However, I thought it’d be a shame not to capitalize on the growing umber of merchants offering datafeeds these days, so I started looking for a proper plugin that would complement my cms of choice, wordpress.

After analyzing and testing a few options, I settled on CSV 2 POST as my CSV import plugin. Why CSV you ask ? Because it is a great way to create sites focused on products which you can later optimize or use as you like. You get the csv files after joining any affiliate network and get the datafeeds that the merchants are offering. Some of these datafeeds can contain tens of thousands of products, so it is not easy to find a plugin that would be able to import all of them without crashing. A very important aspect of the decision is the ability to see a demo in action, as well as being able to test a version of the product hands on.

What convinced me ?

Well. first of all the owner and the staff were gracious enough to provide enough support, as well as free version to use for testing. This has been a top feature for me, being able to test my CSV import plugin before committing to a purchase.

If you want to see how easy CSV 2 Post is to use just watch the video below.

Very easy isn’t it ? Since I am a marketing guy and not a tech person, I found the ease of use absolutely wonderful.

So, what is it good for ?

The range of ideas are infinite, but mainly my focus will be on developing sites by importing datafeeds containing affiliate products. Based on my hands on experience, I’ll be able to create blogs with thousands of products in just a few hours. I also run a multiple blog platform and CSV 2 POST works on that as well. SEO plugins that I use work perfectly with the plugin, so I’ll be able to automate much of the SEO effort. It also supports that automatic creation of tags. If you have some technical knowledge, you can also customize your posts using PHP. You can also take advantage of the timestamp feature and post your products staggered over the course of time.

Worth the money ?

I say definitely yes. Just the ability to create big sites should justify the price tag. Together with the fact that the developer is offering unlimited downloads of the future versions, as well as hands on support and the existence of a support forum, make buying CSV 2 POST a very easy decision.

But you don’t have to take just my word for it. Ryan, the developer, is offering you the full experience via the demo blog which you can access by clicking the link below.

CSV 2 POST Demo Blog Log In

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• Hubpages - leverage an authority site to like Hubpages correctly can help bring your presence to the forefront quickly.

• Slideshows - I publish how-to guides on slideshare to that truly help people learn how to accomplish a particular goal - such as this one called “Submit An SEO Press Release: A How To Guide“

• Article Marketing - I write articles that designed to help people build their businesses and syndicate them to a wealth of article directories

• Press Releases - publish press releases on sites that offer search engine value

• Free eBooks - promote them on eBook directories

• Blogs - both by blogging and by reaching out to other bloggers whose readers could truly benefit from the services I offer

• Social Networking Sites - We’ve scoured the web to find the best business networking sites that offer not only a useful service, but backlinks as well

• Directory Listings - Not all directories are great… but there are a handful that are

• Wikis - while the links on sites like Wikipedia, Wikihow, and eHow are often ‘nofollow,’ the exposure can be dramatic

• Forums - helping others to solve their problems on blogs and forums can go a long way. I interviewed a wonderful entrepreneur, Chris Hanisco, aka, The Dippy Chick, who was found by the news media because of her active presence on a popular enterprenuer’s forum.

• Email Marketing - reaching out to current clients and people who have expressed interest in our products and services to get the word out

• Twitter - Thank you Angie (one of SEO Content Solution’s awesome writers and an online writing coach) for Tweeting about the new press release site!

• Friends - Give friends and contacts to review your site and, if they like it, to give it a Stumble or recommend it to their contacts. Offer an incentive to review your site and invite them to link to it in their upcoming posts.

From Self Made Chick

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• Trademark symbol ™ - Alt + 0153
• Copyright symbol © Alt + 0169
• Registered trademark symbol ® Alt + 0174

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Remember how you used to daydream in school, only to snap out of it just as you heard the last bit of information that you knew was going to be on the test?

OK, maybe that was just us. But we’re guessing that, along those lines, over the last few months you may have missed a lot of the advice we’ve offered on managing your new minimum bids.

By now, you probably have keywords with minimum bids that can change from time to time—reserve prices that reflect both the value and quality of your keyword. If you weren’t paying attention before, you may find these three strategies helpful for managing your bids.

Know Your Keywords
Pay attention to which bids are changing, and then adjust as needed. For more details, you can read our original blog post, but here are a few basic principles you should follow:

• Learn which keywords work best for your business.
• Invest in the keywords that are working for you.
• Know what you can spend on your keywords.

Watch Your Quality
You may not have much control over the level of competition in your keyword’s marketplace, but you do have control over how relevant your ads and keywords are. Good ad quality can help lower your minimum bid, plus it can also help your ads reach higher ad positions without an increase in cost-per-click. And, of course, people are more likely to click on more relevant ads. Our March 17 post on ad quality and minimum bids touched on four concepts:

• Track your ad quality through the quality index and the Ad Performance Report.
• Write better ads to make your ads more relevant to potential customers.
• Test different versions of your ads using ad optimization, so that the best-performing ads are displayed more often.
• Group relevant keywords together to increase ad group quality scores.

Use the Tools
Without being too obvious, bids that can change are trickier to keep track of than ones that never change. So we’ve created a bunch of tools that can make it easier for you to know what’s going on with your account. In April we wrote about changes to the account interface, which fall into two main categories:

• How do I know when my minimum bids are changing? This information is plastered all over your account, from alerts on your dashboard to status columns on every keyword page.
• What should I do about my bids? We’ve added a number of ways to help you adjust your bids, including quick links from the status columns and bulk bidding tools that can set several bids at once.

