Not much time to post these days in between launching new campaigns and doing tutorials and posts on the stack that money forum.

Here’s a fast version of one of the videos i did today.

Shows you how to quickly rip ppv/cpv lading pages using bo.lt

You can get the music here:

http://soundcloud.com/mustard-pimp/deftones-youve-seen-the

I always look for ways to optimize my workflow. Specifically when it comes to ppv marketing, a streamlined process for launching, optimizing and scaling your campaigns is critical.

In this post I will share with you a simple way to run multiple traffic sources within a single CPVLab campaign without loosing the ability to analyze and optimize by target & traffic source.

CPVLab is currently* my preferred solution for tracking and optimizing my affiliate campaigns.

Note: Its my current favourite. But…delayed release of the ppc/social module for cpvlab are increasingly frustrating. CPVLab is usable with Facebook and Plenty Of Fish, but such an additional module, free for existing users, would be very very welcome!

You will need version 2.11, and a couple of simple configuration steps. This method does the job for now, but its not perfect. At the end of this post Ive got a couple of suggestions which would make things even easier.

My PPV Workflow

My workflow goes something like this:

1. Pick related offers i like
2. Create 2 landing pages with different angles & setup the campaign in cpvlab (66% to 2 LP + 33% to DL)
3. Scrape targets
4. Run campaign in Trafficvance & optimize
5. Scale profitable targets to other networks

Currently you can run multiple landing pages and multiple offers in a single cpvlab campaign. But you cant run multiple traffic sources in a single campaign. Its also not possible to group campaigns into projects.

Why would you want to track multiple ppv traffic networks in a single CPVLab campaign?

Because it will give you a single view of the profitability of your campaigns, across multiple networks and traffic sources.

Secondly, the cpvlab campaign and stats summary screens can become rather cluttered if you have 20-50 campaigns live, each with several traffic sources.

The basic CPVLab setup

You will need cpvlab version 2.11 if you want to track multiple ppv traffic networks with cpvlab in a single campaign. If you havent upgraded, go and do it as this new version has got a whole bunch of enhancements.

This version of cpvlab comes with the option to track multiple variables (referred to as tokens) with your campaign url. The tracking data will then show those additional variables in the Stats screen for your campaign and how each target is performing against those variables.

To track multiple traffic sources, all you need to do is setup one additional variable and assign a new unique value to that variable in your campaign URL for each traffic source.

There are 4 steps to set this up:

• Setup a multiple traffic category under the network settings
• Setup your campaign variables
• Customize your campaign URLs on your traffic networks
• Analyze stats & Optimize

Create New Traffic Source in CPVLab

First of all, you will need to setup an additional CPV Network. Go to the Settings Menu and click on CPV Networks.

Then, under the Add Network section, fill out the form as per the screenshot below & save:

CPVLab Campaign Setup

The Keyword Token can be anything you want it to be, as long as its the same as the name of the URL parameter in the Append Token field. These tokens are also known as Query strings.

Also, because each PPV Traffic Network has a different way of passing the target to your campaign URL, you will need to remember to change the value of the Append Token to the one relevant for the specific network:

• Traffic Vance: {KeyWord}
• Lead Impact: KEYWORD
• Direct CPV: {{keyword}}

Setup Campaign Variables

Next step is to create a new cpv campaign or edit one of your existing ones.

Set your predefined source as the “Multiple Network” option you just created, and estimate your average Cost Per View across the different networks and update the Stats CPV field.

Next, tick the “Capture Extra Tokens” option, or if your already using this feature, add an extra token. Configure it as per the screenshot below:

Token's Need To Be The Same

Its very similar to the Keyword Token and the URL Append Token. “Name” is the title for this token that you will see in your Stats screen. “URL Append” is the section you will need to add to your campaign URL, and “Parameter” is the name of the token/variable which needs to be as its included in the URL Append.

CPVLab Stats View

The Campaign URL field in CPVLab is not automatically updated when you add additional Tokens, which must be a bug. So when you configure your PPV Traffic Network you need to make sure you add the Append section to your URL.

Customise Campaign URLs

Now copy the campaign URL into a text document so that you can quickly edit it and create the relevant versions for each of your Networks. Make sure you add any of the extra tokens you created, including the one from the previous step.

