Let me just say this really quick. If you are using pay per click search traffic (or any other traffic that you pay for) and you are not tracking your costs and results down to the keyword level, STOP! You will NEVER become successful this way, since you are going into this blind.
You could easily have a losing campaign that, with a few tweaks and removing some unprofitable keywords, could turn around to be a significant winner. Worse, you could experience some success, not be sure where your results came from, and a winning campaign could become a losing one.
I struggled with finding a system that could easily track to the keyword for some time, but I eventually did find an AWESOME one: Affiliate Prophet.
This software is really great, but it does take a little time to get used to it and get it set up. Once you have it up and are comfortable using it, you are golden.
Let me say a couple things here about what it does and why I like it so much, then I’ll tell you some pitfalls to avoid with it, as there can be a couple frustrations getting it going.
First off, with the basic package, you have 3 main functionalities: affiliate spy, quick test, and split test.
Affiliate spy is a REALLY cool feature. By simply plugging in your affiliate site, say from clickbank or ANY other affiliate network, affiliate prophet will copy the page completely for you on your own domain. (Just be sure to include the trailing "/" in the affiliate link to avoid any problems with images.) By using the link that affiliate prophet then gives you though, you can track everything down to the keyword level AND see how long people remain on your site in terms of 3 ranges of time. That way, you really get to see who is interested and who isn’t at a glance.
Additionally, in terms of direct linking for PPC campaigns, you are no longer competing on the main affiliate URL, which is great. This just means that you have to go out and buy your own domain name, but that isn’t an issue really at all. I recommend godaddy for that.
For Quick Test, you can just quickly and efficiently track by keywords. You just put a little code on your landing page and you are all set. No reason to have different URLs for each keyword or anything like that, affiliate prophet takes care of everything.
For Split Test, you can rotate up to 3 different landing pages through one URL that affiliate prophet assigns. This allows you to test and optimize your landing page, while the software tracks by keyword, and you should be split testing ads in google adwords or other PPC markets. That way, you are testing EVERYTHING and optimizing everything.
You do need a unique URL assigned to each keyword in this case, but that shouldn’t be a problem if you are using Google Adwords editor (or MSNs editor for MSN adcenter, Yahoo doesn’t have an offline editor but you can export from Google and import into Yahoo.) I personally use a spreadsheet, then copy that right into Adwords editor and upload that into Adwords. If you need help with stuff like that, just comment on the blog or e-mail me and I can help you with that.
Then, Affiliate Prophet collects all the data, and at the end of every week (or whatever period you are measuring on) you just export it from your affiliate networks and import back to Affiliate Prophet, and it reports on everything down to the keyword. REALLY an awesome program, at a one-time $100 it is absolutely worth it.
What to watch for:
- If you are hosting on godaddy, I would recommend switching to another service for hosting. I host with hostgator and affiliate prophet immediately hooks up there with NO issues. Plus, you can host an unlimited number of sites for just $10 per month at hostgator.
- You DON’T need to install Affiliate Prophet on more than one domain. I did this at first and quickly ran out of licenses (he gives you 3 to start with.) You should just run everything from one domain. It will look weird in Adwords at first, as your display and destination URLs won’t be to the same domain, but Google is cool with that, as long as the redirect page goes to the domain of the display URL.
- Peter Yoon, the creator of Affiliate Prophet, is really awesome. He responds really quickly and personally to e-mails. But, don’t overload the poor guy. He has a great discussion board that is pretty active too. And, I can actually help out some too if you have a quick question since I’m pretty familiar with it.
Well, that is it for now. I hope you see what a valuable resource this can be for your affiliate career. And, just to sweeten the pot, if you order through my links on this page, I’ll throw in a bonus for you. Give me a market that you are looking into promoting (or a product), and I’ll send you a short but thorough report. In it, I’ll list the top 10 most successful advertisers, how long they’ve been advertising and their most successful ads and landing pages, and a complete list of all their keywords. Normally I charge $300 for this kind of market report, but I’ll give one to you free.
And, if you have any other questions be sure to look around this site more, blog some of your comments here, and e-mail me. I can likely help answers most questions that you have.
Looking forward to helping in any way that I can,
Sincerely,
Mike
