[WAMA] Larry Kim - Founder of WordStream - Thursday 15th January, 5PM EST (New York)

53 replies

Hello Warriors!

Thanks for having me. I'm the founder of Wordstream.com and I have 3 key areas of interest:
  • Paid Search: I've analyzed nearly $10 Billion Dollars in PPC/AdWords spend and arguably know more about how AdWords works than anyone on the planet. I also do Twitter and Facebook Ads.
  • Early Stage Start-Ups: I also have experience in super early stage start-ups having recently bootstrapped a company from nothing at all to a successful +$10M / year + 150 employee +2000 customer software company. I'm the #1 Columnist at Inc. Magazine.
  • SEO/Content Marketing/PR: I do a ton of content marketing / PR stuff. My content has generated tens of thousands of press pick-ups in the last few years. My blog does a million visitors per month.
I can answer anything on these 3 topics. Feel free to post your questions ahead of time.

I look forward to the event on Thursday 15th January at 5pm EST time.

Thanks!
#5pm #est #founder #jan #kim #larry #tuesday #wama #wordstream #york
  • Profile picture of the author Alaister
    This WAMA event with Larry Kim was very valuable and we received a huge amount of positive feedback. The ideas presented by Larry was extremely actionable and useful.

    For a limited time we are opening the recording of the WAMA event with Larry Kim to everyone.

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    Transcript:

    Alaister: Welcome to todays Warrior Ask Me Anything event where we bring you the worlds best Internet marketers and online entrepreneurs. Today Im really excited to bring to you Larry Kim. He is the founder of wordstream.com and has contributed to a lot of online marketing and SEO blogs such as Moz.com Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch. He has also recently been awarded most influential PPC expert in 2014 and 2013 according to PPC hero and has a spot in clicks digital marketing hall of fame.

    Welcome Larry.

    Larry: Well thanks for having me Alaister it is great to be here.

    Alaister: So before we get kick started into the actual questions I would love to hear about your actual story, how you started WordStream and for those of the people on the call who are not familiar with WordStream, a little bit about what you do.

    [00:57]

    Larry: Sure. Just briefly like a lot of other people on todays call I started out ten years ago doing Internet marketing consulting. Now I happened to have an engineering background, electrical engineering background and so as I was developing my sole proprietor business just doing Internet marketing consulting I was also writing some software to make my life easier so that I could take on maybe four clients instead of two clients, you see what I mean?

    And then more and more time went by and I kept on making the software better like in terms of keyword expansion and having more features and functions to my own personal software that I was just using to make my life easier that kind of a few years ago I just thought you know, maybe I should try selling this product to customers. And so I pitched to a bunch of venture capital firms and raised tens of millions of dollars and today we have got thousands of customers using our software.
    Its been quite a crazy couple of years.

    [02:09]

    Alaister: Wow that is a really inspiring story. I mean being able to build your own software and get funding and thousands of users it must have been a crazy ride.

    [02:19]

    Larry: Ah yeah. This is a first time for me so literally, like when I was pitching venture capital companies I was just like emailing the inbox, Hey Ive got this great idea for Internet marketing software. Can we meet? And then it actually worked so that was pretty crazy.

    [02:38]

    Alaister: I know you guys have grown a lot since you first started. What have you found to be the most successful strategy that has contributed to the growth and the success of WordStream?

    [02:52]

    Larry: So definitely I would say it has everything to do with content marketing. Today the WordStream blog is a very powerful engine that generates 1 million visitors per month to my blog. I generate something like 15, 000 emails and phone numbers of people signing up for trials or free audits or white papers or eBooks etcetera and that is a decent amount of people that we can call back and try and pitch our services and products to. So that is a very powerful asset.

    And the way that was built was over the last five or six years I have just been doing blogging really, just blogging three times a week, 52 weeks a year for the last five or six years and over time that really starts to snowball and you end up with this massive internet marketing presence.

    [03:50]

    Alaister: Wow thats excellent. With content marketing I know a lot of the warriors on the forum spend a lot of time researching and actually doing content marketing and content creation themselves. I would love to hear more about your strategy around that.

    So I have got a question here from Paul O and he asks, How often do you actually post on the blog?

    [04:12]

    Larry: So I would say that I am publishing maybe three to five articles a week. Not all of them go to my own personal blog on WordStream, I also do columns on like Inc magazine and Search Engine Land and all those other places but on average it would be three to five per week. And the key here is just it doesnt even matter how many you do but as long as you do it consistently over time I have found that to make all the difference.

    [04:38]

    Alaister: There has been a lot of discussion around guest blogging and guest posting and the effectiveness of that strategy in the future and even now. What have you seen? How have you found this as a strategy?

    [04:55]

    Larry: Oh well the key here is what blogs do you guest blog on? And as long as you are going for the top tier of websites like Inc magazine or whatever the most influential publication is in your particular industry I think you will be fine. But Im mindful Google doesnt like links from columns so I purposely try not to include links in this kind of stuff so as to be above board.

    [05:26]

    Alaister: So three or four or five articles a week; that is a lot of content. And you must spend a lot of time writing the content and coming up with the different topic ideas. And I know a lot of people struggle to do keyword research, be able to come up with interesting topics that regularly. Have you got a certain strategy or way that you found works for being able to pump out useful content that is on interesting topics?

    [05:55]

    Larry: Sure. So there are a couple of ingredients that I look for in my best stories. So one of them has to do with leveraging the power of a trending topic in something in the news recently. Another idea has to do with having unusual findings. So like just because something is trending, Id like to see if that story had some unusual angle that I can speak to that is kind of contrary to what people generally think because those tends to do very well. I also try to think of like who would care about this story in terms of like, this is a big deal becauseand if you cant answer that question then you probably shouldnt waste your time writing it up. So just unusual trending topics that have actual takeaways and that are aligned with monster SEO keywords, those tend to be the ones that I do, that do the best.

