Can You Put a Dollar Value on Online Trustworthiness?
Read more about: Online Marketing, Website Tools + Tips
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For the last few months, I have been experimenting with Google AdWords and other PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising for generating revenue - both on this blog and with other affiliate offers. Although I have had some nicely profitable and successful campaigns, that hasn’t always been the case.
Sometimes the offers just don’t convert. Sometimes I can’t afford good keywords. Sometimes, my butt gets whipped to pieces by Google’s Quality Score system, and instead of making money, I’m cursing at my laptop screen. Loudly.
So yesterday, my friend Lisa sent me a link to the new PPCClassroom that’s been generating a lot of buzz lately. Usually I’m quite skeptical about high-priced trainings and programs, preferring to learn on my own with a little elbow grease and research.
But then I saw that Jeremy Palmer is running the PPCClassroom program. And he’s got Rosalind Gardner involved in the training as well.
Regular readers know that I heavily promote two affiliate training programs here to my readers - Affiliate Classroom and The Super Affiliate Handbook. They are both high quality and excellent resources and I am 100% willing to put my own name behind them, because I think they are THAT good.
Do you know who is behind Affiliate Classroom and The Super Affiliate Handbook? Jeremy Palmer and Rosalind Gardner.
I completely trust these two people.
I didn’t even need to read the sales letter - I pulled out my credit card immediately and gladly gave them $500 to help me get better at PPC marketing (and hopefully save my children from listening to loud cursing).
The lesson here is this: Building trust online takes so much time, effort, and sometimes, money. I have turned down thousands of dollars in advertising revenue myself because I didn’t want to attach my name to a product or service I couldn’t personally stand behind. Jeremy and Rosalind have spent years building up credibility and adding value to the affiliate marketing community - and now they have earned the trust of me (and others) enough that we will buy their products without a second thought.
Sure, that trust is hard-earned. But yesterday, they had so many people signing up for their program that their server crashed. I can only imagine how much money they made yesterday. But even if they pulled in millions, I think that trust is worth more than any bottom line.
So what are you doing to build trust with your site visitors?
And how will that benefit your business for years to come?
: For every sad there is a happy~ 07/02/09 08:38pm
: Happy Days celtic Ireland !! 07/02/09 10:33am
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Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Kelly McCausey is an internet marketer, blog publisher, podcaster
and web business coach. Host of 
Bill Parlaman is owner of 
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I would really love to know more about PPC and especially google adwords but $500 is way out of my range. Do you know of any good places for about $5.00?
Tamara and I are (hopefully) building trust by being really transparent on the new blog. I think that when people read it they can easily sense that we’re completely on the up-and-up, and that we want them to succeed as much as we want us to succeed.
Whether or not this will work out to benefit our business or not definitely remains to be seen, as talking about your mistakes publicly may not always be the best way to instill faith in prospective clients. Again, our hope is that people can see a genuine effort to do a great job and to help foster a sense of community. With luck, this will inspire others as well as attract the type of clients we would most like to work with. (That makes sense, right?)
Hi Wendy, I love your blog, I can’t find the time to read as much as I’d like!
I’ve just started playing with PPC and would love to get the new program but am balking on the price because I’ve been spending too much money on products lately that haven’t done much for me.
Could you give us a review, your honest opinion on whether or not it is a tool that can make the average person just starting out back their investment and then some and also time involved to use it?
I can see the value in PPC, but can also see the draw backs that you have mentioned in your article.
Janice - you can absolutely count on my review - but the program doesn’t officially start until October 10th and it goes for 6 weeks, so it will be a little while before I can give an honest description of the value of the program.