Sponsor Quetion?

[Rcourt64]

I'd like to know how come different sponsor track hits in different way?

Some track hit to sign up page? some track hits to galleries? then CCbill tracks a different way? Some just track unique hits others raw hits? and then some break it down into so many different ways, its even more confusing? I've ask a few webmaster and they reply with:
"I dunno, each sponsor is different, and I just look my sales" is what they say.
So is there a page provided by each sponsor that explains how & other info that hits are tracked?
The reason I ask is because I see sites with a PR ranking and look at site the stats hits show one number, but sponsors show a totally different number?

Anybody???

[sarettah]

Originally Posted by Rcourt64

I'd like to know how come different sponsor track hits in different way?

Some track hit to sign up page? some track hits to galleries? then CCbill tracks a different way? Some just track unique hits others raw hits? and then some break it down into so many different ways, its even more confusing? I've ask a few webmaster and they reply with:
"I dunno, each sponsor is different, and I just look my sales" is what they say.
So is there a page provided by each sponsor that explains how & other info that hits are tracked?
The reason I ask is because I see sites with a PR ranking and look at site the stats hits show one number, but sponsors show a totally different number?

Anybody???

just imho here. There are no set rules on how to track hits. Back in the day you usually saw just raw and unique and sales (and even that is tenuous as hell when you start trying to break out AOL and others that have their own cache servers between the surfer and the site). So, I would guess that each sponsor does what they think will be most advatageous to themselves. I have not seen any explanations fully laid out on sponsor pages (there might be stuff in the faqs or some such) so I basically go with the most important stat being the checks that get to my mailbox.

Personally, I run some custom tracking stuff to keep track of what I sent where and how it did, if a sponsors numbers look to me like I am being ripped, and the check does not justify staying with them I just pull the links and move on.

[Rcourt64]

Originally Posted by sarettah

if a sponsors numbers look to me like I am being ripped, and the check does not justify staying with them I just pull the links and move on.

Ya, well crap. thats difficult to do when the sites fully dedicated to one sponsor. probably gonna have to totally rebuild or shut 'em down.


Talk 'bout puttin' all your eggs into one basket

[sarettah]

Originally Posted by Rcourt64

Ya, well crap. thats difficult to do when the sites fully dedicated to one sponsor. probably gonna have to totally rebuild or shut 'em down.


Talk 'bout puttin' all your eggs into one basket

Nothing really wrong with that in some ways. I have some domains that I purchased solely to send traffic to one sponsor. Edited: If you are only running one domain/site then yeah, you chould probably do some filtering and diversify where your traffic ends up at a bit. :End of edit

You can protect yourself some by adding a little bit of ssi to your pages so that you can track how many people actually clicked a link to the sponsor and comparing that to your sponsor stats every now and then. At the same time you can keep track of which of your links are getting clicked most often and refine your message to get the most clicks you can.

[Rcourt64]

Originally Posted by sarettah

Nothing really wrong with that in some ways. I have some domains that I purchased solely to send traffic to one sponsor. Edited: If you are only running one domain/site then yeah, you chould probably do some filtering and diversify where your traffic ends up at a bit. :End of edit

You can protect yourself some by adding a little bit of ssi to your pages so that you can track how many people actually clicked a link to the sponsor and comparing that to your sponsor stats every now and then. At the same time you can keep track of which of your links are getting clicked most often and refine your message to get the most clicks you can.

Server side includes ??

[sarettah]

Originally Posted by Rcourt64

Server side includes ??

Yes, SSI=server side includes. Actually very easy to set up ssi stuff.

In the case I am talking about, you could do an ssi call to a little tracking script or do a straight php call to it. It will result in basically the same thing.

[sarettah]

I apologize, I am sounding quite glib about this, I have been answerign quickly while doing other stuff here. I am eating lunch now and so have a few minutes to be more concise.

First: You want your links that currently go to your sponsor to instead point to your server so that you can capture that someone clicked the link.

Second: on the page(s) you point to on your server you want to include a simple tracking script to capture the click, that can be done by an ssi call or a straight php/cgi call, whichever suits you.

Third: The page you pointed to on the server, or the script you called then redirects to the sponsor.

That way you can record what page of yours the surfer clicked from and which link they clicked on.

I will work an example for you in a second.

[sarettah]

As I was putting stuff together I realized that I had forgotten the easiest method to pull this all off which is using simple html redirects and then referencing your weblogs.

It is a little more tedious to set up because it basically requires that you create a page for each link you want to track. In each page is a redirect in the header with a 0 wait. When you want to see how many clicks went through a certain link you simply look for the page in your stats and you have what you need.

