Use Ad Tracking Software To Spend Your Advertising Money Effectively
You need to know how you spend your traffic-building money and also how you spend your time, in terms of what is working, what is not... And you also need to know where your profits are coming from...
For the former situation, you'll have to set up special ad tracking off-site links.
For the latter one, the merchants whom you are affiliated with, will provide you with the on-site links - and if you have your own online store, you'll also require appropriate ad tracking software, in order to track sales properly - not just visitors...
Alternatively, you can also install your own CGI script...
Learn The 'Behind-The-Scenes' Secrets for Generating More Profits From Your Internet Business By Carefully Selecting Your
Ad Tracking Software
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You'll have to create these links specifically to track the success of your off-site promotional campaigns. To that effect, you'll have to place a different link in each of your promotional campaigns, so that it becomes easier to track. In this way, when your prospect clicks on your special ad tracking link, he first goes to a script that records the click, and where it came from. Then, it sends your prospect to the final destination webpage within your site.
These ad tracking programs are supposed to provide you with the following:
- total clicks coming in for all your special links, and also the number of clicks for each special ad tracking link that you set up.
- 1st time versus repeat clicks. You'll know if your visitor who is clicking on your link, clicked on it before or not.
You now will have a powerful way of ascertaining the precise traffic-building success (or lack of...) of every off-site promotional campaign, whether you are...
- purchasing ads in ezines
- bidding for keywords on pay per click search engines
- posting a comment in your favourite newsgroup
- links from a free ebook you are promoting
- links from any email of yours, and more...
Testing your ezine ads is particularly useful, because it will allow you to measure which of your ads is generating a better response. It'll allow you, e.g. run Ad A in ezine 1 and Ad B in ezine 2, then a week later you may swap the previous combination and be able to evaluate which of the 2 campaigns was more profitable.
Testing web-based advertising becomes also particularly effective, because the use of these special ad tracking links will allow you to track the performance of each banner, pay per click search engine, or your posts in Internet discussion groups.
Click Through For Profits
Now let us look at other half of the equation, i.e. the part that generates profits for you... Yes, I know this is what you like to hear about. I won't disappoint you! Stay with me a while longer. :-)
As you know, click-through occur when your visitors click on a link and leave your site. This is not necessarily bad, if they'll generate profits for you... It all depends where those click-through are going...
- do you own an online store, accepting credit cards? Great! A percentage of those leads will yield you a profit.
- are you a web developer, selling your services online? Excellent! This sales site of yours is an obvious final destination for your incoming visitors. And...
- you probably are an affiliate for several programs... Set up links pointing towards such merchants and monitor closely their conversion into sales or leads... and your profits will grow.
You could even track sales - not just traffic - by creating specific web pages that will track both clicks IN and clicks OUT of your site. All you have to do is, when you place an ad in an e-zine, or bid on keywords with a pay per click search engine, send your prospects to a special, dedicated page on your website. Obviously, such special webpage that you have set up can only be used for such specific promotion at stake - it can not receive links from anywhere else. On such webpage, you'll also have to create new ad tracking links for your affiliate program. If your merchant does not provide you with such feature for their affiliate program, use the free services provided by Snip URL . It is a very user-friendly service!
Say you create a pay per click campaign...
By setting a special webpage for this campaign of yours (it can be a simple duplicate of one of your site's pre-existing pages), you'll be able to know with precision that this pay per click listing brought in this many visitors to your site, of which this many visitors clicked on to your specific merchant or your online store... i.e. a complete follow through of your visitors behavior, for each promotional campaign. And since you know the conversion rate for each of your merchants (or your online store), you'll be able to decide whether you should carry on advertising with your current ezine or pay per click engine, or not.
Finally, let me give you another useful tip in this regard, which I personally use quite often... You could also create a small text file (with your Note Pad), and place this HTML code given below within the HEAD tags:
*<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="0;
URL=http://www.AFFILIATE_LINK.com">*
And obviously, where it says AFFILIATE_LINK above, replace it with the actual link that you wish to promote. Save the file and give it a name, with the HTML extension. Then, upload it to your server, where you have your site hosted and place it in the main folder. From now on, you could simply promote this shorter link...
*http://YOUR_OWN_SITE.com/aff_link.html*
without having to promote the affiliate link given to you by the merchant.
Another good method is to generate a 'cloaked' affiliate page, because in this fashion you'll also protect your affiliate commissions.
Ad Tracking CGI Script
But if you do not wish to manually create an HTML redirect page, log into your server and then upload the file (too cumbersome!), there are good alternatives... such as installing your own CGI script at your server.
With a good CGI script, you can quickly zip through all of the stats for every single one of your links, ads, or campaigns with the push of a button, even if you have several web sites.
You won't have to...
- Mess around with dozens of campaigns until it becomes hard to keep track of them all.