It should look something like this:

http://tracker.com/base.php?c=147&key=ebf15b4ce5661c98b635b8d650ade6a7&nw=NETWORK&kw=KEYWORD

Now for each ppv traffic network that you are using for this campaign, edit the campaign URL and replace NETWORK with a unique name for the network, and KEYWORD with the value used by the network to pass the target.

For example, here are 3 campaign URLs for the main networks I use:

TrafficVance

Network ID: TV
Keyword Token: {KeyWord}

http://tracker.com/base.php?c=147&key=ebf15b4ce5661c98b635b8d650ade6a7&nw=TV&kw={KeyWord}

LeadImpact

Netword ID: LI
Keyword Token: KEYWORD

http://tracker.com/base.php?c=147&key=ebf15b4ce5661c98b635b8d650ade6a7&nw=LI&kw=KEYWORD

Direct CPV

Netword ID: DCPV
Keyword Token: {{keyword}}

http://tracker.com/base.php?c=147&key=ebf15b4ce5661c98b635b8d650ade6a7&nw=DCPV&kw={{keyword}}

Analyze & Optimize

The final step is to send traffic from the different networks, and then analyse your stats.

You will see that the additional tokens/variables are shown in the first table in your stats view, with the performance down by target.

All you need to do is look which targets are getting click throughs and conversions on each network, and ditch the ones that are not.

There are some limitations at the moment:

• You cant change the columns to exclude some or all of the custom tokens. You can just do this for the standard CPVLab column types.
• The tokens are not shown in the Landing Page Performance, Offer Performance, or Campaign Performance tables
• There is no table showing overall performance for each token

Wrapup

I hope this little tutorial helps you with understanding Additional Tokens feature in CPVLab 2.11 and maybe streamline some of your own workflow.

If you’ve got any questions about this, post a question below. I hope you enjoy this workaround.

However…

It remains a workaround. CPVLab should support this out of the box in my view.

Here are some improvements that I would like to see to make sure this work even better:

• As mentioned in my previous cpvlab post: support for 1) multiple traffic sources per campaign, and 2) grouping multiple campaigns as projects
• Fix the bug which stops the additional tokens being added to the Campaign URL at the bottom of the campaign setup screen
• Include / exclude custom variables for the stats tables
• Reflect custom variables in the Landing Page Performance, Offer Performance and Campaign Performance tables

4 Jan 2011 – Update:

It seems this feature has now been switched off again on Google Insights. Guess they were beta testing a new release of the tool. Shame, but no doubt it will be back!

Nice update google.

You can now search for trends and insights related to Youtube, Twitter and Buzz! Great for discovering new markets, keywords and niches.

Twitter and Buzz search are still buggy because there does not seem to be much data for the last 90 days. I am sure that in September the world did not stop tweeting about twitter or facebook!

But there is some usefull stuff already.

Trending Video Games on You Tube

Here you can see a basic insight search, with youtube selected as traffic source, and Games selected as the category. Very useful if you are targeting Video Games in your campaigns.

The top video games on you tube by growth were:

1. Black Ops (2010)
2. Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
3. Gta 4 (2008)
4. Halo Reach (2010)
5. God of War (2010)

Of course few of these are beating the most popular video games search terms on YouTube:

So What About Twitter? Here are The Top Rising Topics for 2010

And The iPhone is beating Android on Google Buzz!!

Happy Christmas Everyone!!

Today saw the long anticipated launch of Blekko – a new search engine thats been in the works for 2.5 years.

This is not an extensive post on the features that Blekko has. For that check out these posts by techcrunch and mashable.

Two things set blekko apart:

1) users have tools to do new types of searches, using slashtags (/date) to filter and sort results

2) users have unprecedented level of access to the algorithms and data that determine relevancy

This post focusses on the second, and gives you a quick summary of how you can use Blekko for your SEO research.

For a detailed summary of all the SEO features, check out this post by Aaron Wall and this one on search engine land.

Note that Blekko is still in beta, and that it does not replicate google results. Rankings and data from Blekko can therefore differ from Google.