    In terms of just the workflow of like how to figure out what to write about today, I mean I have a couple of assets here that are very valuable. One of them is like I have a lot of customers. So like you know I have got thousands of customers doing paid search marketing and so I can just look into their accounts and get inspiration to figure out what are they doing and is it working or not. So there is a lot of case study data there. Not everyone has that so I am really lucky to have that.

    I am also pretty hands on. I am actually doing the marketing for WordStream, most of the content marketing, so I learn through experimentation and I just make note of my findings and if there is something interesting that I find out, like oh this is how you should use Twitter ads or something, I will just write that up quickly.

    [07:44]

    Alaister: You mentioned targeting monster keywords. Do you actually choose a specific keyword that you want to target when you are creating your content?

    [07:52]

    Larry: Almost always and I think that is the key to success. I mean gosh if you are to search on a bunch of paid search related keywords like adwords or PPC tools or whatever I think what you will find is it would be very difficult to not find a page from WordStreams website that will show up in the organic listings. And so basically like six years ago I had mapped out the taxonomy of all the possible keywords in my space and I have just been sort of tackling them two or three a week, 52 weeks a year, for the past six years. And then what you end up with is kind of this strategy of global SEO domination where it is like you are showing up for everything you know. It is pretty wild.

    So yeah of course I do keyword research, I mean I build keyword research tools so like in terms of this offer that we sell, so that shouldnt be too surprising.

    [08:48]

    Alaister: I can see how it can be extremely powerful. How do you go about doing the actual keyword research? Do you have a certain formula for, I suppose like competition, level of searches and volumes of searches and things like that?

    [09:00]

    Larry: Yeah I do Im happy to share that with you. I get all my data from the adwords keyword planner, so thats the replacement of the Google keyword tool. Now I focus on a couple data points from there, so I will do a bunch of query expansion and try to get tens of thousands of keywords in there that are related to my business and then I will get a few metrics. One of them is the estimated monthly volume, another one has to do with the competitive metrics so in terms of how competitive is this keyword Google will give you a number between zero and one, so 0.5 would be moderately competitive, one is super competitive and zero is not competitive. And so they will give you that number. And they will also give you the estimated cost per click for that keyword for a first page spot.

    Using those three data points I have everything I need to prioritize my content marketing efforts.

    What I do is I look for high volume keywords that have high commercial value. So what I do is I multiply the volume x the price of those keywords to figure out what keywords have the most value.

    Now, the reason why this is important is because you dont want to be going after keywords where there is like low volume, you would prefer high volume, and you dont want to go after keywords where there is no value attached to them. If people are only willing to pay five cents for that keyword then there is a good chance that it is not a very lucrative keyword, whereas if they are willing to pay $20 for that keyword then it probably has more commercial intent and is probably more valuable. So I just multiply those two signals, the price x the volume to figure out which to prioritize.

    Now I then divide by the competition so if it is high competitive those get pushed down, if it is low competitive they will get pushed up. So, a simply formula. It is the price x quantity for the keywords divided by the competition and then I just go through the list.

    [10:59]

    Alaister: It is interesting that you use commercial value as part of that formula. I mean obviously you would definitely use that when analyzing your pay per click keywords but it is really interesting that you also use it for your SEO efforts in trying to generate traffic to your blog and your articles that actually have high commercial intent.

    [11:22]

    Larry: Yeah of course. Im just tapping into the wisdom of the crowds here so what I am suggesting here is you know if I have really found a key word that is valuable then there ought to be at least a few advertisers advertizing on the keyword otherwise the chances are it is not as valuable. There are three or four million advertisers on keywords so someone must have figured it out you know?

    [11:45]

    Alaister: I have got a question here from Mark and he asks, and it kind of ties in with what you were saying in regards to the commercial value. So if you have got a keyword that has got a high cost per click so you might have an estimated cost per click of $20 or $12 or whatever it may be and it is sort of out of your budget, how would you go about trying to target that keyword and bringing down that cost per click?

    [12:09]

    Larry: Well I can give you a couple of ideas. So in terms of reducing the cost per click, the easiest way to reduce the cost per click is to increase your click through rate. So what we are finding is in Google, just like how in organic search there is like all these penguin and panda algorithms, in paid search there is this one algorithm that runs the whole thing it is called quality score. And how that works is the higher your click through rate, the lower your cost per click, the lower the price you pay per click. Conversely the lower the click through rate, the higher you pay. So if you can figure out a way to make your ad two or three times more compelling so that more people click on it you can expect to see anywhere from a 50% reduction to like a 400% reduction in terms of the cost per click.

    So a couple of tips on how to do that. It has to do with using emotions. So a lot of you bloggers, you look at sites like upworthy and these types of sites. Look at those crazy click baity headlines that people use that get hundreds of thousands of shares on Facebook. Those are the types of emotions you should be tapping to in your ads to get the very high click through rates which will lower the cost per click.

    Just one other idea quickly Alaister, if you cant lower the cost per click of your ads there is a couple of other strategies. One is to be picky. So maybe you dont go for that keyword. Go for a keyword that is a little bit more specific. Try and be a little bit more picky, you see what I mean? Or maybe you just focus on your marketing like trying to get the fish that got away from your site rather than paying $20 for a click on Google search.
    So there are plenty of different strategies. Maybe you dont go for that keyword. Maybe you try to improve that quality score so you get the clicks cheaper. Does that make sense?

    [14:04]

    Alaister: That is a great answer. I sort of see a pay per click campaign from a few different angles. One of them obviously being the ad copy which basically impacts the click through rate so you are obviously always testing different copy and trying to find the most compelling and as you said the one that speaks to peoples emotions and things like that.

    Then you have also got I suppose the conversion rate on your landing page side which allows you to determine how much you are able to spend. If you are able to get more conversions and you are able to earn a certain amount, perhaps you are able to spend more money on that specific keyword as well.

