the HFS+ file system decides to go screwy you can waste a day or two fixing it
3. I was spending lots of my time inside VMWare on my bootcamp partition.
4. I already have photoshop 6 for windows and don’t feel like spending a ton on CS3 for the Mac
5. Excel for the Mac blows compared to Excel on Windows.  (Try having really complex charts, and it slows to a crawl on the mac where the exact same spreadsheet does geat in Excel 2003)
6. Games.  Seriously.  Games.  (Not that I play that much, I don’t, but every now and then when you want to test something, rebooting into bootcamp just to try a game (or run photoshop w/o terrible slowness) is just a big pain)
7. I’ve tried Parallels and VMware Fusion. Neither one is awesome.  But they both get the job done, and you can use Visual Studio inside either just fine.
8. That STUPID suspend to crash bug that will NOT go away.

I am sure there is more.  So at this point I had 2 choices.  Sell the macbook pro and buy another laptop or just convert it to mostly XP.  I chose the latter.  So now I have a macbook pro running windows XP as my primary system.  The hardware is still awesome.  And now if I ever have a very rare instance where I need OSX I can just reboot into it… that is probably what I should have done in the first place.

Tags: Advice, Personal by John Hasson
5 Comments »

Somebody contacted me using that little chat widget on the right with this opening line:

Greetings I have been trying to get into the PPC arena for about a year without much succes constantly getting google slapped and tried a few other PPC source with no real measure of performance can you help

I was kinda busy at the time, so I simply said

Do you have a specific question?

You know what. here is the whole thing, I am in a rush to take all my girls to see High School Musical 3 tonight.

Guest: Greetings I have been trying to get into the PPC arena for about a year without much succes constantly getting google slapped and tried a few other PPC source with no real measure of performance can you help
Me: Do you have a specific question?
Guest: what am i doing wrong or not doing (I know you have no info about me or my site at this time) but would you be willing to look at my site and give you opinion\
My Thoughts: No specific question really.
Me: usually i na case like yours it is not just one thing
Me: *in a
Me: google slaps = stop making crappy sites
Me: biggest thing you need
Me: is tracking
Guest: I’m sure but i have doing this for a year with little return I have bought books and endless searches on the net right now  i workwith click bank and already have a site and ads but not sure what else to try
Guest: what “googles” defination of a crappy site
My Thoughts: How can I tell him to “google it” nicely….
Me: that is something you should be able to find out foryourself
Me: by just looking through Adwords Help and FAQ
Me: if you can’t do that then PPC is not something you should be doing
Me: There is no “shortcut” or trick
Me: it is just a matter of hard work
Me: trying and failing a lot
Me: if you are going to ASW I’ll gladly spend a few min glancing @ your stuff to tell you if anything comes to mind
Guest: unfortunitly i’m not but i would be happy to forward my site and maybe an ad for your opinion
My Thoughts: Hmm.. do I really want to mess with this? Ah ha. I can use it as a sorta blog post/site review, that would be worth my time.
Me: can I useit in a blog post
Me: make it public, etc?
Guest: can i send it in an email
Me: I’ll post my reply as a new blog post
Me: that cool?
Guest: yeah that would be great
My Thoughts: Gotta make sure they know what they are getting into.
Me: and your ok with others seing the site and the ad
Me: *seing
My Thoughts: CURSES! I can’t spell crap.
Me: *sEeing
Guest: depends you how bad you rip my site /ad apart
Me: lol
Me: I’ll tell you what I tell everyone
Me: Don’t fall in love with your site or your keywords or youe campaigns
Guest: no really i don’t want to look like an ass even if i am one
Guest: ok i should be chating anyway i will email later today
Me: k
Me: tlak l8r

Guest what… no email from them.

I am glad to answer questions, etc. but something like “why am I not making any money” is way to general for a simple answer.  And don’t ask me stuff that you can find out if you just read AdWords FAQs.  However, in person at a conference when I am in a good mood, I’ll happily answer stuff like that. 

