The Hidden Dangers of Constant Stat Checking
How many times a day do you check your affiliate sales stats? Once, 5-times, 10-times, or minute-by-minute hitting refresh? We’ve learned from experience that checking the current day’s stats has hidden land mines that could negatively affect the way you make campaign decisions on a short and long-term basis.
Any seasoned PPC affiliate will tell you that constantly monitoring your traffic and sales in ‘real-time’ can cause minor heart palpitations. That’s because what you’re watching is in constant flux. It’s a proven fact that traffic and sales vary wildly throughout any given day. Google may decide to throttle your traffic in some new and unexpected manner, or the purchasing behavior of your customers could fluctuate at any point. It’s this state of heightened anxiety that is the natural enemy of the successful affiliate.
Why? Any changes you make to your campaign based on this ‘real-time’ information can come back to bite you. For example, let’s say you log in to Adwords and notice that your ad spend is a lot higher than it’s been historically for that particular time of day. It’s getting to a level you consider ‘abnormally high’… So what do you do? At this point your natural inclination might be to jump to conclusions and gear down your daily budget, or even pause your campaign entirely. But we urge you to resist the urge! There’s no better way to have Google put your account into the nightmare of ‘manual review-land’ than messing around with your budget or starting and stopping campaigns on a dime. It could turn out to be days or even longer before they decide to turn the traffic tap back on.
These type of blink-of-an-eye changes may set your mind at ease temporarily, but in the long run could cost you thousands of dollars in revenue from the ensuing campaign review. More often than not simply taking a minute or two to look at the previous day’s traffic, sales, and ROI stats will save you from the perils of snap decision-making. If you wait it out and don’t sweat the hourly fluctuations, you’ll often see your campaign right itself and finish up on a positive note.
If you’re looking at your stats regularly, be sure to relax, take a deep breath, go for a walk, meditate, levitate, or do whatever it takes to get your blood pressure down and your head into original chill mode. After all that’s where the best ideas come from. Try the old-fashioned method of taking a step back and changing your attitude toward the way you look at your campaign.
This could mean that the next time you’re evaluating your bids, content, or some other aspect of your business, you slow down a little and take more time to make a decision. Instead of worrying, try working yourself into a calm relaxed state, and from there think about what is going to be your best move. Don’t let panic force your hand. In short, when you’re stat checking, make sure daily fluctuations aren’t negatively affecting your overall outlook of the universe.
Stay positive – it works!
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How true! Sometimes you can be your own worst enemy. I used to be guilty of this and have sense learned to wait until I have meaningful data to base decisions off. Thanks for the post