    [14:43]

    Larry: Right, right of course. Thats a big part of it as well but you were asking me about the cost per click, so.

    [14:48]

    Alaister: Yeah sure. So on the other side in regards to the actual optimization of the landing page, what have you found works best there?

    [14:58]

    Larry: Well here is a crazy idea for you. Try eliminating your landing page.

    So what is happening these days is that more than 50% of the searches done on Google are coming from mobile devices okay. So what you can do is you can, instead of having them click and go to this website where you have this long form where you have to type in all this information which is very difficult to do on a phone, you can eliminate that landing page and instead just have a call button. So they will call you straight from their phone, they search, they click on the call button, and you can talk to them. And there is this theory Alaister that says the longer that you wait to get back to someone, so if someone fills out a form on your website and you call them back the next day, their interest will have gone down by like 50%. And you will only get in touch with a small fraction of them. Even though they wanted to talk to you the moment has passed.

    And so the neat thing about this mobile is like you can get 100% conversion rate. So rather than send them to a landing page where you get like two or three or four % conversion rates to leads, you can eliminate the landing page and just force them to call you. And then you get 100% conversion and you are kind of talking to them right at the moment where they were thinking of buying your solution. So that is probably the most powerful idea that I have.

    [16:16]

    Alaister: Yeah wow, that is extremely powerful. I think that is something that a lot of people in the community on Warrior havent really considered. A lot of the discussion is around landing page optimization, how to go about most effectively collecting peoples email address and their details, but I think that is extremely powerfully, being able to leverage the fact that so many people are searching using mobile devices and being able to get in contact with them and start that sales process so that information searching process by giving them a call or whatever. I think that is really powerful and definitely something that a lot of people should try.

    Do you think that only works for I suppose local businesses or would you sort of recommend that for all sorts of business? What about businesses that perhaps dont have a sales theme and dont have the capacity to be able to call people as soon as they submit their phone numbers and stuff like that?

    [17:09]

    Larry: So that is interesting you asked that because I understand that not all businesses are set up to accept phone calls but what I found is that when companies test on this, they change their business model.
    So I had a company that was selling auto parts online and it used to be all ecommerce and they tried this mobile stuff for a couple of months and they realized, we got to add a call center. And we have to have the hours to be open between these hours.

    The mobile is happening whether you like it or not. This trend is happening and the question is just will you adapt your business to take advantage of it or just let others take advantage of it and just watch the trend go by?
    So I think it is relevant for the vast majority of businesses and if you are not set up to take those calls it might be worth trying it out and seeing how those calls convert for you because with calls you have immediacy. They need whatever it is, right now and that is very powerful.

    [18:22]

    Alaister: I think it comes down to testing I suppose. And if it works for your business it is definitely something they should continue.

    I have got a question here from Greg D. and I know you are a big advocate of retargeting, I have read in a lot of your articles and blogs. And he is asking, How to go about retargeting, how to get restarted if I want to implement a retargeting campaign and what sort of results have you seen from your clients or your own retargeting efforts?

    [18:48]

    Larry: So the simplest way to get started with retargeting is just to put a retargeting pixel on all of your web pages. Dont be very picky just put it on all of them and then come up with a generic offer to show to those people, to try to get people back to your site and to do whatever it is you were hoping to do, whether to fill out a form, or buy your product etcetera. And that is kind of the most basic way to do it. If you want to get more advanced you start segmenting by interests. So like people that visited product A page should get product A and people that visited product B page should get ad B etcetera. And you just start by being very generic and then kind of working your way to being more and more specific with your offers and your targeting.

    What I found, just one tip Alaister, is that it helps to be a little bit aggressive with remarketing. So what I mean by that is you can limit the number of impressions. Like how many times will you limit the number of ad impressions to a person per day and for how many days will they be seeing the ad?

    One mistake people make is that they set those numbers too low because maybe they are worried about making people annoyed. But what is so cool about pay per click marketing is you only pay if someone clicks on those ads, right you dont pay if they see it so you are getting free branding. Like every time they see that they are kind of remembering your brand. And then when they do click on them even though if you see an ad ten times you are less likely to click on it but those who do click on the ad are more likely to convert.

    So it is kind of like this perfect storm of marketing, like being aggressive with marketing we are seeing tremendous results. We are actually seeing better results on marketing then we are on the paid search ads.
    So I thought that was interesting.

    [20:46]

    Alaister: Yeah that is extremely interesting. You mentioned in regards to retargeting, segmenting your users and being able to perhaps target per interest or depending on what page they visit. I have got a question here from Steve J. and he says, Hi Larry, tracking is everything and it is a sticking point for him. Would you be able to share some insight in how to track conversions? And I suppose that ties in with the retargeting, being able to identify where the traffic is coming from and being able to understand what is contributing to the conversions that you know where to spend more of your budget I suppose.

    [21:22]

    Larry: Sure. The most important report that I would suggest people look at is in Google analytics. It is basically this conversion pathway report. Trying to figure out of the people who complete your goals, how do they get there? And it turns out my second biggest conversion pathway is people who find WordStreams content organically but then pulled back into the site through marketing. So that gave me the insight that I should be spending a ton of money on remarketing because that is converting the millions of visitors that I have.
    So check it out it is called the conversion pathway report in Google Analytics.

    [22:05]

    Alaister: Yeah so for everyone on the event we will share all of the tools and different links that Larry is sharing with us in the forum so you guys will be able to have access to it.

    Alright well I am just looking at some of the questions here and I have got another one here from Phil and he sort of says, In your experience what is the number one biggest mistake people make when they are first starting out in PPC?

    [22:28]

    Larry: You know a lot of people make the mistake of playing like PPC using the SEO strategies. So SEO strategy is kind of like this land grab, you are trying to get as much impressions and clicks as you can to increase your traffic right. Well in paid search you have to pay for those clicks so actually the strategy is the opposite. You want to get as few clicks as you can that are of the highest possible commercial value. So you are trying to kind of cherry pick only the best and so it pays to be very very picky. So sometimes that is a slightly different mindset from content marketing and SEO and Ive seen that lead to failure like, Oh we paid for all these clicks and they were garbage. Well that is not the goal of paid search you want to buy as few of them as you can that are the highest value.

