SFI AFFILIATE TEAM-BUILDING ON STEROIDS!
13th May 2012- I've promised to give away 15 affiliates to 3 members of my team in June.
- I've given away 4 affiliates to 4 member of my team so far in May.
- I've gave away 60 affiliates to 12 members of my team in April.
- I gave away 101 affiliates in December 2011. (A Record!)
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Tracking
TEToolbox: How I Got Tangled Up With My Link Tracking Software
Link tracking software is one of the essential tools of Internet marketing. I use Tim Linden and Jon Olsen’s excellent TEToolbox to cover all my link tracking needs, whether its for promotions on traffic exchange, safelists or articles posted on my website, blog or on article directories.
TEToolbox’s link tracking software also allows you to rotate two or more pages on a single link and receive stats about how many hits they receive and how many of those hits convert into clicks. It’s a good way to split test two pages or rotate two completely different pages, as you wish.
Split-Testing With TEToolbox’s Rotators
One thing I do is rotate a standard affiliate page with one of my own splash pages designed to promote the same affiliate product. The difference is that my splash page is unique, branded, and designed to get the prospect to opt-in to my list BEFORE clicking through to the standard affiliate page.
By rotating the two pages I can make sure that my personal splash page gets a higher conversion rate than the standard company affiliate page, and so far, my branded splash pages have always converted at a higher rate.
A Right Split-Testing Tangle…
But the other day I noticed something weird was happening when my branded splash page showed up on the rotator link which was rotating between it and the standard promotional page for the excellent My Surf Business product. When you clicked on the “Click Here to Find Out More” link, half the time it directed me back to the SAME splash page I had just been viewing. Another click or two would eventually get me through to the standard affiliate page.
I scratched my head and checked the HTML code, but couldn’t find any problems…
Lesson: Do Not Link To A Page Via A Rotator That Includes A Link To The Page You Are Coming From…!!
Then, a day or two later, it suddenly hit me – OF COURSE, you screaming IDIOT!! You placed a tracking link from your home-made splash page directly to the affiliate sign up page, BUT the tracking link you used is the SAME rotator link that switches between the standard affiliate page and your splash page! NO WONDER that half the time when you click the button on the splash page it takes you… BACK TO THE SAME SPLASH PAGE. Doh!
The moral of the story is not – NOT – to link to a page via a tracking rotator that includes a link to the page you are coming from!
Once I realized what the problem was – and that it was MY fault – it was easy to correct. I simply separated the tracking links and made sure the tracking link I placed on the splash page pointed ONLY to the affiliate sales page.
Link tracking is an excellent habit to get into, but if you are not careful you can get your link tracking software into a bit of a twist!
David Hurley
Note To Internet Marketers: Check Your Link Tracking Links!
One of the most important tools in a serious Internet marketers arsenal, along with a website and an autoresponder, is a link tracker.
Link trackers serve several important purposes:
- They track your links (obviously!)
- They let you monitor and update all your links in one place
- They cloak your affiliate links
- They show you your clickthrough or response ratio
- They will split test two or more versions of your web page
I use Jon Olsen and Tim Linden‘s TEToolbox to track my links. Although the product is aimed at traffic exchange surfers, it is not limited to traffic exchange campaigns and is actually an excellent link tracker in its own right.
But, yesterday, I discovered that one of my links was going to a messed up page, which was really bad because the page was advertising a bunch of free WordPress Mini Sites, so the design of the page would obviously be an important factor in getting the prospect to opt in!
When I checked the link in the tracker I found that my affiliate link was one of those l-o-n-g ones that has two urls mashed together. Unfortunately, the link field on TEToolbox was too short and forced the URL to wrap over three lines. The linebreaks were what cause the trouble.
So, how do you get around that kind of problem?
I was thinking about abandoning tracking the link as it is not one of my major concerns, but I would prefer to know what the clickthrough rate of every page or link is.
My solution was to go to su.pr – Stumbleupon‘s URL shortner – and shorten the original link. I then plugged the shortened link into the tracker and it worked a treat. The only problem is that su.pr links place the Stumbleupon bar at the top of the browser, which will tempt people to leave the page. My next move was to go to Google and use their URL shortener – Goo.gl/ – instead. It worked a treat and doesn’t add anything to the page.
Here are the steps in the process of creating a shortened tracking link using TEToolbox and Goo.gl:
1. Take the URL of the destination page – the page you want to direct traffic to – and create a tracking link in TEToolbox.
2. Copy the tracking link.
3. Go to Goo.gl and turn the tracking link into a shortened link (it will look something like this: goo.gl/29dbl9)
4. Paste the Goo.gl link into the web page you are using to drive traffic to the destination page.
5. Click the link to make sure it works.
6. Check the tracking stats in your TEToolbox admin site to make sure it registered your click.
That’s it! The whole process takes about 5 minutes to complete.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about another problem I had with my TEToolbox link tracking software – a problem that was entirely my own fault, but which took me ages to work out the cause… once I finally realized what was happening, the cure came quickly…
More about that tomorrow!
David Hurley
A Quick Look At The TEToolbox Ad Tracking And Rotator Service
Experienced and successful Internet marketers will tell you that you need an online ad tracking service to track your hits, measure your results and split test everything.
I agree!
My choice of tracker is TEToolbox.com – a very convenient and easy-to-use service that was created by Paul Kinder, Tim Linden and Jon Olsen for tracking hits on traffic exchanges.
However, TEToolbox can be used for much more than tracking traffic exchange hits. In fact, TEToolbox is a full-on remotely hosted tracking service. In other words, you don’t have to download any software but can log into your account on the TEToolbox website and manage everything from there.
One of the things I use it for is to track clicks to my product pages on Tripleclicks.com where I sell Japanese games.
By using TEToolbox to do this, not only can I track where my visitors were coming from, but also, if I replace the item on Tripleclicks with something else, I point the link in TEToolbox to the new page and that’s it. I don’t have to replace all the links across my various webpages.
Another benefit of TEToolbox is that you can also track conversions by placing some code on your Thank You page.
As well as the ad tracker you get:
- A banner rotator
- A web site rotator
- An easy to use splash page maker
- A banner ad maker
- A branding tracker to show which TEs work best for you.
As a free member you get access to everything except the branding tracker. If you upgrade you can create unlimited trackers and add unlimited numbers of banners and web pages to the rotators.
TEToolbox is one tool that I use every day and I’ve found it to be great value for money. It is the only tracker I use, both on traffic exchanges and elsewhere.
David Hurley
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