In This Post:
- Introduction to the Plug-in
- Images – Take a Look
- Video – How the PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress Plug-in Works
- The Plug-in’s Main Features
- Confirmed to Work with These Affiliate Networks
- Why did I create the PPC Keyword Tracker?
- Buy & Download Instantly » – $47.
I am very stoked to be able to introduce you to my new WordPress plug-in called the PPC Keyword Tracker.
Until my WordPress plug-in became available, there was no easy inexpensive way for an affiliate marketer using Pay Per Click advertising and WordPress–to promote affiliate offers–to know what keywords they were bidding on were actually generating conversions/sales. With my PPC Keyword Tracker plug-in for WordPress you will know.
This plug-in is ideal for use with major PPC advertising platforms like Google AdWords and most affiliate networks.
And, MOST IMPORTANTLY my plug-in automatically stores your keywords, anonymizes then passes them as a unique Tracking ID to a Merchants’ affiliate sales tracking software. Now, you will know exactly which keywords are generating sales.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Each keyword that is recognized by the plug-in is automatically assigned a correlating Tracking ID, which is viewable in the Keyword Anonymizer Report. Use this report to see which keywords are generating sales!
TIP 1:Try using my plug-in with campaigns or offers you are running that use a hard-coded subid or campaign id.
Currently, the PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress plug-in can store, cloak and anonymize keywords associated with the following types of tracking IDs:
- affiliate subIDs (sid)
- tracking IDs (tid)
- campaign IDs (cid)
- custom tracking variables
- or create your own…
BONUS: I truly believe that my plug-in’s ability to dynamically cloak and anonymize your PPC keywords is one of it’s strongest features. In effect, your merchants won’t get to take advantage of your hard work!
Example of a Cloaked & Anonymized Keyword:
From: http://www.yourdomainname.com/?tid=teeth-whitening
To: http://www.yourdomainname.com/?tid=5You can see that the keyword “teeth whitening” has been cloaked with the anonymized variable “5.” This number 5 is what gets dynamically passed through your affiliate URL to a merchants’ affiliate tracking software.
PPC Keyword Tracker Plug-in Images
Here are a couple of images showcasing my PPC Keyword Tracker plug-in to help you see how awesome and easy it is to use.
To be perfectly clear, I think it is worth repeating that the anonymized version of your keywords (tracking ID) is what a merchants’ affiliate tracking software will credit with an associated sale. Thus, you’ll know which keywords, tracking IDs and campaigns are generating sales. Now armed with this information, you will FINALLY be able to truly optimize your PPC campaigns down to the keyword level.
Who wants to spend money on keywords and creatives that do not generate sales? Not me!
Scratching your head? Watch the video and it will all make sense.
How the PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress plug-in Works
NOTE: This video was published prior to my plug-in being listed for sale. Please ignore all references made in the video with regard to the plug-in being in Beta. Sorry for any confusion! I’ll be adding an updated version in the near future. In the interim, please feel free to contact me with questions.
If you will be using my plug-in to track you Google AdWords traffic, please be sure to review the correct way to write a destination URL that passes keywords (search queries). TIP: Click on See an example.
The PPC Keyword Tracker Plug-in’s main features include:
- Store Unique Tracking IDs (Variables)
- Affiliate URL Cloaking & Rotator
- Keyword Cloaking & Anonymizer (with full-export functionality)
- Basic Click Data
Although the plug-in should work with virtually any affiliate network offering affiliate subid tracking and reporting, I have already confirmed the PPC Keyword Tracker plug-in to work with these affiliate networks
- Clickbank (Confirmed)
- Networks using Direct Track Tracking (Confirmed)
- Neverblue (Confirmed)
- Azoogle (Confirmed)
- Commission Junction (Confirmed)*
- CX Digital (testing soon)
- GetAds (testing soon)
*NOTE: CJ.com only displays SID (subid) when a purchase is made. I think that’s lame, but it is what it is.
Why did I create the PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress plug-in?