1. Analyse the inbound links to your site

Using your domain with the slashtag /inbound in the search gives your a wealth of backlink data. If you click on the graph link it will show you a bunch of helpfull graphs:

• inbound links by domain & ip
• included & excluded inbound links
• inbound links by year
• inbound links by month

Below the various graphs it shows you the table with all the backlinks to your domain. You can sort by rank, to see the most powerful sites on top, and highlight the anchor text used and whether the link is a nofollow link.

The other slashtag to use here is /urlseo which gives a great summary, in particular the backlink breakdown by %piechart and the anchor quality.

2. Review the competition

The second great SEO feature of Blekko is the /rank slashtag. There are different ways to view the data, starting from simple to complex.

First it will show you the sites ranked for the keyword, and whether the keyword is included in the domain (D), anchor text to the site (A), title (T), or URL (U).

By clicking on the more detail link you will see the same characteristics of the pages that rank including a bunch of others. For SEO and Internet Marketing, the most useful ones are:

• anch – is the target keyword in the anchor text to the page?
• title – does the page title include the keyword phrase
• adsense – Does the site use adsense?

3. Compare yourself to the competition

To compare a site to your own, enter your domain and add the /compare slashtag. Then just add one of your competitor domains to the second domain field.

This will show you a couple of nice graphs. But the really valuable information is in the inbound links table below. It basically shows you which top domains are providing links to your competitor but not to you.

Conclusion

Blekko is sofar looking to be an awsome tool. I have not compared the quality of the search results to google yet, but I am sure someone else online will be blogging about this soon.

Loads of potential!

What do you think? Have you tried blekko?

If you have not heard about cpv:lab you must live in a cave. It blows Prosper202 out of the water for advanced campaign setups.

Dont believe me? Just check the buzz about this new tracking solution: Finchsells CPV Lab Review and ppc.bz cpvlab a week in review.

Here are the steps I went through to setup an iframed campaign on CPVLab.

Why iFramed?

Two reasons.

First of all, it allows me set the main offer in context of the Angle I am taking for the particular campaign.

Second, I find that some offers are slow to load due to multiple redirects. The iframe helps in making sure users dont click away before the offer is loaded.

Campaign Type

Landing Page Sequence

Campaign Setup

Campaign Config

Complete the campaign details. You should be familiar with most of the settings at the top, but two are worth talking about specifically.

• Stats CPV: With CPVLab you can upload your actual CPV Network cost for most major networks. This is a manual task, so for ongoing tracking of your campaigns use the Statistics & Trends options. In the Stats CPV field enter the average cost per view when you create your campaign. Update this as your campaign receives traffic to make sure your Stats give you an accurate view of your P/L.

Setup your Landing Pages

You need to setup the links and URLs in your landing pages to the relevant cpvlab URLs. So scroll to the bottom of your campaign setup screen, where CPVLab lists all the URLs you will need to use.

In your CPV Network Campaign, include the CPVLab Campaign URL. This is URL1 in the campaign flowchart above. This URL will looks something like this:

http://yourdomain.com/base.php?c=10&keyword={KeyWord}

In your first landing page, which will be the popup ad, link your Call To Action using the Offer URL. This is URL3 listed in the flowchart, and looks something like this:

http://yourdomain.com/base2.php

Finally, in your main Landing Page which includes the iframe, you need to include two URLs.

First the iframe src URL, enter the url (URL5) listed under auto redirect. This looks something like:

http://yourdomain.com/base3.php

For the exit popup script, use the Campaign URL of the separate campaign you have setup for that offer or Direct Link to the offer URL (URL7). I use the latter so I can track performance, something like the following:

http://yourdomain.com/base.php?c=10&keyword=exit-popup-c10

Setup your Levels

Because of the Landing Page Sequence I want to use, you will need 3 levels.

Level 1: Your CPV Popups (URL2)

Level 2: Your Main landing pages with the embedded iFrame (URL4)

Level 3: The Offers to load in your iFrame (URL6)For each level, name your URLs and add the URLs of the pages you want to splittest in each level.

I am hopefull that in a future update of cpvlab the Multiple Options setting will be available as part of a Landing Page Sequence. That way the main lander can link out to different split tested Offers and track performance within this campaign.

