Posted on March 23rd, 2007 by Ian M
Although I mentioned this before, this article really got me fired up enough to write a post about it. Why share your keywords, conversion percentage, and stats, (the most important information you have for an online business) with someone else? Most people do it because it’s easy and free. Two great reasons, but at what cost? If you are making a 200% return with some keywords, and since every Adwords account has different pricing (Quality Score, etc), couldn’t Google easily just charge you more on those keywords? Or worse yet, create their own CPA campaign for your best money makers and wipe you out?
I looked around and found a few alternatives to Google Analytics. Feel free to share more information in the comments.
Mint
FAQ: http://www.haveamint.com/faqs/
Related blog posts:
Mint versus Google Analytics
Mint: Fresh Visitor Tracking
Stat tracking the Mint Way
CrazyEgg
Demo: http://crazyegg.com/demo
Related blog posts:
Wordpress CrazyEgg
CrazyEgg.com - A Brief Peak - Cool Stuff
Clicktracks
FAQ: http://support.clicktracks.com/clicktracks/faq.php
Video: http://www.clicktracks.com/comparison.php
Related blog posts:
Tracking Customer Conversion
Review Clicktracks v5.0
I currently use AWStats and Google Analytics (without the conversion tracking on), a few scripts, the built-in tracking from the affiliate companies, or don’t have conversion tracking at all. I am looking for a better solution, and will provide an update when I find one.
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Filed under: Conversion Tracking, SEM, Affiliate Marketing, Adwords
Posted on March 17th, 2007 by Ian M
We have all put links on wikipedia in hopes for more free traffic, hence we have all had the link then removed by the editors. Wikipedia being more of a altruistic type source of information, a cynic would say most of the links added to Wikipedia are for selfish purposes and therefore should be taken down because they don’t add any quality or better the user experience. Often times they are correct, but there is also a lot of links that do help.
Regardless, if you have a site, and are trying to make money online, you need links. Wikipedia is still a good source for links as a few of my sites get nearly 30% of their traffic from wikipedia. The other nice thing about getting your links on wikipedia is that it is a painless easy process. You just go to the page, and edit it, adding your link.
Another site with the same characteristics is wikia. On wikia.com you will find wiki style encyclopedias but with a theme applied to them. Wookipedia for example, is all about Star Wars. There is also a wiki for finance. There is not as much of the purity of wikipedia, as there is Adsense on the pages. Wikia is an easy place for links. You won’t get as much traffic as wikipedia, but it’s still worth doing.
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Filed under: Link Building, SEO
Posted on March 6th, 2007 by Ian M
Do you only use Adwords to drive in traffic? I know started that way for a while, and am glad I started looking around. There is no reason to stay with Adwords only, especially now with the Adword Quality Score preventing you from getting traffic from long tail keywords that are once or twice removed from your target keywords, but fit in the same audience as your target market.
Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter may not have the traffic or ease of use Adwords boasts, but both of them have new versions released that fix a lot of the problems their old versions had.
There are other search engines I have had some success with as well, and many I haven’t. For instance Brainfox and Blowsearch I spent money and got nearly nothing back. Looksmart and 7Search however have both given me some decent results.
One key thing is here the audience of the search engines. Remember not only do different keywords and ads give you different types of traffic, but so do different search engines. This article is great for comparing them.
Most search engines offers coupons, so at least test them out with free money (look for coupons on the Wickedfire forums). You may find better conversions, expensive clicks, and clicks you simply couldn’t get through Adwords.
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Filed under: SEM, Adwords
