How you answer that question is a pretty good measure for what kind of money you are making each day.

Now there is nothing blackhat here, but there are still plenty of people on this forum trying to make money as affiliates or on CPA by spending money on real traffic, and I see them constantly discussing all the money they are losing.

So here's a couple quick tips that will make all the difference in the world:

1. Track every advertiser, period. If you are just sending a bunch of traffic from a bunch of sources to one link and hoping for the best (like a lot of people I talk to) you're done for.

I've attached Adtrackz because its a simple to use tool that can make a big difference in your campaigns. Install it on a domain with hosting and start setting up individual campaigns for EVERY SINGLE advertiser you buy traffic with.

Adtrackz also generates what is called a tracking pixel. A tracking pixel is simple some code you paste on a confirmation page whether it be on your own website or someone elses. This code will let you know how many sales/leads whatever that you have made from each traffic source from each link.

If you are an affiliate, and the company or CPA merchant you are promoting will not place your own pixel on their confirmation page, don't promote the offer, it's not worth advertising them if they aren't willing to take 3 seconds to paste your code on their page for your own tracking.

2. Track EVERY keyword, period. Some companies like Zango give you a tracking pixel to paste on your confirmation page or someone elses, and will tell you exactly what keyword generated that conversion which is invaluable to a profitable campaign, aka drop the keywords that aren't converting, buy more of the keywords that are.

If the traffic source you are using does not have a pixel to track each keyword, then you need to go into Adtrackz and create one URL for each keyword even if you have 100 keywords.

Not knowing what keywords are converting for you on a campaign is useless, you might as well flush your money down the toilet because at least then you get to watch it spin around and around and get a few seconds of amusement.

If you are doing a keyword targeted campaign then you should have a different ad for every keyword so that the text is 100% relevant to what the person was searching for.

3. Cheap traffic is cheap for a reason, if you are buying these 10,000 visitor packages for $39 all you are getting is proxy traffic 90% of the time, and the other 10% that its real exit traffic, most of the time the people dont even see the ad nor do they care to click it, even though you are still getting charged for it as a view.

4. Banner advertising works, don't listen to anyone that tells you it doesnt. If you are going to buy banner space you need an ad server. An adserver tracks all your advertising for you, especially banner advertising. Ad servers are expensive, but http://www.openx.org/ is free and open source, just upload it to your server read the manual and start testing with it.

The ad server can optimize your campaigns for you by serving multiple creatives on the same site and figuring out which converts the best for you. So if you bought a banner here on blackhatworld, all you would have to do is give Dave the code from your ad server and it would serve either one banner or rotate multiple banners to find the best converting one for you.

5. Stop being a sissy. $25 is not an ad spend, and it is no way to test if a traffic source is going to be good or not. Everyone that comes crying to me about how broke they are and can I help them with good traffic sources is full of shit, they have cell phones, televisions, video games, car payments, and a thousand other things they blow their money on. That is not broke, that is wasteful, step your game up and filter your income into testing as much traffic for as many types of offers as you can and you WILL succeed.

Anything beyond a roof over your head, food on the table, electricity, and a high speed internet connection is unnecessary if you really want to make huge money online.

My best friend Jay is making $1200-$1800 a day now because he stopped being a sissy. He was always crying to me that he had no money to invest until a finally asked him "Would you rather be a shut in for 6-8 months now and then a six figure earner the rest of your life, or keep spending your money on tanning and stupid shit and be living in a one bedroom apartment the rest of your life?

The answer was pretty simple and he just bought an $800,000 house, he was a janitor at a high school the last three years by the way, so he is actually the real guy that used to clean toilets for a living before making it big.

excellent post - before I started tracking my results with paid traffic sources I am sure I was making 20-30% less from duds. It's more important than most of us (even vets) give credit to.

damn,...

i just gotta say, i love you nevarc.

Metrics make the business world go round.

Nev Said it all guys, Stop trying to be the playboy around the neighborhood, start saving and soon you will succeed!!!!

Also, another good tracking option is hxxp://www.tracking202.com These guys are great, and you can track anything with it. They also have a "host it yourself" option for their app, so give it a try. Tracking is a Must for any Marketer

Tracking202 is a good resource, also HyperTracker though they are $20 a month

Wow - this is good information, and for me very timely. Thanks! -e-

Whats the benefit of using this method as opposed to running the raw logs through something like AWStats?
I've found so far my AWStats line up almost exactly with what I see on all my affiliate reports everywhere....

Thanks for #5 - I needed that.

Awstats is for tracking visits, time of day, pages viewed and other useful information about your visitors, however it is not an ad performance and optimization tool. If you are spending any money on traffic, you should have a full tracking system.

Originally Posted by genie1

Whats the benefit of using this method as opposed to running the raw logs through something like AWStats?
I've found so far my AWStats line up almost exactly with what I see on all my affiliate reports everywhere....

great post. thanks a lot.

thanks for the info nevarc, I always thought OpenX is only for publishers now I know we can use it to track as advertisers too.

very good post I like openads very good system. Could you use open ads for all your tracking though or would that not be a good system?

Could someone share with us upgrade to version 4.0 ?

Originally Posted by Nevarc

Tracking202 is a good resource, also HyperTracker though they are $20 a month

tracking202 is fine but why not go with the self hosted version prosper202. That way you are positive your tracking data is secure. I know Wes is a good guy but its better to be safe then sorry.

Nevarc...thanks for sharing the code...

Nervac those were great shares.
I would have hitted the thanks button, but you can be such a scammer sometimes trying to sell your "secret" money making techniques to silly newbies. See ya in hell... (lol)
This place should be called blackhatscamworld. Buy/sell section is a scammer's heaven, wtf!