Until this is available, I link the exit popup of the second landing page to a separate Direct Link & Landing Page campaign with Stats CPV set to 0.

It looks more complicated than it is. Honest!

So have a go and enjoy cpvlab – its a pleasure to work with and I am sure that I have not seen half of what is or will be possible.

Feel free to ask questions about the above approach by commenting on this page? Or, if you have an innovative cpvlab setup, why note share it!

CpvLab Ideas?

Before I close off this post, here are some new features I would really like to see in cpvlab. Its already a great tool, and these features would make it exceptional!!

In addition to the above wishlist, here are some other minor enhancements:

What do you think of CPVLab? Let me know by commenting what you think of the suggested features above, and what you would like to see in CPV Lab.

About 10 days ago I showed you how to build a simple Yahoo Pipe to scrape the Google Hot Trends. Today, I am going to take that tutorial to the next level.

You might want to use the hot keywords in your CPV campaign. Rather than manually copying each of the top 10 results, you should really automate this task.

Unfortunately, Yahoo Pipes does not work with Google.

The reason is that Yahoo Pipes supports the robot.txt setting which asks ‘spiders’ not to scrape.

No worries though. There is another excellent tool that you can use:

So today I will show you how you can easily scrape URLs from Google with Dapper. Its a simple and quick method that still works, even after Google switched on Instant Search.

Note: throughout the next steps described below, a window can pop up offering you a demo of the next step in the process. Feel free to watch these to get to know how dapper works.

1. Switch off Google Instant

To scrape URLs with Dapper you will need a google search URL. You dont want to use the one from Google Instant. So switch it off by starting to type something in the search box. Then select the option to switch it off:

Next, click the Advanced Search button, and select the option to return 100 results. Do your random search and grab the Google URL once the results are showing. If you want you can clean up the URL, but its not essential.

Note down the URL in a text document as you will need it later.

2. Create the Dapp

Next, log in to Dapper, and create a new Dapp. Then just paste the Google URL from the previous step into the ‘Enter the URL’ field  and press ‘Next step’.

This will then show you a window with the google search screen, where in the next step you will save a couple of pages.

3. Saving pages

To ensure that Dapper scrapes the right information, you need to teach it what text to grab. You will want to grab a couple of pages to make sure it does this correctly.

You need to add the page to dapper by clicking the ‘Add to Basket’ button. Then enter a different result in the search box, and press seach. Again, add this page to the basked. Do this once more.

Then click ‘Next Step’ in the left side bar.

4. Selecting content

You are now at the 3rd stage of the dapper scraper, where you select the content you want to scrape.

All you need to do is click the title of the first search result to select the content you want to scrape:

5. Preview feed (nothing to do here)

6. Saving & configuring your Dapp

7. Getting ready to use your Dapp

Whats next

I love to make myself redundant. Thats why I always look to automate before I outsource.

On my journey to Ditch my Dayjob, I am now making some good progress. Adsense, SEO, PPC and PoF revenue streams are in place.

So Whats Next…

…PPV (Pay Per View) or also known as CPV (Cost Per View).

In PPC its all about finding the keywords that convert. On PoF its about the Demographics. In PPV it seems….URL’s and Keywords are key.

So I am creating my own URL scraper.

“Not another scraper!!”

I know that many already exist, but most of them are limited.

They are limited to just scraping google, bing and yahoo for the main keyword.

I want to go beyond that and build something that finds the unique profitable URLs that no one else is targetting.

Phase 1

As a first component to this new scraper I want to be able to give a theme keyword, and get a list of related terms. I have build it in Yahoo Pipes and Dapper, and currently gets related keywords from Google, Bing, and Search.com.

Example: Make Money

Below are the first 20ish related terms for the keyword “make money”:

Here is the Yahoo Pipe for the scraper.

Phase 2: Get URLs

The next phase will be to use the related keywords and grab a bunch of URLs for these. It will do the expected (Google, Bing, Yahoo) but I also want it to do the unexpected

Phase 3: Turn it into an online tool

Following phase 2, no doubt you want access to it. So I will build a quick web front end that will spit out a nice table of URLs and a downloadable CSV file.

What would you like to see me implement in this tool?