In early 2009 I created a WordPress-based blog and planned to use Google AdWords to buy some traffic to test the blog’s main offer (an e-book). Little did I know that trying to track the keywords I was paying for using a WordPress-based blog was going to be such a nightmare. I literally spent 6 – 9 months looking for such a plug-in!
I truly believed that any plug-in I found would have to be easy to use, automatically capture tracking IDs and associated keywords, store them and cloak and append an anonymized variable (tracking ID) to my affiliate URL so I would know which keywords were generating sales and the merchant would not. Who wants to pay for PPC keywords that don’t convert?
At any rate, I was about to give up looking and just pay somebody to build such a plug-in for me. That’s about when I came across a search engine ranking that looked promising. And it was!
It was a blog ran by a really nice and helpful guy named Jonathan Boettcher. He had a plug-in called the URL Rotator (with Tracking) Beta, which seemed close to what I was looking for. Thus, I downloaded and installed it.
I tested the plug-in for a few days, which I found to be quite easy. And, it was this testing of Jonathan’s URL Rotator plug-in that provided further validation for a few additional features I thought might make this a more complete option for myself and potentially affiliate marketers.
Following, after a bit of additional brainstorming and a few discussions with a super affiliate friend of mine, I decided it was time to have my own WordPress plug-in built… and the PPC Keyword Tracker was born.
Buy my PPC Keyword Tracker WordPress plug-in for just $47 (USD)
To buy my plug-in, select your order type below and continue by clicking a Buy Now button. I am selling my plug-in via ClickBank.com, so you will be redirected to a page(s) hosted on a clickbank.com domain name to ensure a secure transaction.
Your purchase includes free updates and you will automatically be notified when a new version of the PPC Keyword Tracker plug-in is available.
| LICENSE TYPE | PRICE | BUY |
| Single License (1) | $47 |  |
| Unlimited License (2) | $94 | |
| 1 Plug-in may be used on one domain name. 2 Unlimited usage license for the price of 2 licenses. |
||
“Being able to track my campaigns is an absolute must no matter what traffic source I’m using. Having moved over to Wordpress I immediately ran into problems. Certain themes had to be edited a certain way and hacking the code everytime I installed a new site just to pass tracking data became time consuming and costly. What Eric has managed to do is not only solve this problem but has also created a cool way to rotate and split test merchant pages on the back end.
I’m a split test junkie and being able to finally have a simple yet effective way of doing this through Wordpress was huge for me. I can pass whatever tracking variables I like and best of all my keywords are “anonymized” so the affiliate network cannot steal my best converting keywords. Matching them up from within the plugin’s reporting features is a breeze so I am finally saving myself some time to concentrate on other areas of my business. Eric’s Keyword Tracker is a must have for anyone driving paid traffic through Wordpress … period.”
- Tom Page : Affiliate Marketer
Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
If you want my plug-in, but feel uncomfortable about filling out the form to get it, just send email to me eric [at] ericitzkowitz.com and I’ll send it to you as an attachment. No worries! I know you’ll love it! Thanks.
[Reply to this comment]
Eric,
Thanks for your hard work! Question: Google is really “down” on affiliate marketers now, and knocks down Quality Score and/or ups bid prices and/or deletes accounts if they detect affiliate links on a landing page.
Does your plugin effectively cloak the link so it no longer looks like an affiliate link… or can one use a cloaker or php redirect and still use your plugin?
[Reply to this comment]
@Daniel The plug-in allows you to create a friendly URL. When you setup an affiliate group, you will be asked to create a “slug name” for your friendly URL. Let’s say you want your slug for this affiliate group to be “offer.” Your friendly URL will be http://www.your-domain-name.tld/offer. You will use this friendly URL wherever you want to create a link to the offer/squeeze page on the merchant site. It also includes a URL rotator, so you can test multiple offers all via the one friendly URL. That means you don’t have to update your landing page each time you want to try a similar offer from a different merchant(s).
[Reply to this comment]
Hey Eric, thanks for the shout out!
I see a bunch there that looks familiar, and some pretty cool new features too. I’m going to give the plugin a test drive – I’ll let you know what happens!
Cheers
Jonathan
[Reply to this comment]
Jonathan, thanks!
