Your site is a work-in-progress. Whose isn’t? But a constantly evolving site architecture creates certain problems, like changing URLs. They’re enough of a pain to deal with internally, but any links that you give out — for directory submissions, articles, advertising, whatever — will need to be dealt with too, redirected, updated if possible. And this can be one heck of a chore…

…unless you’ve got ProLinkz.

Just Give Out Tracking Codes

Instead of giving out your actual URLs, keeping track of who you’ve given them to, and then trying to notify and force them all to update their links when you’ve made changes — or worse, compromising your site’s design and usefulness by not making architectural improvements because “too many people have the old URLs — get into the practice of creating and using ProLinkz Tracking Codes for every URL of yours that will likely make its way “out there.”

With people linking to your Tracking Code-enabled ProLinkz links, changing a link is simply a matter of changing a Tracking Code’s destination URL within ProLinkz’s Control Panel. You don’t bother anyone; in fact, as far as everyone’s concerned, it’s business as usual.

That’s all there is to it!

Notes

• There are no ProLinkz address-change benefits if you only give out your site’s root URL. And ProLinkz won’t be much help if you change your domain itself. But for the URLs to any other specific areas of your site, this very simple and basic technique is a huge convenience and timesaver… for everyone.
  
• You’re not limited to using this technique for URLs on your own site. You can easily set ProLinkz up to redirect to any URL out there (like affiliate program links). If the links change in any way, one little easy update ensures that none of your previous efforts at distributing or promoting the URL will go to waste.
  
• BONUS: Of course, you’ll also benefit from being able to easily count and track hits to those ProLinkz Tracking Code links you’ve given out!

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If you sell website, blog and/or ezine advertising space, you may want to begin offering your advertisers clickthrough reports. Made possible, of course, by ProLinkz. And very easily — just create a Tracking Code for each ad that redirects to the advertiser’s URL.

To report an advertiser’s clickthrough counts, just click the advertiser’s Tracking Code Stats button from the ProLinkz Control Panel and generate a report for the desired period. The resulting on-screen page can be saved to your hard drive or copied to a text file which can then be forwarded to your client.

Benefits

A clickthrough reporting service could help your advertisers in several ways:

• No guessing; your advertiser will know the number of clickthroughs his or her ads have generated. With these numbers, s/he’ll be better equipped to decide whether any changes need to be implemented to improve ad performance, or to keep things as is.
  
• Your advertiser will come to recognize your ezine or website as ad-test friendly. When another ad campaign is ready for development, your site or ezine may even be used to develop the most effective ad copy and material before rolling out universally to other advertising vehicles.
  
• Provided that you (the publisher and/or editor) are well respected by your subscribers/site visitors, your own domain name in the URL (ProLinkz works from your domain) could result in slightly higher clickthroughs, particularly with ezine advertising. This is an especially attractive advertiser benefit.

In addition to the higher likelihood of repeat business with better informed advertising clients, these ProLinkz-powered clickthrough reports also help you better grasp your medium’s effectiveness and suitability for different types of ads. They could, for example, help you detect your subscribers’ interests, influencing your editorial content, not to mention letting you categorically pinpoint which potential advertisers to approach.

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ProLinkz lets you easily see which affiliate offers get more clickthroughs — and potential income — for you. Not only that: You can measure and compare the effectiveness of the different banners and/or links the affiliate programs give you to use.

Testing the Programs

To properly test which affiliate offers get more clickthroughs, put banners and/or links of two or three different offers on the same webpage (or rotate them). For a more accurate comparison, the offers should be presented in a similar manner and in a similar position on the page.

Simply assign a unique Tracking Code to each banner/link, and use the resulting ProLinkz URLs on your webpage. When someone clicks on a banner or link, ProLinkz records the click and redirects the prospect to the affiliate program’s specified destination URL.

Comparing Clickthroughs

Comparing the clickthroughs is easy to do through the ProLinkz Control Panel. Next to each Tracking Code is a Stats button, which lets you generate on-screen reports of click counts, along with referrers, dates, and times.

Single Program Testing

If, on the other hand, you want to test the effectiveness of the different banner and/or link options for a single program, one way to do that would be to make a webpage dedicated to that program’s offer. Then rotate the different banners and/or reword your text links (each with its own unique ProLinkz Tracking Code) until you find the most effective combination revealed by your ProLinkz Stats results.

