Click Bank + PPC Tracking

Hello,

I'm pretty new to selling Click Bank products using PPC. I am wondering, whats the best way to track which keywords are getting the sales? My adwords destination URL is a php file that redirects to the click bank product page. I have inserted adwords conversion tracking code to that page, but that still doesnt tell me which keywords that the customer buying the product used to get to the page. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks.

 

If you have conversion tracking on the thank you page (after the customer buys), that's the best. Then you can run a query report to find these words.
If it's not your product, ask the vendor to put your code on the thank you page.
And if you can't do any of it, assign a ClickBank TID to each keywords and see what converts.
nadavs

 

Or you can also use Clickbank Tracking, if your campaign is not really big.

http://www.clickbank.com/affiliate_tools.html#Affiliate_Tools_5

 

I'm using 3 ad groups with probably 50-60 keywords each. I can only make a tracking ID for each ad right? So I still wouldnt know which keyword is working?

 

I suppose I could take the keywords that are getting a high CTR and split them into different ad groups, but dam that will be a lot of work. Anyone have better suggestions?

 

I use Google conversion tracking whenever the CB product allows it (and I tend to want to use CB products that allow G tracking) ... But I'm also planning on trying some smaller campaigns using CB tracking with some CB that dont have G tracking but that I really want to promote.

 

The best and most inexpensive tracking I've used, which I'm still using, is Xtreme Conversions, which can be found here:

http://www.xconversions.com

I endorse very few products but this is one of them. In fact, I was so impressed I sent the owner Amir an unsolicited testimonial after I've used the tool.

This tool automatically tells you where your clicks are coming from (e.g. google.com, google.com.uk etc., google partners such as ask.com, or particular adsense websites if you're using the content network), which keyword the visitor typed into google to find your ad, and most importantly, which keywords and adgroups are making you the sales.

In the past, to track which keywords are resulting in sales, you had to ask the particular clickbank product publisher to put a code in their thank-you page that's specific to you. With this tool, this is no longer necessary.

What I do is, I would start a new campaign with lots of adgroups, run the campaign for a few days, then check my stats. I would first look at my clickbank sales and make note of the tracking ID associated with each sale. Then I would check my xtreme conversions stats to find out the keyword associated with each tracking ID. For example, say I'm promoting a dog training product (fierce competition by the way), and I may have the adgroups "chihuahua puppy potty training", "golden retriever agility training", "adult westie house training", etc. Say when I check my clickbank stats, I see that I've made 3 sales, 2 for "chihuahua puppy potty training" and 1 for "adult westie house training". At that point I can compare, for each adgroup, how much I've spent in ads and how many sales I've made as a result. If an adgroup is costing me too much money without making a sale (for example "golden retriever agility training" which hasn't made a sale - say that it's already cost me $30 in adspend, way more than the commission for one sale), I would pause that adgroup. Whereas for the adgroups that are pulling a profit, I may bid more to get more sales, and/or spend the time to tweak my ad to increase CTR -> increase QS -> lower bid. Over time, the only adgroups I'll leave on are those that are turning a profit for me.

If I was not tracking, I would only be able to tell whether the campaign was profiting or losing money OVERALL. For example, the campaign may be losing money overall, but in reality perhaps only a couple of the adgroups are making all the sales and the rest are only costing me but making no sales. If I wasn't tracking, I would have stopped this campaign thinking it was a dud (or the product wasn't converting). But because I was tracking, I would know to keep the couple adgroups making me profit and stop the rest.

But that's only one of the ways I've been using xtreme conversions. For some of my campaigns, I've found that clicks coming from google's search partners weren't converting at all, whereas the clicks directly from google WERE, so I turned the "search" option off - and was able to turn my campaign around.

The same goes for clicks from the content network. With tracking, I know exactly how many sales are coming from adsense ads. If it's profitable, I may increase my content bid (and I would know HOW MUCH to increase it by because I know what my profit margin is!). If it's not profitable, I simply stop the content network.

