If you invested in bid management software within the past few years, chances are high that you were probably duped in one key area: automation.

Now, before you think I’m about to split hairs here…let’s walk through a few basics to make sure we’re on the same page…and…wait…who am I kidding? This might make you mad -… Continue reading What is Truly Automated, Adaptive PPC Bid Management Technology?.

When I started semvironment as an agency* several years ago, I was proud of the crazy results we were able to achieve with manual pay per click management techniques.

We used massive custom spreadsheets (customized for each client! no ‘rubber stamp’ approach!) with rules that would tell us to move a bid up or down or change… Continue reading Manual PPC Bid Management is Dead.

Affiliate Summit West 2010

I’m stoked to be going to Affiliate Summit West this year!

I’ll be getting in late Sunday night but I’ll be there all day Monday and Tuesday. I’ll probably be tweeting a bit – I’ll tweet out my location, etc sometimes so I’d love to chat!!

Ads on this blog

I will be experimenting with ads on this blog in the very… Continue reading Quick Update: Affiliate Summit West and Ads on this blog.

Lately I have found myself getting less willing to share knowledge, insights and tricks in the ppc space or even some of the cool stuff I have learned in the SEO space…and to that end, I feel like I have chosen to hide underground for quite some time. This is clear by the amount I wrote last year…this year I would like… Continue reading The Code of the Underground Marketer.

I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since June…well, I guess I can believe it.

Here is a quick summary of what I have been up to:

1. Growing the affiliate marketing side of my personal income…and have been doing quite well with it. In fact, I have launched or am in the process of launching… Continue reading Where Have You Been?.

Students have been dropping by the office more and more as the year moves along…they are looking for internships, jobs or simple career advice. Some of the best questions that have come up so far are: What can I do right now so that you or somebody like you would hire me? What do you look for… Continue reading PPC for Beginners.

semvironment has been going through a shiny new internal transformation lately…here’s the latest:

semvironment is now a one man show. I (James Zolman) realized that during this economic turmoil, it is easier to be flexible and strong as a service provider if the people that help me can maintain their sense of… Continue reading semvironment's shiny new guts :P.

I’m writing this post to formally announce my imminent and inevitable death. Or at least that’s what it feels like since I am officially leaving semvironment today. For the better part of two years I’ve been writing ads, designing and redesigning landing pages, and throwing Arby’s sandwiches across the office at James and the occasional intern. It’s… Continue reading Goodnight and Have a Pleasant Tomorrow.

Have you been thinking about mobile advertising? If you haven’t, you probably should. Mobile advertising can be an extremely profitable part of an integrated Internet marketing or pay per click advertising campaign. Mobile has been called the world’s fastest growing ad medium, and today we’re going to run through 8 of the Hottest Mobile Ad Platforms in order to help you start off on the right (mobile) foot.

I’ve only recently started exploring the power of mobile and search…specifically paid search – and noticed a cool tool in Google AdWords that I wanted to share!

While setting up a mobile campaign last night I thought “Wouldn’t it be great to see the mobile search volume for these keywords? I bet Google has a tool…let me go to AdWords Help and see.”

Kablam! Here was the