FYI… I further edited the part of this post that includes mention of you and your plug-in to hopefully let anybody reading this post know that testing and using your plug-in helped me to validate which additional features and functionality would make the plug-in even better. I also gave you some more link love. (:
[Reply to this comment]
Hi Erik,
Does PPC keyword tracker work on other affiliates network, e.g. other CPA network(Azoogleads)?
I noticed that there are only 4 options of URL templates on the setting.
Does that mean that it only works with these 4??
thanks!
[Reply to this comment]
Eric Itzkowitz Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
@Ken Those are merely examples. You can use whatever tracking ID you want. Be sure you store whatever tracking ID you want the plug-in to remember. I really appreciate you using the plug-in. Let me know how it works. I’ll take everybody’s feedback and make the plug-in even better. Thanks! – Eric
[Reply to this comment]
Thanks Eric, I really like your plugin!
@Ken, You can use the plugin with multiple affiliate networks… the key isn’t the variable that you send to the plugin, the key is in how you format the outbound URLs. IE, you’d include a TID= for clickbank, SID= for CJ, and SUBID= for certain other networks.
[Reply to this comment]
Eric Itzkowitz Reply:
February 25th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
UPDATE: When storing multiple variables in the Stored Variables field, do not use a space after a comma.
Wrong: var1, var2, var3
Right: var1,var2,var3
[Reply to this comment]
Hi Eric,
Thank you for putting together such a great plugin. It is a helpful solution for a difficult problem.
I’m having one issue….I keep getting this error on my keyword anon report:
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in
Now, I’m also trying to track my conversions using google website optimizer and am sending people to a meta refresh redirect (so google registers the conversion) then to a php redirect (using the slug your plugin generates, which sends the visitor to the offer), any thoughts on what I could do to make the data show up on the report?
Thanks!
[Reply to this comment]
Eric Itzkowitz Reply:
March 22nd, 2010 at 12:21 pm
@Alok, Thanks for downloading my plug-in. With regard to the warning, please try deactivating the plug-in then upload and activate it again to see what happens. Make sure you store appropriate tracking variables, as well. Google, for example, uses ?kw= so you’d want to store just the “kw” portion in the plug-in. You are not using Hostgator are you? It was reported to me that there is something about their setup that just doesn’t like my plug-in or others for all I know.
With regard to you trying to track conversion via the method you describe, I’m afraid that’s a bit over my head. I think I know what you are trying to do, but I don’t know how to make it work. As far as I know, unless you ask a merchant to add a tracking cookie to their success page or some sort of tracking beacon, you won’t be able to actually track.
But, the plug-in will store the keywords you are using to drive traffic and then anonymize them before appending it to your affiliate URL and passing the tracking ID to the merchant’s affiliate tracking software. You’ll know what keywords/campaigns are driving the sales.
In the next version of the plug-in I am going to add in a time stamp for each click so you will know when the click took place, as well as a search function so affiliate with many keywords can do a quick search for any.
[Reply to this comment]
I’ve started using your awesome plugin on 2-3 offers I’m promoting within a single CB account. You’ve made many of the features I would like in a ppc keyword tracking plugin.
I have two questions/comments.
When promoting multiple offers with different urls with this plugin in the same affiliate account, (like CB), will the numbers always starting at one. This is messing up my hop tracking count in CB for the diff offers.
Ex. Hops 1-10 are used for offer1.com/?tid=X and for offer2.com/?tid=X (both new sites and using plugin) in the same account would mess up which keyword got X hops because the variables aren’t unique to the offer in the account.
Could I choose where the numbers start or have a bigger random number starting so there’s less chance of the unique vars being the same?
What I was using before to anon and track clicks was the pretty link plugin. I really liked how it would break down the time and info on where each click came from so I could see a pattern and what times of the day had the most conversions. I’m looking forward to your next update with time-stamping the anon links!
Thanks for your hard work and willingness to share
[Reply to this comment]
Eric Itzkowitz Reply:
March 22nd, 2010 at 12:08 pm
@Vanessa, Nice find with regard to the multiple offers running/rotating within one Affiliate Group. I’m sure that is something that can be fixed. I’ll ask my developers.
