The Clickbank Adwords Case Study: Part 3
April 24, 2008
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This last part of the case study took a while, for a multitude of reasons.
The other two:
For one, I have been developing tracking software to track my Clickbank sales. But now there is Hexatrack and Tracking202, both of which have free trials. Actually, it’s developed. It just needs cleaned up so that others can use it. You see, I build things as fast as I can to have access to the functionality, but that leaves the interface a little less than newbie friendly. It’s simple and I am still continuing development.
Another, I was really unorganized with my advertising during the time I ran this campaign. I have all the data, but the methods I used weren’t actually refined. In fact the methods weren’t really methods. They were shots in the dark based on logic but I was still learning.
But then I realized that may be the exact reason to write this case study. I ran this campaign haphazardly, without tracking and I still made a profit. If I can do that, just about anyone can.
Looking back over the keywords, I started vary specific, product name specific, and I expanded from there. I was initially going to intrepret the data only. But in the meantime, I found Blist. With Blist, I could upload the data and share it, which is exactly what I did.
And then I ran into issues and another day and found Zoho. Damn, how long has this thing been around with me needing it. I uploaded the ROI details of the campaign and messed with it for less than ten minutes and came up with this, which is a little squashed from the amount of data but it gives me a graph of the ROI I never had before. Originally I embeded it here, but the graph was too big for this layout. So above is the link and below is the screenshot:
Like I said it was kind of squashed, but you get the idea. At the end of the run there, my daily spending on the ads jumped over the $40 mark and that was right when the stall happened in my ROI. I saw it coming. The rise is where I started adding more misspellings and longer phrases. The two days before the $40 day, it started creeping up.
Sometimes this happens when someone new starts testing your territory. Which I how I learned the maximum bid for a keyword is $100 a click. Yep, I have bid that high. It’s like playing chicken. Who is going to turn away first? I had the benefit of my stats to know it was worthwhile. The guy coming in just thought it was too rich for his blood.
At the time though, I was running the ad through my own domain. The product’s name is Joana’s Guide. I bought joanasguide.net which has recently expired. It gave me the benefit of being on it’s own domain (i.e. no other competition from people bidding on their affiliate link) and an extra highlight from Google when people searched for the product name. The actual product’s domain was joanasworld.com. Now if that isn’t a chance to get more clickthroughs, I don’t know what is.
So what I happened at the end I am unsure of. I could pretty much hold my position because I had my own domain. So why all the clicks? A proxy clicker? Everyone bought their own domains? Who knows? I can’t remember now. I just chose another product.
But this was in my early day’s, shortly after I discovered the key to using a product’s name for Adwords campaigns, so I never went further than that for this one. But I expanded it with misspellings and phrases built around the products name, ending with a grand total of 199 keywords. Misspellings and longer phrases are usually cheaper due to less competition. Here is my keyword list near the end of the campaign. And for those that want to dig deeper here is all the Adwords data and the raw ROI data because I am about done looking at it.
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Stephan Miller · Filed Under Clickbank, Using Adwords with Clickbank
Really cool! I’ve never seen anyone who has ever shown a Clickbank campaign of theirs in this much detail!
It’s really interesting to see the different strategies other people use… the data speaks for itself more than words.
And in case you’re wondering, No, I’m not going to copy you campaign…
Takes care!
I figured I’d have to take it above and beyond to get some notice. But it does beat the screenshot of sales. It’s an old campaign. I have the numbers back for two years on campaigns. So you can use the data. This or any of the upcoming case studies will all be with dead campaigns, but it gives actual reality to the numbers that others might give you.
Hi Stephan,
Excellent article. I’ve used some of this in my tracking but was not aware of the programs you mentioned. I’m having a look at them now. I like the forcasting I can get by tracking stats over a time period.
Thanks again.
Joseph
Joseph’s last blog post..CB Niche Builder
This is the first time I used Zoho for this. It worked out rather nicely. I had been just looking at the numbers, but it is nice to see it up on a chart.
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