How I Use MSN Adcenter To Make Money Online

This maybe one of the longest post you will ever see about MSN Adcenter on how I had a conversion of 14% from just 7 clicks to a sale which brought in US$47! First off before you continue reading this article, I do not guarantee any results from following the tips I am about to exposed but I am quite sure you a more optimized result out of it :) The result generated from this is from pure testing and tweaking of my ad.

Here’s the result I got from my little experiment below :)

MSN Adcenter Tips


As you can see above, I got a total of 7 clicks which I paid SG$0.40 plus another SG$10 setup fee and generate a nice US$45 for me :) If you like to find out more about how to setup MSN Adcenter or what it is about, you can click here to view a video tutorial I did previously.

Here’s What You Need To Get Started Making MOney With MSN Adcenter
- US$5 To Sign Up For A MSN Adcenter Account
- A Tracking Software
- About US$50 Budget To Spend On PPC

Product: Atomic Blogging 2.0
Commission: 70% (US$32)
Duration: 7 Days
Targeted Country: USA Only

Set Your Default Currency To The Weakest Currency

To be frank this is not my first time doing PPC, I have been an advertiser in Google Adwords for some time already. So what I did this time was basically applying the same tactics I know into MSN as well. First off to get cheaper clicks on MSN what I did was I set the currency of the MSN Adcenter to Singapore Dollars. By default it is actually US Dollars, why did I do that you may ask? Well it’s very simple, in MSN Adcenter the lowest PPC bid price that they allow is $0.05 regardless of which currency you choose. The current rate of SG$1 to US$1 is current 1.38 so if you think about it I am now able to bid at US$0.03 just because I choose Singapore as my default currency.

However do caution, you will seldom get be able to get clicks at $0.05 these days, from this experience I did the cheapest I found is at a rate of SG$0.11.

Here’s How I Setup My MSN Adcenter Campaign

MSN Adcenter Tips


First thing you will noticed in the screen shot above, I have set a budget of SG$400 a month for my campaign. The reason I do that is you have to understand from the search engine point of view how do they surf ads on their websites for advertisers.

The amount of times your ad will appear on search engine is always related to your budget and how much you are willing to pay for. Because if you are MSN, wouldn’t you want to always give higher priority to those who are willingly to spend more?

Here’s how it works, search engine will always give higher priority to those who set a higher budget limit compared to those that are lower. In this way, your advertisement will get the maximum amount of exposure and impressions for the keywords you want to advertise. So if you are currently not getting any impression on your ads now you know why :)

This tactic can also be applied in Google Adwords to as high as $1,000 a month but just remember to only advertise in Google Search Network only.

For the negative keyword part, this is the section where you will want to input keywords that you DO NOT want to advertise on. Let say you are interested to advertise on the broad keyword “wordpress”. If some one type “free wordpress” or “wordpress free” my advertisement will not appear as I set the negative keyword “free” in the box as you seen above.

To brainstorm a good set of negative keywords, think about the type of people online that you do not wish to advertise to :)

Here’s How I Setup My MSN Adcenter Ad Group

MSN Adcenter Tips
Click On Picture Above To Enlarge


To get the maximum results from your Ad Groups, it is always recommended to create a separate Ad Group for each new set of keywords and country.

Here’s Are Some Common Mistakes Done By Many Advertisers

- They set the Ad Group to advertise on multiple countries
- They only input only 10 keywords in their ad group
- They set a really low budget on their ad group

Here’s How I Get Keywords The Lazy Way

MSN Adcenter Tips
Click On The Picture Above To Enlarge


I could have done a better job in getting keywords but I was pretty lazy so I decided to just use the keyword tool provided by MSN Adcenter. Do note that in PPC, keywords are the most important factor which will determine the end results of your campaigns.

There Are Three Ways You Can Get Keywords

1. Find keywords containing a word or phrase

You can use this option to easily generate lot so of keywords from a primary keyword you have typed as you can see in the above image.

