Is Google Cash Detective Worth It?

Google Cash Detective (GCD) is a membership program that included proprietary software (two types), a forum, daily webinars and a forum. It is currently closed, but they are collecting names and email addresses for a waiting list.

I was briefly a member of GCD, but I asked for a refund, because I didn't believe that it would advance my business objectives.

What Google Cash Detective is designed to do is to allow members to clone successful affiliate marketing campaigns of other direct linking affiliates (that is, campaigns which link directly from the affiliate's adwords ad to the merchant's site).

The first piece of software uses a database of keyword data and of google ads associated with the keywords. The database covers a (roughly) seven month period of dates, but it is constantly being expanded. It allows you to search for related keywords (using the Google tool) and for urls (allowing you to search individual affiliate marketer campaigns).

The other pieces of software allows you manipulate your google adwords account. It will track keyword conversion and, if you want, automatically maximize your return on investment by raising and lowering your bids on particular keywords within parameters you set.

Both pieces of software do what they claim to do (despite some technological glitches during the launch). The url search on the first software is particularly revealing, showing how long campaigns have been in place, which ads have been most successful, etc.

So why did I cancel my membership? Essentially it comes down to four factors:

1. I can do everything that the GCD does already, although it would certainly be much more time consuming.
2. The quality of the training videos is very uneven.
3. The size of my affiliate marketing budget does not justify a $1997.00 expense for the first year of membership. For someone with a larger budget, it might make more sense.
4. I don't think direct linking is a very efficient way to manage affiliate marketing. It is a short term approach, and I prefer to spend my time, energy and money on longer term strategies.

While the GCD program delivers what it promises, some of the pre-launch information suggested that this involved some new, secret way to make direct linking more profitable. Whenever I use direct linking, I already employ all of the techniques that this program reveals.