We hope this helps you catch up. If only your ninth-grade Biology teacher had been as understanding.

— The Team

Photo courtesy ~romana~ on Flickr.

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If you’re heading to Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in San Jose next week in search of free tsotchkes, you may also want to try something considerably more valuable — one of our free personalized campaign optimization. You have to be there in person though because this is not an online session.

The half-hour one-on-one optimization session, with a Yahoo! Search Marketing content specialist, can help you learn how to drive more traffic, increase conversions or build brand awareness. So sign up for a session now.

When:
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Where:
Search Engine Strategies (SES) - San Jose 2008
Booth #201
San Jose Convention Center
San Jose, CA  

Cost:
It’s free! To take part in a Yahoo! campaign optimization session, you must first register for an SES Expo Pass. Expo passes are free if you register before August 15, 2008, and $50.00 after that.

Remember to check out the Yahoo! lineup of speakers at SES San Jose 2008.  See you there!

–The Team

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The event will once again be hosted by the Harbour Master in the IFSC, Dublin on Saturday the 9th of August. I encourage everyone who can to attend as it is a great way to have a few drinks with people who don’t get annoyed at you for talking shop when socializing.

For the second time running, the event will be sponsored by the most fantastic webhosting company in Ireland, Blacknight Solutions who incidently are launching their new web hosting plans today and have also just exploded onto the scene with their new VPS hosting solutions (I plan to sample the finest champagne)

If you can make it we will be meeting at 7:30PM - 8:30PM. This is an open event and anyone can attend. The last event was great and I cannot tell you how much I got out of meeting everyone.

The confirmed attendees are as follows:

• Richard Hearne
• Dave Behan
• James Larkin
• Micky Wall
• Louie (You cannot miss him)
• Gavin Doolan
• Dave Davis
• James Farrell

The last time a LOT more than the confirmed list came along so please do join us.I might be there a little late so whoever gets there first, please get a table where we can all sit together! Looking forward to meeting some fresh faces and some… not so fresh. More details can be found here.

Those who are definitely coming along, let me know in the comments below and I’ll link you up above.

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For this example, we’ll use the trusted Google Content Network. For those unfamiliar, Google allows you to advertise using Adwords on three different “networks”. These are “categories” are the Google Search Network, which AdWords advertisers will be most familiar, The Search Partners Network which includes AOL and various other “trusted sources” and the Google Content Network which consists of hundreds of thousands of websites and domains running Google AdSense. For the sake of simplicity, I am leaving out print, audio and TV. What we will be focusing today is the Google Content Network.

Many advertisers either fail to consider buying additional domains to compliment their main one or don’t want the trouble of researching the value of the domain. With the Google Content Network, this is already being done for you behind the scenes.

The content network is, by default, run on all sources. This includes a plethora of relevant publisher websites as well as social networks, video portals and parked domains. We want to take a closer look at the latter.

It should be noted that Google give options to exclude most of these sources from within the AdWords console.

Assuming you are advertising on the content network and have your conversion tracking set up (you do have it set up don’t you?) you can use a rarely spoken about AdWords report called the “Placement Performance Report”. This report gives you insight into how your ads are performing on the different sources and gets as granular as the domain and URL of where your ad was served from.

When you run this particular report, you can choose to report and view on a variety of metrics. For the purpose of this post, we will only be looking at the domain, URL impressions, clicks, conversions and Value/Cost (Return On AdWords Ad Spend).

Below you will see an actual report run for one of our clients. As you can see, we have sorted the list by ascending conversion data. This is a report for ONE WEEK. Starting to see where I am going with this? For this particular client, the value for each conversion is between $97 and $227 so you can clearly see that the content network is working for them.

Great! We can see the content network is working well for this client. We can leave it running right? Well… let’s just take a look at what’s actually on “parked domain 1″. When we navigate to the site, we see a typical SEDO landing page with content network ads prominently displayed. We can also see the clients ad running in position #3. However, as with most/many SEDO landing pages that are only monetized through advertising while they are waiting to be sold, in the left column there is an offer to “Buy this domain“.

So this domain is for sale eh? If this domain is generating an average of six conversions per week for this client and it’s getting a lot of type in traffic, it must be worth something. Even sharing this domain with ten advertisers using AdWords, the value to this particular client is on the bottom end is $762 ($127 x 6) per week or $39624 per year! (assuming traffic is maintained AND that the client is still sharing with the other advertisers). We might be on to something. Clicking on the “More Details” link to buy the domain brings us to the following page:

So here we have a domain that’s generating $762 a week gross revenue and it’s for sale for $500? Do I need to tell you what happened next?

We advised the client and they purchased the domain the day of this report. Because we know which landing page was generating the conversions from this domain, the client simply did a 301 redirect to the landing page and let me tell you, they are reaping the rewards. They are getting an even higher than expected return because now they are not paying for the clicks to their site and are not sharing the page with 9 other competitors! Since the beginning of the year, they have purchased over 30 domains using this method.

Buying these domains that have type in traffic and that you KNOW convert (from your AdWords conversion data) offer a significant long term return on investment. So what are you waiting for? Go run your placement performance reports and see what money you are leaving on the domain table today! (before your competitors read this)

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