I spy with my little eye and see a Clickbank affiliate paying $4.01 per click to promote SPYware Remover via a direct-link from the top spot in Google Adwords on the term “download remover spyware”, a term that shows an average of 5,400 searches per month.
This affiliate is also paying $2.52 to be in the top spot for “spy remover”, another keyword phrase with good volume at 6,000 searches per month. Those are only 2 of 316 keywords and keyword phrases in that affiliate’s spyware removal software campaign, and he pays as much as $5.77 per click!
Assuming a CTR (click-through ratio) of only 1% on 5400 searches per month at $4.01/click means that he’s spending $216.54 per month on that ONE keyword… and in all likelihood the CTR is probably closer to 3 or 4 percent. He has another keyword phrase in the top spot gets 8300 searches per month for which he pays $4.72, so at 1% CTR you can add another $391.76 for just THAT keyword.
Even if he’s only paying 20% of those prices, remember that he’s running 316 different keywords many of which get thousands of searches per month.
So, the campaign is either insanely profitable or this affiliate is insanely stupid.
HOWEVER, because I know that his campaign has been running since at least October 22nd, 2008 or over 4 months as I write this, I suspect that he’s taking some serious coin to the bank because…
No one in their right mind would run an expensive campaign like that for so long unless they were turning a profit.
I can also tell you that he’s run 5 different ads in the campaign and moreover, EXACTLY which ad is the most profitable, having run 83% of that time, as opposed to the ad that didn’t work so well and was removed after only 2 days.
So… how’d I find all that out?
I was testing out Chris Carpenter’s (author of Google Cash) new PPC competition tool (OK, a keyword spy tool). 
Up until now, I’ve tested a number of keyword spy tools, but never wrote a review about one because I didn’t find them particularly useful… until now.
It’s called Google Cash Detective 2 and Chris has a 27-minute video where you can see it in action. Pay particular at around the 20-minute mark as Chris explains how much those affiliates are REALLY paying for their keywords which is not nearly as much as Google would lead you to believe. Chris also shares the ‘how to get it at a lower price’ pay per click keyword advertising tactic.
But I liked Google Cash Detective so much that I spent 3 hours ferreting out all sorts of great information the first time I logged into the system and could easily have spent much longer than that.
Google Cash Detective Advantages
Competitive Intelligence NOW
What I particularly like about GCD (Google Cash Detective) is that it returns information FAST and in real-time, unlike others into which you’d input your list of keywords and then wait days (sometimes WEEKS) for them to gather competitive intelligence. The difference is that GCD is powered by vast server clusters that are capable of tracking millions of keywords, advertisements, landing pages and dozens of other pay per click metrics.
Slideshow: See Your Competitors’ Landing Pages
I loved the Slideshow feature. You simply search for a keyword, and when the various permutations come up, you click on “Slideshow” beside the keyword of your choice and it shows you all the landing pages for that keyword (see the screenshot below).
If you append typical affiliate publisher keywords like ‘review’ and ‘comparison’ to your search and then use the Slideshow, you’ll more affiliate landing pages returned. This lets you see what type of landing page (e.g. top 3 comparison, blog post, article) converts best in an Adwords campaign for a particular niche.
Wildcard Searches
Another cool feature is the ability to do a wildcard search for campaigns that direct-link to Clickbank and other networks to see which are particularly profitable.
My URL search for ‘http://*.clickbank.net’ returned 29,727 results
.
I was simply astonished by some of the great product ideas that I saw… and never would have thought of otherwise – one of which got THOUSANDS of searches per month and was only costing 5 cents a click in the top spot.
Woohoo! Thank you, Chris!!
In other words, Google Cash Detective 2 is also a niche market research tool.
If you’re a publisher (with an inherent bias against losing leads by direct linking to merchants), you can use the service as I did to come up with ideas for new products to promote to your audience, i.e. bring that traffic to your site to promote products AND build those leads.
Google Cash Automator
GCD also includes the Google Cash Automotor which allows you to bring all your Google Adwords campaigns into the interface to test and revise them.
Intuitive Interface
Another thing that I really like about GCD is that the interface is highly intuitive and easy to use being that I’m one of those people who HATES to read instructions — I’d rather play / work with software until I break it or can’t figure out how to make it work anymore — and at no time did I come across something in GCD that wasn’t understandable. However, there ARE training videos available should you get stumped.
Is Google Cash Detective 2 for You?
An online subscription to Google Cash Detective 2 is best-suited for serious affiliate marketers (or merchants) that already (or plan to) use pay per click advertising extensively.
From that perspective, Google Cash Detective 2 is a wise business investment for those who want a competitive advantage.
To learn more about this service, visit Google Cash Detective 2 now and watch the video.
About Rosalind Gardner
