What’s the one thing you enjoyed most in Avatar? For my Project Management friend it was the video logging. Did you notice that the team kept their reports not in Microsoft Word (i.e. on paper) but as video logs.

When trying it out, the protagonist in the movie couldn’t get a handle on it. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to it’, was the reply.  Well, it worked for them, could it work for you? Here are some of the reasons you might want to consider using video for project management activities.

What Avatar Can Teach You About Project Management

Advantages of video logging

• Capture Emotions— Capture human elements missing from electronic reports, such as emotions or subtle suggestions made in the video logs that would not otherwise be noticed.
• Speed — Videos are faster to make. You just open your mouth and talk! Consider the effort in using Microsoft Word, applying styles, finding the right template, typing, fixing grammar horrors etc.
• Convenience — you can record videos almost anywhere. The recording device is smaller and easier to transport.
• Faster — For me, using a flip camera is now as easy as a telephone – just start talking! Consider this against the effort in using Microsoft Word, applying styles, finding the right template, typing in, fixing grammar horrors etc.

Disadvantages of video logging

• Structure — you need to train people how to deliver video reports, otherwise they’ll ramble defeating the purpose.
• Search — while you can search Word files on the network by keyword (i.e. metadata), how would you do this with video? Is it possible to tag/keyword videos as we do with Word docs and online reports?
• Edits — while videos are faster to make, if they need to be edited, then you lose the upside.
• Convenience — while you can record videos almost anywhere, this can be abused as employees file in reports pretending to be onsite with the client.
• Compliance – the number of laptops stolen each year (holding confidential data) continues to rise. This raises issues with unauthorized user video apps to submit, retrieve, share confidential data. Of course, this also applies to PC, iPhones etc.
• Storage — maybe this is no longer as problem as the cost of server space continues to fall and compression technologies improve. But would terabytes of data get expensive in the end? Not sure.

Should Project Manager use video for status reports?

It’s early days yet but I can see the attraction of using video to file in reports.  The difficulty may be in getting people to make the change. As it often the case, the problem is not in the processes or technological benefits, but the human issues that underpin these decisions.

What do you think?

Could it work? What do you think is the main barrier to using video more frequently in the work place?

Clickbank’s analytic data is refreshed multiple times per day. You can view the last time your analytics data was updated by checking the Data Last Updated box. This contains the date and time your data was last refreshed.
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1. Daily information for your account is available for 120 days.

2. Hourly data is available for 40 days.

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The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to compare specified dates hour by hour.
You can setup marketing campaigns for specific times in a day.

All of the charts we discussed in the previous articles provide information for a whole day.

However, ClickBank can also let you view your information hour by hour.

The hourly charting control is located above the trend chart, as a button; toggle the trend chart between daily and hourly to update it.

The hourly trend chart lets you compare any selected day to another selected day hour by hour.

For example, you can configure it to see your sales for today versus yesterday, or compare different days of the week.

You can use this to determine how your web business is performing during a time period and examine which marketing or business tactics are performing the best.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to compare stages of the sale.
Clickbank offers a further degree of sophistication in its comparison charting. Comparison charting lets you chart two metrics over the same time period.

For example, say you were viewing Gross Sales by customers in India.

You can gain more insight into customer tends by overlaying the Hops received in that same time period and gain insight into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns targeted at customers in a different country.

To do this:

1. Select a different country.

2. You can have the same insight into any other campaign you are performing at the country level.

3. All of the metrics available in the data table are available in comparison charting. The control for comparison charting is located above the trend chart in a dropdown menu.

Anyone familiar with Google Analytics will understand the user interface very quickly.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to compare the different stages of a sale.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to explore by attributes of a sale.
When checking the performance of your Clickbank sales, there are many attributes for each sale or prospective sale.

To manage your business with ClickBank, you need to examine the performance (i.e. in terms of sales and click-thrus) of your products or marketing campaigns by many or all of these sale attributes.

The ClickBank analytics tool let’s you explore and view sales trend for these attributes.

These attributes are as follows:

Vendor: The nickname of the vendor whose product has been promoted (available for affiliates only)

Affiliate: The nickname of the affiliate who promoted the product (available for vendors only)

Product: The vendor nickname and product item number promoted

Billing Type: The type of product promoted – Single Sale or Recurring

Customer Country: The customer’s country based on IP Address or the country the customer selected on the Order Form

Customer Province: The name of the province the customer selected on the ClickBank Order Form

Currency: The currency the customer chose to pay in for their purchase

Language: The language assigned to the product sold

Tracking ID:  The tracking code used by affiliates to classify campaigns for HopLinks (affiliates only)

Category: The ClickBank category and sub-category assigned to the promoted vendor (affiliates only)

You can report on these attributes by selecting them from the left-hand navigation menu once you login to your Clickbank account.

You can drill-down into the trends of each item by clicking on the item in the data table.

For example, when viewing Gross Sales By Customer Country, click on the America item in the data table and the trend chart will show Gross Sales by customers located in America.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to compare the different stages of a sale.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll show you how to analyze sales by stages of a sale.
As an affiliate in the ClickBank Marketplace, you probably know that prospects work their way through several stages in the sales process.

For example: a prospect (potential customer) might start by clicking on a Hoplink from an affiliate.

This may result in the customer visiting the vendor’s web page, placing an order, and then moving on to the ClickBank Order Form.

Note: Clickbank refer to this first visit to the order form as an ‘Order Form Impression’.

