Want Some Free PPC Software?
I always wonder about this. You see these products being pushed that supposedly help you in PPC campaigns and so on. I wonder, why are they selling it? If it is any good they would be using it internally to beat competition. I say this because all of my PPC software I use is written in house by me. Right now I have no plans to sell any of them. It seems that many PPC programs out there don’t do much more then you can do with some research and Excel.
That being said, I had an interesting idea. Someone give me a PPC program that they see that they want for free. I’ll look at it and see if I can throw together a free version in a weekend and give it out just to prove a point. Or if there isn’t one that you use, then suggest features you would want in a PPC application and I’ll try to throw a free PPC program together in a day or so.
Update: Ok.. changed a little bit so I don’t have people come after me. Don’t give me a ppc app to copy. But if people post things they wish they had in a PPC app, I’ll still try and put one together in a weekend.
I think it was Paul from uberaffiliate.com who created a program which did the same thing as a paid program like effecient ppc. Needless to say, he almost got sued like crazy and ended up taking it down.
As far as programs though, it seems like from what I have read lately that people love Efficient and Speed PPC.
Jason, that was not Paul, it was Derek Beau who had cloned SpeedPPC. Btw - Dereks free software is awesome.
Updated to avoid being sued.
@ Think Like An SOB - my bad, I knew I had read it somewhere. Just looking out for someone who is doing a good deed.
- How about an external tool that queries Google for more than 150 keywords at a time.
Hey John,
Why don’t you create a program that keeps track of conversions by the time of the day like you showed in an earlier post.
I think the time specific tracking is a good idea, I’d like to have something like that.
I’m betting the companies selling these programs realized, probably correctly, that after the time they spent making these programs they were likely to make better money selling them than using them. Perhaps it would make someone more money than it cost them to buy the program, but not nearly as much as the profit from hundreds of hopefuls buying the program. In short, I am betting these PPC programs are moderately profitable for the users, but more profitable for the sellers.
another concept that crossed my mind, though I wonder about the legality of it, is a program that would track other people sending traffic to the same advertiser, and tell you who is outperforming you (so you could maybe get an idea of why and by how much). Like I said, a program that researches your competition and spits out information to you might bring up certain legal issues, but then again, legality may only be an issue of what you do with that information.
Hey John - good call on the update. I remember when Derek made that software (good stuff, btw). His blog pretty much died right after that - shame because I didn’t think it was really that close and new commercial software came out right afterward & they didn’t get sued.
Great blog - found you via the ASE link - just subscribed.