It’s Been 24 Hours, Do YOU Understand Your Clicks?
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Data is important and affiliate marketing is all a numbers game. If you are not good at math then get yourself a super Asian but its not really that hard to understand numbers. Especially if you are getting data visually. If you can see pictures and decipher then it is fairly easy to look at your click patterns or even when it is a great time to launch a campaign. In the past I talked about day time parting and why it is important to take advantage of profitable hours of a day.
Today we are going to look at click patterns and understand them better. I got an irregular pattern of clicks a newly launched campaign, this is 24 hour time frame. This is from Friday, May 22, 2009. Also this is on Google Content Network targeting specific sites base on keywords – just placements.
What does this graph tell you about the click pattern? It seems irregular because it is up and down when there are active clicks. But does that provide us with enough information to determine if the offer I am running is profitable?
So what does the click pattern tell us? Well first notice the rise to traffic when starting it’s day. During the late hours (EST) it rarely gets any clicks and it seems to me that the sites I targeted are not that active at night. Now starting at 11am it spikes up then by noon it drops back down. Interesting.
Throughout the day it does this, goes up for a spike then it comes back down. Now this is just 24 hours on 1day. This pattern may not happen on another day or when you gather a full analysis of click patter for a week, it may differ or it may not. What happens after a month, is it still the same?
This is just a days worth of data on a specific date, so the pattern may have been just to that particular day, was it a holiday? Did anything special happen on that day? What are my Google Adwords stats looking like? So there is a bunch of stuff to look and analyze.
Looking at this it seems that every other hour I am getting a spike and then it dips back down again. It continues to do this up until midnight. Where it has the last spike, which I will assume will go back down.
Now, since this is a new campaign I usually start it late night or mid day, depending how I feel. Since this started late night it gradually gained momentum and then kept a constant pattern across the Google network. It does dip back down but kept a steady pattern of rises and falls with minimal clicks.
If we look at it, the flow pattern is constant, it never grows. It just plateau at a tip point and never trys to break that. I should see another spike somewhere else, especially a time where there would be more traffic maybe after dinner? Or After 3PM? Depending on the demographics, but no it is kept right below a certain amount of clicks.
This is because this campaign is not on accelerated, but spread out for the day. There are 2 options when starting and running your campaigns accelerate or steady, Accelerate means Google will deplete you and give you the most possible clicks possible. Steady means it is controlled. Google analyses your CPC and your daily spend limit and provides you with a steady traffic base on what you give to Google.
“But does that provide us with enough information to determine if the offer I am running is profitable?”
Definitely not. It is just one variable of the equation, and without another accompanying variable, the data is pretty meaningless to me. From what I am guessing… there is likely going to be another post following this one =D
Till then,
Jean
Really amazing information about clicks on website and affiliate marketing.nice job dear.
Ian – good post, I really like your ones like this looking at different aspects of running offers. I’m still in the newbie phase when it comes to this stuff so everything and anything is helpful. It be great if you had some time to do some beginner focused posts too! Keep up the good work man!
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This is probably a fairly typical daily click distribution for a site relying on adwords. Obviously Google’s algorithm to spread the clicks throughout the day is not perfect. It seems to do things in spurts and stops when it is worried about using up too much of the day’s spending budget. With seo and other traffic building strategies, you typically see much more even daily clicks, with a rise and fall in the morning and night. I think I’ll have to pay attention to your tips and try to get back into ppc.
Great post about the clicks that you receive. I do notice that Asians click much more than their European and US counterparts. This is possibly due to their relatively light experience to internet marketing. It is also because of this that American/ European visitors who click pay relatively higher.
A few clicks in US peak hours is better than a whole host of clicks in the Asian peak hours. Just my 2 cent.
Great post about the clicks that you receive. I do notice that Asians click much more than their European and US counterparts.
This is probably a fairly typical daily click distribution for a site relying on adwords. Obviously Googleâ??s algorithm to spread the clicks throughout the day is not perfect. It seems to do things in spurts and stops when it is worried about using up too much of the dayâ??s spending budget.
With seo and other traffic building strategies, you typically see much more even daily clicks, with a rise and fall in the morning and night. I think Iâ??ll have to pay attention to your tips and try to get back into ppc.
This is possibly due to their relatively light experience to internet marketing. It is also because of this that American/ European visitors who click pay relatively higher.
I think the time and period that we publish our article may affect the click through rate also, but I’ve yet to do research on this.
Good post Ian!
Regards,
Lee
There is lot of work have to do no this and make more research on it.
Whenever i use to read your site i found some new information like this one on clicks. Its really a very useful information. Thanks to share such valuable information.
I don’t actually use adwords but I do track my traffic levels by the hour and day of the week. I run a weight loss blog and I was finding that most of the traffic (and affilate conversions) were coming on 1 specific day (Sundays 4pm to 8pm) This was a steady trend over a few weeks.
Just by posting my best articles early on Sundays I almost doubled my affiliate commissons. (Adsense earnings were also up slightly).
Too many people are just not taking the time to analyize the numbers, that is where the money is.
Steve
Demographics and proper timing plays an important role in here, based on my own experience.
To succeed with Adsense, you need to have a website with the right topic, the right audience, the right traffic. It needs to offer value to visitors, otherwise you can’t get decent traffic to the site.
Things in spurts and stops when it is worried about using up too much of the dayâ??s spending budget.
It be great if you had some time to do some beginner focused posts too! Keep up the good work man!
Playing the numbers game can be fun at times. Creating multiple campaigns can be a beneficial to your business then you can see the clicks at a distant between campaigns. This scale is a superb identification.
This seems pretty useful. Haven’t checked it out though.
Great analytics. Checking out statistics and data regarding your site is really the most important part.
“You can’t improve what you can’t measure”
Ron
I run a weight loss blog and I was finding that most of the traffic (and affilate conversions) were coming on 1 specific day (Sundays 4pm to 8pm) This was a steady trend over a few weeks.
Excellent presentation with very helpful information about clicks tracking. Ian I really enjoyed reading your post.
I was finding that most of the traffic (and affilate conversions) were coming on 1 specific day (Sundays 4pm to 8pm) This was a steady trend over a few weeks.
very detailed info…maybe i should do some digg too
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