Speed202: How to Integrate Tracking202 & SpeedPPC

The question of how to best use Tracking202 with SpeedPPC has come up time and time again in the 202 forum, so I figured it was time to finally sit down  and create a detailed tutorial. So grab some coffee or your drink of choice, close all your other browser tabs, and pay close attention. This is going to make you some money if you follow along!

A couple of things to keep in mind before I begin:

-   The following tutorial assumes a working knowledge of Speed PPC, Tracking202, and the Adwords Editor. In the interest of time, I will not be detailing the setup or general usage of any of these tools. If you are not yet familiar with these tools, this tutorial will probably be a bit over your head. I highly suggest you first study the user documentation of each tool if any of this material confuses you.

-   Since Tracking202 and Prosper202 are essentially the same tool, this information will apply to both tools. For users of Tracking202 Pro, the process is even easier, but that will probably be another post.

-   Some assumptions are made about your affiliate marketing knowledge, including how to research and choose an offer to promote, keyword research, and writing ad copy. I will not be covering these topics in detail.

-   We will be working with Google Adwords using the Adwords Editor. The process for working with MSN AdCenter and Yahoo are similar enough to not be covered at this time.

-   I suggest you set aside enough time to read this tutorial in its entirety as it may get a bit lengthy. I intended to provide as much detail as possible.

Ok….now that our assumptions are out of the way, let’s get started!

The Overview

Integrating Tracking202 with Speed PPC is actually quite simple and generally you can have a fully working direct linking campaign up in less than 10 minutes using this process. The length of this tutorial might make it seem like a difficult task, but it really isn’t once you get the hang of it.

Setting this up with landing pages is a little more complex, but not much. But for this demonstration, I’m going to show you a direct linking (aka Google Cash method) case study.

Essentially, there are 4 main parts to this process:

1. Choosing an offer to promote and getting your affiliate link
2. Setting up your campaign in Tracking202 and getting your output destination URL
3. Creating the campaign in Speed PPC and generating the Adwords Editor output
4. Importing the campaign into Adwords Editor and uploading to Google

Sounds simple enough eh?

Part 1 – Preparing Your Affiliate Link

I’ve chosen a tax offer from NeverBlue Ads, even though that tax season is over…you’ll have a working example to follow along with.

The offer I chose is called IRS Tax Freedom (campaign ID: 4401) in case you want to attempt this offer yourself. Be careful if you do decide to run this though as this market is quite pricey & competitive. This is a new offer with a payout of $22.50. The payout information is needed when you setup your campaign in Tracking202 (or Prosper202).

If you are using Tracking202 Pro, also keep the payout amount handy since you can now use this amount in your postback URLs.

So I’ve selected my offer and have obtained my affiliate link. (Ensure the subid portion of the link is intact (subid=). For more information on subids, visit Subids.com

Remember, this will be a direct linking campaign, so once you’ve selected an offer to promote and have your link, we’re ready to add it to Tracking202.

Part 2 – Setting Up Tracking202

Go through the process of creating a new direct linking campaign in Tracking202. This should be a very quick setup, but if you are confused at any point, please review the Tracking202 tutorial video on how to setup a direct linking campaign.

The key part of this process is obtaining your generated Tracking202 destination URL in Step #7. (called “Get Text Ad Code” in Tracking202 and “GetLinks” in Prosper202)

For this example, I am not including text ad tracking and for simplicity sake, have set my maximum CPC to $1.50. (Great resource to estimate Max CPC: Max CPC Calculator)

My raw affiliate link looks like this:
http://lwken.com/click/?s=54098&c=126436&subid=

But my cloaked Tracking202 affiliate link looks like this:
http://redirect.Tracking202.com/dl/2450313?t202kw=

Keep your generated Tracking202 link handy…we’re gonna need it in a minute in Speed PPC.

Part 3 – Creating Your Speed PPC Campaign

Step 1 – Setup Your Seed Keyword List

Fire up Speed PPC! (I highly suggest that you make sure you are using the latest version, which is 3.0.11 at the time of this writing. They’ve fixed quite a few bugs)
If you don’t already own Speed PPC, it is well worth the money for the time it can save. I’ve arranged a $100 discount off the purchase of the SpeedPPC Affiliate Pro version for Tracking202 users. (Normally $497)

To simplify your learning, I’ve included the actual campaign file from Speed PPC that you can review and use as a template, or to upload as is. (Be sure to swap with your own affiliate links unless you are feeling so kind to make me some free money:).

Download the “IRS Tax Freedom” campaign here (Right-Click, Save-AS)

Review the image below to see how I have Speed PPC setup. I generated a basic keyword list and have pasted them into the seed keywords field of the “Keyword Setup” tab. In this example, I am running a single core campaign, so I will not be using the {expansion} and {final} tokens.

