Doing a case study without skewing results

Hmm. I'm not an expert, but could you do the case study early? Like how a TV show is taped and then broadcast every week. Do it over a period of a few weeks/months, and then either after it's done, start to release weekly "updates"?

I'm doing a couple of these right now. Some I am doing ahead of time and then 1 I think I will do in "real time" but somehow not giveaway the url. Not sure how this is going to work.

The thing is that if you do it in real time and people see what the url and keywords are, everyone is going to start targeting those keywords. I've been to quite few of Don and Jeremys bootcamps where this has happened. It totally screws up the case study.

I almost think that doing it ahead of time is better because I am thinking people will get bored having to "wait" for stuff to happen. If you do it ahead of time, then they can see how it turns out in 1 reading. People want instant gratification.

Lee

You all have some very good suggestions, thank you. I had never thought about doing it ahead of time. I suppose if I did that but wanted people to see things as they developed, I'd have to use screenshots, which would be fine.

As for my newbie readers targeting the same keywords as the person doing the case study, not sure what to do about that. If I release the information long after the person has gotten their site established, it's not likely the copycats would be able to overtake him, but who knows. I'd like to think people wouldn't do that, especially since I'd be giving them reasons why it's not a good idea, but I'm not naive. At least not most of the time.

Good point about instant gratification, Lee. There is that to consider.

Thanks for the tip, Justin! That would definitely cut out a lot of the "false" traffic. But if after their first visit, they bookmark it and thereafter go directly to the site, I wonder if a filter would be able to exclude IP's that first visited through my link. Just thinking out loud. I'll have to go into Analytics and see if that's doable.

I'm guessing the course is about traffic then, not particularly money?

If it's about money just forget the traffic, by all means show the analytics results, mention that traffic may be skewed and X was refered by your URL, and some may be repeat visits etc.

But... look how much money he is making >>>

Sorta thing.