This second edition of “Ask Derek” is being published later than I had originally planned, but regardless, here it is. There are eight questions from four different readers.

Q1: Researching Affiliate Offers

LurksterAZ asks “What do you look for when researching an offer?”

There are lots of things that I look for. Most of it just comes with experience, but here are a few questions you can ask yourself:

• Are other people promoting this offer in the same way I plan to?
• How are other people promoting this offer?
• How much are top affiliates earning?
• What kind of potential does this offer have?
• How fierce is the competition?
• Will this offer be long-term or short-term?
• Is there enough demand for this offer?
• How does the available CPC compare to the commission?
• Does the landing page look like it will convert?
• How difficult is it for a visitor to complete the offer?

Q2: Good Converting Landing Pages

LurksterAZ also asks “When looking for an offer that you like, and you check out the landing page, are there certain elements of the page that you think would make it a good converting page?”

There isn’t really a cut-and-dry answer for this questions because it is all situational. A good landing page for a lead generation offer is not the same as a good landing page for a free download offer. Similarly, a good landing page for an eBook is not the same as a good landing page for a physical product.

It all comes down to trusting your instincts and your previous experience. You can always ask yourself if you would personally “respond” to the page, but your tastes might not match those of your target market.

Q3: Making Money Online With Blogs

CoolioJones asks “Do you think the market for making money online with blogs is saturated?”

Not at all. Blogs are really just content websites with a few defining characteristics. There are so many different markets (with new ones created all the time) that “making money online with blogs” cannot possibly be too saturated.

If, however, you were referring to blogs about “making money online with blogs”, then sure. But as long as you are providing unique, original, valuable, and helpful content… who cares?

Q4: Getting Readers Involved

CoolioJones also asks “What’s the best way to get your readers involved and interacting with our content?”

I’ll admit that I am not an expert on this topic, but I would have to say that the best way is to create compelling content. Whether you are looking for sales, submissions, comments, or whatever, the reader must feel compelled to respond.

In the case of a blog, writing content that solicits questions or provokes thoughts has seemed to work best for me. For sales copy, the reader needs to feel a strong desire to have whatever you a selling. For anything else… you get the point.

Q5: Blog Contests Are Overrated

CoolioJones also asks “Do you think blog contests are overrated at this point?”

As long as the “prize” is something that people want, then no. I think contests are a great way to generate buzz for any website. The problems arise when nobody wants what is being given away or when the entry requirements are too much for what is being given away.

I plan to have frequent contests on DerekBeau.com in the future, once I am sure there are enough readers to generate sufficient participation.

Q6: Pay-Per-Click Match Types

Daniel asks “What do you see as the the advantage to including all three of match types (broad, phrase, exact) in your AdWords campaigns? Presumably you compare clickthrough/conversion rates to determine whether the wider matching is effective enough to keep?”

Yes, as you mentioned, I do compare the conversion rates of each match type to determine which ones are profitable. In addition to this, I monitor my traffic statistics to see which keywords are triggering the broad and phrase matched keywords. When I find some that are not already in my account, I add them.

Lastly, I don’t know if this is true or not, but it seems to me that advertisers bidding on exact match terms are given a relevancy boost over those only bidding on the broad match counterparts.

Q7: Keywords With No Impressions

Fields Marshall asks “I used keyword transformer per your suggestion. I know Google says that quality score is determined on a keyword level but I just have the feeling that Google may see a lot of keywords in your ad group without impressions and lower your quality score for the ad group. This actually was a question on the Google advertising professional exam that I took a week ago. I passed but was never sure to the answer as to whether having an ad group with a lot of keywords without impressions was a negative thing.”

Well, I never got around to taking the AdWords Professional Exam, so I don’t know the official answer. I can, however, offer my own insights and solutions.

I’m almost positive that keywords without impressions have no effect on your search campaigns. They may add some confusion for content match, but that shouldn’t be an issue if they are all permutations of the same keywords.

As for keywords with impressions but not clicks, while I don’t think it affects your keywords that are maintaining good click-through-rates, I do think you should either delete them or move them to their own ad group.

Q8: Outsourcing Plagiarized Content

Jeff Gannon asks “As a follow-up to one of your posts on content out sourcing, we have used a few sources and have been burned by getting scraped or stolen content and have found tools like copysentry to be a little lacking. What do you use to vet your copywriters?”

To be honest, I don’t worry too much about getting stolen content because (to my knowledge) it has never happened to me. I check the provider’s feedback to make sure that they have a good history and also make the decision based on how they communicate.

When the final product is delivered, I do random searches on Google for a handful of phrases in the content. I have never found any of my purchased content to be plagiarized and I have never had any complaints from other’s claiming that I plagiarized their content.

For protection, I usually sign an agreement/contract that does include a plagiarism clause. I’m not sure how these contracts would hold up internationally, but I’m pretty sure that any of the United States providers I hire would not have a case against them. If I did find a breach in contract, I would simply take that provider to court (depending on the value of damages).

Let Me Answer Your Questions

I hope you all enjoyed this second question/answer post. I would like to get more questions from more readers, so please send them to me via my contact form. Let me know if you would like a link back to your website, and include your URL if you would. If not, that is fine, just use any name you want to be published and include as much, or as little information as you like.

Thanks again to everyone who submitted questions for this edition and I hope to have another posted soon!