It has cost you time and money to generate your INCOMING traffic. Your OUTGOING traffic generates income for you. You can measure both… INCOME minus EXPENSES equals PROFITS.
And for your long-term success, that’s critical. Why?
Because if you know more about the nature of your INCOMING and OUTGOING traffic, you can maximize your returns for every dollar and minute that you spend!
What do you need to know? 1) Traffic 2) Links in 3) Links out.
Analyze Your “Big Picture” Traffic Stats
All traffic-reporting software packages cover the basics... average number of visits, visitors, and pages viewed per day, as well as the totals on a per-month basis. Here’s what those terms mean... • Visits -- the number of visits to your site • Visitors -- the number of different people who visit your site (ex., a visitor could account for 10 visits) • Page Views -- the number of pages viewed by all the visitors during all the visits. A single visitor might view only one page... or twenty.
Forget about hits. A hit is simply a line in your site’s log file. If a page has 3 graphics on it, that’s 4 hits (1 for the html page itself, plus 3 for the graphics). But if that same page has 100 graphics on it, that’s 101 hits!
Now that you have the big picture, it’s time to delve inside and pull out some important details...
• Daily statistics -- visits, visitors and page views must be reported on a day-by-day basis, in both absolute terms and as a percentage of the total (ex., percent of total visitors). If you do a special traffic promotion on a certain day (ex., run an ad in an e-zine), a daily statistic report is an easy way to gauge the response.
• Most popular pages -- your page view stats must be delivered on a per-page basis, with the page generating the most page views reported first. By understanding which pages are most popular, you understand better the needs of your visitors. Correlate this with your link-tracking data (more on this below) to make sure that your most popular pages “get the click” to your income generating programs. Also, use this data to get a better feel for what your market wants... and, just as important, what it does not want.
• Most popular entry pages -- same as the previous section, except that this specifically tells you which pages are the most popular “entry” pages. A page counts as an entry page when it starts a visit. Correlate this with how people find you (referrers and keywords, discussed just below), and you have a wealth of insight into how your site is being discovered, and what people want. Use these conclusions to give you ideas for other related, profitable areas for content development.
• Most frequent exit pages -- these are the pages from which people leave your site. Some people look upon high numbers for a given page as “bad.” But you have to correlate this with other data... If a “high entry” page is also a “high exit” page, that’s not really a surprise. If a “high exit” page is also generating tons of links out to your income-generating programs for you, that’s not so bad either, is it?
• Referrer URLs -- this tells you where your traffic is coming from... Search Engines, other Web sites, link exchanges, etc., etc. Extremely useful info!
• Keyword search -- which keywords are people entering into engines to find you? That’s what this super-valuable data tells you! Taken together, referrer page and keyword search data tell you where and how your visitors find you, which gives you a base to build even more traffic-building ideas!
As you can see, traffic analysis is actually a pretty simple task... when you know what you’re looking for, and how to turn data into information.
So how do we get this information? Through two forms of analysis that are specialized for content sites like yours...
• Click IN Analysis and… • Click Through Analysis
Explore Click IN Analysis
Click INs occur when people click on an OFF-SITE link and come into your Theme-Based Content Site.
In order to do Click IN Analysis, you create special tracking links. You create these links specifically to track the success of your OFF-site promotional campaigns. You place a different link in each of your promotional campaigns so that they are easy to track.
When the user clicks on a tracking link, she first goes to a computer program that records the click, and where it came from. Then the program sends the visitor to the page in your site that you had specified.
Click IN analysis yields the following...
• total clicks coming in, for all your special links, and also for each special tracking link that you create • “first-time vs. repeat” click INs, for all click INs, and also on a link-by-link basis. In other words, has the person who is clicking on a link clicked on it before?
You now have a way of measuring the exact traffic-building success of every offsite promotional campaign, whether you’re... • bidding for keywords on Pay-Per-Click engines • buying ads in e-zines • posting an ad on the bulletin board of your local grocery store • no matter how you promote!
Here are some of the uses and advantages of Click IN Analysis...