Tags: Advice, Affiliate Marketing, PPC, Pay Per Click, Personal by John Hasson
3 Comments »

I’ve got a campaign that has been running for a decent while with a couple thousand keywords and a few hundred adgroups that have been slowly built over time.

Yesterday I wanted to try out google’s “opportunities for improvement” feature on this campaign.  But google wouldn’t run on it because the campaign had more then 64 adgoups and more then 2000 keywords.  grrrr

So I took a quick look and found that only about 10 of the adgroups had any conversions in the past 3 months.  I put on my wizard hat and took the s…..   Actually I was just ruthless and deleted all the adgroups that had no conversions in the past 90 days.  Would google let me run their “opportunities for improvement” feature now that I shrunk it down?  No!  But now it just says “sorry, can’t do it” w/o a reason.

Fine I think..  I’ll leave it alone and let the campaign do its thing.

Here is where the awesomesauce comes in:  After wiping out the “dead weight” my CTR shot up by 67.6% my avg position went up by only 2% (nothing significant) cost per click down by 1.2% (nothing significant).  My clicks went up by 56.7%.  This of course resulted in lots more conversions.

So… if you have a really big campaign that has profit in it.  Trim the adgroups and keywords that are not converting, google and you will both be happier.

Tags: Advice, Online Moola, PPC, Pay Per Click by John Hasson
2 Comments »

When I was really young (less then 10 years old) my family had this game that I loved to play.  The rules were you all sat around in a circle and spun a coke bottle.  Whoever it landed on, you had to say something nice about that person.  Then it was their turn to spin, etc.

Well…  I was at some kids birthday party (still while being young and naive) and they asked us what games we wanted to play.  Well I was emphatically for spin the bottle (unaware that it was a kissing game).  It wasn’t till a few years later when I finally understand the weird looks (especially from the growups..)

Parents: When you teach your kids “modified rules” games.  Make sure they know the real rules.

Tags: Advice by John Hasson
1 Comment »

My neighboor is a good friend and I think he just started up a new sales job for some sort of financial planner company.  He asked me to come to a presention.  At first I though he just wanted to do it at my house.  But he shows up 1/2 an hour early asking if I was ready to go?  WTF, why not.  Now I haven’t showered yet and am wearing grubby clothes that I put on this morning to help the concrete pourers coming to do my patio.  My hair is a mess and I smell bad.  Meh.. sure I’ll go.

We drive down to his business partner/boss–I am not sure of the whole relationship.  I sit in the comfy couch.  His partner says, oh no you have to sit in this chair in front of my desk– *sigh* so I move.  His office is plastered with plaques and trophies.  I mean plastered.  My BS meter is rising…  After dealing with small talk I cut to the chase and say, “What exactly is it that you do.  [Removed] is my friend so I came down here because he asked me too.”  His business partner says with a smirk, “So do you do everything [Removed] asks you to d….” he trailed off when he realized how stupid he was.  But by then it was too late.  My BS meter was off the scale.  [to be fair, the comment would have been fine if I actually had a good relationship with the guy, but I don't--he didn't answer any questions directly -- also a bad thing.]  I still don’t know what they do and I am ready do leave.

So I do.  I get up and ask my friend to take me home. As I get up to leave he makes another comment about me getting upset, and blah blah.  I told him, it wasn’t really the comment.  I just don’t trust him.  Not just his rudeness.  There was something fishy.  I have learned to trust my BS meter.  I’d say it is right 80-90% of the time.  I like those odds. I don’t want to waste an hour with a guy like that.

Moral is.  If you don’t trust the guy or it seems fishy, it probably is.

Tags: Advice by John Hasson
4 Comments »

Hi John,

Quick question, I was using Marchex and Miva to drive traffic to my adsense sites, my traffic soared and I was disabled by adsense for invalid clicks, does Marchex or Miva use tricks to boost their own revenue? My account was about 3 years old and never had a problem until I started using PPC to drive traffic to my sites

In your opinion, what is the best alternative to Adsense for making money with websites.

