Have you been asking yourself. . .”How much are my competitors spending on PPC advertising?” While it may be hard to get an exact answer about that unless you ask your competitor directly, there are some things you can find out about the strategies of your competitors.

It’s easy to get lost in all the technical aspects of running a ppc campaign. You spend your time surrounded by keywords, keywords and more keywords in addition to other data. As you are monitoring your bids, positions, budget, and ad copy, you can easily lose track of the bigger picture and changes that are going on within the industry or among the competition.

There are three steps that you can take to consistently keep an eye on your competitors and keep up with what’s going on in the industry.

Identify what the most important keywords are for all of your major competitors. Pay attention to the average position that your competitors rank for under these keywords, some common elements they have in their ad versions and what common elements they have on their landing pages.

Take note if huge corporations with who have lots more money to spend on PPC don’t appear on the top spot or even in the first page. There must be a reason for this.

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Perry Marshall’s Adword’s Course
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You can really get a lot of information by observing what goes on in the marketplace, but you do have to take the time to dig in and analyze it.  For instance,  if everyone in a particular sector is offering problem-solving e-books, free trials, and demos, you should probably have some sort of interactive media on your site because your target audience is probably more likely to convert to these types of actions.

Take regular screen shots of the top 10 or 20 ads for your major keywords.

The biggest reason for doing this is to identify the newer competitors that are moving in to the area. By doing this, you may see that a competitor has copied one of your ad versions very closely, causing your click-through ratio to go down the tubes. This way, you can also track when competitors are scheduling their ads and when they change ad position.

Use the Google free keyword based search tool on your competitors pages. Type in your competitor url and Google will automatically inform you of appropriate search phrases, content, and keywords.  You may get ideas for additional keywords, or see areas where your competitors have excellent content. This also keeps you familiar with competitor’s websites as they add or change content. Something you should keep up on if you want to advertise using PPC.

Certain tools or memberships sites like Spyfu.com allow you to do some detailed analysis when it comes to your competition. These solutions are not exactly the answer to your question of “How much are my competitors spending on PPC advertising?”. . .but they can help you beat out your competition.

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One of the easiest ways to gain status, leads, credibility and trust from your customers is to write your own ebook.

Many people are intimidated by the thought of creating their own ebooks but the truth is, the process is very straight-forward and it can be enormously profitable. If you are already involved in activities such as blogging, article marketing and creating relationships with newsletters, an ebook is just one step beyond in the whole process but can really give your credibility rating an extra boost.

Here are three steps in how to write your own e-book.

1. Choose a topic for your target audience. Don’t make this into a huge product. Pick something relatively narrow within a major topic. So, for example, if the main topic is “internet marketing”, choose something that fits within that category like “article marketing”, or you could go even further and narrow it down to “keyword research for article marketing”.

Keep in mind that for an ebook to work the way you want it to, it must truly address the problems, concerns, or desires of your target market. The content must be top-of-the-line.

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Detailed Instructions on How To Write Your Own Ebook
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2. Brainstorm. Write down every idea you have, walk away and come back and write more. Put down anything and everything for now.

3. Organize your ideas into an outline. Divide your ideas into headers, subheaders, chapters and write descriptions of each point you include. Make sure to keep track of your references and write those down too.

4. Research. Hopefully you’ve picked a topic that you are familiar with already but whether you have or haven’t you’ll need to do research to make your content as valuable as possible. Take notes, mark references and use quotes as you write your own ebook.

5. Put all of your organized ideas and research into a very long article of at least 30 pages – this is your ebook!

6. Get a second opinion. Chances are you’ll spend quite a bit of time on this endeavor. Make sure that you step back every once in a while to give yourself a break. And when you’re near the end, ask someone else to read it for a more objective opinion. Whether it’s your friend, spouse or a fellow marketer, make sure you get a good, honest critique and, if possible, edit of your work.

Once you’re finished, you can either sell your ebook from your blog or website or you can offer it free of charge for people who sign up – the goal of this is to build your list.

If you decide on the first option, you’ll have to set up a shopping cart system. You don’t have to charge a lot for your ebook to make money and because it doesn’t cost you anything to create the book (if you don’t count the time you spend on it) so anything you sell will be a profit.

Learn to use the internet in a smart way and know that you can make money online through study and effort. So now are you ready to write your own ebook?

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