1) The Untraceable Link -- Some links have no Referring URL, so it’s impossible to know where they come from through regular traffic analysis. But geez, we need to know this data. For example...
i) links from a free e-book that you are using as a promotional tool.
ii) links from e-mail of any kind... sig files, links in mailing lists, Autoresponder campaigns, links in the e-zine that you publish, ads that you buy in e-zines.
iii) links from non-Web based newsgroups (ex., anything you read with your newsreader -- but if you read newsgroups via deja.com and your browser, this does not apply since the Traffic Stats section will report on any visitor who arrives via a Web site -- you could, of course, still use a tracking link for this if you want to).
iv) links that are simply typed in, often due to offline exposure (especially targeted print media). Tracking links are great for any kind of offline promotion.
v) links from your blog.
By creating a special tracking link for each of these “untraceable links,” you’ll know what has been previously impossible to know.
2) Testing e-zine ads -- set a different tracking URL for each ad that you write. That way you can measure which ad generates a better response. Here’s how...
Run Ad #1 in E-zine #1 and Ad #2 in E-zine #2, then switch a month later. Which ad got more responses overall? Stick with what’s profitable. Drop the rest.
E-zine advertising becomes very cost-effective when you can drop the dogs and increase your budget for the winners.
3) Test Web-based advertising -- Even if your promotion is Web-based, it’s more convenient to run tracking links than to review the Traffic Stats Referrer information (which do tell you which sites links originate from). So use your special tracking links to track the performance of banners, Pay-Per-Click Search Engines, even posts to forums and discussion groups.
So far, we’ve talked about tracking the various possible origins of the tracking links (i.e., the OFF-SITE places where potential visitors see and click on your tracking link... e-zines, pay-per-clicks, etc.). And we’ve assumed that the ultimate destination of those links is to your Theme-Based Content Site.
But you have several options for the ultimate destination of your OFF-SITE tracking links...
1) Your Theme-Based Content Site -- Let’s say that you have a terrific page about a special kind of flower. That page has several in-context text links... links to books, growers, affiliate programs, etc, etc. You take an e-zine ad. Where should the ultimate destination be?
Easy... to your Keyword-Focused Content Page! Since you have worked so many in-context text links into your OVERdelivering copy, you have a whole bunch of chances that a sale occurs on at least one of your merchant-partners’ sites.
2) Straight to a merchant-partner -- On the other hand, suppose you write a wonderful article about this special flower as content for a prominent e-zine published by a third party. Your “payment” is that you can include your URLs. Where should these links point?
Easy... work those special tracker links into the content of the article, and point them straight to your merchant partners. One link for each merchant. Since anyone who clicks passes through the tracking script first, you’ll see exactly how many people clicked on each link! No point in directing them to the same info on your site, right?
3) A free trial download -- Even a download URL can be the destination. Offering a free e-book on that special kind of flower? Take an ad in an e-zine, offering the link straight to the download. Naturally, the e-book will have links to your various merchant-partners, and to your Theme-Based Content Site. Every one of those in-book links should be special tracking links, too!
4) Your online store -- Same idea. If you have an online store that needs traffic, and if the situation dictates that you’re better off by sending visitors “directly” to your store (after passing through the tracking script, of course), then do that.
Same goes if you have a site that sells single products or your services. If an ad costs you $100, but you see that it generated 500 visitors, and if you know that 2% of your visitors buy... it’s easy to figure out whether your ad is profitable!
No matter where these visitors originate from, and no matter where you send them to, Click IN Analysis reports how well each promotional effort is working.
Click IN Analysis is vital for anyone building income through content. Unfortunately, existing services are very expensive. Here are your best two options...
1) If you have some tech skills or if you employ someone who does, use our Ultimate Link Tracker. It’s free when you join our 5 Pillar Program... http://affiliates.sitesell.com/ Don’t worry. There’s no obligation to work the 5P Program unless you want to. Consider the Ultimate Link Tracker as my graduation gift to you!
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2) Site Build It! provides all this. The Tracker Library makes it a snap to set up your special tracking links. And you get complete Click IN Analysis reports at the click of your mouse! Cost? Included in Site Build It!, which itself costs less than services that offer only this feature! http://affiliatemarketing.sitesell.com/
Explore Click Through Analysis
Click throughs occur when people click on a link on your Theme-Based Content Site and leave it. (They don’t actually leave since you pop open a new window for them!) We should actually call them “click outs” -- but since the industry is used to “click through,” we're stuck with that term!
