We had to go downtown today to get a Visa so Sarah can enter Taiwan. We will be heading to Taipei for the yearly Computex trade show. Computex is the second biggest IT show in the world and this year it will nearly double in size thanks to a new convention center.

The Taiwan consulate office sits on the 20th floor of a downtown office building. The corner office has quite a nice view of downtown Vancouver. The view was so nice, I decided to flip out the Flip and take a video. I’m pretty sure taking pictures or videos while inside the consulate is not allowed but nobody said anything. I guess my posture and control was too good.

Our month long trip to the far East starts in mid May and will take us to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei. The Flip is going to come in real handy.

This Post Was Brought To You By

Serious Entrepreneurs Wanted For A Real Business - We have a HUGE VISION and the most logical system in the world. That’s why the director of the Better Business Bureau joined us!

Still Selling SiteWide Links? That Means You Are Losing LOTS OF MONEY! Replace your sitewide links by TNX.net code and generate 10x times more income by selling different links from every single page of your website or blog!

Have a Blog? Offer $20 BidVertiser Coupon of Free Clicks to your Readers - Simply signup as our referral and you will get a unique link which will give your visitors $20 in free clicks! And you will also get paid for it! Isn't that a WOW?

This post was guest blogged by Chad Frederiksen of CDF Networks.

If you are lucky enough to have found a well converting pay per click to affiliate offer, you are probably looking to expand the reach of that offer. Obviously the big 3 PPC engines: Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN Adcenter make up the bulk of all PPC traffic. But if you stopped there, you may be leaving money and clicks on the table. To capture all the possible PPC traffic for your niche, also consider 2nd tier PPC networks. Oh sure, we have all heard random people in a forum or blog saying that 2nd tier networks are garbage and to stay far away from them. But never believe what you hear about any pay per click service until you test it for yourself. What might have failed miserably for someone else could turn out to be a gold mine for your particular campaign and offer.

Before testing a second tier PPC engine consider the positive and negatives.

Positives:

Lower bid prices. Clicks are generally cheaper than the big 3 pricing. 5 cents or cheaper are very common on 2nd tier networks.

Looser rules. Generally you can get away with things Google wouldn't even let you think about. Direct linking, thin affiliate landing pages, and creative use of display URLs are usually fair game. Many 2nd tier services don't even factor in quality score

Negatives:

Traffic quality. You never know exactly where the clicks will be coming from. A lot of the clicks are from content based pages and expired domains, so the conversion rates can be lower than straight search traffic. Their GEO targeting algorithms can be ineffective or even non existent. Click fraud and traffic bots are always a big concern on 2nd tier networks.

Traffic volume. The smaller networks just can't produce the volume of clicks that a Google or Yahoo can. This will always be a limiting factor on 2nd tier networks.

So you have weighed the pros and cons, and are ready to test a new 2nd tier network? Well, here are some considerations before you start:

1. Never do your initial niche or offer testing on a second tier PPC engine. Take an offer that you know converts well on MSN, Yahoo, or Google, and then try it on the 2nd tier network. Know your average conversion rates and thresholds you need to hit to be profitable. Adjust your initial bids accordingly.

2. Definitely use a click tracking program. As much as they have cleaned up their acts lately, 2nd tier networks still have traffic quality issues. You’ll want to track your clicks for fraud and other problems. There are many click tracking systems out there, both open source and paid. Whatever you choose, install some kind of 3rd party tracking before starting.

3. Before signing up, look for coupons. Most networks offer free clicks to get started, so why use your own money to test their network? Free is always good! If you can't find any coupons, try this tip. Give them a call and tell them you are interested in trying their network. Ask if they can match your initial deposit. Mention that you can spend up to $20k/mo on their network if the test works. (To a smaller network, that should get their attention). Act like a big shot if you have to. Whatever method you use, you can almost always get some free clicks to start the test.

4. Use their bulk upload tools. Most networks have tools that will accept a bulk upload of a spreadsheet you have exported from another account. This will save a lot of time and hassle getting started. Remember, you already should have had the campaign running on another network, so don't waste time building a campaign from scratch when you can just export – import.

5. Set a daily budget. Although you will probably not hit it, it's good to have a budget on an unfamiliar network in case anything crazy happens while you are sleeping.

6. Finally, like any PPC network, track you stats carefully. Don't be afraid to let the campaigns run for a while to get a good statistical result from the test. That data will help you determine if the network is a winner or loser for you. Good luck and happy testing.

Here are some real world testing results of many 2nd tier PPC networks to give you a head start.

This Post Was Brought To You By

Best Credit Card Offers Get up to $250 or even FREE round-trip plane tickets by signing up for hot credit card offers and bank deals!

WordPress Tutorials Blog - Discover how to use WordPress as a marketing weapon. Subscribe to our blog to win free themes every month.

Pharmacy affiliate program - Earn up to 70% lifetime commissions with MedStore.biz Or you can add link details as you suppose should be better for your blog.

For those who missed my Affiliate Summit session with Zac Johnson, Amit Mehta and Kris Jones, the Affiliate Summit organizers has posted a video of the hour long Q&A session.

The idea of the session was the talk about different ways to promote affiliate deals. However, most of the people in attendance were on some kind of PPC bent. The majority of the questions went to Amit because he was the PPC expert.

The session was a lot of fun and it was nice to finally meet Amit and Kris Jones for the first time and hook up again with Zac. They’re all great guys and I look forward to meeting them again at a future event.

This Post Was Brought To You By

Have a Blog? Offer $20 BidVertiser Coupon of Free Clicks to your Readers - Simply signup as our referral and you will get a unique link which will give your visitors $20 in free clicks! And you will also get paid for it! Isn't that a WOW?

Still Selling SiteWide Links? That Means You Are Losing LOTS OF MONEY! Replace your sitewide links by TNX.net code and generate 10x times more income by selling different links from every single page of your website or blog!

Serious Entrepreneurs Wanted For A Real Business - We have a HUGE VISION and the most logical system in the world. That’s why the director of the Better Business Bureau joined us!