2. Search a website for keywords

You can use this option to spy on your competitor’s keywords by simply entering the website url of the competitor. This evil tactic saves you lots of time and research :twisted:

3. Search the destination URLs of your ads

I do not use this option a lot but what I know is that MSN will just give you suggested keywords based on the website you want to advertise on.

To get more ideas and help on getting keywords you can click here to read an article I wrote about spying on keywords.

Always Remember To Advertise On All Three Type Of Keywords

On each keyword that you managed to find, always take the time to advertise on the broad match, exact match and phrase match. To understand more about the difference in each keyword match here’s a detailed explanation of them taken from MSN Adcenter.

* Broad match triggers the display of your ad when individual words in your keyword appear, in any order, in a customer’s search query. For example, your keyword “red flower” would match search queries that include “red flower,” “flower is red,” and other variations, and not just “red” or “flower.” Broad match can expand to include words that are closely related to your keywords. For example, a search query for “red carnation” may result in your ad being displayed, because adCenter automatically identifies carnation as a type of flower. Use broad match to expose your ads to a wider audience.

* Phrase match triggers the display of your ad if the word or words in your keyword appear in a customer’s search query—even if other words are present in what they type. Your keyword “red flower” would match searches for “big red flower” and “red flower,” but not “yellow flower” or “flower red.”

* Exact match triggers the display of your ad only when the exact word or words in your keyword, in exactly the same order, appear in a customer’s query. Your keyword “red flower” would only match searches for “red flower,” with no spelling variations. With exact match you may see fewer impressions (An ad that is served to and displayed on a user’s browser.) but a higher click-through rate (The ratio of the number of times an ad is clicked to the number of times the ad is displayed. ) , because your ad is shown to people who may be more interested in your product.

Download My Set Of Keywords

I created two set of keywords in two Ad Groups, you download them below :)
MSN Adcenter Ad Group 1 – Wordpress Keywords
MSN Adcenter Ad Group 2 – Random Keywords

Tips On Creating That Ad

MSN Adcenter Tips


What you see above is the ad I used to advertise Atomic Blogging 2.0, here’s are some tips you can use when creating an ad.

1. Use Keywords In Your Headline – The keyword I was targeting in this ad was actually Atomic Blogging

2. Insert A Problem Or Solution On The First Line Of Your Ad

3. Add A Gift Or What’s In It For Me On The 2nd Line Of Your Ad

4. Enter Website URL as Display URL but in the destination URL enter a tracking link for tracking purposes.

Summary

That’s almost about it, if you like this post do remember to subscribe to this blog to get further updates. One last thing to note is that will you be able to get the same result as me if you actually do this? Chances are you may or may not, it highly depends on what keywords you used and what ad you use. You will only be able to know only after you tested it :)

If you are interested to promote Atomic Blogging 2.0, you can simply click here to sign up for a free Clickbank account, and click here to sign up for Atomic Blogging Affiliate Program which has a 70% commission payout. Or you can simply use your own Clickbank hoplink at
http://(yourid).atomicblog.hop.clickbank.net
(replace yourid with your clickbank id)

If you have any further feedback or comment about this post, do post them below would love to hear your comments :)

Comments

21 Responses to “How I Use MSN Adcenter To Make Money Online”
  1. Fantastic tips on using MSN Adcenter. I use adwords daily, but your article has inspired me to now try MSN. Great tips!

  2. John Tan says:

    Hi Alvin,

    Sound like a very good investment! Will take a look and try it when I have time. LOL

  3. Nancy says:

    You’re amazing! You have taken the work and frustration out of PPC and given us a chance to achieve…Thanks to for the keyword lists.

    Most of all, thanks for sharing your vast business knowledge with us…

  4. VernLai.com says:

    Good work and thanks for showing it to us.

  5. Seeni J G says:

    Hey Alvin,

    I know how painstaking it is to grind keywords out, set the budget correct, targeting right and all the nitty gritty to make a PPC campaign work right. I have paid exhorbitant amounts of money with Google PPC all the time and have had little luck with MSN or Yahoo paid ads.

    However, your numbers and affordable cost have made me think otherwise. I think i should give it a try. Heck, there isn’t really much to do apart from writing a new ad as you have given the rest on a silver platter!

