Using Ad Tracking Tools

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You HAVE to know how well your ads are doing.
You cannot justcast ... of them into the wind and HOPE that maybe you willget the odd result.
You must know where is good for your ... ads p You HAVE to know how well your ads are doing.
You cannot justcast thousands of them into the wind and HOPE that maybe you willget 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 sufficientresults for the amount of effort you'll put in. It will get someresults, but you'll be working hard, not smart.In order to not have to post ads 48 hours a day for 2 clicks inreturn, you must narrow it down by testing so that you can thenspend 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 ofsome of the simplest online tracking tools for your URLs.The first one I have been testing myself is the free service fromLinkCounter.com http://www.linkcounter.comGo there and set up a FREE account.
You paste your "real" links(the web addresses you want people to actually go to) into theirsystem and they give you a "new" link that you would publish inyour ads. How easy can it get?You can set up as many as you like and keep adding to them, asyou 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 howmany clicks you got on each of the different links you set up.Here's an example from my report:Link Title: EACZ Bravenet ClassifiedsLink URL: pub21.bravenet.com/classified/show.asp?usernum=1800611284&cpv=1Link : http://www.linkcounter.com/go.php?linkid=69653Date: Clicks2000-12-11 2I 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 peopleactually 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 inhalf in a newsletter or any other email message as the originalone in this example obviously would.If it gets chopped, it won't be "clickable", which means to worksomeone would need to copy and paste it in bits into theirbrowser.
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 atthe wrong place -- usually the right place, but without yourreference on, or more likely, they will just skip it altogether.=> linkcounter.com is generic -- it doesn't identify your programso there is an element of "surprise" that will help you get theclick.
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 justget an error or go to linkcounter.
If they knock the numbers orreference off your affiliate URL, then they may still end up atthe program, but you won't earn the commission.=> You will find out if anyone actually IS clicking!Track a whole ad campaignIf you use different linkcounter links, for the same URL, butwith different ads or for the same ads in different ezines, (giveeach one or "campaign" a title that you'll remember), you'll findout which ones work best so you know where to advertise again orif you should maybe "tweak" your ads for better results.You can also use this on your website, but you don't need to haveone to use it. You can also enter an amount, say if you are in aprogram that pays you 10 cents per click and it will add them upso you can double-check this against your commission check.This doesn't mean you should NOT get your own website, domain andhome on the web.
If you have that already, then you can use thisto see how many people are clicking away to certain links withinyour site, both internal or external. Your log files should tellyou where people go internally, but if you don't have them,here's an alternative.
Your log files don't send you email eachday 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 eachcampaign it's own page with a (preferably invisible) counter on.If you do have access to log files on your site, "key" your URLswith references of your choice so you can count the responsesto each.
Or set up different redirect pages for each ad to seewhich ones get hits. You can get the code for a redirect page,here: http://www.tucats-design.com/eacz/code.htmlJust don't leave it to chance, or you'll spend more time chasingyour own tail than actually making progress or PROFIT.
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