9994 Hours Left
So today I mentioned subids briefly as I worked on them this morning. This afternoon I added a tracking system that will run across all sites. I have identified 12 key points within the traffic/visit/data collection/conversion which will give me exceptional insight into areas where my sites can be optimized. This is again handled by the central system with host sites providing dumps of visitor activity for the main server to pull and interpret.
Why go to so much effort?
Its one of the KEY differences between newbie's and pro's. When I stated out, I'd come up with a method twist, build all the resources, and then start on the traffic. I'd be super excited, and then when it converted at 500:1 I'd get pissed off and assume it's a shitty method. Lots of people give up after a few of these fails. I'm too stubborn for that.
Over time it became clear that MANY things can screw up a campaign/method. So I started to build in functions to record clicks, mail opens, conversion rates. If it could be recorded, I recorded it. It became obvious quickly that failings happen with mails, invalid links, down offers, bad hosting, miss spellings, and about 100 other stupid little details. Data logging eliminates these problems when they occur, and yes I still make newbie screwups, but they are caught before I lose money 90% of the time.
You shouldn't think that Google Analytics is enough, most people don't even use this correctly. I recommend learning some basic PHP and logging things to a MySQL database, this is the most simple method which will allow you to track things that YOU care about. If you can't be bothered to learn some basic computer languages, it makes IM very much more difficult.
Tomorrow I'm working on the absolute most boring part of any development, compliance. I'll be adding the various frameworks for privacy policies, t&cs, unsubscribe, and consumer data removal requests. It's boring, but if you want stable and no hassle from the authoritah!, its best to just follow their rules, and add more scale to overcome the hassle.