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As I’ve noticed with almost every other form of advertising out there, using adwords content network can be hit or miss depending on your campaign.  I have used content network with tons of success and have used it where it just wasn’t worth it.  If you do some site targeting though… you may be able to do wonders with your content network traffic.

Many people don’t really use content network properly, they use it sloppily and pay for it in prices and quality of traffic….duh….this is what google and everyone else wants…for you to fall into the rat race and keep the industry flowing.  For people who do treat it like ppc, which let me say, with ppc I track down to every single ad group, and every single keyword (actual keyword searched, not just the keyword you are bidding on), I try to get  as specific as possible and cut out what isn’t making money and what is.  This is what needs to be done with content network….just like in the regular search network except instead of hunting for keywords your more hunting for sites or pages.

You can either start off the bat using site targeting only and just testing a specific site or sites, or even find specific pages and only target those.  You could also just run it on some keywords and have it run through a good tracking script which will grab the referrer code and display it.  This will show you the site that the traffic is coming from and you can then cut it down to only sites sending you converting visitors, or whatever it is you want in your traffic.

Just treat things like a business, you need to learn to manage and micro manage…be able to look at things in a whole and then break it down and look at things at an ad group perspective, at a keyword perspective, learn how to view stats and break things down quickly so you can determine where the "good" and "bad" traffic is coming from and what action to take about it.

OK, I just got done watching a video on keyword research from a very popular and liked internet marketing company and wow I was a bit shocked.  Jeeez they spent 10 minutes going over if its better to phrase your search on a singular or a plural version of a word, for example "buy microwave" vs. "buy microwaves".

First of all, if its that big of a deal, why not just focus on both terms?  If you don’t have a site with enough juice to pull it off then throw up a minisite or a subsite somewhere and just get a few backlinks for the second term.  Its not that hard.

Second of all, isn’t this stuff that should be taught in like Keyword Research 101?  Anyone who can go to google and type in "keyword research" will find very many tools that mixed with common sense should suffice quite well.

In case your to lazy to go and actually sift through a few entries on that google page, than just use Keyword Discovery’s free tool.  I have been using this for ages and that free tool is all I need for my keyword research many of the times.  From what I hear, if you take the results from Keyword Discovery and take it times three, that will be a much more accurate number of the amount of searches.

Now when I want to dig a little bit deeper to understand the traffic patterns of certain keywords I will many times use Wordtracker’s GTrends Tool.  You can get an idea on the amount of competition on Google compared to the amount of searches.  Now these numbers are far from accurate, BUTTT if you can kind of step back and take a broader look at things, don’t worry so much about the numbers but compare the trends since it shows the past history.  See if its steady traffic, traffic that is going extinct, or traffic just starting to peak.  By using this tool, you can many times find some golden opportunities.

It really comes down to just using common sense.  Just sit down and think… What would other people search to find this?  What would I search for to find this?  Try phrases in your keyword research tool to get new ideas and find the higher trafficked most targeted phrases.  DO NOT look at the numbers spat back out at you by these programs as accurate numbers, they rarely ever are.  But like I said you can still use these tools to get ideas on new keywords, search patterns of users, and many other things, that mixed with the information of trends in that area, can really help a guy out

There are tons of other Keyword Research tools, some are pretty good, some are complete junk.  Feel free to comment and let me know which tools you are using and why it is you choose it over others.

If you read my previous article on what a subsite really is, then you may have been wondering what are some more social networking sites that can be used as subsites (or methods to get links to your subsites).  There are literally thousands of different social sites that could be used for either of these purposes.  Instead of making you weed through everything though, I will go over a few of the ones that I have actually used and gotten good results with.

Squidoo

Squidoo was pretty hot for awhile there and everyone was trying to get squidoo lenses out as fast as possible.  Because of this Google made a couple changes to their algorithm that seemed to drop some of the squidoo pages from their usual first page rankings.  Because of this, the hype has seemed to pass on Squidoo, however the pages STILL rank really well.

Hubpages

Here is another site similar to squidoo, you can post articles and many other things.  There isn’t much to say other than you can use this site for traffic and backlinks back to your main site.

Freewebs

These guys have been around quite awhile and seem to be pretty solid whenever I use them.

Gather

Gather is another great network.  I have heard many references to Gather from a lot of respected web marketers I know.  I think there is a lot of potential here and I plan on taking advantage of it much more this year.

Flixya

Flixya works great for traffic generation and backlinks also.  Flixya has seemed to rank really well in the search engines from the tests I have done so far.  Another stellar possibility as a Web 2.0 subsite.

Google Notebook

Now I know many of you may be surprised to see this one on the list.  I installed Google Notebook as a plugin to firefox awhile back and was using it for my own reasons, mostly for taking quick notes, etc…I mean it is called Google Notebook.  What I found was that you could publish your notes which in turn can rank really well in search engines and help drive great traffic to your site.

Cafepress

This is a great method for companies to start a really quick e-commerce store usually geared towards clothing lines.  You can use this to create your own store.  However, you can use this for your own benefits  if you don’t want to run an e-commerce store, which I’m guessing none of you are to concerned about if your reading this.