Thanks,
[Edited]

First of all, don’t feel too bad.  You are not the first who is in this situation and you won’t be the last.  Google has gotten pretty strict on driving paid traffic to MFA sites.  Driving PPC traffic to MFA sites is how I got started in affiliate marketing.  Heck, I even got banned from Adsense around the time Iron Man came out.  But by then I had moved almost everything from adsense to real affiliate revenue (leads, people actually buying something, etc) and not just clicks.  I do still have one or two sites that generate revenue from clicks, but I do not focus on them at all.

Personally I am not a fan of Marchex or Miva.  (Miva’s precision network is kinda ok, but it is really spotty)  Using these guys is fine if you are doing leads or purchases, just plan on your conversion rate being at least 1/3 to 1/4 of what you are used too (maybe even less).

If you work at it you can beat any adsense revenue by running product or lead gen campaigns (who do you think was paying for the adsense ads in the first place?)  Now you get to move up a level in the internet marketing foodchain.

Look at who was advertising on your adsense slots.  Can’t do that? Then look who is advertising on google, yahoo, msn for your targeted keywords.  See what they are selling.  Try selling that…

Tags: Advice, Affiliate Manager, PPC, Pay Per Click by John Hasson
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Woooo, fancy title claiming to make gobs of cash in no time at all.  Well the reality is you have to work up to this point.  Here is an example.  Say you are bringing in 90 leads a day with a payout of $2.50.   Not bad, not bad you say to yourself.  If you have a good relationship with your affiliate manager (and who doesn’t?) then ask for a payout bump.

My conversation went something like this.

8:55:46 AM Me: on another note, there are a few campaigns I am getting some traction on.  wondering if I can get a payout bump on them?
8:55:52 AM Awesome Affiliate Manager: of course
8:56:00 AM Me: <private cool stuff>
8:56:08 AM Awesome Affiliate Manager: you name the campaign and i’ll name the payout
8:56:15 AM Awesome Affiliate Manager: <private cool stuff>
8:56:28 AM Me: this one
8:56:29 AM Me: <private cool stuff>
8:56:31 AM Me: and
8:56:36 AM Me: <private cool stuff>
8:56:38 AM Me: that one
8:56:40 AM Awesome Affiliate Manager: ok
8:59:21 AM Awesome Affiliate Manager: ok, on the <private cool stuff> i can go to <private cool stuff>
8:59:30 AM Me: cool
8:59:48 AM Super Affiliate Manager: and the <private cool stuff> 2.70

So now instead of 2.50 it is 2.70.  If the campaign sustains (if anything I should be able to get higher volume) that is ~90 * .2 * 365 = over 6500.  In less them 5 minutes.

I usually don’t ask for a payout bump unless I am providing a decent amount of volume and I know I can keep it up.  Nothing lamer then getting a payout bump and then dropping the campaign.

Tags: Advice, Affiliate Manager, Affiliate Marketing, PPC, Pay Per Click by John Hasson
1 Comment »

Here is what I mean by this.

Say you are promoting a product.  You need to stop thinking like the person trying to sell it.  “dog training” is a nice general keyword, but really your keyword should solve a problem.  “stop dog peeing on carpet” is a person looking for a solution.  The people looking for solutions are going to be much more interested in your dog training guide.  This concept can apply to just about any niche.

Here is another one

auto insurance quotes vs i need insurance vs i hate geico
look, “i hate geico” has zero ads right now.  Bet you get some killer CTR and conversions with links to someone who isn’t geico

But how do you know which will work and which don’t?  Easy.  Do all of them.  Yes *all* of them.  (caveman speak:Turn off bad. Leave on good)

Tags: Advice, PPC, Pay Per Click by John Hasson
3 Comments »