SpeedPPC Campaign Builder – Keyword Setup Tab

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[For Advanced Speed PPC Users Only]

You’ll notice that where it says “Additional Adgroup Text“, I’ve added my own label. Personally, I don’t like to group different match types in the same adgroup since the CTRs can vary greatly across match types. So what I do is add the match type label to the end of the adgroup name (ie: income tax refund [exact])

This allows me to quickly see within Adwords which match types are getting the lion’s share of the traffic, and I can adjust my bids accordingly. To do this effectively with Speed PPC, you have to generate your keyword list once for each match type. (This should be automated in a future update in my opinion)

So if I wanted to bid on all of the match types, but separate them into their own distinct adgroups, I would add the adgroup label [exact], select the “Exact Cost” checkbox on the “Pricing & URL” tab, generate my output, and paste into the Adwords Editor. I would repeat the process again, changing the adgroup label to [broad] and [phrase], for the other match types.

This method gives me triple the number of adgroups & ads that I would normally get had I grouped the match types into the same adgroup, but gives me a lot more flexibility when fine tuning my campaign. I can now adjust bids by match type, which isn’t possible when the match types are grouped into one adgroup. Make sense? Good.

Here are the differences in final output by using this method:

Grouped Together MatchTypes: 1 Campaign, 34 Adgroups, 102 Keywords, 68 Text Ads
3 Separated MatchTypes: 1 Campaign, 102 Adgroups, 102 Keywords, 204 Text ads

As you can see the 2^nd method can get quite bloated if you have a large number of seed keywords. In this example, I have 102 keywords from a source list of 34! In most cases, I only do this with my best keywords due to the adgroup and keyword limitations of Adwords. In this tutorial, I am only going to use only [exact] match types, so my total adgroup count will be the same as my keywords, 34.

Keyword Research
While not a comprehensive keyword research overview, I thought just for fun that I’d show you how I came up with the 34 seed keywords, considering how expensive keywords can be in the “Tax” niche (upwards of $30-$40 per click!). We’re after the low hanging fruit, generally anything under the max bid.

Here’s my process:
I viewed the source code of the landing page for this particular offer and pasted all the keywords found in the meta data into Google’s Keyword Tool.

1.    I selected the setting in the Google Keyword Tool to show estimated CPC’s for [exact] match keywords only. (the broad match estimates are normally way off)
2.    I then added the keywords to my list that were under my max bid of $1.50. Some goodies were also found estimated at $.05 CPC, which is great in such a competitive market like this.3.    I grabbed the keyword list from Google and pasted into Speed PPC (above).

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Step 2 – Setup Your Destination URL & Bid Prices

This is the most important part, so read carefully. Remember in Part 2 (Setting up Tracking202) where we generated our cloaked tracking URL? Well…now we need it.

In the “URL Template” field, paste in the tracking URL:
http://redirect.Tracking202.com/dl/2450313?t202kw=

For Tracking202 to dynamically insert the bidded keyword from Google, you need to add the {keyword} token after the “t202kw=” portion of the link.
http://redirect.tracking202.com/dl/2450313?t202kw={keyword}

Now to include any desired SpeedPPC tokens, simply add them after the “t202kw={keyword}” part of the URL. Separate tokens with an ampersand symbol (&).

You can include as many SpeedPPC tokens as needed for your particular campaign type, but in this example, I am only using {seed} & {keywordtype}. Remember in SpeedPPC {keywordtype} equals “match type”, so I’ve set my variable “mt” = to {keywordtype}.

If I were running a dual core campaign, my URL template might look like:
http://redirect.tracking202.com/dl/2450313?t202kw={keyword}&s={seed}&e={expansion}&f={final}&mt={keywordtype}

To simplify the variable names, I’ve shorted them from “seed=” to “s=”, or matchtype= to “mt=”.

Now generally unless you are using dynamic keyword insertion on the landing page, having all these variables in the URL is unnecessary. I do like using the {keywordtype} variable though so I can see which match types converted within Tracking202.

SpeedPPC Campaign Builder – Pricing & URL Tab

Under the “Google Setup” section, you’ll see that I’ve only checked the “Exact Cost” option, and set the bid to my max bid of $1.50. This is a very competitive market, with thousands upon thousands of possible keyword variations, so I don’t want to lose my shirt by bidding on the broad or phrase matched keywords.

Yes I’ll be missing out on some potential money makers with long tail keywords, but I can add some broad keywords in later, once Ive had a few conversions with exact match. Tracking202 Pro has a great new feature that allows you to capture the “actual search term” in relation to the bidded keyword…so I wouldn’t dismiss broad keywords in all markets.

Step 3 – Write Your Text Ads

I’m skipping most of the details on the “Ad Setup” tab. Existing Speed PPC users will already know how to use tokens to create text ads. If not, reread your Speed PPC User’s Manual. I won’t be tracking individual text ads in this tutorial since that would be a logistical nightmare.

