Spying On Your Competitors To Gain An Advantage
It is no secret that spying on your competitors can save you a large amount of time when it comes to setting up winning affiliate campaigns. The traditional affiliate model requires you picking an offer, setting up a few campaigns on paid traffic sources and then testing to see what converts.
But the problem with this process is that there are dozens of variables to test (i.e. split testing banner creatives) and before you can develop a winning campaign, you have already lost a lot of money. One of the quickest shortcuts to success is watching what is already ready working in the market and simply improving upon it. There is nothing wrong with this and is simply the equivalent of a company going to the supermarket to see their competitor’s new packaging.
There are many tools available that allow you to see which ads have been running for months on pay per click search engines and media buying platforms. The logic is that if the ad has been running for a long period of time, the advertiser must be making money.
As an affiliate, this can also help you identify affiliate programs that are profitable and save you a large amount of time in the testing phase to see what works and what doesn’t. You can then take their ads and banners and build upon them to create even better ones.
There are many spy tools available online that allow you to see what is working today. You can easily click on one of the many successful ads and reverse engineer entire ad campaigns. In fact, many affiliates leave tracking footprints on their landing page, so you can clearly see what paid traffic platforms they are using to send traffic.
As an advertiser, it may be concerning to know that your ads are being monitored, but that is the evolution of Internet marketing. Spy tools are nothing new and have been around for years.
I know at one point there was concern from PPV marketers about PPV spy tools coming out and spying on what was running on the PPV networks. This was a concern because anytime an automated robot crawls the PPV networks, this costs the advertiser an impression. And PPV advertisers pay their ad campaigns by impression and not click. Luckly so far, I haven’t seen this become a major issue – yet.
A new service called MixRank just recently launched and they have catalogued the entire Google Content network so you can see what ads have been running for extended periods of time. I have arranged a $1 trial offer with the guys over at Mixrank for a 7 day membership for my readers.
I highly recommend that you take the $1 trial offer and see if this tool fits in nicely with the rest of your traffic arsenal.
Click Here To Try MixRank For $1
What are your thoughts on spying and using tools like this? Comment below.
Best wishes,
Gauher Chaudhry
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November 2, 2011
12:19 pm #comment-1
I think the ultimate sauce is building your subscriber base. Even if someone swipes your campaigns you can still own something that they don’t, and that is the relationship you have established with your list of followers.
I always read Gauher’s emails and want to purchase his products because I can see that he keeps it real, and I can trust someone who has helped me make money in this industry with his video on 7search (which was free).
I do think spy tools give you valuable information when you are internet marketing but the person advertising may have an advantage over someone just trying to copy.
November 2, 2011
12:20 pm #comment-2
I think its totally fare game.
Who wants to go through umpteen offers, speak to their AM
and then base what they do off on the AM’s words
Whilst you can look at a offer promoting on some networks
and people have the whole other websites they want to promote
either on the same analytic’s, on the same shared hosting
Like why not, they should do more time in hiding as much as they
can and leave what they want out there
But that’s the internet for you, when you actually understand what’s
going on, your reverse engineering and spying on everything lol
November 2, 2011
1:13 pm #comment-3
please is this one going to crawl the ppv network?
November 2, 2011
2:39 pm #comment-4
No, this one doesn’t crawl PPV networks.
November 2, 2011
5:53 pm #comment-5
I think it’s a solid way to become a better marketer overall creatively. The more data you have the better.
November 2, 2011
10:15 pm #comment-6
Great information as usual Gauher!!!
Thanks for the MixRank recommendation and getting your readers a $1 Trial offer. No one’s going to go broke giving this service a seven day run. A lot of valuable information could be gained by giving this a shot.
November 2, 2011
10:24 pm #comment-7
I signed up with Mix Rank, but their tutorials are no use whatsoever. I contacted their support about 2 weeks ago and they said that about ten new tutorials would be posted the next week. They didn’t appear.
So far your recorded seminar gives the best instructions to use the program.
Might I suggest that if they continue to offer inadequate instructions, you could make an added-value affiliate offer of tutorials that would show them exactly how to use Mix Rank with PayPerClick formula.
November 8, 2011
5:42 pm #comment-8
is it legal, and is it ethical?
November 13, 2011
12:32 am #comment-9
Hi Gauher,
I can’t find a way to contact you so I’m trying through your comments.
I’d like to purchase an email to your list about my new site
http://www.webtrafficcollege.com
Let me know how much you would charge for this, and the size of your list.
Thanks,
Harrison
November 15, 2011
12:36 pm #comment-10
Hi Harrison,
Sorry but I don’t sell ad space in my newsletters.
Gauher