As I promised yesterday, I bought PPC Classroom 2.0 today and here are my first impressions. Obviously I haven’t had time to do a proper full review yet, but since there’s a lot of hype surrounding this and so many people are promoting it I thought it best to get something objective out for my readership in short order.

What’s In PPC Classroom 2.0

PPC Classroom 2.0 is free as long as you pay shipping and handling of $6.97 for US residents or $9.97 for international deliveries. That will get you a DVD shipped to your door, online access to the materials, and a bunch of bonuses.

If it’s free, how do they make their money? In the upsells, of course.

The first upsell is for the “Niche Detective Club”, which is free for 30 days and $19.95/month after. You get a chance to sign up for it when you enter your shipping and credit card details for PPC Classroom.

The second upsell is actually a negative billing option. When you pay the $6.97/$9.97 for shipping and handling, you also agree to pay $97/month starting 30 days from the order date for access to the “PPC Inner Circle”, a membership site. In other words, the first month’s access to the PPC Inner Circle is free, at which point you either need to cancel the membership or pay $97/month to continue. Either way, you only pay the initial small fee for lifetime access to PPC Classroom — if you cancel the PPC Inner Circle membership it doesn’t affect that.

I’m not a big fan of negative billing, although I understand the point of all this is to make money so of course there needs to be some kind of upsell. They are promising to make it really easy to cancel the PPC Inner Circle membership…. here’s the cancellation policy:

Cancellation Policy:

By purchasing this DVD you are agreeing to join the PPC Inner Circle which will start after 1 month of your purchase.

You will not be billed for the PPC Inner Circle at the current moment, you have a full 1 month to try PPC Classroom and decide if you would like to remain a member.

If you decide to stay, you will automatically be charged a nominal $97/month. You may cancel at any time. If you cancel before the first month is over, you will never receive any billings.

There is no commitment or obligation. There is no cancellation fee of any sort.

We are here to help you and if you do not feel that we are providing value, we do not feel we have earned your money!

How To Cancel:

Canceling is very easy and hassle-free. You will never get harassed to stay a member by any of our staff members.

You can cancel right on the system with the click of a link. Our goal is to make this the best resource for you, we’re not here to trick anyone.

You can try our PPC Inner Circle with no concerns, doubts or risks.

OK, I wouldn’t really characterize $97/month as “nominal” (especially if you add on the $20/month for the niche detective upsell), but I guess that’s marketing for you. From what I know about the people behind PPC Classroom, I’m sure they’ll respect this policy.

Note that you have to pay with a credit card, PayPal is not an option.

Ooops, Can’t Join!

I’ve been writing this post live as I go through the registration process. Unfortunately, I’m stuck… the registration form doesn’t like the billing address for my credit card. Must be something about the Canadian address that it doesn’t like, although it doesn’t give me any details. I’ve sent mail to the support address but who knows when they’ll get back to me given all the excitement.

This kind of puts a crimp in my review plans! I’ll have to continue this later, if the thing doesn’t sell out before I get this issue resolved. Stay tuned… the joys of “live” blogging…

Tomorrow PPC Classroom is opening its doors again and they’re offering a free report on affiliate marketing with pay-per-click traffic (it goes by the rather unwieldy title “How to Avoid the 5 Deadliest Mistakes that Keep 98% of Affiliates Dead Broke, and Join the Ranks of the Elite 2% of Super Affiliates!” — I’ll just refer to it as the “PPC report”). The report is good — 33 pages long with real content — and I have heard good things about PPC Classroom and will take it for a spin myself to see what all the fuss is about. In the meantime, though, I thought I’d add my own tips to those in the report. These will only make sense if you read the report first, though, so be sure to download it from here first.

1. An easy way to start building a broad keyword list is to use the “~” (twiddle) operator in Google. Put the twiddle in front of a keyword in Google to do a “synonym” search. This can show you other keywords that Google thinks is relevant.
2. Also use the free AdWords keyword tool. Be sure to check the “Use synonyms” option when you search. And for a really good set of keywords, use the URL option to generate a set of keywords based on the address of a related website or two. You’ll be surprised at the keyword groups that get generated.
3. The AdWords Editor is perhaps Google’s best-kept secret for managing your AdWords account. You can do all kinds of neat things with it, including the trick that Amit shows you in the report. I’ve used it to create a whole pile of ad groups from a simple Excel spreadsheet file — it really does make it convenient.
4. Don’t discount the content network… I have had a campaign running on the content network that costs me only 5 cents per click. I used a broad keyword list (see #1 above) for it and I’ve been very surprised by which keywords get the clicks — it’s not at all the ones I expected!

And don’t forget to read my previous AdWords tips, like squeezing more keywords from the keyword tool.

And if you’ve joined PPC Classroom before, I’d love to hear your comments about it…

I just came back from a vacation, more about that in a separate post. Anyhow, before I left I traded in my old BlackBerry 8700 for a flashy new BlackBerry Bold and while the new device is great, I’m surprised at how much I miss the trackwheel (a scrollable wheel on the side of the device that you could also push in with your thumb) that was on all the older devices. As part of RIM’s push into the consumer space, the trackwheels were replaced with trackballs.

You know, the trackwheel is actually a great way to move up and down a list of items. I understand why they went to the trackball — web browsing is much harder when you can only move in two directions, not four — but I wish they’d left a trackwheel on the device as well. And BrickBreaker sucks with a trackball.

Requisite AdSense tip: Track your earnings while you’re away by creating a custom report and having it emailed to your BlackBerry or other mobile device. It’s delayed reporting, but if you don’t have regular access to a computer it’s the simplest way to make sure things are still running smoothly while you’re gone.