These are just a few ways that ProLinkz can be used to help you determine affiliate program performance and the effectiveness of the many different ways that these programs can be promoted. ProLinkz, in effect, helps put you in the desirable position of being able to make better content, focus, and promotion decisions, relying far less on mere intuition by now being armed with actual hard data.

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ProLinkz can measure the effectiveness of your email signatures, those few lines often used as mini advertisements that are automatically appended to outgoing email.

Simply use one of your ProLinkz URLs in your signature. When the link is clicked, ProLinkz records the click and redirects the prospect to the destination URL.

Counting and comparing email signature clickthroughs is easy with ProLinkz. Just go to the ProLinkz control panel and click on the Stats button next to each Tracking Code you’ve used in your signatures. This feature will provide you with the number of clicks a signature has generated, along with dates and times.

The ability to easily count and measure the effectiveness of an email signature by using ProLinkz comes in particularly handy when promoting using slightly more complex email signature marketing techniques, such as…

Email Signature Rotation

Most email programs let you keep one or more signatures on file. You could create several and rotate them as needed — monthly, weekly, or even with every message you send out. Even with rotation, however, it is to your best business interest to use signatures that actually perform, and drop/replace those that don’t.

By setting up a unique ProLinkz Tracking Code for each separate signature, even if they all lead to the same destination URL, the drop/replace decision becomes an easier one.

Signature Trades

If you trade signatures (put someone else’s “ad” into your email signature and they do the same for you), it’s not only important to know whether or not your signature is effective, you’ll also want to determine whether your trading partner is actually worth trading with. ProLinkz can, of course, easily track all trade signature clickthroughs,

You’d be better served, however, to try and have only one unknown in this particular scenario that you’ll aim to measure with ProLinkz. It’s very difficult to clearly measure a trading partner’s worth, for example, if your signature copy is mediocre, and vice versa.

Continued Vigilance

Once you find effective signature ad copy, stick with it. But continue to monitor its effectiveness; ad response seems to go in cycles. If/when your signature ad copy slides from its peak, you can and should test other ad copy.

Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of email signature ads. Because the signature is automatically placed at the end of your outgoing emails, they are easily forgotten. With ProLinkz, you can monitor clickthroughs quite easily and accurately, giving you the most out of this “automatic” advertising.

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As an ezine advertiser, you know it’s critical to measure response from each individual ad insertion. Ads cost too much to let dead ones be placed where highly effective ones could instead.

ProLinkz can help you with insertion decisions by counting clickthroughs. This number can help you determine:

• The effectiveness of the ad compared to other ad insertions elsewhere. The publisher’s distribution numbers notwithstanding, when you spend your dollars, you’re looking for results. Using ProLinkz, you can easily calculate your cost per clickthrough, which is much more meaningful than cost per display.

This cost per clickthrough can then be compared with the results of the same ad in other ezines.

• The ratio of clickthroughs to sales. This ratio can be compared with the same ad in other ezines to determine which ezine delivers the most responsive prospects.

By testing different ad copy and different ezines for effectiveness, you can determine which combinations are most profitable for you and worth continued, or even expanded, expenditure.

Testing

To test, simply use a ProLinkz URL in each ad you place. When the link is clicked, ProLinkz records the click and redirects the prospect to the destination URL.

Comparing the clickthroughs is easy. Just go to the ProLinkz Control Panel and click the Stats button next to each of the codes you used in your ads. This feature will let you generate reports that tell you the number of clicks that a link has received, along with dates and times.

By being able to easily have ProLinkz help you count and measure the effectiveness of your ezine advertising efforts, you’ll also be in the highly desirable business position of being able to make better copy, focus, and promotion decisions, relying far less on intuition alone to help guide your business.

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How many people actually read your ezine? This “readership” information is far more valuable and useful to you — and prospective advertisers — than a generic “total subscribers” count.

But measuring readership of an ezine sent out by email is tough… unless you use ProLinkz.

Particularly if you have an HTML format ezine. ProLinkz will not only tell you how many people actually open your emailed ezine (as opposed to just deleting it or shuffling it off to some never-to-be-seen-again 2READ folder limbo), you can even track time data (how many people read within minutes, hours, or days of an issue’s release).

Measuring a plain text ezine’s readership, however, is a bit more difficult. But not impossible. And made easier with ProLinkz’s help, as described below.

HTML Format

All it takes to measure readership with an HTML format ezine is to include at least one graphic image in your ezine that loads from your server. This can be any image, like a banner, logo, or button GIF, but I personally prefer to use a transparent single pixel GIF image for this purpose, since readers don’t really have to see the image you’re counting.

