AdWords problems

I was fiddling with my adds one day. After adding some keywords to one of my campaigns, they all suddenly stopped working. I contacted Google, and received a default answer: are you bidding high enough? Did you pause the campaigns? That sort of thing. It didn't surprise me that the first mail was a default mail. I mailed them back right away writing I simply added keywords and ALL of my campaigns stopped working, not simply the one I changed.

The next mail I receive is 3 days later. They want to know if I'm happy with the support I received. I nearly fell out of my chair. No I'm not happy. All I got was a standard mail back and all my campaigns are still not functioning.

2 Days after I get another mail saying they are looking into it. So I wait another 4 days before I mail back to figure out if they finally found something. The answer is rather surprising: I received another default mail telling me they suspended my AdWords account because they believe someone else logged into my account.

I have a Vista machine and an OpenSuse machine on my desk, and I log into my account from both depending on what I'm doing. I even log in using my wife's laptop which has Windows XP and uses a different IP cause I'm using a wireless connection. This probably raised a flag in their system blocking my account.

Adds are back up after 2 weeks. Sales where a little slow, so I hope they will pick up again.

Customer map

Plimus sales reports have a great feature: they automatically create a map with your customers location. I thought it would be interesting to share this information with you.

This is not a complete map of all my customers. I have 2 credit card processors, and this data is only from one of them (Plimus). Also, not all customers are shown on the map for some reason (e.g. most UK addresses seem to be a problem). So only half of my customers are on the map, and I'll only show the data for 2007. Anyway, these images should give you an idea.

The World:



It's clear that most of our customers live in the US or Europe.

The USA:



New York area:



Europe:

January sales analysis

I wanted to make this analysis for 2 reasons: the switch from RegNow to Plimus and the switch from US$ to euro. How did they affect my sales? I know it's a bit early and I'm not taking the full month into account. In fact, it's only been 2 weeks. But it might be enough to check how things are going.

I don't think the number of sales have been influenced by the change. The amount of orders is equal to the best months of 2006. So switching credit card processors seems to have no influence. The profit has increased. Plimus rates are better and the euro is strong compared to the dollar, so I'm receiving more from each sale.

Product price seems to have little influence on the number of orders. I noticed a growth when I increased the price a few months ago (but there where other factors), and I'm not noticing anything now.

There is a difference in Geography. When I check my orders from each country, the United States was way on top the previous months. Now, other countries are getting closer to the United States. And not only European countries. I’ve seen an increase in sales from Canada, Australia and Japan. Most orders where in euros, while Australian and United States Dollars are tied in second spot. Are US users scared to pay when they see a euro sign or is the price too steep? This might be a fluke, after all we only use this months data compared to the last months of 2006. Something to keep an eye on.

Most people still use regular credit card orders, but there has been an increase in PayPal orders (with Plimus, not by using the link on the website). Why do people select PayPal with Plimus instead of using the PayPal function on my website? The answer is easy: I only have a PayPal link on my ‘Buy’ page. And almost no one is using that page to buy the software. I had one order from someone using the buy page, and it was a site license (which is only available on the buy page). All others order are from within the application, the index page or the product details page. So I need to ask myself: do I need to have the site license on the product pages, and do I need to remove the PayPal option from the buy page? I’ve included the site license on the discount page for now, and I will probably add a clear link to the product page.

That’s about all I can tell for the moment. I’ll create another analysis a few months down the road.

Sales statistics for 2006

Another year has passed, and it's time to make a review. I've included some charts without any real figures. They should give you an idea about my sales, and the direction I'm going. 2006 is also the first full year for Service - O - Matic (first released at the end of 2005). So it should be nice to see how it performs compared to our first product: Watchdog - O - Matic. I have not included data of Sniff - O - Matic, because I have only released it in 2006. Keep in mind that I started my AdWords campaign in October 2006.

First chart is the number of orders in 2006. Note that one order can have multiple licenses, but it is still counted as one order. Also, I did not deduct refunds (2 in 2006) and PayPal orders (3 in 2006). These do not influence the chart with those numbers ;-)



We have 2 big jumps in total sales: May and October. I'm not sure why the Watchdog - O - Matic Professional orders where up in May. The October sales for Service - O - Matic where bigger because of the Bits du jour promotion and the start of the AdWords campaign. Service - O - Matic sales are great compared with Watchdog - O - Matic. I've had more orders for Service - O - Matic than the regular Watchdog - O - Matic version. So I'm quite happy with our new product. We only sell the professional version since the end of November, so it's too early to know where those are going (although I think they won't get as high as the regular version). Overall, the number of sales is increasing. Typical bad December is still the 5th best month of 2006, but I did increase the AdWords campaign and profit is not brilliant because of this.

Next chart is the orders / download ratio. I added the regular and professional orders together, although I only have a trial download of the regular version. I believe the trial version also results in professional sales.



The Service - O - Matic orders / download ratio is making strange jumps. But we can see that the ratio (which is 2% average) is much higher than the ratio of Watchdog - O - Matic (1 % average). I can only point to "ease of use" and "registration code" as reasons. I made some changes to the Watchdog interface and I no longer have a registration code to activate the full software since October. The orders / download might be increasing (disregarding December, which is a special case). Still, this is something I'll need to look into. It would be great if I could increase the ratio of Watchdog - O - Matic.

Which product brings in the cash? Below, you can find a nice product chart for 2006.



You can see that Watchdog - O - Matic Professional is my biggest cash cow at 48%, followed by my site licenses of Watchdog - O - Matic. Service - O - Matic and the regular Watchdog - O - Matic are close, but the number of orders do make a difference.