In order to do “Click Through Analysis,” you convert your regular OUTGOING links (i.e., links to your merchant-partners, your online store, and your sales site) into special tracking links. When your visitor clicks on such a link, she first goes to a computer program that records the click and where it came from. Then the program sends the visitor to the income-building site that you had specified.
Click Through Analysis yields the following... • total click throughs for all your ON-SITE links, as well as for each ON-SITE link (i.e., on a link-by-link basis) • “first-time vs. repeat” click throughs for the total of all click throughs on all your ON-SITE links and also on a link-by-link basis. In other words, has the person who is clicking on a link clicked on it before? • and, of course, the clicks divided by the page views, which gives you your “Click Through Rate” for all your links as a group, and also on a link-by-link basis.
Excellent Click Through Analysis would even slice and dice your click through analysis like this... 1) It would present you with link-by-link data, broken down for every page that each link appears upon (in other words, if LINK A appears on Pages 1, 2, and 3, it shows you how LINK A performed on each of those pages) 2) And it would present you page-by-page data, broken down with the performance of every link on each page. (In other words, if Page 1 contains LINKS A, B, and C, it shows you how each of those links performed on that page.)
And perfect Click Through Analysis would give you all this data for any time span that you request!
With Click Through Analysis, you have an exact success rate of every single ONSITE link. And that, dear reader, measures income... your money.
You’ll know exactly what people are clicking upon and what they are not. From that point, it’s just a question of building upon your successes and fixing your weaknesses to maximize your income.
Click Through Analysis is as critical for your Theme-Based Content Site as Click IN Analysis. Again, existing services are very expensive. And none give the degree of information that I have outlined for the perfect Click Through Analysis.
Here are your best two options. They may sound familiar...
1) If you have some tech skills or if you employ someone who does, use our Ultimate Link Tracker. It’s free when you join our 5 Pillar Program... http://affiliates.sitesell.com/ (Once again, consider it a complimentary graduation gift.)
-OR-
2) Wait! Did I say that there was no perfect Click Through Tracking Analysis available? I was wrong. Site Build It! provides all of it. Cost? Included in Site Build It!, which itself costs less than services that offer just the click analysis! And, best of all, it all happens automatically, behind the scenes, as you build your site! The analysis is totally integrated with Site Build It!’s site-building tools. All you have to do is click your mouse to get the reports. http://affiliatemarketing.sitesell.com/
POWER-USER TIP:
Want perfect tracking of how effective your e-zine ad is? Combine Click IN Analysis and Click Through Analysis!
Do this...
1) Place an ad in an e-zine, or bid on keywords from a Pay-Per-Click Search Engine. The link goes to a page on your site that receives clicks only from this ad. It can be a simple duplicate of one of your site’s pre-existing pages. But it should not receive links from anywhere else, including even from your own site.
2) On that page, create new tracker links to your affiliate programs, links that are unique for this ad. You should not use these tracker links anywhere else.
3) Now your Click IN Analysis can track the INcoming traffic and your Click Through Analysis can see how many of those folks coming IN actually go to your income-generating programs (or your sales site, online store, etc.)
You’ll know exactly and you will be able to say... “This e-zine ad on this day (or this Pay-Per-Click listing) brought in this many visitors of which this many clicked on to this and that merchant.”
Since you know the Conversion Rate for each of your merchant-partners (or your sales site/store), you know whether it makes sense to keep advertising, or to find more targeted e-zines, or more targeted keywords on the pay-per-clicks.
This technique works for e-zine ads, opt-in mailings, or article submissions that direct readers to your Theme-Based Content Site, and it can be very helpful to test the cost-effectiveness of the Pay-Per-Click Search Engines
As I said, though, this requires a fair degree of savvy and some work. Definitely for power users only.
Know your visitors, the heart of your business, by following traffic stats. And tracking links in and out is the key to maximizing income by getting the most return from all your traffic-building expenses.
