Here are 5 ways that I use my Online PPC ROI Calculator to help increase the ROI of my PPC campaigns with Pay Per Click advertising such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing. Incidentally, this article is my submission for the ProBlogger Top 5 Group Writing Project.

The first thing that we need to do is select a product to advertise for our PPC Campaign. Since this is about PPC, I’ll use Keyword Elite as the product.

1. Find out the variables for the product. We need to get the amount we will earn per sale and the conversion rate. In the case of Keyword Elite, we will be earning $97 per sale. But we don’t have access to the conversion rate, so let’s err on the side of caution and say that it is 1%. This means that for every 100 visitors to the sales page, we will sell 1 copy of Keyword Elite. We can now enter 97.00 into the Amount Earned per Conversion field and 1 into the Conversion Rate field of the calculator.
2. Next complete the Number of Clicks and CPC (Cost per Click). Let’s say that we are going to test that 1% conversion rate by buying 100 clicks at $0.50 per click. Now push the Calculate PPC ROI button to get the results. For data we have entered we get a ROI of 86%. This means that for every dollar that we put into our PPC campaign, we get $1.86 back. Which is not too bad really.
3. Now lets find what the break even investment amount is. To do this you need to tweak the CPC (Cost per Click) field until you get a ROI of 0%. To save you time, I will tell you know that the break even CPC for this case is $0.93. So that means that you can safely bid up to 93c and in theory you will not lose any money.
4. You can now start getting creative with your numbers. If you can increase the conversion rate by 1% by improving your ad copy, you will see that for CPC of $0.50 your ROI is going to increase to 272% - i.e. for every dollar you spend on advertising, you will get back $2.72 or an net profit of $136.00 on a spend of just $50.00. So that shows us that we should definitely be working on our ad copy!
5. The next step is to test, test, test with different configurations of variables. Use the calculator to help you construct your ad campaigns, find products that are worth promoting and avoid products that are going to send you bankrupt.

Finally, please leave a comment to let me know if the calculator is not working properly or whether you can think of any enhancements to make it more useful for you. Now go out and make your fortune with PPC Affiliate Marketing!

I have just uploaded my Online PPC ROI Calculator. It’s origin is from a spreadsheet that I use when planning my PPC campaigns, to work out how high I can bid on keywords.

It works on the basis that you know the following variables:

1. The amount you will earn from a sale.
2. The projected conversion rate of the product. You can often get this from the merchant.
3. The number of clicks you are going to buy.
4. How much you will pay for a click.

In return for this data, the calculator will give you:

1. The gross earnings from your sales.
2. The total amount spent on clicks.
3. How much money you profited or lost.
4. Your return on investment.

It’s pretty basic at the moment. If anyone would like me to develop it a bit more, then leave a comment with what you reckon would be useful.

Likewise, I’d be keen to hear any feedback as to whether it is working properly (or not).

This was an exciting week because I received my review copy of Search Engine Optimization With PHP by Jaimie Sirovich and Christian Darie. SEO Egghead (aka Jaimie Sirovich) mentioned a couple of months ago that he wanted to hear from people who were interested in reviewing the book, so I immediately sent him my request. And I was super happy to receive the book shaped package in my mailbox from the USA as he mentioned that the publisher may not dispatch overseas.

Anyway, the book gets a big thumbs up from me. I could not have arrived at a better time as I was needing to do some SEO friendly URL rewriting in the .htaccess file. There is a whole chapter devoted to this and it managed to turn a previously seemingly impossible to learn task into something that took me just 15 minutes to implement. I think I’m starting to get regular expressions sorted out too thanks to the book.

So far I have got through the following chapters:

• Provocative SE Friendly URLs - Very handy explanation of how to implement dynamic URL rewriting with regular expressions and htaccess - and I started implementing these straight out of the book.
• Duplicate Content - Very handy information on how to avoid it. If you are implementing database driven website, then you really need to take a good look at whether you are creating duplicate content.
• Black Hat SEO - I always like reading about Black Hat SEO. However, this chapter is more about how to avoid it or fall victim to it. However, How-not-to-do-it guides are often the most informative
• Link Bait - This is really cool if you are a PHP programmer and not a master copywriter. Most of the resources I have read about link bait involve being creative with your pen. This has useful tips about how you can create some cool stuff with PHP to attract the link love.
• Cloaking, Geo-Targeting, and IP Delivery - Another great chapter on what is sometimes considered part of the dark arts. Including lots of useful code to get started.
• Simple Regular Expressions - This is actually an appendix to the book, but very handy none-the-less.

That probably covers just 1/4 of the book.

If you are a PHP programmer and are wanting to develop SE friendly websites, then you should really consider getting this book.

One thing that would have been handy is a disk with the source code for the extensive coding examples in the book. I’m not sure if this is because mine is a review copy so was not shipped with a CD. I’ll dig around and see what I can find.

Get Search Engine Optimization With PHP here.

I have just bought the Who Loves Money eBook and am reading it now and will post a review ASAP.

Who Loves Money is written by Kyle and Carson, the same guys who did Beating Adwords and Inside The List. I like both of these products and regularly refer back to them for information. On that basis, I pretty much bought Who Loves Money on the strength of these 2 books.

Like I said, I have just started reading Who Loves Money, so drop back soon if you want to see what I think of it.

In the meantime, check out the Who Loves Money website and see what you think.

You can also see my Beating Adwords and Inside The List reviews here too if you like.