    Does that make sense?

    [23:23]

    Alaister: Okay excellent. I have got a whole bunch of questions here, I mean the questions are really flooding in. In regards to your pay per click efforts and your clients efforts, what are the major differences in pay per click across the different platforms? So Google adwords, Facebook advertizing and Twitter and things like that. What are the major differences and what strategies have you found that perhaps work on one platform and havent been as effective on another platform?

    [23:51]

    Larry: Sure. Great question. There is different type of ad venues, I would classify them in two buckets. One of them is kind of social, so like Twitter and Facebook and the other one is more search driven, like Google and Bing ads for example. Search ads are really really great when you have a predefined category of interest where people are searching for something. They know what they need but they dont know where to get it. So think about all the categories of businesses you used to look up in the phone book in the yellow pages, like plumber or just wherever there was some category of service or product. Those do best on search.

    There is a ton of other businesses that are not selling, they are basically selling to people, like certain demographics. Like I am selling to, I dont know, people who have anniversaries today or who are moving, like certain life events or certain purchasing histories, or certain age range or gender. Those types of businesses like anniversary gifts or moving services those tend to do better on Facebook because you have got different types of targeting options rather than keyword targeting it is based on all this life information that people are uploading.
    So just high level Facebook and social are great for targeting people. Search ads are great for targeting intents, like keywords basically.

    [25:29]

    Alaister: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Do you find, I have got a question here from actually another Larry, Do you find text ads to be more effective than image ads or the other way around? Or do you find there is a place for both of them? And what are the differences I suppose in approaching using display ads as well as text ads?

    [25:50]

    Larry: So if you are doing display ads, you really shouldnt be using text in your display ads. Like basically you havent even created an image yet, you are creating a display ad that was text and it is kind of masquerading as an image ad but it is not truly like a high quality image and I think it is a big mistake to be doing display advertizing with anything but html 5 or high quality PNG graphics for those images. Why? Because you can get branding right. You can get branding in a text ad but you can put your logo in a visual ad and remember that is free branding right. You only pay if people click on that ad. And you are going to get, if your click through rate is 0.1%, that means you are getting tens of thousands and millions of impressions for free, and you are not fully taking advantage of that value by not putting your colors and your logo.

    Another thing I noticed is that if you, in general, the image ads have twice the click through rate of text ads on the display network. And remember the higher your click through rate the less you are paying for those clicks. So yes you are paying for more clicks but the clicks that you are paying for will cost 400% less. So I think it is crazy to be doing display ads with anything but high quality image ads.

    [27:19]

    Alaister: I know you are extremely passionate about start ups and the whole start up scene. I have got a question here from Chris K. and he asks, For an early stage startup with no positive cash flow and very little resources, what do you think he can get the most impact out of? Would it be PPC, SEO, or PR or how would you compile a marketing strategy for someone just starting out?

    [27:45]

    Larry: Well you know it is going to be difficult to rely on paid search for this kind of stuff where you have no money. I mean you do have to pay for those clicks. Geez if it was me and I think back to how I got started, I was leveraging very very highly leveraged marketing efforts in content marketing. So what I would do is I would tap into the power of trending topics like the Facebook IPO of two or three years ago. I would put out a story to coincide with that huge global event. In this case it was like a research study talking about how effective are Facebook ads and I Showed that they werent that effective at the time. And that was just a couple of hours of work and that got picked up in ten or twenty thousand newspapers across the world. And you cant get that kind of scale in terms of that type of exposure just by paying for clicks.

    So you have got to think outside the box, leveraging the power of trending topics and content marketing to get maximum visibility for what it is you do and what it is you are selling.

    [29:01]

    Alaister: Yeah. I really love the fact that you have had so much success with content marketing. You spend a lot of time pumping out content on both your blog as well as other peoples sites and as you said it is your number one referrer or customers. I have got a question here from Simon E. He is constantly pumping out content however he finds that no one is reading it, so he wants to ask, How do I get the word out there and what do I do after I have written a high quality blog article or piece of content?

    [29:33]

    Larry: Gosh. Alaister, there is this notion of likeso 5% of the content on my website produces over 50% of the traffic alright. So 5% of the content produces over 50% of the traffic. So I have written something like 1,200 articles over the last couple of years. Well you know just over 60 of them are generating more than half the traffic. It is almost like why did I bother with the other 1150?

    There are just certain topics that resonate really really strongly. Like I was saying earlier, are they aligned with a monster keyword? Are they aligned with a trending topic? Is it unusual? Why should people care? Like you have got to ask those questions.

    The key to my success here has to do with doing the content promotion prior to writing the article, you see what I mean? Like if I cantwe do the promotion first. If we cant really think through who would be really excited to read about this and share this information, I dont even bother writing it up.

    So it seems like for this particular question, this person who is asking this question, they should switch the process of content promotion to be the first thing they do rather than the afterthought.

    [31:06]

    Alaister: Yeah that is really interesting. I think a lot of people as you mentioned, they spend a lot of time writing the actual article and they dont really look at the high level picture of what it as actually about and who would be consuming the information. That kind of carries me on to this next question where Dana is asking, Do you after writing the article, do all this promotion in terms or releasing it to press release sites and all this sort of thing or do you kind of let it organically grow because you have done the pre marketing and pre research ahead of time?


    [31:38]

    Larry: No, we promote like crazy. So I will have a network of a couple of hundred lists that I have built relationships with. And the way you build relationships with these people is that you work with them on stories and if the stories do well they will want to work with you on more stories. So I will be pitching that to my contacts, I will be putting it on my social media channels. I will be sponsoring the content on my social media so that people can see that. There are these features on Twitter and Facebook called custom audiences or tailored audiences. So what you can do is assemble a list of the most influential journalists or people in your space and upload that list and make sure that they see that content. So that when they do see and share it that will really greatly amplify the exposure of your content.