Once on the Order Form, the customer fills in the required fields and clicks the Pay Now button.

This is the Order Form Submit.

If the submitted order form has no errors, passes fraud detection, and is accepted by the payment processor, it becomes a Sale. Technically, this is a Gross Sales as the customer can refund the product in which case you lose the sale.

After a Sale, the customer can return the product for various reasons. Depending on the action the customer takes, these returns can be processed as a Refund or Chargeback.

Refunds and chargebacks are removed from Gross Sales.

The new ClickBank Analytics tool lets report on and measure success through these stages of the order process.

The stages are as follows:

• Hop: prospective customer clicking on a HopLink
• Order Form Impression: prospective customer visiting the ClickBank Order Form
• Order Form Submit: prospective customer clicking the Pay Now button on the ClickBank Order Form (reporting counts up to one order form submit per customer visit to the order form)
• Gross Sale: A successful customer purchase of a ClickBank product
• Refund: A return of a customer purchase
• Chargeback: return of a customer purchase initiated by the customer contacting their payment processor or their bank
• Net Sale: A customer purchase (Gross Sale) that has not been returned

Additional metrics measure the success of converting a customer from one stage of the process to the next.

These are:

1. Earnings per Hop: Dollars earned for each Hop that a customer clicks. Calculated by dividing Gross Sales Amount by the Hop Count for a specified time period.

2. Hops per Order: The number of Hops it takes to generate a sale. Calculated by dividing the Hop Count by the Gross Sale Count.

3. Hops per Order Form Impression: The number of Hops it takes to get through the vendor pitch page and generate a visit to the ClickBank Order Form.

Calculated by dividing the Hop Count by the Order Form Impression Count for a specified time period.

4. Order Form Sale Conversion: The rate at which a visit to the ClickBank Order Form generates a sale.

Calculated by dividing Gross Sale Count by Order Form Impression Count for a specified time period.

5. Refund Rate: The rate by which customer sales are returned in the form of a refund. The metric is calculated by dividing Refund Count by Gross Sale Count for a specified time period.

Note: Each refund is assigned to the date of the original sale, so the refund rate is an accurate indicator of performance of sales on a given day.

6. Chargeback Rate: The rate by which customer sales are returned in the form of a chargeback.

Calculated by dividing Chargeback Count by Gross Sale Count for a specified time period.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to analyse by attributes of a sale, for example, emerging trends.

The ClickBank Analytics tool helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. In this article, I’ll look at FAQs regarding this tool.
Q:  Why does the number of Order Form Submits not match my Gross Sale Count?

A: There are several reasons: (1) the customer didn’t enter all fields correctly (2) the customer’s method of payment was declined.
Q:  Where is the Trend Chart? Has it been hidden?

A: If it disappears, you can always find the trend chart on the Hide Chart link in the upper-right of the page.

Q:  Why is the Gross Sale Count higher than the Order Form Submit Count?

A: Subscription sales have a recurring billing element that initiates a sale without the customer visiting the ClickBank order form at each recurring time-period.
Q:  Why are improper Customer Countries in my reports?

A: In certain instances, a Customer Country is determined by the IP address the customer is using. Each IP address belongs to a country, Satellite Provider, or generic region like Europe or Anonymous. However, most IP addresses are assigned to a country.

Q:  Why does the automated Internet robot impact Hop and Order Form Impression data?

A: ClickBank filters automated visits from its reporting so you get a better picture of real human traffic.

Q:  Why are sales not showing in the Analytics tool?

A: Check the Last Updated Data box on the left-hand side of the reporting page. This shows when information was last loaded into the Analytics tool. The sale may be too recent to be available at this time.

Q:  Why will the trend chart not display the selected time period?

A: Select a time period and then click the Go button in order to change the time period.

Q:  Why do the Original Analytics metrics not match the new Analytics tool?

A: Original Analytics and New Analytics do not collect data on the same schedule and will likely not be in sync with each other as they calculate Hop traffic differently.

Q: Why did Net Sales data change since the last time I ran the report?

A: Net Sales may change because of refunds or chargebacks that were not included in the first report.

Q: Why are sales totals by Category greater than by Product?

A: A site listed in two Marketplace categories will include sales totals for each category, which causes your sales metrics to double.

ClickBank has just released a new tool (ClickBank Analytics) that helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. This series of articles explains how ClickBank’s new and improved analytics reporting works, how it differs from its original reporting system, and answers questions related to this reporting. Also includes FAQs on analytics, metrics, reporting, trends, digital goods, affiliates, online payments, and credit cards.

ClickBank Analytics:

1. Lets you produce trend charts by different topics over custom time ranges.

2. It gives you charts and data tables so you can see sales trends.

3. You can manipulate the charts in different ways, so you can see emerging trends.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to explore sales by stages of a sale.

ClickBank has just released a new tool (ClickBank Analytics) that helps affiliates and customers track the success of their sales and the performance of their digital products. This series of articles explains how ClickBank’s new and improved analytics reporting works, how it differs from its original reporting system, and answers questions related to this reporting. Also includes FAQs on analytics, metrics, reporting, trends, digital goods, affiliates, online payments, and credit cards.

ClickBank Analytics:

1. Lets you produce trend charts by different topics over custom time ranges.

2. It gives you charts and data tables so you can see sales trends.

3. You can manipulate the charts in different ways, so you can see emerging trends.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to explore sales by stages of a sale.