The latest internet marketing must have is the tool that allows you to spy on your Adwords competition or just plain monitor what other people are doing on PPC.
The Premise:
You enter a bunch of keywords in the software and it checks the ads running on the big PPC networks. It finds out if these are direct ads from merchants or affiliate ads.
After a couple of days or weeks, affiliate ads that are still running can be labeled as “probably profitable”. Using the data gathered, lazy and or smart affiliates can enter a niche or add keywords to their repertoire and have a strong chance of seeing them turn profits.
The Culprits:
There are many different pieces of software or applications that exploit this newly popularized intelligence gathering method. The latest of these has been the much hyped Google Cash Detective by surfer boy Chris Carpenter: $397 entry fee plus $97 monthly. Sold out.
The first of its type was Under Cover Profits. $300 a month. Sold out.
(Don’t be tempted to put this software in the same category as the Rich Jerk’s Keyword XRay or Xconversions. They don’t do the same thing.)
Finally, the latest newcomer on the scene is AdSpyPro by Jean-Philippe Schoeffel. It’s sold for a one time fee of only $67 and many have called it a clone of those mentioned above.
It isn’t.
That has some good and bad implications. Notably the author is not stealing anything from former developers but the software also has some handicaps.
I can’t say I don’t recommend it but it’s important to know what you’re getting when you buy this piece of software and neither the gurus nor the sales letter are giving you the full account.
First off, since I haven’t weighed in on the concept behind the software yet, here it is:
I think it can be an extremely valuable “cheat”. If you can load up hundreds of highly searched keywords and find out which affiliates are making money on which keywords, while spying on their landing pages or noting their direct links, it’s hard not to see the value.
The important thing is to not get carried away. The hype would have you believe you can just replace their ads with your own and live happily ever after.
That’s not the case, especially on the direct linking ads. The affiliates you are nuking will not go without a showdown, making it extremely likely you will dogfight your way to the upper limit of thin margins.
If you use your own landing pages, it slows down the process but the competition becomes indirect and you can inflict some real damage.
AdSpyPro: It has some issues…
The good Stuff:
• Allows you to spy on your Adwords competition
• Traces ads and how long they’ve run
• Automatically recognizes affiliate links from the 15 largest networks, including Clickbank
• Runs on proxies: does not harbor additional costs
• Price: At $67 one time, it’s not in the same ballpark as the others
• Detailed, clear instructions
The Flaws:
• Only returns ads from the first page of results
• Only automatically detects direct links and can’t read iframe or redirected affiliate links
• Runs on proxies: you have to supply them which makes research slower and less automated
• Has some minor bugs at time of launch
• Needs detailed and clear instructions (it has them) because the install process is not automatic
• You need hosting to use this software
To conclude, the verdict is not one sided.
AdSpyPro is a useful and functional piece of software. It has its limitations and might require you to read instructions to complete installation. You’ll also need to go proxy hunting.
On the other hand, it can afford you an important advantage over your peers and lessen the edge your competitors have over you if they have one of the expensive sold out kits and you are flying blind.
Check out AdSpyPro and decide for yourself.
good review Alex but the flaws:
All who bought it recieved an update to 1.02 already which fixed a few bugs. Ads from the first page is all you really need..as long as it returns how many COMPETING ads.
This tool along with Xconversions (for which keywords ARE profitable) both for under $200 and i wouldnt touch detective with a tire lever
The email from JP said in a few moths the proxy will be automated and find proxies that work and plugem in.
However you missed a VERY VERY important point.
People have been getting there money back from GCD because the quiries on there hosting accounts have been too CPU intensive and some hosts have CANNED accounts using detective-some very unhappy customers.
On a good note all JP’s lists recieved an email and we only paid $27 for ASP. If you buy xconversions through your own link and EVERYONE DOES (dont lie people) it’ll cost you $77.So……$27+$77..the best $100 you will spend in 2007.
Thanks & cheers Alex.
Rob
AdSpyPro DOES NOT require the use of proxies and works great without them. They would only be necessary if you plan to slam 1000+ keywords in the system for one campaign and set your crons to run more than once a day. Otherwise, proxies not needed or required! You’re correct that the installation is not for beginners but this is really a good thing because this will keep a lot of people away from this great script (install is available for $30). Thanks for the fair review!
Hey Guys,
Thanks for your comments:
Schmutly: I agree with most of what you said. The money is mostly on the first page but I would like to see all the data, especially on highly competitive and highly searched terms.
As for GCD, you pretty much summed it up and your dynamic duo of AdSpyPro and Xconversions is a very sound investment.