Another person also suggested starting the count at something like 0000001, which I will also ask for. I may actually just ask them to include a form field that will allow anybody using the plug-in to use whatever count they want, and perhaps allow for letters, as well. I’ll see what I can do.
Thanks for the feedback!
p.s. The two new features you eluded two will be coming in the next couple of weeks. Just so you know, I do plan on selling this plug-in via ClickBank, but those of you who have already downloaded it will just be grandfathered. If you know anybody who wants the link and want them to have it at no cost, tell them to get it fast as those I have info for get grandfathered in. When I sell it it’ll be going for $47. I will also be allowing affiliates to sell it at a 50% commission.
[Reply to this comment]
@all Just received updated files from my developer. This revise fixes a bug that was causing an elevated click count. Later today, I’ll be sending out an email with the updated files and some other pertinent information.
[Reply to this comment]
On sale now via ClickBank. The new version is solid, but as always please provide me with your experience both good and bad. You can also promote it as a ClickBank affiliate and earn a 50% commission.
[Reply to this comment]
Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again – taking your feeds too now, Thanks.
[Reply to this comment]
Thank you for making this Wordpress plugin!! We can use it in our efforts to promote our
gift site.
[Reply to this comment]
Does this work for organic search (non-ppc search engine traffic)?
[Reply to this comment]
Eric Itzkowitz Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 11:06 am
James, I just replied to you via email. In short, I think the plug-in can include functionality for tracking organic traffic. However, I really need to consider potential leakage and other issues inherent with organic traffic. For example, what should it pass if a visitor comes in from a link that is non-search engine by origin (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Email, etc.). In these cases there are no identifiable keywords. Of course, any feedback from yourself or anybody reading this post would be awesome. Thanks again.
[Reply to this comment]
I need to get more information about keyword system in our website or blog. Please tell me something about it. Also is it useful for us to improve our traffic through our niche.
[Reply to this comment]
Eric Itzkowitz Reply:
July 8th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
@Jaya Currently, the plug-in only offers a great way to track what keywords, campaign IDs, etc. are generating sales. This way you can optimize your spend; get rid of non-producing keywords.
[Reply to this comment]
Hey Eric,
I just bought your plugin and installed it, and then noticed this:
“This plug-in requires mod_rewrite to be turned on!”
What is this? And how do I do this?
Right now the “pretty” url is not redirecting to my affiliate link.
Please help.
[Reply to this comment]
Eric Itzkowitz Reply:
July 8th, 2010 at 12:49 pm
@Victor, I know you’ve received my email, but thought I would provide the same link–given to you–in this reply so others could quickly and easily take care of this. Here is the link: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks
[Reply to this comment]
Erik,
Thanks for the great plugin, is there a way to track multiple adwords ADS along with the keyword that is being used at the same time.
I assumed you could use the variables file like this: kw,ad
Then in the URL like this:
http://www.myblog.com/offer?ad=1&kw=
http://www.myblog.com/offer?ad=2&kw=
But it does not seem to seperate the variables in the report..
Am I missing something?
Thanks,
Wesley
[Reply to this comment]
Eric Itzkowitz Reply:
July 19th, 2010 at 9:52 am
@wesley
I just fired off an email to you regarding your question–in further detail. For others reading the comments, however, I wanted to post a quick reply so everybody knows that I have an awesome new version of the plug-in (1.0.3), which has three awesome new features. I’ll be releasing this today. Everybody who has purchased the plug-in, gets updates for free. (:
With regard to tracking multiple ads (not keywords), I’d have to think about this. What info are you wanting to know, which you’d like to see the plug-in report? Google Analytics can tell you; perhaps combined you can know more about which ad converted. You’ll already know what keyword converted by using my plug-in.
The new features:
1. Click time stamp
2. Customize your anonymous tracking IDs
3. Keyword search tool for the Anonymizer Report
I look forward to your reply via email or here eric [at] ericitzkowitz.com.
[Reply to this comment]