    So nowellit is rarely, maybe once in a while you get these kind of, Wow I got a million likes and I dont even know what happened, it just kind of fell out of the sky. But most of the time I am pushing pretty hard you know even after having thought out the different promotional angles ahead of time.

    [33:00]

    Alaister: Yeah excellent. Okay. Just going back to pay per click campaigns, there are a lot of people looking to get started perhaps with a smaller budget. Saheed R. asks, Do you have a specific checklist that you follow when setting up a new campaign or do you have a checklist that you would recommend someone follows when they are first starting out and building up their first campaigns?

    [33:25]

    Larry: Sure. So we talked earlier about this notion of being specific and being picky. So that is important. Just one other thing in terms of the checklist and process that I follow and that is, it is not a set it and forget it kind of thing. So like you dont just set a budget and run it and let it run. That is crazy. Search marketing, the great thing about it is you get feedback. It gives you information on like, what is the click through, what is the conversion rate, what keywords are doing well, what arent, what adwords are doing well, what arent. And it is really critical that you adopt a work flow where you are kind of constantly like once a week or something like that, revisiting those campaigns and making the tweaks and changes or even killing off campaigns completely if they cant be fixed and changing direction. You have to be iterating your way to success as opposed to just setting it up and saying we are done. You know what I mean?

    [34:22]

    Alaister: I have got a question here from Barbara, it is interesting. It seems as though her campaign has grown to a certain level. And she is asking, What is the best way to set it up so Im able to scale across different topics in different countries? How would you structure the actual campaign?

    [34:42]

    Larry: So that is a really great question because as you start building out your campaigns they get bigger and bigger, it is like a living object and it becomes very difficult. It is almost like you are pouring a foundation of concrete, like the foundation of a building and once that is poured it hardens and it is really hard to be nimble and try new features and functions because you built it a certain way.

    The good news is new features from adwords kind of help you not have to have all that inertia of having so many campaigns. So like one example comes to mind, it has to do with location based bid adjustments. So like say I am selling to Canada and the USA, and rather than having two different campaigns, one for Canada one for the USA maybe I can have the same campaign running, but maybe if Canada was worth less to me (I am not saying it is worth less but just in this example) if it was worth less I could set the bids to 50% as much and set the bids in the USA to be like the full amount. So thereby I can layer in different countries, different time of day, different devices, all within the same campaign rather than having to clone it into 200 different variants you know.

    [36:06]

    Alaister: I have got another question here, I guess this is a bit more higher level, and they are asking, What sort of metrics do you look at on a daily basis? So I guess this is not specific to pay per click or SEO just in general what are the metrics that you spend the most time looking at that are driving your decisions as the founder of WordStream?

    [36:29]

    Larry: Wow. You know Im in Google Analytics every day. I look at the traffic because as I was saying earlier everything has to do with content and our ability to bring in people, so traffic really is the top of the funnel. And then from there I look at something called sales qualified leads. So that is of the emails and phone numbers that we generate, how many of them fit the criteria of my target market in terms of their location and their spend and I need to make sure that number is growing really fast. Another ratio I look at has to do with the conversion rate from those sales leads to actual demos, so how many can we get on the phone. And then other metrics include things like customer satisfaction and customer life time value. So those are some of the metrics that drive my business.

    [37:28]

    Alaister: Carrying on from that, what sort of success metrics do you look at from your content? Do you look at things like page views or number of shares or how would you determine the level of success from a piece of content?

    [37:41]

    Larry: You know there are so many different ways to measure success on content. One unusual way that I have been tracking content is enthusiastically positive engagement. So like people actually phoning WordStream to talk about an article that I wrote, or emailing me like a specific question related to some piece of content that I had. Like how engaging is it? And that it was so engaging that people would take that much time to ask a question there or that kind of thing. So it is kind of unusual but that is one metric that I track.

    The other metrics are kind of standard like how many shares, how many comments, time on site. It is all around the engagement of the content. Is this something that people care about or is it just something that is so dumb or obvious why should I bother commenting or sharing on it?

    [38:46]

    Alaister: Here is another question from Dependran, and he is starting out a new blog and he is asking, What are the fundamental on page and off page SEOs that you would suggest he investigates and gets right before actually launching the site?

    [39:06]

    Larry: You know that is such a big question. I think just maybe investigate like the history of the domain that you bought, make sure it is clean and it has a clean profile. That could probably sink your ship if it was some old expired domain with a lousy profile. I think it is pretty green field. I dont have a great answer for that.

    [39:37]

    Alaister: Yeah I suppose there are a lot of places to start right so it is kind of a very broad question. Carrying on from that we have got a question here from S.B. and he asks, If you are looking to start, what are the best training programs that you have found for pay per click, SEO and PR?

    [39:53]

    Larry: So definitely for pay per click, WordStream has created something called the PPC University. So that has everything from very introductory content to more advanced content on how to do PPC marketing on adwords on Bing and how to do remarketing. So check that out. The blogs that I read are like Jenny Marvin from Search Engine Land, PPC Hero, Search Engine Watch, the usual places. And one thing if people are interested I maintain Twitter and Google Plus and LinkedIn profile, I update twice a day with interesting content. You can check those out if you are interested.

    [40:41]

    Alaister: We will place a link to all of those places, PPC University and PPC hero and all that sort of stuff in the forum so everyone will be able to get access to it. I have another question here in regards to content creation. That seems to be a very popular topic on the forum. And they are asking, Do you have a certain rule in regards to length or keyword density within the content that you create?