- Click ten different buttons just to see the traffic for all your campaigns.
- Create and upload new html pages each time you want to track your ads.
- Squint your eyes to look at messy, disorganized stats.
- Wait 30 seconds or more for a simple report.
- Put a graphic on all of your pages which is just plain annoying, and causes you to lose some of your hard earned traffic.
- Depend on other people's servers -- which could go offline at anytime, and are overloaded with thousands of users -- to track your ads.
With a CGI script installed on your server, you control over ALL of your links, ads and campaigns - and without paying monthly fees !
For each one of your campaigns, essentially you'll get...
- referring URLs
- what browsers your visitors have installed
- what operating systems your visitors are using
- hits per hour, per day, and hits per month for all campaigns and sub-campaigns (more on sub-campaigns later)
And you even don't need a website to use this CGI script - which means that you could use it in your own ezine...
It is also very easy to install. It could be up and running on your web site, ready to start tracking all of your ads in just 30 minutes!
Finally, if you are looking for an ad tracking script that also tracks sales (besides clicks, actions and redirects), you should consider ProAnalyzer.
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Quickly & Easily Analyze, Test, and Tweak Your Online Advertising To The Point You Couldn't Stop Your Ads Pulling Power... Even If You Tried!
ProAnalyzer is an Advanced Ad Tracking script that runs on your server, and tracks clicks, actions, and sales. It also has a 3-way split testing option.
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Running ProAnalyzer on your web site is like having a elite group of expensive marketing consultants working for you 24/7.
It logs and analyzes advertising & conversion stats, return on investment, affiliate sign-ups, opt-in list subscribers, etc., all it in real time... giving you a complete and accurate overview of all your marketing efforts!
From this information, you can identify what ads are making you money , and what ads are just wasting your time.
Wordtracker
Visit the Wordtracker web site  |
| Overview: |
Wordtracker offers a database of 340 million search queries from which you can query to build keyword lists for use in search engine optimization and pay per click advertising. |
| Screenshot: |
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| Features: |
Database of 340 million real search engine queries compiled from top metacrawlers.
Simple, exact/precise, compressed, comprehensive, misspelling, lateral, and thesaurus search.
Returns singular, plural, uppercase, lowercase, and capitalized versions of a search query.
Returns a list of similar keywords that bear any relation to your search query.
Displays the search count for each keyword.
Shopping basket to store your keywords.
Competition search finds keywords that have few competing web pages in major search engines.
Set up to 7 projects, where you can add, swap, and delete keywords.
Allows you to export or email the saved keywords.
Top 1,000 long and short term search reports.
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| Benefits: |
Find out what your target audience are searching for when searching for your businesses, products or services.
Find out what keywords to target when optimizing your web pages.
Find out what keywords to target when advertising in pay per click search engines.
Find search terms that have few competing web pages in major search engines, which should make it easier to get top rankings for.
Spot trends, before your competitors do.
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| Review: |
Wordtracker was the first and still is the best keyword research tool available.
It offers a massive 340 million keyword database from which you can find out what your target audience are entering into search engines and how many times each keyword has been entered.
This is invaluable insight to help you target your customers in your search engine optimization efforts and pay per click search engine advertising. I probably wouldn't be able to come up with 95% of the keywords that Wordtracker comes up with.
Competition search is a neat feature. It helps you find keywords that have few competing web pages in major search engines. And the fewer pages you have to compete with, the easier it should be to get top rankings.
Wordtracker even offers a mispelling search to help you find misspelled keywords. Sprinkle these into a web page to ensure your page comes up in search results.
I use Wordtracker virtually every day. It's like my oracle. I never write a Google or Overture ad, or optimize a web page, without checking with Wordtracker first to see which keywords I should be targeting. Wordtracker tells me exactly what my customers are entering into search engines.
If I had to give up all of my search engine software tools, Wordtracker would be the last one I would give up. It doesn't come cheap, but I think it's priceless. Would I recommend it? You bet! |
| Accolades: |
"Wordtracker is an essential investment, a must have resource for any search engine marketing professional." - Danny Sullivan, Editor, Search Engine Watch.
"Wordtracker has no equal in the industry to my knowledge." - Brent Winter, President, First Place Software.
"I wanted to say how invaluable your resource is for researching proper placement on the web. Your service has now saved me and my staff thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours." - Lee Erickson, Activemarketplace.
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| Format: |
Online subscription service. |
| Require: |
Internet connection. |
| Free Trial: |
Yes |
| Costs: |
1 Day - GBPЈ4.20 / Approximately US$7.65
1 Week - Ј14.00 / $25.50
1 Month - Ј28.00 / $50.99
3 Months - Ј69.00 / $125.66
1 Year - Ј140.00 / $254.95
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| Visit the Wordtracker web site |
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