Been worried? Were you starting to think about calling out “International Affiliate Rescue” to find the erstwhile authoress of Affiliate Stuff? I certainly got that impression when I dashed into the house today after 7 days of no internet access, put on the kettle and with shaky hands, switched on my beloved internet once more. Before the first stats page had finished loading, up pops Kieron telling me he didn’t vote for my blog in the A4U Awards so I could go letting tumbleweed gather about the place!

Sorry, having just been on a 365 day holiday, I absolutely had to nip off for nine days more of R & R. This time I went up to the remote North of Scotland with my Mammy and Daddy. Hence, there was no real internet access and a radio silence resulted. Probably for the best really. I’d only have been up all night wailing and gnashing my teeth looking at my desolate affiliate commissions during the postal strike!

I’m now back, and my wrists have duly been slapped… I promise to blog furiously for a week to make amends!

In case you’re interested, here’s a picture of Lossiemouth. This proves certain critics of Scotland’s weather entirely wrong!!

Here’s the first of the questions I got in from blog readers about those burning issues newbies need to get to grips with!

“Hey Kirsty, thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

Great down- to-earth blog!”

Some affiliates do create one ad per key term using the Google Adword editor. However, you don’t necessarily have to do this when you are first starting out. It would be perfectly acceptable for you to create an adgroup bringing together similar keywords / product areas that would be covered by your ad text. This is the strategy I tend to follow.

Also, you could use dynamic keyword insertion to make sure that the ad title was always reflective of your target search term. If you haven’t heard of this handy dandy Adwords tool, you can basically place a command in your ad which will dynamically place any of the search terms in your adgroup in the title of your advert in response to a search made by a potential customer in Google or one of Google’s search partners.

Clear as mud? Don’t worry. Kirsty shall explain!!

Below is a screen shot of the dynamic keyword syntax in action within a fictitious adgroup yours truly created for illustrative purposes: –

Basically, by inserting the {Keyword:Search Term} operator in place of the title you are asking Adwords to show the search terms listed in your adgroup as the title of your ad. The alternative text will be shown as the ad title in the event of a search term falling outwith Adwords 25 character title limit, so it is important to make it as relevant as possible to maximise click through rates.

For further reading on adwords dynamic keyword insertion see Google’s own guide here.

I hope this helps a little, and good luck with all your new PPC campaigns with swish dynamic titling!

If you haven’t yet booked your pass to A4U Expo and you’re put off by the £279 price tag, Kieron has a great and easy to enter competition over at his blog to win one.

It’s open to affiliates only (he’s not paying for merchants or networks to get in – they get enough from affiliates, lol). All you have to do is tell Kieron what aspect of the 2 day event you would most be looking forward to. To enter, just leave a comment on his blog post about the contest.

I’m not entering because I already bought a pass for myself and the lovely Duncan at the early bird rate of £179. So, instead of leaving a comment on Kieron’s blog I will tell you all here what I am most looking forward to: –

Um, well anyone who knows me really well will be in no doubt that any section of the event involving me getting free drinks will be a firm favourite. However, over and above my love of alcoholic beverages I have to say I’m really looking forward to catching up with all my affiliate chums after a year out of the loop. I felt pretty isolated from the industry on my travels, and can’t wait to really get my finger back on the pulse over a drink or ten (see? I managed to bring alcohol into it again!!). I’d quite like it if I managed to catch hold of Kieron for long enough to enjoy a strawberry daquari too… but I suspect he’s going to be a popular guy at the event.

Get A4U Expo conference information here.

Hey hey!

Well, I’m just kinda getting back into the swing of things here at Affiliate Stuff HQ (AKA the dining room in the house where I grew up!). Obviously the old blog posts have been quiet for a wee while what with all my world wide larking around, so I’ve been getting myself all settled in and up to speed with affiliate issues old and new.

I was thinking that the posts in which I publicly answered the questions of people who had e-mailed me (with their permission) had turned out to provide some really pertinent answers for newbie / wannabe affiliates desperately trying to make sense of the huge amounts of affiliate information which is broadcast on all freqencies. Researching and understanding the mystic art of affiliate marketing, and more importantly separating the internet wheat from the chaff, can be hugely confusing.

So, with that in mind I’ve popped all the previous posts into a new category appropriately named “Ask Kirsty“. I’m now chucking the floor open to anyone who wants to ask me a wee question. I’ll answer it on the condition that you know I’ll publish it on my blog. Obviously if I get two similar questions I’ll sort of group them together.

Ask away guys! There’s a Contact Form with your name on it!

So here I am, frantically PPC’ing my little affiliate heart out to catch up on my Christmas preparations. As I mentioned in a previous post I have 90,000 Adwords listings to upload.

So yesterday morning I proudly present my 90,000 listings lovingly created with affiliate blood, sweat, and tears. What does Google tell me?

WTF?

So I duly try again later. And again. And again. And again. In fact, I was still trying at 10pm last night. This morning I decided to delete everything and start again with smaller chunks of upload. The first chunk of around 10,000 listings went up no problems.

“Oh well” I thought. “Perhaps I just needed to cut things down a little.”

This afternoon, I duly pulled another chunk of 7,500 from my beautifully crafted PPC spreadsheet. What does Google say to me about my relatively modest request?

AAARRRGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Modesty forbids me from actually detailing the rest of what I said when this happened again. Needless to say if there was a swear jar in this room there would be enough money in there for a trip to 2 to Barbados. Now, don’t get me wrong.. when it’s bloody well working Adwords Editor is enormously powerful and saves a huge amount of time by giving you the ability to set ads, adgroups, and keywords within a spreadsheet before popping it into the Editor for upload to your Google account. I regularly upload thousands of listings with a graceful ease.

But oh great PPC gods. Why today? Why now when I have so much to do?