Hi Woody,
I too have just created my first product. It's a freebie ebook but either way I do want to get it out there and see how it appeals. I read with great interest your recommendations to your friend, and I ended up lost.
I have included your comments and then why I'm confused,

1. Keep your daily budget low but cost per click high.
Does this mean buget,say, $20 per day but pay the most you can for a keyword, like about $1? That would mean 20 clicks and you're done surely, so I think that not a large number of buyers are going to spring from a high advertising cost, or am I missing a point?

2. Use a multivariate testing system and find the combination of page elements that converts (or doesn't).
Any suggestions what these are? Is it some kind of page scanning, keyword identifying, superduper analysis software?

3. Drop top competitor cookies. What? Who? How? How did they get in your ad for YOUR product? Lost me at the start with that one. Onwards though to; If the visitor is searching to buy and they don't buy yours, make sure they are cookied with your affiliate link to your competitors. Again, how? If you have an ad for your product, how on earth are they getting your competitors cookies, and how are you supposed to get YOUR cookie, that's selling your competitors product, when you are actually selling YOUR product w…Oh I'm just totally lost with that altogether, it just doesn't make sense at all to me. I know I'm new at this but that was just gobbledegook to me. It might just as well have been the calculations for a moonshot or nuclear fusion.

4. Bid on buying keywords only and use negative qualifiers. This keeps the freebie seekers away and attracts buyers.
WHAT? So those expensive keywords now have to be negative? Or I buy positive ones but then MAKE them negative. Example, Keyword - Marketing. Make negative - Crap marketing. So freebie hunters will think…no good, don't bother, but real buyers will notice it's a ruse? Really not getting that one at all.

I've read your blog for sometime and I have to say that normally what you post is THE most straight forward, plain talking, clear as a bell, no nonesense information any marketer could hope to find. No BS, just facts in an easy to read and understandable way. I thought I'd tell you that because it looks like I'm being mean in my assessment. I'm not. I'm just utterly confused by the terms and lack of qualifiers that might give more idea of what you mean.

Cheers
Darren

Darren,

Woody is likely to give his own response, but I thought I'd take a crack at your questions in the meantime.

1. If you're working with a small budget, you'll want to go for extreme quality over quantity of traffic. In the affiliate world, this will be bidding on product names, product model numbers, etc. For example, instead of Learn Spanish, you'd bid on Rocket Spanish, which is a product name. You're CPC will be higher, but your visitors will be laser-targeted.

2. For simplicity's sake, let's say your sales page consists of a headline, a sales paragraph, a guarantee, and a picture. If one version of that page isn't creating sales, and you replace one element at a time and test it against the original version, you've done an A/B split test. For example, if you only change the headline and compare the sales numbers to the original version with the old headline, you're A/B split testing.

Multivariate testing tests several elements on the page at the same time and finds the best combination. Let's say you use this software and enter in 4 headlines, 4 sales paragraphs, 4 versions of your guarantee, and 4 pictures. Rather than put one of those in place manually, the software will automatically try different combinations of page elements and tell you which one resulted in the most conversions. As for the software, I know Woody likes MuVar 2008. Google's Website Optimizer is probably best for those on a tight budget, since it's free.

3. Let's say that you sell a learn Spanish ebook named The Spanish Miracle. You set up an AdWords account and send traffic to your site. When visitors come to your site, let's assume they've never heard of your product before and just feel more comfortable buying the more established Rocket Spanish or Learn Spanish Like Crazy. If you're only selling your own product, you just lost the sale and didn't make any money. However, if you are an affiliate for your competitors, you can drop their cookies on visitors' computers so if they do buy a competitor's product, you'll at least get a sales commission from this.

I'm new to this tactic, but I believe that Affiliate Cloner will do this for you.

4. Buying keywords are keywords that someone might type in when they are ready to buy something. i.e. Buy product X, Purchase product X, etc. These are very basic examples. Again, your traffic will be lower, but your quality will be high, which increases your chances of making a sale.

Negative qualifiers are items in your PPC ad that help tell people who your product is for. An example of a negative qualifier might be listing the product's price in the ad. This let's freebie seekers know that your product isn't free, which means those types of visitors are far less likely to click on your ad and waste your valuable ad budget.

I hope this helps.

Luke

Hi Luke,

Thank you very much for clarifying those points. I'd never come across those terms and they were totally baffling.

You clarification has now changed that and now the blog makes compelete sense to me. I understand what Woody was saying now and I'm going to try several of these out.

I really am grateful for your comments and explanations of the terms.

Best of luck to you in the future.

Kind regards
Darren