Don’t have a transparent single pixel GIF? Download and unzip 1pixel.zip which contains a file called 1pixel.gif that you can use.

Note that you don’t have to use a unique image. With ProLinkz, it doesn’t matter; you can use any image, as long as it’s available from your server (that’s why a recurring banner or logo will do the trick).

Next, to make things more manageable, you’ll probably want to generate and install a separate ProLinkz script just for this application. Remember, you can generate as many separate “custom” installations as needed with your ProLinkz account for use with your domain. Install this script into your cgi-bin directory, or wherever you place your CGI scripts, preferably in its very own sensibly-named subdirectory, such as:

http://you.com/cgi-bin/issues

Create a unique Tracking Code for every issue you want to track (I use issue numbers). For the URL, enter the URL of the previously mentioned image file that’s on your server. For example:

http://you.com/images/1pixel.gif

Once you’ve set up a ProLinkz Tracking Code for an issue, you can easily insert it into your issue’s HTML to display the image you’ve assigned to that Tracking Code instead of the actual image URL. For example, for your ezine’s first issue, you’ve set up Tracking Code 001 that points to the single pixel GIF on your server. To display the image in your ezine, simply insert the following line in your HTML where you want the image to “appear”:

<IMG src=”http://you.com/cgi-bin/issues/pl.cgi?001″>

Now, every time a subscriber “opens” the issue, it will load the image from your server, making ProLinkz count and track the occurrence. That’s really all there is to it!

Plain Text Format

Measuring readership of an emailed plain text ezine isn’t quite as open sesame easy as the method described above for HTML format ezines, but not impossible. Here’s one technique. Its success, however, relies heavily on your ability to offer your readers something they will act upon. A time-limited free download works best, in my experience. Preferably something small. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what will work best for your audience.

Instead of specifying a graphic image for each Tracking Code, use the download file’s URL. So, to count readership, simply have ProLinkz count downloads!

Additional Notes

• If you put copies of your ezines on your website, you’ll likely want to use different unique Tracking Codes for these Web copies so you can track how many people read your ezines on the Web vs. email.
  
• Count accuracy is impossible. But who cares? What you’re going for here is a workable ballpark figure, a rating (percent) of your total subscriber base that will help you make educated guesses for whatever purpose.
  
• The techniques above can be used to track and count readership of just about any email message, not just ezines.

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One problem about having files available for download on your site is theft… particularly if you happen to be selling said files. Unless you’re able to jump through a few technical hoops, you likely have some valuable files essentially available for public downloading to anyone who just happens to know the URLs.

Even if you try to keep those URLs hidden and reveal them only to, say, paying customers. It’s not exactly rare for a “customer” to pay for a download with a credit card, get the URL, do a chargeback, and tell all his cronies where to get the files.

Although not bulletproof secure by a long shot (in other words, if you want that, go elsewhere), ProLinkz can provide a quick-and-dirty solution for this problem among the many other things it does for you. By doing nothing more than creating a unique ProLinkz tracking code that leads to a file’s exact location, you’re now a little better off than publicly naked. How? Because you’ll be giving out the tracking code, not the file’s actual URL!

Here’s an example: the download for the free Master Spambot Buster script. Once there, click on the download link, which is actually a ProLinkz tracking code. Notice how you can’t tell where on our server the file is actually located by examining that ProLinkz-ed download link (nor can you tell from the dialogs while actually downloading the file). The file’s real location is now effectively cloaked.

On top of that, you also now have some additional benefits, such as being able to count how many people have downloaded a file, when and from where. And some management benefits, like being able to easily create multiple unique tracking codes all leading to the same file.

This does not however, prevent someone from distributing the ProLinkz-ed link for others to download the file (told you it wasn’t bulletproof). BUT, now you can easily monitor download activity, meaning with just a bit of diligence (for far less effort because of ProLinkz), you can head off problems, preventing them from becoming big ones. Link got out? Easy. Delete or change the tracking code. Problem solved, without needing to delete, rename, or relocate the actual file.

With a bit of imagination, you can use this ProLinkz “feature” for other things as well. Time limited downloads, for example (”Subscribe now, and get this file free, but only for a limited time!”). When time’s up, just delete the tracking code. Leave the file where it is if you want — no one knows where it really is. Talk about great for making normally for sale downloadable products temporarily available for free for a promotion, and ready for future promos just by creating new tracking codes. Put your thinking cap on, and see how many more useful applications and ideas you can easily come up with once you get rolling.

Have fun cloaking those downloads!

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