Guest post by David Merry a Director at online live casino CastleCasino.com and manages the affiliate program marketing. You can find out more about promoting CastleCasino.com at www.castleaffiliates.com.

Reliable tracking software holds the affiliate industry together, without it we wouldn’t be able to put any faith in the programs which we promote and rely on. Regardless of the confidence which you have in your affiliate software operator it is always best to get another third party perspective, something which Google Analytics allows you to do in spectacular fashion.
Even if you have 100% faith in the tracking capability of your affiliate software, the greatest benefits come from the mountain of extra data analysis opportunities it provides you with. As a quick example to entice you to read further, you may naturally assume that the 100 clicks you send per day to your merchant come predominantly from a particular keyword you get 2000 visits for; however you may discover that actually they come from a keyword which only sends 500 visitors – therefore enabling you to shift your focus and allocate your budget better based on accurate statistics. In short, you could spend less money and make a lot more. What have you got to lose?

How to implement:

In order to allow Google Analytics to start tracking your outbound affiliate clicks as goals you need to complete the following:

Step 1: Assign a tracker to each link.

You will need to input an artificial tracker to each link that you want to track, which is created by tagging the page with the _trackPageview() JavaScript function. As an example, if you wanted to log every click on a particular link to www.keithbond.co.uk as a page view for /G1/keithbond.co.uk, you would add the following attribute to the link’s tag:

Although adding a tracker to every link is long winded initially it can be speeded up using a find and replace source code tool. From that point it becomes simple and second nature to include the JavaScript tracker when building a link. Please note, the G1 included in the link stands for ‘goal 1’ and just helps me categorise, you can add whatever you like.

Step 2: Use the JavaScript generated tracker as a goal

The task is now simple, simply add the tracking link to your Google Analytics goals section (Website Profile > Edit). Using the code above as an example you would add the following:
/G1/keithbond_co.uk

This should be added as a URL destination with head match selected in Google Analytics.

Simple!

How to use the tracking

Once the process that I have outlined has been implemented you should start to receive data reported as goals within hours.

The most basic report you will find is an overview of the goals which have been completed and the conversion rate. This doesn’t help analyse anything in particular however may give you insights into trended data, for example which date of the month are your conversion rates generally the highest.

Next browse the traffic sources section in your Analytics and break it down further to the traffic sources list. Then click on the ‘Goal Set’ tab and you will be greeted with exact click through percentages that every single source has given you. This should help you identify which sources are actually earning you the money and sending traffic to your merchant. Remember that traffic levels is just a worthless number, it is the traffic which converts which pays the mortgage.

You can also use this same method with the keywords which you rank in search engines for, allowing you to identify the consumer intent of those visiting your site through them. Remember, you can now filter out all of the keywords which are sending you non-converting traffic and allocate budget into what earns you money.

As my last example (from the millions I have!) you can even break this down into territories. The example below shoes me that people from Spain seem a lot more inclined to click on this particular brand – all I have to do to improve conversions for this is to include this brand on the Spanish versions of our sites. Simple, yet effective.

I think you are starting to get the point, try it out for yourself and see what is and isn’t working for you!

Twitter

I had a chat recently with Graeme Sandwell (Director at Paid on results and the genius behind their technical innovations which are widely copied but seldom equalled) and he pointed out that Internet Marketing Blogs UK was no longer updating it’s twitter account and when I took a look I found it hadn’t been for a number of months, shows how off the ball I have been of late.

Well to cut a long story short Graeme kindly helped me to get the site tweeting again, more about that in a future post, but massive thanks to Graeme.

The Cull

I took the opportunity while sorting out Internet Marketing Blogs to cull the blogs that hadn’t been updated for quiet some time and in all removed around 40 the remaining channel list is here. If you are no longer on the list of bloggers and wish to be re-added once you become active again give me a shout (contact form) same goes for any active UK focused Internet Marketing / Affiliate bloggers who would like to be included.

Please note that in the main merchants and agency’s who predominantly blog product newsletters appear here and not in the main feed.

Guest article by Oliver Ackers of www.SimplyFreeGadgets.com

As you may already know, getting into affiliate marketing can be quite daunting, and is hard to get going in the correct direction, and then most people will usually give up anyway. Well here’s something that may help you get your foot in the door with a little more ease. Often referred to as, “Freebie Sites”, “Referral Sites” and so on, these sites are very easy to use and to understand, that anyone can use them.

