dzoaffiliate

Has anyone bought the premuim version of PPC Web Spy? If so is there a monthly fee?

RobinInTexas

I avoided the free version, my guess is that the whole thing is nothing but pure spyware.

If anybody has a different opinion I'd like to hear it.

Brad Callen

What on earth are you talking about?

Taken straight from Wikipedia: Spyware is computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user's interaction with the computer, without the user's informed consent.

Our product has 110% nothing remotely related to that. It is a basic Firefox add-on that places a "view keywords" button below each Adwords ad in Google so that you may click it and view your Adwords competition's keywords. FREE users display 2 of their referrals affiliate links at the top of Google that are clearly marked as their referral's affiliate links. If you're a free user and don't want to be bothered by the ads, then just uncheck the option in the options window: http://screencast.com/t/pycGFxD4

PAID users see no affiliate links by default. That's it. No more. No less.

To answer the original question: no, there is no monthly fee.

Zero

Hey Brad. Dunno If you'll read this but great job on your awesome PPC tool. The moment i saw it, I knew i just had to get it. Awesome stuff.

Brad Callen

I'm not sure. Probably a lack of understanding like you originally had. The problem with forums these days is alot of people post comments based 100% on speculation and people reading it (that don't know) just assume the original person knows what they're talking about. That's why you see a lot of negativity in forums. Negativity spawns more negativity, which to me is a very sad thing.

I think this lack of understanding is worse with this tool because it's a completely new and unique program and idea. A "view keywords" button has never been placed below a Google Adwords ad before, so those that aren't used to seeing that, just assume the worst. Human nature, I suppose. Couple that with the fact that about 60,000 users have downloaded the free version in the past 3 weeks, and there's a lot greater chance to read confused user comments in forums. Whereas, if this was spread out over the course of a year or 2, you likely wouldn't see many confused forum posters.

I've been wracking my brains trying to integrate all the feature ideas that customers are giving us, so this week has been very stressful for me. Ended up coming down with a cold.

Brad

mick535

The main problem I had with the program was the main "marketing" hook for Platinum users, which was:



To me, that aspect is saying that the Free users are going to click on my affiliate links, even though they know they are my affiliate links.

One of the biggest problems for Affiliate Marketers is getting people to click on your links and getting them to think that they aren't affiliate links. Here; everyone will know and more than likely, the click rate will be very low.

Do you have any data on what power users of this program are seeing in terms of a click through rate?

I would think you would have to have a very substantial downline for this Viral feature to be of any benefit to the normal user.

The PPC Spying features are excellent. I think if you would have focused more in this area and tossed out the #1 and #2 positions in Google thing, you would have had less downloads, but more of a targeted audience. Just my 2 cents on that.

I was personally turned off by this feature. To others it might be something that their list members flock to.

Great product overall.

jmidas

Youngmarketer - DO NOT post your guesses as facts - you only end up looking like an idiot. If you don't have a clue what you are talking about, simply don't talk. (Brad was much nicer about this than me - but you slammed his product for no reason and without knowing a thing about it)

That said, I did buy the premium version a couple of days ago. And, honestly, I have mixed feelings on it. Brad, I see you are here, so I'll just throw out my 2 cents.

Also, please know that I have only played with it a little bit so far.

1) I think it is an amazingly great idea as a keyword spying (research) tool, although I would like it if it returned more than 100 keywords. If it is to be limited, It would be nice if it somehow gave the 100 best performing (on what parameters I dont know yet). At this point, I am not 100% clear what the results I am seeing are telling me. All in all, I love this aspect of the tool.

2) As much as I like the keyword research part of it, the jury is still out for me on the viral/monetization part of it. I really dont like this part of it. I think I would actually prefer it if it were just a keyword tool and leave out the other aspect of it.

Anyway, one suggestion I have would be to make the big green button under the ads much smaller and almost a little hidden. Maybe just a small "something" that those who use the tool know the meaning of.

All in all I like it and plan to use it extensively for the research side of things.

Brad Callen

Hey, awesome comments and you're spot on. Here's my answers to both:

1. The reason it's limited to 100 is because of the cost involved in providing this data. Once over 100 keywords and "business wise" it wasn't feasible for us to charge only $97. I wanted to make it affordable for anyone, as I was trying to put myself in the customer's shoes. I know from experience that 100 keywords is more than enough keywords to have a very profitable Adwords campaign. Most of my campaigns have less than 25 keywords. We could provide more than 100 keywords, but the price would have to be alot higher if it were a 1 time fee. That's why you see other services charging monthly fees. They would charge a 1 time fee also, if their costs to provide the keywords were low enough. We could do 1 of 2 things. We could charge a monthly fee for an "Elite" version that gave as many keywords as we have for each domain. OR we could charge a much higher 1 time fee. I've been reluctant because I didn't want it to seem like it was too expensive. What do you think?