    [41:06]

    Larry: Yes. So generally speaking, I try to go for like 800 words. One thing that I try to do is have a good amount of images, so memes or figures or graphs, you need to have a few of those per post. That is pretty standard. Once in a while I will do these really really deep dive thought leadership kind of research on like conversion rates or click through rates where it is really in depth stuff, and those will go to maybe 3500 words but I only do maybe one a month of those types of pieces of content.

    [41:47]

    Alaister: Yeah I have seen a lot of those really kind of deep dive ones. You have done a lot and there are a lot of people in the industry that have done a whole bunch. I think Ollie Gardener from unbound loves to do them, Neil Patel from crazyegg he loves to do them. It seems as if they get a lot of attention in the social networks and there is a lot of people sharing those and things like that. Have you found those to be more effective than I suppose your shorter more regular articles or do you find the more regular articles to be effective?

    [42:17]

    Larry: You know I dont see a huge correlation between the length of article and the success. Like it is true that my longer form content tends to do better than the short form articles but they take more effort. So the question you should be asking is, is it better to do one long form or three short form? And I think the answer you would end up with is the same place, because like the longer form stuff does better, but you have got more of these smaller things that do okay and it is a tie.

    Alaister: I guess the answer would be do both perhaps.

    Larry: Yeah and in fact that is what I do. So like whenever I am doing research I will create the long form content first okay and that is just not adjustable, like for people who are just skimming. And so then I will create kind of variations on that post where I just plug one of the key findings rather than going through twenty of them, and create columns or blog posts around chunks or pieces of the story as opposed to the whole thing.

    [43:37]

    Alaister: I have got a question here from G. Sketch. They have seen in a lot of pay per click ads on Google ratings and reviews and he is asking how does he go about achieving that?

    [43:54]

    Larry: Well those are just ad extensions. So that is the review extension. So it is just a standard feature in adwords. When you are creating the ads it asks you if you want to create any extensions and you can just pick the ones that are relevant to your business.

    There are different types of ad extensions. Once of them is a call extension, like the click to call button. Another one is an address like a location extension where it gives directions to your store, another one is the site link extension so these are additional callouts below your ad. They are all the same thing.

    [44:25]

    Alaister: Would you recommend testing all these different extensions on the same keyword and seeing what is the most effective?

    [44:31]

    Larry: You are almost always better off adding as many extensions as you can. Basically what it does is it makes your ads bigger and that means it is commanding more space and more attention. Remember it is a battle for attention in the SERPS and if you have like all these callouts and bells and whistles on your ad, typically what we see is like those ads do 80% better than those without.

    [44:57]

    Alaister: Wow. Yeah okay. Yeah that makes a lot of sense I mean you are getting more real estate on the SERPS right?

    [45:06]
    Larry: Yeah pushing other people down.

    [4:506]

    Alaister: Okay I have got a question here from Keith and he is asking... he runs a local business, I think it is a local dentist. How would he go about leveraging pay per click campaigns and things like that. He finds it very difficult to I suppose assess the value of paid advertizing just because he cant track the conversion rates and things like that so he doesnt know if that ad led to a new customer and things like that.

    [45:37]

    Larry: So dentist seems to be a pretty good vertical for search ads because like it is one of those things where people know what they are looking for and maybe dont know where to get it from. So I guess the key would be to, I dont know get started with initial campaigns and tracking that success and trying to figure out whether or not it is worth the while or not.

    Just one thought for the dentist vertical. I think that would be a really good type of ad to be running on mobile right because you know you probably have a dentist office so you probably have a receptionist, so you probably have someone who can pick up the phone. So you could run ads like during your office hours and send that to like maybe one of the different lines in your office and maybe that phone could ring slightly differently when it comes from adwords rather than just a generic call. And you could get a sense for how those are doing. And just run it during business hours so that you have people answering the phone.

    Yeah I think that is kind of the low hanging fruit because if you are searching for a dentist on your phone you probably have a toothache or there is probably a reason you are doing it on your phone as opposed to on your desktop. So I think that would be a nice place to start.

    [47:03]

    Alaister: Yeah I think that is very powerful. It ties back into what you were talking about in regards to having the call feature as your conversion goal with your ads. I think that is very powerful and probably not a feature that people are using to the maximum potential right now. But it has already happened, mobile usage has increased significantly and as it continues to increase the people that jump onto this trend I think will be able to see a lot of success.

    [47:34]

    Larry: Just quickly, the thing about dentists is they are not necessarily like the early adopters. Like they are not, you know they have other things to do like patients and things like this. They are not always full time search marketers. So I think there is a lot of opportunity for a smart dentist to jump on this quickly and be the first mover and really pick up some patients.

    [47:53]

    Alaister: Yeah that is a really good point and I think that doesnt only apply to dentists I think it applies to a lot of traditionally offline business whether you are a tradesperson or even if you have a local store somewhere I think it is probably applicable to those kinds of business as well.
    [48:07]

    Larry: Indeed, yes.
    [48:09]

    Alaister: Excellent. Okay we are actually running out of time but I have got a few more questions coming in now and I want to squeeze them in just before we wrap up. I have got an interesting question and these are questions that come up almost every single time. Here we have got Steven asking, What books are you reading right now and what online marketing books have you found to be most useful and valuable to you?

    [48:31]

    Larry: You know the two names that come to mind in terms of whose books or blogs that I read, one would be Perry Marshall. So he is like a really great guy that does marketing books and one of the books I read recently was his 80/20 guide to sales and marketing. And basically he is pointing out that most of the marketing you do and most of your effort is wasted and most of the value comes from very little, like as little as 4% of your effort can generate 50% of the rewards. So he just challenges me to think big. Remember how I was saying 5% of the content produces 50% of the results. That is a lot of leverage.

    The other guy who comes to mind is Rand Fishkin. He is a friend and a colleague and I have learned a lot from reading his blogs. And definitely add that to your tutor list.

    [49:32]

    Alaister: It is funny you mention those people, we have actually had Rand Fishkin on one of our previous warrior ask me anything events and it was extremely valuable. And with Perry Marshall we have got him coming up I think next month, so everyone watching that is something to look forward to.

