I was really looking forward to promoting Keyword Elite 2.0 and making some money with it. It has both the recognizable brand name and enormous hype that I look for in a product launch. The only problem with Keyword Elite 2.0? It really isn’t very good. If Brad Callen really “bet his house” that Keyword Elite 2.0 would be the best keyword tool on the market then I hope he is having fun moving out right now. Although, with $800,000 in Keyword Elite 2.0 sales in less than a week, I don’t think Brad Callen is complaining much at all.
Keyword Elite 2.0 allows you to run 8 different projects, and here is my actually hands-on review of each Keyword Elite 2.0 project.
Keyword Surge – I probably found Keyword Elite’s keyword surge to be the most disappointing part of the entire product. Using its proprietary database, I results that it returned seemed to be lacking quite a bit. For example, a search for the term “keyword elite” returned a total 16 keywords. Using the free Google Adwords keyword tool I got 87 keywords. Other searches I tried with KE2 also showed significantly less results. The search volumes return by Keyword Surge also looked to be pretty inaccurate as well. For example, the search term ppc coach search shows 3600 monthly searches in the Google tool, but just 180 monthly searches in KE2. Since I personally haves sites ranking for the term ppc coach, I am pretty certain that 180 monthly searches value is way off. I tried several other searches as well and the search volumes consistently differed from the Google Adwords keyword tool by a factor of 10. I also have issues with the other keyword sources that you can use as well. Using the Google results, you don’t even get any search volume numbers and it was quite laughable to see some of the irrelevant Ask.com results it returned.
Market Research Sleuth – This project lets you enter a keyword (or multiple keywords) and see the ads that are running for it on the big 3 networks and it’s supposed to show you how competitive your keywords are. I don’t have too many complaints about how this works, but honestly you can do the same thing with the free version of Traffic Travis.
Adwords Time Machine – This Keyword Elite 2.0 project allows you to quickly get the ad history for any website that has advertised for your chosen keyword in at least 1 of the past 6 months. Of all the KE2 projects, this is probably the one I like the best. The top section gives you an overview of which advertisers are consistently advertising for the chosen keyword. In theory these are the sites you want to emulate for your own PPC campaigns. What I like the best about the Adwords Time Machine though, is that if you click on the magnifying glass icon for a particular site, it will give you all the keywords that a particular advertiser is bidding on in Adwords. This actually seems to produce accurate results and I can think of several ways to use that info effectively.
Search Engine Dominator – This project is for SEOs and it analyzes how difficult it will be to rank for certain keywords in the 3 search engines. This feature may come in handy for some, but the user interface for this is way too cluttered. The bottom table is just filled with way too much information which makes it really hard to look at it and quickly figure out what you are looking at. I like the fact that it search through all 3 search engines, but I think I still prefer Market Samurai’s SEO competition tool better.
Adwords Competition Sniper – This project allows you to monitor keywords in Adwords over time. You can schedule KE2 to automatically run this project at specific time intervals to gather this data. However, I don’t find this particular compelling as again, the free version of Traffic Travis has this exact same feature.
Advanced Google Site Targeter – This project allows you to search for other sites related to your keyword that are displaying Adsense ads on them. Theoretically, this will help you target these sites in your Adwords campaigns. For example, if you are running CPA polls, you may find this feature useful. However, I know that the free tool Adwords Digger can do the same thing.
JV Diamond Miner – The purpose behind this project is to help you find joint venture partners in your niche. The tool will go out and find other websites that have an opt-in email list. What you are supposed to do is approach these site owners and see if they would be willing to promote your own product as your affiliate on their opt-in thank you page. This may or may not work, although I am skeptical at how practical this project is. If anyone has success using this, please let me know.
CPA Magnet – This last project allows you to search for CPA offers across different networks. While definitely useful, there are plenty of other free places you can do the same thing online, like OfferVault.com (which I just noticed actually powers CPA magnet) and Offernut.com which is actually powered by the free Offer202 api.
Can Keyword Elite 2.0 help you make money? If you have your own product to sell, then absolutely. Brad Callen is a master marketer as evidenced by the hype his products receive. Get on his email list and follow his strategies for promoting Keyword Elite 2. It will definitely help you market your own product better. However, while Keyword Elite 2.0 is not a completely terrible product, it certainly does not live up to the hype. $197 is a high price point for most people and I think majority of its functionality can be found in other free tools.
If you have purchased Keyword Elite 2.0 yourself, do you agree or disagree with my review? Be sure to leave a comment and share your experiences with Keyword Elite 2.0.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I agreed with you, KE2 Keyword Surge is very terrible. He used WordPot as a keyword surge to pull keywords and stats god damn it! It shows a keyword has 600k searches / month and when I check with google, google shows 27k / month (BROAD match) Holy shit! WTF is that? Google takes 80% of all search engines traffic right? Do you agree with me?
Thanks for the info. I’m using a 14-day trial version right now and at first was very excited, but after using it for a few searches, it seems to simply have stopped working.
First it stopped returning any results for competing pages in Search Engine Dominator. I find it hard to believe that there is “No Data” for every one of the keywords it’s showing me, especially when you use popular search phrases.
Then it stopped showing me the “captcha” code in the Google security code box when you run Keyword Surge.
Seems to be the buggiest software known to man.
I was thinking about purchasing it before it started acting goofy.
Your review was most helpful. “Wasting money online so you don’t have to…”
You made me smile today.
- AJ
I agree. I’ve had the product for over a year. There’s been about a dozen new versions but they all have the same problem: they simply don’t work with Google anymore. I don’t know if it’s a change with Google or the software, but the search results for the Surge and Sleuth simply don’t work. Support from the website is simply a form email giving advice that doesn’t work then to check your firewall. But it used to work, it actually does works every once in a blue moon, but it simply doesn’t work most of the time. Too bad because I liked it.
well Brad – bad karma comes your way…
After all your loyal KWE1 customers got shunted aside, no more updates or support and if you want KE2 you have to pay for it… well guess the gods will have the last laugh – KE2 is certainly a flop, and in todays competitive keytool arena – it wont stand.
KE1 was the tool of its time – but those days are long gone
and so are the loyal customers that put him there.