Check out the Jon Fisher Competition!

4thOctober

The difference between a winning campaign and a losing campaign.

Perhaps one of the most important differences between a winning campaign and a losing campaign is how closely you watch your statistics!

One of the most common mistakes with affiliates is that they fail to monitor statistics due to sheer laziness. I know because I've been there and struggle to not be there each day. Did you know that there are just some keywords that will convert sooooo poorly that it could cause a campaign to be unprofitable when in reality, turning just that single word off would result in a net profit?

It is quite a task having to go through and track all your statistics but it's worth it. I've found certain groups of keywords that just didnt work well. They got a lot of clicks but almost never converted. Turning those off boosts my profit up and allows ... you guessed it, an increase in bids which allows for an increase in... traffic.

A WORD OF CAUTION: Keyword tracking is almost always done through SUB ID's (at least for me). These sub id's can be viewed by your AM (who work on commission). I've actually had affiliate managers (not saying what network) tell me... if you're going to run this offer, you may want to look into X keywords. I simply smiled and said ok while suppressing my rage! She (or He) just shared secret information about converting keywords for another affiliate which I could (I didnt) go in and dominate on. These type of things are great for the person recieving the information but those who work hard to find creative keywords get screwed. Therefore my word of caution is to ENCRYPT your keywords if you do any sort of keyword tracking. I dont care how small the campaign.

How do you encrypt your keyword data? Well... It's complicated. And tracking them back to the original keyword is a daunting task. That's why I've decided to create software to automate the process a bit.

This software is going to:

  • Give you the code to encrypt your keywords in a nice subid format.
  • Allow you to download your daily (weekly, or whatever) reports (from your affiliate network) and upload them to the system.
  • Analyse your keywords and unencrypt / pair your encrypted keywords.
  • Find the conversion ratio of each and every keyword
  • Allow you to input your current search marketing information to see what an optimal bid would be for well converting keywords allowing you to get more traffic to keywords that are doing well!
  • Suggest which keywords you disable based on your search marketing information

    • The software is a work in progress right now but I think it will be beneficial to any affiliate marketer. I probably wont give it away but I'll sell it for cheap.

    Anywho, tell me what you think about the software? :)

    Thanks,
    Jonathan

    No related posts.


    Related Posts:

      No related posts.


    Rate This Post:

    1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
    Loading ... Loading ...

16 Comments

Marc says 4th October @ 22:22

mhhh, sounds very good to me I only wish I could code anything lol =) I already had a lot $1K days :P (btw. gratz to yours) but with such a software I would have a lot more (or even higher) I guess and I could do optimize my campaigns a lot better.

So what I think? How much is the cost when I buy it off your… :D

Marc says 4th October @ 22:25

Sorry for double post… but it would be better if you give each keyword people come to your site with an unique session id, attach this session id then as subid, and when you upload the affiliate reports the program (database) just needs to look for the pairs…so you wouldnt need any encry

admin says 4th October @ 23:05

Hey Marc,

Congrats on multiple 1k days as well! :)

As for your suggestion, I’ll take a look into that. From what I understand, it’s fairly similar.

Thanks!
Jonathan

Benjamin says 4th October @ 23:16

Hey Jonathan,

There is already a tool for it in the market, called Affiliate Radar. It is run by Mark Roth (generated $1m in leads w Google last yr) and a brilliant programmer called Raakesh. It assigns a number to EVERY keyword you create in the campaign, and when you DL your sub-id reports from the networks, you simply upload the report into Aff. Radar and it tells you the CPC, EPC, Clicks, Leads, Search Engine, Adgroup, etc.

It is VERY comprehensive, and having been a member for 3mths now, I absolutely recommend it. I got locked in at $57/mth as I got it early - think its like $97/mth now.

Also allows you to upload campaigns to Google/MSN/Yahoo with just a mouse click. Have saved HOURS on this feature alone :)

Do check it out, as I feel its a really good tool to have.

(affiliate link not included :P)

admin says 4th October @ 23:41

Ben,

Thanks for the tip. I’ve actually heard of affiliate radar before… never used it though.

Perhaps I’ll check it out and review how it works for me. :)

Thanks bud!

Lastly, is there anything about the program you think is lacking?

PS> feel free to email me your affiliate link or DP PM me.

Marc says 5th October @ 9:15

Yeah great idea, I hand Mark Roth that generated 1mil. in affiliate sales last year, my keywords, bids, adgroups etc on a silver platter, nah thanks =) And after looking at the sales page etc. I would have a real bad feeling about this program… Who can tell what they do with this data, exactly… no one but them.

Benjamin says 5th October @ 13:33

Well Marc, you have a valid point there. But from what I have heard from a few respected people in the CPA market (including Gauher Chaudhry, a well respected traffic broker), Mark Roth values ethics above everything else, and although we store our data in THEIR servers, they NEVER do take our data and use it.

Unlike some shady affiliate networks -.-

Marc says 5th October @ 14:14

Oh and btw. I am German, you last name doesn’t mean Family, it means civilization =) Even bigger, eh?

admin says 5th October @ 16:11

Marc,

Thanks! I always thought it meant like people or family… I guess now I know! :) Cool!

Thanks,
Jonathan

Marc says 6th October @ 8:24

Ok I did a bad translation, you can say civilization, but the word Volk is better translated into english as “people” or “nation”, hope I could explain it :D

admin says 6th October @ 10:33

Awesome. I like it!

Thanks Marc

Rick says 6th October @ 13:10

I’m currently obfuscating my subid with a little php and then matching the ID’s in my database. I give my campaign/adgroup/ads abbreviated names and I also add those to the campaign/group names in adwords. This way, I can usually immediately tell to the adgroup or ad level what converted and need only go back to the database for the keyword ID.

My subid’s look something like: goog BtBvA1 389
goog = source
BtBvA1 = ad info. I can usually identify w/o having to cross reference (and matching naming conventions in my adwords campaigns)
389 = keyword id in my DB

Not the cleanest setup, but works for my beginner php skills.

I’ve seen some similar affiliate tracking solutions discussed in the DP forums.

Another feature that might be useful would be displayed PageID or A/B id. Basically for those testing landing page variations to tell which variation converted.

Google has a useful A/B page testing tool, but just like with kywords, can’t use their conversion tracking to see exactly what’s working.

Good luck!

admin says 6th October @ 13:23

Rick,

Thanks for the tips and sharing how you track!

Great information!

~Jonathan

Rick says 8th October @ 2:57

Similar discussions going on in this DP thread (one of the best DP threads in a long time in my opinion).

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=4751820&postcount=383

yeikow says 6th November @ 16:36

Hence Volkswagen: the car of the nation! :D

admin says 6th November @ 16:53

Neat! Now, If only I owned that company ;)

Comments