    [49:51]

    Larry: So I strong endorse both of these guys. And you got to show up for those ones or watch the recording for Rand.

    [49:58]

    Alaister: Just before we wrap up Larry are there any sort of parting point or any sort of points you want to make just before we wrap up to people maybe looking to start with pay per click or content creation or even for people who are a bit more experienced and kind of have been doing it for a little bit of time but are looking for ways to be more effective with what they are doing?

    [50:19]

    Larry: Wow that is a pretty broad question. Maybe I would just say go for it. Like just jump in. That is what I did. I didnt know anything about content marketing or PR or social media. Five or six years ago I was just trying it out and iterating and of course it didnt work initially but you pivot and you change and you analyze. And if you keep this up like I did for six years you end up in a really really good place. It compounds over time. So just maybe you are getting started or you are in the middle of your journey and you are not seeing the results you want to see, just take a longer view and just see, two or three years from now you are looking back and it is like wow I cant believe I created this.

    So just you know, get to work.

    [51:12]

    Alaister: Yeah excellent. Okay well we really appreciate your time Larry. I know you are very busy and you have got a lot on. I appreciate you giving up your time for this community and to be on this event. Thanks very much.

    [51:25]

    Larry: Thanks for having me guys. Have a good day.

    [51:27]

    Alaister: Next week we have got Mike King he is a SEO expert from I Pull Rank, so we are very excited to have him. So for everyone on this event I definitely recommend jumping on next weeks one as well. Next week is going to be at the same time and we look forward to seeing you there. Thanks very much.

    [End Recording 51:46]
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    • Profile picture of the author michaeloslier
      I'm looking forward to this.
      My question is:

      What's the best way to set up an Adwords campaign that is able to scale across different topics and countries?
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      • Profile picture of the author Larry Kim
        Originally Posted by michaeloslier View Post

        I'm looking forward to this.
        My question is:

        What's the best way to set up an Adwords campaign that is able to scale across different topics and countries?
        rather than coming up with a different campaign for every geo-location, consider using location based bid adjustments. -- Basically having one campaign, but then varying the keyword bids according to the different geolocations, depending on the ROI of each location.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Alwell
    What questions do you consider when creating a tripwire offer for a blog?

    Best advice for creating one?
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    & Create A Hyper-Engaged Email List For Your Affiliate Marketing Business!

    https://tipsfromtim.com
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  • Profile picture of the author aars14
    Just registered, looking forward to the event.
    Signature
    "Stuck With Adwords/PPC Campaigns? Want to Increase Conversions? Setup New Campaign? Improve current Adwords Performance Contact Google Certified Partners." -Warrior Forum Thread
    Have you Started following my Aliraza.co - Internet Marketing Blog?
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    • Profile picture of the author Markstyle
      Hi Larry,
      Thank you for this event
      I'm registered and i hope it will be helpful
      All of us have a huge questions and obstacles on mind
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  • Profile picture of the author vijaygirija
    Hi Larry,

    I am happy to be a part of this session
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  • Profile picture of the author solvemyhow
    Hello friends,

    Mr. larry is really expert in ppc. Be ready with your question

    I registered too and looking forward for it !
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  • Profile picture of the author h4ns3n
    I'm registered for the event. I'm struggling with tracking ad groups to a landing page. How many keywords to an ad group and how to know when to bail from an ad group and specific keywords. Also, when do you use Facebook ads over adwords - which affiliate products perform better on Facebook?

    I'm an adwords noob so please excuse any incorrect terminology above
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    • Profile picture of the author Larry Kim
      Originally Posted by h4ns3n View Post

      I'm registered for the event. I'm struggling with tracking ad groups to a landing page. How many keywords to an ad group and how to know when to bail from an ad group and specific keywords. Also, when do you use Facebook ads over adwords - which affiliate products perform better on Facebook?

      I'm an adwords noob so please excuse any incorrect terminology above
      at a high level -- use facebook if you're marketing to people (think: demographics - recent purchases, life events, job titles, etc.). use adwords when you're marketing for where people know what they want but don't know where to find it (eg: categories of businesses that used to be in the yellow pages)
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  • Profile picture of the author AffiliateBeast
    What is the best way to set Bing ad that get's buyers to my amazon affiliate site?
    Signature

    Join 300+ SEOs at SEO republic facebook group Today!

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  • Profile picture of the author cabenb
    Awesome! I'll be there!
    Signature
    Install our Brand New FREE Fast Discount Finder Chrome Extension It will find you the best discounts on Amazon on the fly!
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  • Profile picture of the author goodie6117
    Have you ever herd of DAtafeedr affiliate store?.. If so What is your input ,Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author drem
    Hi Larry,

    We are connected on various forms of social media, so you definitely know how to expand your reach greatly via social media and content marketing. My question would be a rather simple one.

    When you create a piece of content, how do you go about marketing it? Do you have a list of go-to resources that you utilize to provide the initial promotion, or have you gained such an audience that the initial promotion is done for you organically at this point?
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    • Profile picture of the author Larry Kim
      Originally Posted by drem View Post

      Hi Larry,

      We are connected on various forms of social media, so you definitely know how to expand your reach greatly via social media and content marketing. My question would be a rather simple one.

