A Free Way To Track Your Affiliate Links On the Fly

Today I will tell you about a free and professional way to track hits to your affiliate links without investing in an ad tracker. :)

Now, I must confess that now I don't use this method of tracking my affiliate sales. I mostly use Ad Trackz for cloaking my affiliate links as well as tracking my affiliate sales. However, I used this method BEFORE I could invest in Ad Trackz. Today, I remembered those days, and decided to write about it…today, I put myself in the shoes of those who join the world of internet marketing as fresh little birds with lots of dreams but little means :) I can see that there are many people who cannot afford to invest in professional ad trackers. FYI, the Ad Trackz script costs $67. And there is no need to buy it if you cannot afford it now! Today I will tell you of a free way to track your affiliate sales.

And I don't mean that you use free third party trackers like Clickaudit.com. Not that I have anything against Clickaudit.com; I have used them in the past and their service is excellent; but they have a limitation of 10 links with no more than 10,000 clicks per month. Plus you never know when they go out of business. If that ever happens, all your affiliate links go in the dustbin :( That is why I would want YOU to control your affiliate links. In my 24 Do's report, which you have got as a free bonus gift, I have already covered how to control your affiliate links by creating redirect files. However, redirect files cannot track the number of hits received by your affiliate link.

And if you are a fan of bum marketing, then read on… I am going to reveal the free method of tracking my affiliate links that I used in the past…

If you know your stuff well, you can well understand that you cannot survive the bum marketing game without Ezinearticles.com. And they have a rule there that states:

" Affiliate links will be allowed if the link is a domain name you own which forward/redirects to the affiliate link from the top-level of the domain name"

Here is what I used to do (I don't do affiliate marketing now as much as I used to do in the past): I would buy an .info domain from Namecheap.com. Then create a blog on that domain. My blog can be accessed from, say, http://www.mydomain.info/index.php

Right?

Next, I install this free tracker script on my server:
http://www.focalmedia.net/clicktracker.html

And I create a tracking link for my affiliate link.

Now, using Java Script Pro (you got this software as a bonus download)I create a file that redirects visitors to my tracking link. I save this file as index.html and upload it to my server.

The redirect file is accessible from:
http://yourdomain.info/index.html

I also put some keywords and other meta content in that redirect file, based on the meta content and keywords of the site I am promoting.

Now, I put http://yourdomain.info/ in my article resource box. I also include a link to my blog as: http://yourdomain.info/index.php/article-title/

When a visitor clicks on my domain name, guess which file shows up first: the index.php or the index.html?

Test it and you will see that the index.html file comes first. The index.php will never show up unless you type it in your browser.

As you know, the index.html is the redirect file for my affiliate link so the visitor will be transferred to my affiliate link within seconds without him even knowing it!

You can see a sample here:
http://flexiblewriter.com/affiliate-redirect/

You can download the redirect file here:
http://soft9.info/cgi-bin/download.cgi?action=redirect&id=133

Notice that I've also included the link to my blog in my article resource box; firstly to get some SE juice and secondly to give the visitors an option to read a relevant article. Remember that not everybody is interested in visiting your home page. Some will want to read more on a topic BEFORE they get interested in your product.

Another method is to create a little software application  (any .exe ebook creator can do it for you) and give it away for free. When people open that software, they are redirected to your affiliate link. Not very effective, though and I DON'T recommend it; remember that when people download a software, even if it is a freeware, they expect to get some utility out of it. If all they get is a sales pitch, they feel cheated.

Now, if you are a sucker for blogging, or if you are a typical affiliate who uses blogs for their affiliate marketing purposes, I highly recommend you use WP Mass Installer. The beauty of this script is that you can create as many blogs as you want in one go, thereby saving you a lot of time. It does many other things, such as pulling content from RSS feeds at regular intervals. If you have installed WordPress on your server in the past you should have no problems installing this script. The script comes with its own .htaccess file and if you want to host your blog in the root of your server, you need to modify it a little and there are instructions given in the manual itself:
http://www.flexiblewriter.com/go/wpmassinst.html

Now, notice that I told you that I don't do affiliate marketing as much as I used to, because now I engage myself in creating and selling products of my own. In my bum marketing report, I discussed that it is possible to make money from affiliate marketing while selling one's own products at the same time. And product creation is what should be the ultimate marketing plan of any affiliate worth their salt; this is also the reason why I am giving away a free course to my Nuttieviralizer subscribers on how to create info products from scratch and making some instant cash with them.

I would stop my rambling now, but feel free to test either of my methods for yourself :)

Also feel free to post your comments on this article.

And anyone who posts a useful comment will get a free link back from my blog. :)

Feel free to distribute this article by adding my blog as the resource:

http://www.flexiblewriter.com