So usually, to get a sale through an affiliate, you need to make a website and promote it, and hope people will click through and buy things for you to get your commission, but with this there’s an extra incentive. The main thing that will hooks people to these sites is the opportunity of getting a free gift, which can be one of the latest gadgets on the market. This instantly gives you an easy audience to target, as there are new gadgets being released all of the time, the Kinect has just been released, and there’s always new Apple gear coming out. So you could even get a Free iPhone

So to complete one of these sites the first thing that you need to do is sign up to the website, and then complete an offer that the freebie site is advertising. These offers are the affiliate part of the website, as when you sign up, the freebie site will get paid a certain amount, which is about (£/$)20 on average. Then you need to refer some friends to the website to do the same thing. So say you’re going for a Nintendo Wii, which costs around £180, this would mean 9x£20 = £180, which will pay for your gift. Then the gift is usually ordered from Amazon, straight to your house.

You don’t just have to get free gifts though, you can of course request for a bank transfer, so you’ll get the money instead!
So as you can see, this is a much more attractive version of affiliate marketing, because instead of just advertising a company alone, you can advertise getting a free gift instead, and in the long run, you are pretty much getting all the affiliate money that you have earned through them. The way they make their profit is usually on people signing up, completing an offer, maybe referring a few friends, and then giving up. Don’t be one of those people! Make something of it! Make sure you get your Free Xbox or anything else that you want!

To get going, just go to www.SimplyFreeGadgets.com

Silverbean the online marketing agency who are based in Newcastle have just launched a dedicated Affiliate Website.

I have worked with Silverbean for a long time and they are always helpful and willing to go the extra mile to help affiliates promote the merchant programs they look after.

The blurb on their new site says it all really;

We built this site to solely cater for you the affiliate, to make it easier for you to contact and communicate with us, obtain valuable industry information and insights, access resources and receive information about our merchants.

Silverbean look after almost 30 merchant clients including Racing UK, Brora, Fashion Union and Wiltshire Farmfoods.

Check out the new website here www.sbnaffiliates.co.uk

Bit of a belated review of a4uexpo London 2010 and much of it has already been covered, see the a4uexpo blog What’s being said about a4uexpo London 2010?

Highlights

Of the sessions I attended 3 absolutely stood out these were the gems I unearthed ata4uexpo. I’m not going to go into any detail as slides and videos are available somewhere, (Chris Johnski where are they).

Starting off with SEO David Naylor of Broncho first session day one spoke about:

The Three Pillars of SEO – An Advanced Review

I said in my timetable post that Dave is a legend and he lived up to the hype, he mentioned a load of tools he uses daily in his SEO many of which I will now also be using.

Conversion Rate Experts for the day 2 early risers told us about:

Conversion Killing Mistakes : 15 things Affiliates still aren’t doing in 2010

I don’t think I have ever made as many notes in an expo session before, and thanks to my shiny new I pad I can actually read them, cheers guys.

Last but not least in my top 3 is Kevin Gibbons of Seoptimise who gave us:

20 Social Media Tools & 20 WordPress Plugins Boost Your Performance

This is an amazing list some I knew about and some I didn’t, Kevin has blogged about his session with links to everything he mentioned in his well presented illuminating talk. Check it out here > 40 Social Media Tools & WordPress Plugins – a4uexpo Presentation.

Those were my highlights and well worth attending for, and I only scratched the surface, 12 time slots and 50 sessions makes seeing everything an impossible task and I will be looking at the Videos and slides as soon as I get the chance.

So how can A4uexpo be improved?

Well I’d like to see an area set aside for open workshops that people could drop in and out of, for example Conversion Rate Experts (yes them again) did a clinic where they looked at various websites, illuminating not only for the website owner in question but a plethora of ideas for all in attendance when the hour was over they still had a mountain of sites they hadn’t looked at, imagine if that had been running for half a day.

Second point was from a merchant who I spoke to on day 2 who was on a day pass they said that they would gladly have paid more to upgrade to a full pass just for the one day, however they were unable to attend on the first day so a full 2 day pass was out of the question. (Apologies to Matt if this option was already available).

Any thing you want to add please comment below and/or leave feedback on the A4uexpo website.

Memorable Quote

This came from the negative SEO session and is a word of warning to anyone when buying links.

“Shitty links will hurt rankings, lose Google love, and getting trust back is very difficult”

so be warned

Expo thanks from me to…

Matthew Wood and his entire team for another excellent event.

All the speakers mentioned above.

Mark Russell and the Existem AM crew for their fine hospitality.

And finally everyone who attended, would have been no show without you.