Are Ad Spying Tools Effective for PPC Marketing?

There have been numerous released this year and more seem to be coming out of the woodwork.

Pay per click marketing is a niche that is always inundated with new programs. I guess the idea that you can make tons of money by placing ads is very marketable.

The campaigns used to sell these products usually claim that all you have to do is copy the techniques used by this "guru" or "super-affiliate" and you will be in the fast lane to huge profits.

Marketers of ad spying software offer a similar promise. They claim that their product will locate profitable keywords and ads. All you then have to do is copy them and away you go. heaven.
But are these products effective? Let's take a closer look at what these tools do.

First of all, these tools are based on a theory.

The products all provide similar data: displaying the length of time that ads run for particular keywords by other affiliates.

The theory is that if an ad has been running consistently over a period of time, say, 30 days, then it must be profitable.

This may in fact not be true for various reasons:

• the overall campaign may be profitable but since very few affiliate marketers track conversions down to the keyword level the affiliate does not know which keywords are contributing to that profit and therefore continues to run all the ads in the campaign

• many affiliate marketers continue to run campaigns that lose money because they are inefficient, inexperienced, continue hoping that the ads will suddenly start producing results, and so on

• the affiliate may have lower CPC due to a higher Quality Score. Simple spying on someone's ads and copying them does not guarantee that you will make a profit. Quality Score is influenced by many factors, the most important of which are landing pages, which you can work on to optimize. However, other factors, such as the overall history of the account, is totally out of your control.

Ad spying can be helpful in determining whether or not to enter a particular niche. If the affiliates are pulling their ads quickly, it is most likely not a profitable niche. This is a big time saver for niche research.
Another downside is that ad spying software purchases generally involve a hefty monthly fee. Personally, I think that Brad Callen's Keyword Elite does much more for less money and no monthly fees.

If you want fast and easy, time-tested Adwords strategies, you can immediately download Brad's free ebook "Google Adwords Made Easy" here. It's a zipped PDF file so just unzip it and open it.

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