Internet Marketing Toolbox

For most people, venturing into business on the Internet is just as dangerous as it was to the early settlers in the “wild wild west” days… blindly heading off with no idea of whether they were really going in the right direction.

What you needed in those days was a good tracker to make sure you were following along a path that would get you somewhere (safely).

It’s the same on the ‘net now! You need good tracking systems to make sure you stay on the path to success.

It all starts with looking at the log files your web host provides (and it amuses me that some hosting companies still DON’T provide logs). Use the programs awstats and/or webalizer to get to know your web site visitors - how many there are, where they are going, where they have come from, what keywords they are using to find you, etc.

Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google which provides even more stats on your visitors. Just plug a little bit of code into the header or footer of each page on your site… and sit back and watch as Google reports on all sorts of things… very useful tool to have! It requires a free Google account to use.

If you are running Adsense ads on your site, are you using the Adsense Channels feature? You can assign different “channels” to different types of ads - perhaps ads on different sites, or in different sections within a site - and track their performance over time to see which ones are working best for you.

Are you promoting affiliate products through ClickBank? Did you know you can add a tracking ID to your hoplink to sell you where a sale came from? The format of the hoplink URL with a tracking code is:
http://AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=XXXXXXXX
The tracking code (”XXXXXXXX” in the example above) can be NO LONGER than 8 characters, and contain ONLY alpha and numeric characters.

E.g. one of the TID’s I use is COLHP - tells me the ad appears on my website = COL and on the HP = home page. Another (same site)_ is COLLIST = where LIST = the web LISTings section of the COL site.

So… each LINK you advertise on your sites, should have it’s OWN unique TID. That way, you know WHICH link made a sale.

Now… the problem with Clickbank and some other affiliate programs, is that they DON’T report on the actual click-throughs that your ads receive, so often you have NO idea of how many clicks are needed to make a sale… or even whether a product is receiving any clicks at all.

That’s where something like Mike Filsaime’s Power Link Generator comes into play. This program sites on your web site and does a few very useful things. It needs php to run and sql is optional as data can be set up in a text file database, which is fine and probably easier for most people.

First up, it stores all your affiliate links and information about each link, in its database so everything is in one place. Then, for each link, it can create a much more professional looking link : For example…
http://www.netmarketingtoolbox.com/recommends/Power-Link-Generator
or my (fairly obvious) affiliate link:
https://paydotcom.com/r/72/coais/760202/

As well as “cloaking” your affiliate link, it can also report on the number of “hits” each link has had… useful stuff to know!

So, it’s an ad-tracker software… and there are hundreds of them around. Perhaps one of the better ones is the one that comes as part of the very reasonably priced hosting solution at the Ultimate Marketing Centre. Not only are ad-trackers built into the package, but so too are complete mechanisms for auto-responders, affiliate management, customer support, membership management and more! Oh… and don’t forget the hosting of up to 10 domains - all for under twenty bucks! There’s some great bonuses there for Internet Marketers too!

So… the question is…

Which one of these do you use to keep track of where you are heading and how you are going?

Answer: E. All of the above!

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