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Using Ad Tracking Tools
by Pamela
Heywood
You HAVE to know
how well your ads are doing. You cannot just cast
thousands of them
into the wind and
HOPE that
maybe you will get the odd result. You must know where is
good for
your offer, which ads pull best, etc. You need to test
and test
some more.
Indiscriminate free advertising will not generate
sufficient results for the amount of effort you'll put
in. It
will get some results, but you'll be working hard, not
smart.
In order to not have to post ads 48 hours a day for
2 clicks in return, you must narrow it down by testing so
that
you can then spend your precious time concentrating on
what works
best.
So how do you test?
There's lots of methods, but let me show you how to
make use of some of the simplest online tracking tools
for your
URLs.
The first one I have been testing myself is the free
service from LinkCounter.com http://www.linkcounter.com
Go there and set up a FREE account. You paste your
"real" links (the web addresses you want people
to actually
go
to) into their system and they give you a "new"
link that
you would publish in
your ads. How easy can it get?
You can set up as many as you like and keep adding
to them, as you wish. You only need one account to track
multiple
links, ads,
websites, offers, affiliate schemes, whatever.
Every day, they send you a report by email that
tells you how many clicks you got on each of the
different links
you set up.
Here's an example from my report:
Link Title: EACZ Bravenet Classifieds
Link URL:
pub21.bravenet.com/classified/show.asp?usernum=
1800611284&cpv=1
Link : http://www.linkcounter.com/go.php?linkid=69653
Date: Clicks
2000-12-11 2
I gave it the title I wanted to see so that I could
identify it. The Link URL: is the real one (online
classifieds)
and Link: is the one I publish, which is the one that 2
real
live people actually clicked on that day. (Impressive
eh?)
I can see several benefits and uses for this:
=> If you have a very long URL, it saves it
getting chopped in half in a newsletter or any other
email message as
the original one in this example obviously would.
If it gets chopped, it won't be
"clickable", which means to work someone would
need to copy
and paste it in bits into
their browser. Yeah! You think so?
No-one bothers, because that takes too much effort.
In reality, they will either click what comes in the
first half ending
up at
the wrong place -- usually the right place, but
without your reference on, or more likely, they will just
skip it
altogether.
=> linkcounter.com is generic -- it doesn't
identify your program so there is an element of
"surprise"
that
will help you get the click. People don't click if they
think they've
seen
it before.
=> It's cheat-proof. It is still a URL with a
number on the end, but if anyone tries to take the
numbers off this,
they'll just
get an error or go to linkcounter. If they knock the
numbers or reference off your affiliate URL, then they
may
still end up at the program, but you won't earn the
commission.
=> You will find out if anyone actually IS
clicking!
Track a whole ad campaign
If you use different linkcounter links, for the same
URL, but with different ads or for the same ads in
different ezines,
(give
each one or "campaign" a title that you'll
remember), you'll find out which ones work best so you
know where to
advertise again or
if you should maybe "tweak" your ads for
better results.
You can also use this on your website, but you don't
need to have one to use it. You can also enter an amount,
say if
you are in a program that pays you 10 cents per click and
it will
add them up so you can double-check this against your
commission
check.
This doesn't mean you should NOT get your own
website, domain and home on the web. If you have
that already, then you can use this to see how many
people are clicking away to certain links within
your site, both internal or external. Your log files
should tell you where people go internally, but if you
don't
have them, here's an alternative. Your log files don't
send you
email each day as this does!
You'll also find a similar concept at:
http://www.roibot.com/
Or you can do your own ad tracking. At the most
simple, give each campaign it's own page with a
(preferably invisible)
counter on.
If you do have access to log files on your site,
"key" your URLs with references of your choice
so you can
count the
responses to each. Or set up different redirect pages for
each
ad to see which ones get hits. You can get the code for a
redirect page, here: http://www.tucats-design.com/eacz/code.html
Just don't leave it to chance, or you'll spend more
time chasing your own tail than actually making progress
or
PROFIT.
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Pamela Heywood is webmistress of http://www.tucats-design.com
- Building Your Online Business Instinctively.
Subscribe to the weekly TuCats Mewsletter (sic) mailto:subscribe@tucats
-design.com
and get regular FREE hints, tips, articles and
resources.
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