    I hope Yahoo and MSN combined can give Google a run for its money. It is about time the monopoly of google is scrutinized as they are making way too much money and not paying way too little to webmasters!

    Take care & God bless,
    Seeni

  6. Linky Love says:

    Alvin,

    What is your fefinition of keyword (here “atomic blogging”), as this keyword phrase according to nichebot is not really in demand?

    Why you ’suddenly’ switch to MSN?

    Thanks for the extra knowledge of course!

  7. Martin says:

    Hi Alvin,

    Great post but I have to admit to being surprised.

    Firstly its impossible to have a 17% conversion on 7 clicks. 1/7= just over 14%

    Secondly, the fact you had a sale so early could be nothing more than luck. Statistically until you have a minimum of 30 events (sales in this case), you can’t conclude what your conversion rate is reliably, and claiming so is very misleading to get people to market Atomic Blogging, which really isn’t needed as its a great product.

    Besides that a solid article
    Martin

    • Alvin Phang says:

      Hi Martin,

      well.. it’s just based on 7 days.. as I said on the post.. would agree on some points you mentioned.. but I do see some of my friends which I cannot say who get a conversion as high as 25% before :)

      So nothing is impossible until you tested it… you will be surprise sometimes what you get.

      My aim for this article was just to simple try out for 7 days… just to see what happens if I test something out during this period :)

      • Melisa Phinney says:

        Alvin at my dad’s advise I just bought your Atomic Blogging and it is a fantastic program. I am new to blogging and I will need some help later on.You will see my comment on your programs quite often from now on. Melisa P

  8. Hi Alvin,

    Worth waiting for. Not a fan of PPC having lost a lot in the past, but might give it another try now, especially as you have inadvertently given me the answer to what was my biggest problem … How to structure the actual advert to get the right kind of interest in what I offer. Given the amount of info that I’ve read on this stuff for you to give me the best explanation that I’ve seen in a few short sentences is remarkable. It will help me out in a whole lot of areas including forum marketing, classified advertising and in article resource boxes.

    Once again many thanks for your postings,

    Phill

  9. Fidel says:

    Hi Alvin,

    This is a great post. You’ve made the light brighter at the end tunnel for me. This answers my question on how to get started with MSN’s AD program. Thanks…

  10. Tony says:

    Great article. I tried AdWords before for affiliate products but got slaped with very high cpc. Haven’t tried MSN yet.

  11. I seldom use MSN PPC, usually use Google Adwords. But after reading your post from the top to the bottom, I feel I can try it out with confident in MSN PPC. Thanks for the secret you reveal think seldom marketer will post this out like this…But seriously I think conversion is great not just because the setting of the ad but because Atomic Blogging really is a great product …and am sure you gonna see more thanks from people that brought your product…Way To Go Alvin!

  12. Maria lourdes says:

    Great post,I wish somebody had told me about all this before and be more prepared; i,m glad to have come across your site,thanks.

  13. Alvin, thanks for the tips. Although I’m not engaged in ppc at this time, I definitely look forward to taking your advice to heart. Keep up the great tips…many people like myself look forward to them!

    Corrisa

  14. Eclubstyle says:

    Thank you for the tips, I have more understanding on using Msn Ads Center. Best success to you.

  15. Dulcie says:

    Hi, I’m a newbie.
    What’s MSN PPC?
    Is it pocket PC?
    I couldn’t find MSN PPC downloads.

    • Linky Love says:

      @Dulcie

      PPC is Pay Per Click,

      referring to the ads showing up in the search engines (or on websites showing PPC advertisements)

      When it comes to Google:
      -if you show those ads on your website, they call it “Adsense”
      -if you pay for placing ads, they call it “Adwords”

      “MSN PPC” is another way of saying “Msn Ads Center” or “MSN Adwords”…

      @Alvin

      I quickly did a casestudy with Adwords using your guidelines and… lost 30$ without any sale of Atomic Blogging.

      I reckon that’s why you use MSN and that’s why you are the master :-)

  16. Dulcie says:

    THANKS ALOT =)

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