57 Comments

• Mustafa said:
  

  Just minutes of action, tracking is really easy thanks to google analytics but I don’t know why it always seems hard at first. Thanks for the great lesson.

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• Judy said:
  

  Don’t know why analytics and tracking seems so difficult. Haven’t finished this whole lesson yet but the info is a must need to know for me! Thanks for making it easier.

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  • Eric said:
    

    Maybe you’re more of the creative type?

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• Jan Smith said:
  

  Another great lesson Eric. Thank you. One of the tracking tools I use is Statcounter. I have used it for years and I’m really happy with them. I also use my cPanel stats because I like to keep an eye on everything.

  I also use Google Analytics on some sites but I find the other two easier to use and I don’t believe in putting all my eggs in one basket

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  • Eric said:
    

    Cool, thanks for the tips

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• Emmanuel said:
  

  Hi Erics, Thanks for this great wealth of informations. The cost is however much for those who are trying to take off the ground,like me.YOU ARE HOWEVER,ALWAYS GREAT. Emmanuel

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• Mark S said:
  

  Good solid information as usual Eric, Thank You

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• Todd said:
  

  Thanks Eric… I was recently talking to another Marketer who had increased their conversion rate on a squeeze page by a simple tweak…They increased conversions to the high 20% mark. The point being he had not been paying attention before and as a result missed out on approximately 90k!!! This lesson hit home.

  Todd
  http://tie.ly

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  • Eric said:
    

    Yeah, so often we don’t feel the impact until we realize how much money we’ve left on the table.

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• Jeromy said:
  

  Hey Eric,
  Good lesson. I have dabbled in tracking and know it is simply not easy. There are lots of parts to think about to get the whole picture. I tried the self hosted Prosper tracking and found it to be unreliable. Probably my own server (basic Hostgator account), but not the less. I tried the version they have on their site. I know some people are worried about their information being safe….I guess I choose to take a chance and trust that these guys are not interested in that sort of scrupulous behavior, they sell services and I understand they are doing quite well. None the less, I stopped using that service as well. I find the stats I can get through my cpanel are fine (I also track with Google). I use a wordpress plugin to create and track all my links. So far, I have found this to be very effective and I can create nice clean links, with a few clicks in Wordpress Admin.
  Anyway, I am curious, do you outsource a portion of your work? And would this be one that you might outsource?
  I am finding that I am getting completely swamped…I am researching, writing, spinning, designing, creating ‘presence’ online via social networks and such, do it over and over in multiple niches, then of course there is tracking. I am finding it very difficult to manage and maintain momentum. How to you keep up?
  Cheers!

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  • Eric said:
    

    Yes I do outsource some stuff. And yes, tracking and stats reporting is definitely something that can be very easily outsourced.

    You can make a screen capture video to show your worker exactly what you want them to do each day, and then have them submit a report to you containing only the data that YOU want to see, on the schedule that you want to see it. Or you can instruct them to take certain actions based on the results that they’re seeing, etc.

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• casual outdoor furniture said:
  

  Another interesting lesson. I liked the phrase used in the video “Numbers that are watch tend to improve”

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• Kwame said:
  

  GREAT INFORMATION AS ALWAYS. ONE PLUG YOU CAN USE ON WORDPRESS IS A PLUG-IN CALLED (WASSUP).
  VERY USEFUL TOOL.

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  • Eric said:
    

    Nice, here’s the link if anyone’s interested:
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wassup/

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    • karen leung said:
      

      Eric,
      Thanks. This is a great plugin. I’ll definitely put it on all my blogs.

      By the way, if my landing page/opt-in page is not converting. What can I do to help it convert?

      Please inform.

      Regards, Karen

      [Reply]
• Tony said:
  

  Hi Eric,

  Just to let you know that I found you a few days ago while doing some research on finding my Niche.

  I’m starting my second online biz using SBI.

  The 1st is an online presence in the form of my Natural Sea Sponge Wholesale/Export biz, http://www.pelagosponges.com and this site was develop by my #2 son 5yrs ago.

  I wish however, to develop this 2nd one on my own, by mine OWN hands…so yes, ‘m a Newbie but willing to learn; and as this lesson mentions, I want to do a fun site but MONETIZE it of course…so Yep this will be a BUSINESS for me!!!

  Many thanks for your help and if you have some time drop me a line for I have some ideas to bounce off you!

  Cheers!

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  • Eric said:
    

    Glad to have you on board

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• Gary Pettit said:
  

  Eric
  I didn’t receive an email yet for the new lesson but nice to check in and see one. This was perfect cause tracking is something I’m trying to get a grip on right now. The main tracking methods I’m using are: AWstats, Visitor Spy and Wordpress Admin tracking.I understand the charts and numbers pretty well but I’m not always so sure what to do with them. Hopefully that will change.

  

  Slaughter Your Competition with Unstoppable Targeted FREE Traffic!
  http://WebTrafficMassacre.com

  [Reply]
• Luca Di Nicola said:
  

  Hey Eric, in the offline world I used to track all sorts of sales data, by customer, products purchased, when they were purchased and so on. I the online business it’s just as important if not more. The difference being for me anyhow is that online tracking is much more technical. Google analytics for instance gives you all the stats you need but I find it a little overwhelming in setting things up. The language they use is not always clear to me. I have started using tracking links for products and squeeze pages now so I know what campaign sign ups and sales come from.

  Always something to learn…

  Thanks again for these lessons

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• Deepak Kulkarni said:
  

  Hi Eric, very informative post for affiliate marketers but can you recommend something like this for adsense tracking….. accurate,realiable and self hosted

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  • Eric said:
    

    AdSense has good tracking available in its own control panel…

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• Gogvo tools said:
  

  Good tracking lesson… One i like that is free or pro is Statcounter, it works like a charm on blogs or sites and gives all the data you could wish for in a simple format… I use the free version personaly and love it! statcounter.com is a good tracking tool!

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• Dan @ Instant Money Making Websites said:
  

  Another great lesson Eric. Tracking, as you have pointed out is very important to one’s Internet marketing success. Since I started tracking my traffic, I have become more knowledgeable about the niches I’m involved in, and about my target audience.

  And it has enabled me to focus my time and efforts on certain areas where I see more positive response coming.

  I use my Cpanel traffic statistics, Google analytics, and a free plugin, WordPress.com Stats Plugin for my Wordpress blogs.

  This is a cool tool, with it I see where my traffic is coming from daily, what they are reading, and what they are clicking on my blog, including my affiliate products links.

  You can visit wordpress.com, download and install the stats plugin if you want.

  Regards!

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• kevan said:
  

  Really helpful stuff. Many thanks

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• kevan said:
  

  Im on page 1 of google but still have low sales. I will be marketing a different product soon as i am not totally confident in my current product. Have you any advice. Thanks

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  • Eric said:
    

    Page 1 on Google, but how much traffic are you getting? That’s what matters.

    Beyond that, there could be many reasons why your site might not be converting. If it’s the one linked in your name, it definitely needs some improvement.

    The header graphic is useless (the domain name doesn’t mean anything to the visitors who find you). Way too much underlined stuff… some of them look like links, which is confusing. Usually the payment box should go above the PS.

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    • kevan said:
      

      Thanks very much for your helpful reply.

      [Reply]
  • Dez Futak said:
    

    Beyond position 3 on Google, you’ll only get roughly 5% of the total clicks - BUT, this is still about 2.5x BETTER than the top sponsored adwords link
    How many hits are you getting to your site & what position are you on?

    Dez.

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    • Eric said:
      

      You are totally right Dez, which is why SEO is a good traffic strategy. But the other thing to look at is what keyword are you ranked for? It might not be a high traffic keyword, and you might have a much easier time getting traffic from several high search volume keywords via PPC. There are multiple ways of looking at the traffic game, which is what we’ll be covering in depth next

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• Graham in UK said:
  

  Hi Eric
  WOW! that was a lot to take in?
  I’m getting traffic now to my new site, but I’m not sure re no of visitors if this includes search engine spiders or is it ‘real’ visitors. I am getting lots of Google images search as well.Each month the no. of visitors is increasing from all search engines(top 3).
  Great video again
  Thanks
  Graham in UK

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  • Eric said:
    

    Using Analytics or other stats programs you can isolate the search engine bots from your real visitors. Traffic from Google images is a good strategy for someone in a niche like yours. Using tracking, as well as research on Google’s keyword tool, you can determine what keywords would be good to use for images. Then you can add more unique pictures, and use alt tags for the keywords.

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    • Graham in UK said:
      

      Hi Eric
      Thanks for that, Analytics does seem rather complicated!
      Re Google images - although I have used Alt text for all images - when Google displays these images the text they show seems to be random and nothing to do with the image!
      Is there anything more that I can do? - it seems strange to me - any suggestions?
      Thanks again
      Graham in UK

      [Reply]
      • Eric said:
        

        Hmm, it may be picking up the text from the content of your pages. I would suggest adding a couple more unique images (with alt tags) to some of your article pages, and maybe even add a couple of picture pages with a bunch of pictures on them.

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• Dez Futak said:
  

  Great content Eric!

  How would you compare Covert Conversion pro in terms of functionality & ease of use to Adtrackz (which is what I’ve been using since day 1 of my IM career)?

  Dez.

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  • Eric said:
    

    That’s a good question, and I don’t know as I haven’t personally used Adtrackz. But my inclination would be that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” In other words, if you’ve already got everything set up on one system and it’s working well for you… that’s great! If it’s not meeting your needs, then it would be good to test alternatives.

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• panicattacks said:
  

  I have just started using Google Analytics but find things complicated. Will try some of your recommendations.

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• Ray said:
  

  Love The Lesson, Eric! Makes Sense! You Have To Know Your Numbers Otherwise You Are Promoting Blindly!

  What is your Opinion Of Stat Counter?

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  • Eric said:
    

    I’m not familiar with it Ray.

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    • Gary Pettit said:
      

      Ray,
      I use Stat Counter on one of my sites and it works very well. I only use the free version but its extremely detailed and offers a lot of helpful statistics. If I remember correctly, you can compare Google Analytics and Stat Counter from their website

      [Reply]
• Jack said:
  

  Very solid lesson, learned quite a bit and had significant light shed on a few other mysteries as well, thanks & greatly looking forward to the Traffic Module (and Product Launch after that?).

  Amazing how many ways there are to do things and how various marketers come to their choices of tools & methods.

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• Rick said:
  

  Nice article. Another tips: Try to identify a market need that you have to meet and then answer that need by putting up an online business.

  There are many resources that you can find online to help you out as you start your online business. You have to do some research so that your efforts will be rewarded when the right time comes. Remember - you always need targeted website visitors!

  [Reply]
• kidney infection symptoms said:
  

  Thanks for another great video tips…keep up the good work.

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• Andres said:
  

  Analytics give you stats, but not the really important ones. The most important stat of all is which keyword generated the sale and I was using xtremeconversions for that until it stopped working (maybe for the upgrade from php4 to php5). I emailed the team and they told me that I should upgrade.

  Having paid $97 for something that I had not opportunity to profit is horrible, so I decided to pass that offer and I was contracting an elancer to do the job and suddenly I knew about covert conversions pro and bought it, but wondering if it work.

  Two days after, I installed it on my first site on appears to be working good, the only problem with this program is that you have to install it on each of your sites, but seens to be working fine.

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• Romeo said:
  

  Thanks for the info Eric! You really have a handle on the business… Look forward to more lessons!

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• Andres said:
  

  I have to say also that a little change is needed so covert conversions would work on Wordpress (you must add a session variable to the $tid could get “remembered” from page to page).

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• Leigh Allen said:
  

  I get more information from your “Free” stuff than I’ve gotten from some courses I paid a lot of money for! Thanks so much for all of your help.

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• Tom said:
  

  Thanks your for providing your great information! Im with Leigh you give more info free than most give you at a hefty price

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• hyzat said:
  

  Hi Eric,

  What is a good tracking tool to track from where my subscribers come from? I usually have ad swap partners promoting my squeeze page all at one time and I need to see which one perform better.

  I know some simple php thingy that people do for this purpose but i m thinking of having a software/tool that available in the market,

  thanks!

  [Reply]
  • Eric said:
    

    Affiliate Prophet or Conversion Prophet would work for this.

    1) Setup a campaign for your squeeze page.

    2) Put the thank-you page tracking code on your opt-in thank-you page.

    3) Setup the main tracking link as a redirect on your site, and tell your ad swap partners to send traffic to that URL. OR if you don’t want to inconvenience your current partners, you could simply take the URL of your current squeeze page and turn it into a redirect page that goes to the tracking link. And just change your actual squeeze page to a new URL.

    4) The software will then track all of your opt-in conversions. Click on Keyword Stats, and turn the filter off. It will display all the URL’s where your traffic came from, and it will show the conversion rate of each.

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• john@Los Angeles Wedding Photography said:
  

  great info about tracking… thanks for sharing the tip!!!!

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• John said:
  

  Thanks Eric for this free Information for us all,your professional advice in your lessons are solving some of the mysteries for me.
  Brilliant stuff.

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• rhaja said:
  

  wow Eric my man, you are awesome this tutorial is easy to digest and very simple to understand thanks a lot bro.

  [Reply]
• Amos Patterson said:
  

  Thanks Eric
  Another great class, I always learn something even when I think I know the subject.
  Thanks again,
  Amos

  [Reply]
• Jerry said:
  

  E Eric,

  Hats off for sharing so much valuable information and never seeming to have an alterior motive.

  Let me ask you something. Would it be possible to track where a sale came from under the following scenario:

  Say you owned/authored a product and it was active on clickbank. We know we can track a sell generated by the cb tracking link but… this is the kicker…

  What if you wanted to install an option by which you’d let a buyer purchase at a discount for a one payment ‘in full’. Now assume youused paypal exclusively for the one payment option.

  Question is, how could you track where that paypal sale came from?

  In other words, lets say for sake of the conversation that I ran an ad on your site. If I generated a hoplink through cb, I might tag the link as http://www.blahblah.com/tidadonericssight and obviously, if a sale passed through on the cb payment option, I’d know it was, generated from the ad on your sight. Easy stuff.

  However, if the buyer takes the disounted option and buys off the same page using the paypal link, there seems to be no way of knowing the sale was generated from that same page.

  Is there a tip on how I could do that?

  Thanks,I

  Jerry

  [Reply]
  • Eric said:
    

    A good option would be to use Affiliate Prophet which I recommend in this lesson. It will allow you to track where all sales come from.

    If you want to track it for the purposes of paying an affiliate, then you would most likely need to use an affiliate software/script which allows both Clickbank and Paypal. There are several available.

    Another option would be to use some PHP coding, which would pass the clickbank tracking ID (tid) into the Paypal payment link, which can then be automatically collected in a form field (Paypal allows you to collect additional information). Again this would require some coding.

    Also I would not recommend putting CB and paypal on the same sales page, as it may alienate your affiliates. If it’s a matter of too high a price for Clickbank, get in touch with them and explain the situation. They can approve much higher price points on a case by case basis.

    [Reply]
    • Jerry said:
      

      Eric… Thanks so much! I have AP and have never installed it. You have any tutorials or insight on it?

      Thanks and congrats on your newest family addition. Hold them often. Mine have grown beyond being held and the are without doubt the greatest treasures in life.

      Again thanks!

      Jerry

      [Reply]
      • Eric said:
        

        Just what I talked about in this lesson and lesson #57. There are tutorials that come with it. I use AP on all my product launches. Thanks

        [Reply]