Can it be done? Yes, but only with Tracking202 Pro. If you were to attempt to use Tracking202 or Prosper202 to track 68 individual text ads, you’d be setting up unique ad URLs all day long.

Remember, we are tracking at the Keyword Level, not at the Ad Level. Each URL that Speed PPC generates will be a unique Tracking202 URL at the keyword level. So no text ad tracking in this example.

Some might ask, “Then what do I put in the Actual URL field on the Ad Setup tab?”

Answer: Put your own domain or the landing page domain of the offer (if direct linking).

SpeedPPC Campaign Builder – Ad Setup Tab

Step 4 – Generate the Adwords Editor Output

After you’ve completed steps 1 through 3, click on the “Output” tab.

Click the “Build” button.

The keyword URLs will looks something like this:
http://redirect.tracking202.com/dl/2450313?t202kw={keyword}&s=back+tax+attorney&mt=exact

This particular URL is the keyword destination URL for the keyword “back tax attorney” with the exact match type. It, along with all of the other destination URLs, will get pasted into the Google Adwords Editor in the next part of this tutorial.

Review the included Speed PPC campaign file to see the generated output. You will see something like this:

SpeedPPC Campaign Builder – Adwords Editor Output

Part 4 – Importing To Adwords Editor & Google

Ah yes…we’re getting close to being done. But now the tricky part: The Adwords Editor. There are plenty of online tutorials, text & video on how to properly use the Adwords Editor, so I won’t reinvent the wheel here. I’m only going to outline the steps necessary to accomplish the tasks for uploading the Speed PPC output.

If you are new to the Adwords Editor, I suggest you study up before attempting the steps. It is very easy to import data into the wrong place and royally screw up your account, so please be careful.

Download the latest version of the Adwords Editor here. (Yes, it’s free)

More Adwords Editor tutorials that you’ll ever have the time to read:
http://www.google.com/search?q=adwords+editor+tutorial

Quickly, here are the steps to taking your campaign from Speed PPC, into the Adwords Editor, and finally  upload to Google:

1)    Have both the Adwords Editor & Speed PPC open

2)    Select and copy the keyword output from Speed PPC. (click the “Copy” button on the “Output” tab)
Note: Do not use the Export to Excel or CSV feature unless you need to make further changes)

3)    Paste the keyword output into the Adwords Editor by selecting:

• The Keywords Tab
• Make Multiple Changes >>Add/Update Multiple Keywords
• Make sure that the new campaign destination is set to “My keyword information…”
• Select “CPC” campaign, paste your keyword output, click Next, then Finish.

You should have pasted 34 keywords and 34 adgroups.

4)   Paste the text ad output from Speed PPC into the Adwords Editor by selecting:

• The Ads Tab (in Adwords Editor)
• Select the “Text Ads” tab >> Make Multiple Changes >>Add/Update Multiple Text Ads
• Again, make sure that the campaign destination is set to “My keyword information…”
• Select “CPC” campaign, paste your text ads output, click Next, then Finish.

You should have pasted 68 new text ads (2 rotating ads per keyword)

5) Click the “Campaigns” tab

Set your setting to match these:

1)    Click the “Ad Groups” tab
2)    Click “CTRL+A” to highlight all of the adgroups
3)    Set your Adgroup Max CPC (this data is not included in the Speed PPC output)

4)    Click the “Post Changes” button, and upload the entire campaign into Google Adwords

Part 5 – Wait…There Is No Part 5, You’re Done!

Congratulate yourself on a job well done if you made it this far. That’s it! You’ve now created a complete direct linking PPC campaign, with full Tracking202 integration, tracking at the keyword level!

These types of tasks have become second nature for veteran affiliate marketers, but for people new to this industry, figuring this stuff out can be quite frustrating. I remember how confused I was when I first started affiliate marketing, so my hope is that this tutorial will save you some sanity.

If you have any questions regarding this tutorial or feel something is unclear, please feel free to contact me directly at http://masterlesssamurai.com/contact. You can also always post in the Tracking202 forum, which I am also a guest moderator of.

This post took me quite a while to write…so if you feel like “paying me” for the content, simply link back to this post, , post it in internet marketing forums…be creative…whatever you wanna do. I appreciate any link love that I get.

Before I forget, you can download this complete tutorial as an Adobe PDF file, which should be easier to read and print out.

In closing, I hope you found this tutorial informative and enjoyable. I certainly had fun writing it. Stayed tuned for more Tracking202 tutorials, including the new Tracking202 Pro!

Oh…and see some of you tomorrow at Ad-Tech!

Become Masterless, Become Samurai!

-          Wes (MasterlessSamurai.com)

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Filed under: Google Adwords • Speed PPC • Tracking202 • Tutorials

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