I also check to see whether the same keywords are consistently resulting in sales for me. For example, I may have an adgroup that's performing well and when I check my xtreme conversions stats I may find that one single keyword in that adgroup has been making almost all the sales. In that case I would "peel and stick" - take that keyword and start a new adgroup for it. That way I could better target the ad to that specific keyword, for example by using the keyword a few times in the ad to make it bold to increase CTR.

When I'm in a REALLY good mood and am feeling particularly bored, I sometimes look through all my xtreme conversions keywords to pick out those that I know do not match my product and therefore will not convert. For example, I may be selling a "make your wife love you" type of product. I might be checking my xtreme conversions stats to see which search phrases my visitors are typing to find my ad, and I might see the phrase "your wife loves you lyrics" - in this case I would know I probably wasted that click because someone who's searching for lyrics was probably not interested in that product. So I would add the negative "lyrics" to my adwords campaign. This has decreased wasted clicks and therefore adspend for many of my campaigns.

That's all I can think of for now...I've probably been using the tool for other analyses, but I should stop my ranting before I turn this post into a book. But yes, I HIGHLY recommend this tool to anyone who's serious about tracking their adwords campaigns!

[Word of Caution: Whichever domain you install the tool on, make sure to NEVER, NEVER accidentally let that domain expire....I made that stupid mistake a month ago and didn't find out for almost 24 hours. None of my clickbank sales were recorded during that time and I lost several hundreds of dollars in adspend before setting xtreme conversions up on a new domain and changing the code on my tracking pages. I believe xtreme conversions is responsible for inserting cookies, so when the domain it was installed on was down, no cookies were inserted, so none of the sales were credited to me.]

Sorry for the long post!

Amy

 

Amy,

I went to that Xconversions site to check it out and it. And... Correct me if I'm wrong - but does it set the clickbank cookie on the visitors computer as soon as they reach your site? (ie even if they don't click on any links) ? I can see how that alone would make conversions go up higher ... BUT ... I can also see how perhaps Google wouldn't appreciate that? Do they allow that? Does Clickbank allow it?

Am I just reading it wrong, does it not do that?

Thanks for any clarification...

 

Zibblu,

To this day I don't completely understand how xtreme conversions work....I only know how to use it effectively to help my business. I'm unfortunately not a techie and still don't understand how cookies work either. Sorry I can't shed light on your questions, but you can always ask them here:

http://www.xconversions.com/support/

Amy

 

Thanks for the reply Amy. Yes I can definitely see how it would be helpful for business, I just want to make sure it's "legal" first before I buy it (because I'm definitely considering it.) I imagine it may not stuff the cookie until you click off site, I think that would be considered legal. Anyway... I'm going to look into it further and see what I find out.

 

I use Xtreme Conversions what a great tool .
Thank you amy for sharing

 

Yeah I bought Xtreme Conversions too - I can see how it would be very helpful, although so far I can't really get it to work

But yeah it doesn't stuff cookies like I was worried about. So it's all good.

 

How do you tell if the clicks are coming from G's search partners?
Thanks amycheung for your post!

 

AWESOME.... I'm gonna check this out right away, I can't believe I've never heard of it before or that it's not that popular (grav 12?). It would seem that I've wasted 2 months working on developing the same sort of software. I hope this does what I want it to. Thank you amycheung.

 

Another awesome post from AmyCheung... Thanks for the input. Difficulty in tracking (as an affiliate) is the main thing that has driven me toward wanting to become a merchant: to have control over my own checkout page.

 

does extreme conversion work for organic traffic

 

Tracking202 and Prosper202 are two free tracking serveces. The first one is hosted my them, and if you have a little bit of more knowledge you can host it yourself with propsper202.

 

They works with organnic traffic doesn't they ?

 

It can detect organic traffic if you have a landing page setup.