2. Definitely right. In fact, if you go through the buying process now, 100% of the focus is away from the viral/affiliate link aspect and now towards the actual point of the software (keyword research and analysis). The viral feature is now only slightly mentioned as a side benefit, which is how I believe it should have been from the beginning.

Also, right now, the design and feel of the site is being changed completely to go away from the dark/evil looking design... I don't like the feel of that at all. It will look much more upbeat and happy. And the focus is completely away from the viral aspect. I wasn't happy with that either.

Also, great suggestion on making the buttons smaller. That's an option we'll add for sure and was on the list of additions. The tool's been out for about 2.5 weeks now, so we've been swamped with helping current customers. It's finally died down and now have a chance to actually add features and functionality that users have suggested.

Lastly, the question about collecting clickthrough rates etc. We thought about collecting this data, but decided against it, as I respect the privacy of our users, so we do not collect click and search data. We don't store any data about user's searches.

The only data that is collected is the word the user searched for at the time of searching only. This is used to display the appropriate affiliate links. Once the affiliate links are displayed, the data is deleted and not stored for any purpose.

Hope that makes more sense.

RobinInTexas

Well at least I qualified my guess as a guess, I'll give PPC web spy a shot, I just get paranoid when I see a large number of people saying "here's the greatest thing since windoze 95"

marcanthony

I've seen a handful of threads, in different sections of the forum on PPC Webspy.

I've tried my best to understand the spyware and mlm arguments against Webspy... I still don't understand them though.

PPC Webspy is an awesome tool--every feature and function is disclosed, in immense detail, up front... before you download and/or purchase it.

As hard as I've tried, I remain puzzled, when any thought of "shady business" is mentioned about it.

It's an awesome Firefox plugin... you have to option to turn it off and on...

And, if you pour water on it--you will grow a money tree.

Well... maybe you don't want to pour water on it.

Anyhow...

I've been using web spy(the platinum version) for a few weeks now--It's awesome.

Aside from the keyword spying feature, what I like most is that I can also spy on the ad copy the competition uses

Peace

Brad Callen

hehe... and that explains the problem exactly. Too many people downloaded it too fast. 60k people in 2.5-3 weeks will cause a lot of confusion and questions, no matter how organized and straight forward the product is. After tomorrow, the new site design will be done, and we've got many help videos and FAQ in place now, so we're set to go :-)

Brad

Bruce NewMedia

Thanks Brad, I'm glad you came on here to explain this better.

I actually had ignored getting this completely due to comments I'd seen at another forum.
The part of the software I didn't like was being emphasized the most, while they practically ignoring the key word spying benefits.

Thanks for clarifying this. NOW, it does sound good. (and cool) -)
_____
Bruce

RobinInTexas

Brad (and the rest of the warriors)


I was put off by the quantity and what I perceived as aggressive promoting by jv/affiliate marketers to "get this fantastic FREE conquer the world tool."

I am relatively new to the business but I know that there is no free lunch. Good "free things" come from marketers who understand Ziglars "You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want."

My perception of this rollout was that it was not based on that concept. If in fact it was, I apologize for expressing what may have been a bad "guess".

Brad Callen

No worries, Robin, that's one of my pet peeves, when affiliates who signup to promote via the Clickbank marketplace, promote our products using ridiculous hype. That's definitely a negative to using Clickbank, in that anyone that sells via Clickbank has no control over who decides to promote. Although, I have manually disabled several spamming affiliates over the past few weeks through custom programming that we've put in place. From the marketing side of things, the plan is pretty simple. Give away something of great value that contributes to and helps people in our IM community, and in the process; build a list, and build a strong relationship with that list (group of customers) through helpful advice, tips, etc. over time. If I help them make more money online, I'm hoping they'll have trust in me and will purchase something from me at some point in their life. Really, nothing fancy about the strategy. The same overall thing we've all been taught.

I really enjoy coming up with unique software products, and think I do a better job at that than "writing eBooks" or creating a "Home Study Courses", so that's the route I've found myself taking more often than not :-)

Brad
P.S. There really was no "rollout". I literally made 1 twitter post showing a demo video of the software, because I wanted to show people. I purposely I didn't post a link to the site anywhere, because the tool wasn't actually 100% complete at the time. The next thing I knew, people were re-tweeting, googling the name of it, and then promoting it. It wasn't until last week that I told my personal email list about it.

RobinInTexas

Yeah, I hear you and like how much has the Filsaime/Goddady war cost Parsons?