Ad Tracking

Affiliate Programs can help you create a strong online presence using a powerful network of Affiliate Members promoting your site. But, it can also help you manage your advertising efforts - even when the advertiser does not belong to your Affiliate Program.

How?

Use an Affiliate Program to track your online advertisements. This is an effective way to gauge the success of your online advertising without a lot of work!

NON-AFFILIATE PROGRAM TRACKING

Most click-throughs can be tracked by pointing visitors to a unique "entry" page. (e.g. Instead of sending your visitors to www.yourdomain.com, you'll send them to www.yourdomain.com/entry.html) Using your server logs, you can see how many times this page was hit.

Some of the problems with this method:

· Uploading a New Entry Page - Every time you place an ad, you'll have to create and upload a new page. On top of being time-consuming, all of the pages will add an unnecessary amount of K-size to your site.
· Updating Your Entry Pages - You'll have to download, edit and re-upload each of your entry pages every time you make a change to your product information or site layout.
· Page Life - How long do you leave each of the entry pages on your site? A week, a month? What happens when someone clicks-through after you take down the page and gets a "Page not Found" error - will they bother finding your home page?
· Counting Click-Throughs - You'll have to count your click-throughs using a server log reader. You can print out these reports or simply make a mental note of them, but there is no way to consistently tally click-throughs and report on your findings.
· Analyzing Results -- Aside from lining each report up next to one another - you'll have no way of comparing the results of one ad to another.
· Tracking Sales - How will you track sales? Server logs won't help with this. You could ask each purchaser where they heard of you -- but this can be fairly unreliable!

Overall, this method proves highly unreliable in tracking and analyzing click-throughs and sales.

AFFILIATE PROGRAM AD TRACKING

With an Affiliate Program, gauging the success of your online advertising is a breeze!

Just sign up for your own Affiliate Program and use the supplied link in your advertisement. Your Affiliate Program will track all of the click-throughs under that ID Number. Plus -- it will follow the visitor all the way through to the sale. Affiliate Program Ad Tracking will give you a true picture of how much traffic your ad brought you as well as how many sales the ad generated.

When it comes to evaluate the ad's effectiveness, all you'll have to do is open your Affiliate Program and view the stats for the Affiliate ID under which you signed up. You'll see the click-throughs and sales the ad brought you in an easy-to-read format.

The Affiliate Program Software - the most complete Affiliate Tracking and Management software takes Ad Tracking one step further with a built-in Ad Tracker. The Ad Tracker will allow you to input a new advertiser - including information like Publication Name, Number of Subscribers, Contact Information, Cost of Ad and Forecasted Click-Throughs and Sales. The software will then give you the link you'll use in the ad.

After your ad goes out, you can go back to The Affiliate Program Software to find out how many click-thorughs and sales your ad has received. You will even see the Cost per Click-Through and a Sales to Click-Throughs Ratio.

You'll never have to wonder or guess if your advertising efforts are paying off - you'll have the answers in front of you at any time in an easy-to-read format.

Tracking your results with an Affiliate Program will help you determine whether or not your advertising is truly profitable. You'll know what placements really pull and which placements don't carry their weight.

Affiliate Program Ad Tracking will help you analyze your advertising results for all types of advertising including:

· Banner Advertising
· E-zine Advertising
· Articles
· Press Releases
· Newsgroup Postings
· Email Signature Files
· Classified Advertising
· Customer Contacts

No matter where you're spending your advertising dollars online, you'll be able to gauge how well each placement works for you. Once you know how well the placement works - you can move on to testing ad copy, banner rotations and tag lines.

For more information on how The Affiliate Program Software can help you track your Online Advertising, please visit us at: