We’ve just finished covering list building, and we’re about to jump into a new module covering web traffic starting with the next lesson.
But first we need to talk about a very important topic that involves both of those things…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
1) VISITORS
You NEED to know…
-How many visitors you received
You SHOULD to know…
-Where they came from
It could be helpful to know…
-How long they stayed on your website
-What they did on your website
-Where they went after your site
-Demographics
-A bunch of other stuff (Google Analytics tracks almost everything)
2) LEADS
You NEED to know…
-How many leads/subscribers you received
-Your opt-in conversion rate
You SHOULD to know…
-Where they came from
-How many subscribers unsubscribed
It could be helpful to know…
-All sorts of email stats like open rate, click rate, etc. (AWeber provides this)
3) SALES
You NEED to know…
-How many sales you made
-Your sales conversion rate
You SHOULD to know…
-Where they came from
It could be helpful to know…
-How each sale is related to your traffic and subscriber stats.
Web Server Logs
You can get most of the stats you need from the stats tracking within your hosting control panel.
Cpanel web hosts usually have Analog, AWstats, Webalizer, and maybe Urchin.
(See video for demo of AWstats and Webalizer)
Visits vs. Pageviews vs. Hits (Hits is not a very meaningful statistic)
Self-hosted Tracking Applications
I often prefer using self-hosted tracking tools because…
-I need INSTANT stats during launches.
-I try to avoid overdependence on 3rd-party apps.
-Avoid feeding the Google machine.
I use and recommend:
Affiliate Prophet
Covert Conversion Pro
Self-hosted PPC tracking tools:
Ad Spy Pro
Prosper202
3rd-Party Tracking
Some popular ones: AdTrackz, AdWatcher, HyperTracker, Tracking202, and of course… Google Analytics!
Google Analytics can provide all the tracking you need.
(See video for demo of Google Analytics)
Use Google Analytics “Goals”
-You can set up goals for opt-in and sales conversions
-Enables you to track everything in once place
Some ways to take action with your data…
-Better focus your landing pages, blog articles, sales pages, etc.
-Add more pages to get more traffic from longtail keywords.
-See which affiliates are sending you the most traffic, and build relationships.
-Spy on affiliates and copy what they’re doing.
-Eliminate negative keywords from PPC campaigns & SEO efforts.
-Add new income streams, based on what people are looking for on your site.
-Focus your efforts on successful traffic sources.
-Ensure browser compatibility.
-Bounce rate improvement.
Especially important if you’re not creatively gifted as a marketer. If the creative side of your brain is the weaker side, then you CAN compensate by being a good tester and a good action taker.
Action steps:
1) Choose a tracking method to track your visitors, leads and sales.
2) Watch your numbers and TAKE ACTION based on them.
Once we’ve got our tracking in place, we’ll be ready to do what it takes to get web traffic to our website… starting in the next lesson!
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂
Have a great day!
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.
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.
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 🙂
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
Good solid information as usual Eric, Thank You
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
Maybe you’re more of the creative type?
Cool, thanks for the tips 🙂
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!
Another interesting lesson. I liked the phrase used in the video “Numbers that are watch tend to improve”
GREAT INFORMATION AS ALWAYS. ONE PLUG YOU CAN USE ON WORDPRESS IS A PLUG-IN CALLED (WASSUP).
VERY USEFUL TOOL.
Yeah, so often we don’t feel the impact until we realize how much money we’ve left on the table.
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.
Nice, here’s the link if anyone’s interested:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wassup/
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!
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
Glad to have you on board 🙂
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
Hi Eric, very informative post for affiliate marketers but can you recommend something like this for adsense tracking….. accurate,realiable and self hosted
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!
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!
Really helpful stuff. Many thanks
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
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
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.
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
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.
AdSense has good tracking available in its own control panel…
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.
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.
Thanks very much for your helpful reply.
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
I have just started using Google Analytics but find things complicated. Will try some of your recommendations.
Love The Lesson, Eric! Makes Sense! You Have To Know Your Numbers Otherwise You Are Promoting Blindly!
What is your Opinion Of Stat Counter?
I’m not familiar with it Ray.
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
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 🙂
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.
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.
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.
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!
Thanks for another great video tips…keep up the good work.
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.
Thanks for the info Eric! You really have a handle on the business… Look forward to more lessons!
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).
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.
Thanks your for providing your great information! Im with Leigh you give more info free than most give you at a hefty price
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!
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.
great info about tracking… thanks for sharing the tip!!!!