      When you create a piece of content, how do you go about marketing it? Do you have a list of go-to resources that you utilize to provide the initial promotion, or have you gained such an audience that the initial promotion is done for you organically at this point?
      by now i have a big enough following that i can break stories simply by sharing it on my social channels but it wasn't always that way. a few years ago i would spend much more time (80%) on content promotion and just 20% on content production. this article talks in depth about the various content promotion efforts that i employ: Content Promotion: How to Amplify Content & Build Your Brand | Wordstream

      Key takeaway is that the most important content promotion efforts should be done *before* not after creating content. If you can't figure out who will amplify your content, don't bother creating it.
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  • Profile picture of the author trulyedward
    I have just now registered. Definitely looking forward to attend !
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    • I am loking forward to make money from this webinar. Money this month, so me say!
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      • Profile picture of the author jonasa
        Looking forward to the webinar! See you there guys...
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    • Profile picture of the author ww00cS
      Registered
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      • Profile picture of the author bbledsoe
        It now says "Sorry, but this form is no longer accepting submissions." and I received the email 15 minutes ago
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        • Profile picture of the author danieljb
          Originally Posted by bbledsoe View Post

          It now says "Sorry, but this form is no longer accepting submissions." and I received the email 15 minutes ago
          Hi, it is working now, see you there! Link to register.
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        • Profile picture of the author hammad644
          Originally Posted by bbledsoe View Post

          It now says "Sorry, but this form is no longer accepting submissions." and I received the email 15 minutes ago
          But I just got this message when I fill the form.

          You have successful registered for our next WAMA event with Larry Kim.

          I think you should try one more time my friend
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  • Profile picture of the author Mu
    Exciting Im going to be there for sure!
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  • Profile picture of the author laxmankafle
    i am In .. Exicited!
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  • Profile picture of the author BreezyWater
    Mr. Kim,

    Thank you for your time. I'd like to know what are you the most excited about and scared of in the world of PPC and digital advertising?
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  • Profile picture of the author freelanceronline
    just reserve a seat....

    its will be good event to learn
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  • Profile picture of the author drschool
    I would love to attend but it won't be possible at that time for me. Anyway to watch a rerun of the session?
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  • Profile picture of the author powerofschool
    I am eagerly waiting to visit this session tomorrow.
    Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author Shaefercd
    Hey Larry,
    Alll registered and looking forward to the event.

    Can we talk about not supporting Google and using Binghoo?
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  • Profile picture of the author Kimistry411
    Hi Larry Kim, How and where do I go to login to this training?
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  • Profile picture of the author rishaan22
    [DELETED]
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  • Profile picture of the author mahem
    My question is:

    I am PTC/GPT website owner. How can I earn more from this method using my website.

    I have 1500+ members on my website and 10k + hits daily.

    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author Adam1011
    What's your top tips for getting your company in the press?

    and

    Which publications "moved the dial" the most?
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    • Profile picture of the author Larry Kim
      Originally Posted by Adam1011 View Post

      What's your top tips for getting your company in the press?

      and

      Which publications "moved the dial" the most?
      It's much easier to ride the coat-tails of a trending topic than try to get journalists to write about your stuff. See if you can figure out a way to insert yourself into a conversation that journalists are already covering. here's an example of the awesome power of trending topics: Oops, I Ruined the Facebook IPO! - Moz
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  • Profile picture of the author jakerobinson
    For those selling physical products on Amazon, do you have some tips or best practices to drive traffic to item listings. Cheers,
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  • Profile picture of the author pmcgillv
    first thank you for doing this.
    Facebook - is there a better time to start time your AD campaign
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  • Profile picture of the author mattbarrie
    Both FB and Google seem are getting quite crowded and both are putting in the thumbscrews to reduce both organic reach / view through conversions and also tweaking things like "quality scores" making them less and less attractive.

    Do you know of any promising new channels outside of Facebook and Google that are large and scalable opportunities for PPC marketing?
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    • Profile picture of the author Larry Kim
      Originally Posted by mattbarrie View Post

      Both FB and Google seem are getting quite crowded and both are putting in the thumbscrews to reduce both organic reach / view through conversions and also tweaking things like "quality scores" making them less and less attractive.

      Do you know of any promising new channels outside of Facebook and Google that are large and scalable opportunities for PPC marketing?
      outside of google and facebook, your ad options are rather limited.

      there's twitter ads, which i think is fantastic if your business relies on thought leadership / content marketing. Then there's linkedin ads, but i haven't had much success there due to limitations of that ad platform. Finally, there are third party display ad networks like AdRoll, etc. which offer exposure in websites that may not be in the google display network.
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  • Profile picture of the author h4ns3n
    Hi Larry,

    What are your thoughts on products that are offering WhatsApp voice for routing calls from Google ads to business, in line with your suggestion in handling leads generated by PPC?
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  • Profile picture of the author albino
    I am disappointed. It was supposed to be PPC session not about content. Everything was in general so I didn't learn anything. I was expecting to hear some new stuff about PPC, how to start, where to start, what is good CR how to choose KW, something more in detail
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9814133].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Myles Sinclair
      Originally Posted by albino View Post

      I am disappointed. It was supposed to be PPC session not about content. Everything was in general so I didn't learn anything. I was expecting to hear some new stuff about PPC, how to start, where to start, what is good CR how to choose KW, something more in detail
      You may have misunderstood how these sessions work. The speakers mainly talk on topics that they've been asked questions about. So if no one asked about how to start, or where to start, choosing KW etc., then it's not surprising those topics weren't covered.
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  • Profile picture of the author fjackets
    oo good thanks for this info.
    Signature
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  • Profile picture of the author sarahjeff4u
    How can you do content marketing in a right way? What are the factors that determines the conversion rate from your PPC?
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    • Profile picture of the author michaeloslier
      This is a really great interview. Thanks Warrior Forum and Larry.

      A question for Larry:
      In terms of remarketing, what are the most creative and effective campaign you have seen people implementing?
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  • Profile picture of the author chaksmiths
    Great interview. Thinking to remake "The Interview" movie. Good work fellas
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    • Profile picture of the author crickerworldcup
      Great News, as always Warrior Forum rocks, thanks for sharing
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  • Profile picture of the author elchubinebrae
    Great interview, almost had a tl:dr moment but i strived on through.
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  • Profile picture of the author balon
    great info, thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author Ferro Siliocn
    I am happy to be a part of this session - -
    Ferro Silicon
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  • Profile picture of the author mohamed1990
    How to get money
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