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How to create an "ad" tracker
By Steven Currie of YouSendTheCards.com
Why You Want to Create An Ad Tracker
This is how you create an advertisement tracker. You want to do
this so you know in general how much traffic an advertisement or
article or any other web traffic idea created. You will be able
to capture how many hits/clicks each ad generated. This will
give you a per click cost. The lower the per click cost, the
more effective the ad.
For example if you placed one ad on ABC web site for $20.00 and
you got 100 hits, that would be a per click cost of .20 cents
per click. If you placed a $20.00 ad on XYZ web site and you got
50 clicks, would be a per click cost of .40 cents per click, a
higher per click cost. That might tell you that you might want
to spend more money on ads in ABC web site. You may decide not
to advertise on XYZ web site again.
Another thing you should do is EVERY time you place a new ad on
ABC web site set up a tracker for it so you can see if the
number of clicks is decreasing or increasing. You could also
base that on an increasing or decreasing cost per click.
You should be able to set up a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet
to track all of your ads.I would suggest at minimum the
following columns:
Date of Ad Where placed # of hits/clicks $Spent Cost/hit
You should set up ad trackers for every ad, including off-line
print or magazine ads. If you post in forums, you should set up
one for all the forums.
Since Magnetic Sponsoring is the first thing I will be heavily
advertising, I will be setting up trackers for that. Make sure
if you do forum posts to set up one for that, because, remember
that may generate web traffic.
Overview of the Process of Creating An Ad Tracker
To break the ad tracking down when someone actually clicks on
your link in an ad or forum post or wherever, it looks like
this. I am going to use my web site name for this example.
I created a special page tailored to real estate agents where I
wanted to drive traffic. The link for that page is:
http://www.yousendthecards.com/yousendthecards/id21.html
I use a software package called EasyTracker to track my hits. In
EasyTracker, I created a "tracker" link. This is the one I
publish for ads. You can use a "redirector" like tinyurl or make
up a shorter link that will redirect to this on. That link looks
like:
http://mywaytofreedom.com/cgi-bin/mpacks/ad.cgi?RealEstateEZ1
(I have my tracking software on another web site, but you can
keep it all on one web site.)
So when they click on that link it will take them to the
EasyTracker link. The counter counts each hit. It then redirects
them from the instructions we have set up for tracking this ad
back to the real estate web page:
http://www.yousendthecards.com/yousendthecards/id21.html
Now, this is just an overview of the process. I can recommend a
good free ebook on this topic by Harvey Segal at one of his
websites:
http://www.ad-tracking.com/adbook.html
This will tell you a great deal more than this short article.
If you haven't signed up for the FREE E~Biz Newsletter, which
contains articles like this and has free time saving and
productivity software, you should check it out.Send an email to
freebiz@yousendthecards.com and it will give you more
information.
Steven Currie
Local San Diego Toll Free 858-712-6272 866-211-8012 (Daytime
Pacific Time) 858-560-4752 866-574-6262 (Evening/Weekend)
Steven@YouSendTheCards.com http://www.yousendthecards.com/
With SendOutCards.com system you can create sophisticated
mailing campaigns that will run rings around your competition.
Talk to Steven Currie
About the author:
Owner of YouSendTheCards.com, a distributor for an internet
based greeting card company, SendOutCards. Mr. Currie has over
25 years experience in software design, database development and
assisting small and medium sized businesses in growing their
companies.
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