PPC And Direct Linking On Google
I just heard an interview with Chris Carpenter of Google Cash fame.
I thought it was a very interesting interview. He talks about direct linking and how he still is able to employ this strategy despite restrictions from Google.
One golden nugget I found on the interview was on quality score. He goes through a very simple strategy of achieving good quality scores through a bidding technique that he uses.
I was also surprised to find that he doesn’t promote/utilize direct linking the way I thought he would. I had Chris pegged for someone that only uses direct linking. But he utilizes many other strategies as well e.g. squeeze pages, mini-websites.
He realizes that direct linking does work and that there are people that make a lot of money purely from just doing direct linking. But he also feels it is not the best way to develop long term stability for a niche you are promoting.
Check out the interview here.
Tracking AdWords on ClickBank With TID
One of the new things I have learned recently is the ability to track conversions on ClickBank while using AdWords.This post goes into how you can start implementing this tracking system, its limitations and possible solutions for you.
As any good marketer knows, tracking what works and what doesn’t work to convert sales e.g. keywords, is vital to determining your success in a market. I previously thought that it was not possible to track keyword conversions for ClickBank, as I was not able to add Google conversion scripts to the publisher’s “Thank You” page.
I now know that ClickBank allows you to add a unique TID (Tracking ID) to your hoplink. This enables you to see the TID everytime someone purchases an item off ClickBank.
How Does It Work?
Well your normal hoplink would look like:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/
To add a TID to the link, you only need to add ?tid=xyz after your hoplink. Where xyz would be a unique ID number. So that your modified hoplink will now look like this:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=xyz
How To Put This Into Practice?
In an AdWords campaign, you want to be able to know which of your keywords ultimately converts to sales. So assuming you are selling a single product from ClickBank, you want to assign a TID to each keyword that you have.
keyword 1 = assign TID 001
keyword 2 = assign TID 002
keyword 3 = assign TID 003
and so on (You are going to want to record these somewhere).
You then implement this by putting your assigned TIDs to the end of each keyword’s destination URL on AdWords. So if we took one AdGroup as an example:
AdGroup 1
keyword 1 destination URL:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=001
keyword 2 destination URL:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=002
keyword 3 destination URL:
http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=003
Putting It Together
Once someone clicks on your ad and ultimately buys, the TID will be captured by ClickBank and will now be shown on your sales reports.
By matching the converting TIDs to the keywords you assigned them to; you may then be able to eliminate those that convert poorly and/or are too expensive. Of course you will also be able to determine which keywords don’t convert at all.
Limitations/Obstacles
Just to be clear, if you want to track each keyword, you will need to assign each keyword a TID code regardless of match type. So even if you have the same keyword, but with different match types, then each match type needs it’s own TID. So for example:
cookie recipe = http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=001
“cookie recipe” = http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=002
[cookie recipe] = http://YourAffiliateCode.ThePublisherCode.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=003
Now…at this point you may be thinking “holy crap!”. Cos if you had several ClickBank campaigns, with several AdGroups, containing dozens, if not hundreds of keywords and with different match types to boot, that is going to be one hell of a TID list you need to manually track. I would then say “Yep!” you are right, cos I thought the same way.
One solution could be, to keep track of conversions at the AdGroup level. By giving all the keywords in a particular AdGroup the same TID code. You would then, at least know, which AdGroup converted.
Now, I felt this would be OK during the initial stages of your campaign. When you are just testing out the response to a new campaign and don’t necessarily want to put too much work into setting up your tracking.
But over the long run, I would want a robust tracking system to see the conversion rates of my individual keywords.
Fortunately, there are options for you to automate this process. But it will involve purchasing software/utilities to automatically assign TIDs for you. Personally, I have started to use Xtreme Conversions. It helps by assigning TIDs automatically to my keywords. And providing a system for me to upload my sales reports from ClickBank to tie everything back together.
Whatever your preference, manual or automated, remember tracking is key.