Epinions

Here you can write reviews of your site, or reference your site in the review of a product or service of something else.  This can be used really well to get linkjuice to one of your subsites you already have setup.

Yahoo! Answers

This can be used as a great traffic driving tool.  Incase you are new to this, what happens is people post questions that they have.  You can go around and post an answer to the questions that have been posted.  These questions are viewed by the person who posted it and by many others.  If you can give an answer to something in your niche or category, you can really get some traffic flowing to your subsite using Yahoo! Answers.

Kaboodle

This site is designed to be a shopping center site.  One useful thing about this is that people are probably in a shopping mode, and more willing to take an action and make a sale, or whatever it is you want them to do.  There is a section of the site called Help Me Choose!  You can use this as a great way to quiz other shopping consumers by putting up a quiz which will give you answers to questions you need answered.

Slideshare

Here is a really unique site.  At Slideshare you can post powerpoints which other people browse through and check out.  You could use this for so many reasons I’m not going to even start listing them.  One great thing I’ve noticed is that many people who seem to classify themselves as guru will go here to scrape for information on a subject.  By having a powerpoint at slideshare with information you want to get out, people will trust this information and tend to pass it on quite a bit.

Twitter

Twitter is technically a content sharing site, but is a little bit different than many others.  Here you can share a few characters about what you are doing at that specific moment.  This is a great place to get url’s out there and drive traffic to where you want to want it to go.

These sites are all great sites that you can use to build your Web 2.0 empire.  Get out there, create some subsites for your main site, get a few backlinks and start driving some traffic to these subsites.

If you have played around with traffic generating techniques from any web 2.0 sites, comment and let me know which ones, and if you were happy or unhappy with the results.

This is another one of those questions that I get hit with all the time.  It seems most people will never be FULLY content with the network or networks they are a member of.  I can see why…most of them do suck.

I have been around since the day Commission Junction opened.  I used them (and still do a bit) for quite awhile, but when I really started to make a lot of decent money, was when I switched over and started using a model which consisted choosing offers from CPA networks.  The payouts are usually higher and lean more towards getting paid for an action, such as a lead, or the sale of a specific product or service, which makes it a bit easier to get targeted traffic flowing.

I am in or have joined probably close to 50 different networks.  Out of these networks there are around 10-15 that I regularly push traffic to.  Although there are a few networks that jump around as my favorite network, there are always the same that stay at the top.  Here they are…

Hydra Network

Hydra always seems to have kickass payouts and quite a large variety of offers to choose from.  Not only this but Hydra has been wiring me my check on time since the day I joined.  Hydra also offers an incentive system which can get you some pretty nice bonuses at the end of each month.

On a side note, for any of you who are on Hydra, I won the iPhone they were giving away sometime in november, you may have noticed the email they sent out to the ENTIRE network about this

Maxbounty

Here is another pretty solid network.  They don’t have a TON of offers, but quite a large selection.  I have cranked in some pretty decent checks from these guys and would have to say from what I have experienced their affiliate managers actually care about how you are doing.

Neverblue

I always seem to find offers at neverblue that are unique to other networks out there.  Although they will have many of the usual ones, I would highly suggest just checking them out if you ever feel like your in a slump for finding something new to advertise.  These guys are also really fair with their affiliates.

Advaliant

This is another network out there that seems to have a bit smaller customer base, but they have a lot of offers you won’t find elsewhere and they also treat their affiliates extremely well.  As you can see, that is something that is really important to me, so that is a big part of why some of these networks are being listed here.

Here are some others that I use who haven’t let me down over the years…

Copeac

Direct Leads

Now you know many of the places where I dig up offers at when I want to create or monetize any new traffic.  If your not already a member at these places, go signup, check out what they have to offer, and start piling in the dough.

One common mistake I see people making when they first find out about many web 2.0 traffic gen strategies is that they overdo things and put themselves at risk for getting their site banned in the search engines.

Anytime you want to go experiment with any web 2.0 strategies, be it for linkjuice to your site, or simply for traffic, you should not link directly back to your site.  Instead you should create subsites using seperate domains, and point everything to that.  You can than do whatever you want with that domain to direct that traffic to your main site.

Don’t want to go buy a domain for seperate subsites?  No Problem.

You can signup at many web 2.0 services which are ranking really well such as Squidoo or Hubpages and use the page there as your subsite.  Of course, use the keywords in your url, sprinkle your keywords in the page, use decent content…all the regular seo focuses.

Once you have your subsite, you can do your link building and traffic directing to that subsite.  So for instance, if you post a video on youtube, you can direct people to your page on hubpages, which then focuses on getting the customer to your main site.  If something would happen and a search engine would put a ban on your subsite for "abusing" something in their algorithm, your money site will be safe, and you will just lose your subsite.

So build links to your subsites and split things up, this will keep you safe incase anything would ever happen.  Then when everyone is complaining on the boards about some new google slap or algorithm change, you can be laughing yourself to the bank like usual