Steve: You can easily get banned by Google for 100 keywords in a campaign. Trust me, I have tested automatic querries on Google in all manners possible. I wouldn’t use it without proxies as you will get banned eventually unless you do very shallow research.
Agree again with the install. For those that recognize the value (and there should be many) the $30 is a small price to pay.
I’m glad to see you enjoyed the program, I did too. It was not my objective to badmouth it in anyway, just say the whole truth.
Hey Alex,
Looks like your summary has more details than mine. None the less, we can’t ignore such an good offer from JP.
Alex, thanks for the review.
I need to correct just a few things. As stated, AdSpy Pro does not need proxy to run effectively (we have tested with up to 400 keywords with no proxy with no problem)
Also, the most important is that AdSpy Pro identifies affiliate link on landing pages, not just pure redirect link. It has a category for this when identifying aff link : “affiliate-landing” : the other ones are labeled “affiliate-redirect”.
Finally, you can add affiliate network at will ; Oh yes, V2 will be released beginning of July with international query and automatic proxy retrieval.
Thanks for sharing your views.
JP Schoeffel
Hi J-P,
Thanks for the corrections and comment.
I’ve just bought AdSpyPro after reading this, and after running too late to get GC Detective (thank goodness!) So far so good, the install was quite painless, took about half and hour on a fairly slow line. Loaded the first batch of keywords, so let’s see how it goes. Seems the proxy thing isn’t really a big deal. And yes, the supporting videos are great. Only bug is that the timeout on the management application is set very short, so logging back in each time is irritating, but maybe I’m missing some setting or other.
I’ll follow this whole automation trend with interest, surely it must impact quite significantly on affiliate marketing if it becomes widespread, and especially if the cost of doing so comes down, as it’s bound to do.
Thanks for a great blog, one of the more sober ones on affilate marketing.
Hi Charl,
Thanks for your comment. As far as AdSpyPro goes, I’d say, so far so good. A useful addition to just about any arsenal and far more wallet friendly than the others out there.
I bought AdSpyPro and have it running with just under 1000 keywords… and no proxies.. its been running for about 5 days… no probs yet… man.. i need to hurry up and put up a GREAT promotion on my blog! because I am LOVING this product…
Sincerely, The 15… scratch that… 16 year old marketer!
Hey Cody,
Thanks for sharing. It seems to be running fine without proxies for now. I’m surprised but can’t complain.
Nice blog by the way, I heard of you and your track record is pretty impressive.
Hi Alex,
I have both Google Cash Detective and AdSpyPro. After over two weeks GCD still isn’t working for me. Chris is a cool guy, but the Indian company he has contracted tech support to is absolutely the worst I’ve ever seen. I promise not to vent my spleen here…
Some of us GCD owners bought AdSpyPro as a backup to GCD. It installed easily and ran relatively well straight away. There are a few glitches. There’s a bug in the parsing of regular expressions that prevents the user from adding new affiliate programs that have a question mark in their URL. It has a function for checking that proxies are up, but every one of the 100 or so proxies I entered came back as bad, even though I could reach them through a browser. Fortunately it seems to be able to crawl 1000 – 1500 keywords without a proxy quite readily. (They may have addressed some of these bugs already, as I just noticed that version 1.03 has just been released.)
It actually does find affiliate links on landing pages and report landing page ads as affiliate ads – something GCD cannot do. Very cool. AdSpyPro has some queries that I really like that GCD doesn’t have, such as giving you all the other affiliates promoting the same site.
GCD tracks ad variations tested by an affiliate, gives an indication of which ad and variation have the highest CTRs and will also provide CPC and number of clicks data (this last you have to pay extra for). Its greatest strength, in my opinion, is the integration with Google Cash Automator. With the two tools you potentially have full automation to find, analyze, launch and manage campaigns on a large scale. The Automator looks after your AdWords account to maximize the ROI or other parameters. This is the part that costs $99 per month.
AdSpyPro and GCD are roughly equivalent in capabilities. What really gives GCD the edge is integration to GCA, and the potential of large-scale automation that it promises. However, at the moment Chris is recommending porting campaigns over to MSN adCenter, and as far as I know, GCA does not work there.
So there you have it, a side-by-side comparison of the two tools.
One tip, for those wishing to buy AdSpyPro (or GCD): both of these programs run on a web host, not on your local computer. Not all hosts are created equal. Before getting a host, ask if the management is through cPanel. Also ask if the hosting plan you want permits you to install your own cron jobs. These two things will save you much pain later.
BTW, congrats on the launch of Project Black Mask!
Walter
Hey Walter,
Thanks for the very detailed account, lots of good stuff in there.