Also can be done by java too, lol. There are so many ways to skin a cat, ya know.

[TheEnforcer]

It can be a pain to be sure when it comes to tracking the progress of your traffic and because as you point out sponsors all track it in a different way you really need to track your outbound clicks to a sponsor on your own if you truly want to closely monitor your traffic's productivity.

[Toby]

You can use PHPAdsNew to track outgoing clicks. It doesn't have to be used just for rotating and tracking banner ads.

However, whether using PHPAdsNew or any other strategy for tracking outgoing clicks, if you are linking to sponsor hosted galleries you still won't get accurate data on raw clicks to the sponsor since the surfer must click thru from the hosted gallery to the site tour, in most cases, before the sponsor records a click.

[sarettah]

Ok, as I was putting together a sample, I decided that the ssi was not a good way, which might be what you were questing earlier rcourt. lol.

Sorry that's what happens when you are coding asp against sql server, php against mysql, foxpro and javascript pretty much all at the same time while you post on a message board. The brain gets pretty befuddled.

Anyway, a sample page is here http://www.bntnews.com/rcourt

The PHP version just writes a new record to a simple text file each time a link is clicked (actual tracking should be deeper than this, should capture date, time, page it came from etc) I was moving fast so I just wrote another line to the text file which is at http://www.bntnews.com/rcourt/track.txt

The html version is just a simple redirect using a meta tag redirect with a zero refresh and as I said earlier, you would get your counts from that by looking at your logs.

Yeah Toby, phpads can be used that way pretty easily, but there is a certain amount of overhead that goes along with that, but it will give you some pretty detailed data.

Like I said, many different ways to skin the cat


The code in redirect.php (the script for the php version) Like I said, an extremely simple example:

0)
  {
    fputs($checkit,$site . "\n");
    fclose($checkit);
  }
  # redirect to page
  header('location:http://' . $site . '.com');
?>

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Toby

You can use PHPAdsNew to track outgoing clicks. It doesn't have to be used just for rotating and tracking banner ads.

However, whether using PHPAdsNew or any other strategy for tracking outgoing clicks, if you are linking to sponsor hosted galleries you still won't get accurate data on raw clicks to the sponsor since the surfer must click thru from the hosted gallery to the site tour, in most cases, before the sponsor records a click.

and you can set phpadsnew up on one domain and run it remotely on all your domains....i love that shit

[Rcourt64]

Originally Posted by sarettah

Ok, as I was putting together a sample, I decided that the ssi was not a good way, which might be what you were questing earlier rcourt. lol.

Sorry that's what happens when you are coding asp against sql server, php against mysql, foxpro and javascript pretty much all at the same time while you post on a message board. The brain gets pretty befuddled.

Anyway, a sample page is here http://www.bntnews.com/rcourt

The PHP version just writes a new record to a simple text file each time a link is clicked (actual tracking should be deeper than this, should capture date, time, page it came from etc) I was moving fast so I just wrote another line to the text file which is at http://www.bntnews.com/rcourt/track.txt

The html version is just a simple redirect using a meta tag redirect with a zero refresh and as I said earlier, you would get your counts from that by looking at your logs.

Yeah Toby, phpads can be used that way pretty easily, but there is a certain amount of overhead that goes along with that, but it will give you some pretty detailed data.

Like I said, many different ways to skin the cat


The code in redirect.php (the script for the php version) Like I said, an extremely simple example:

0)
  {
    fputs($checkit,$site . "\n");
    fclose($checkit);
  }
  # redirect to page
  header('location:http://' . $site . '.com');
?>

WOW thanks, I need to re read it over about another 100 times before it sinks in..LOL. But thanks

[sarettah]

Originally Posted by Rcourt64

WOW thanks, I need to re read it over about another 100 times before it sinks in..LOL. But thanks

The code form the sample page I posted:

  
  
  
  PHP version
  Click here to go to Weekend Jewelry
  Click here to go to Paper Jewels
  HTML redirect version
  Click here to go to Weekend Jewelry
  Click here to go to paper jewels
  

If you notice, the url actually being used is redirect.php?site=weekend-jewelry. That is a the redirect script being called and in the call weekend-jewelry is passed in as a variable called "site"

0)  Only do this if the file opened successfully
  {
    fputs($checkit,$site . "\n");  Write the value in the site variable to the file

The \n at the end of the line is a linefeed so that each
 write creates a new line.  

fclose($checkit);   Close the file
  }
  # redirect to page
  header('location:http://' . $site . '.com');  Since weekend-jewelry was in 
site this will redirect to a url 
of http// + weekend-jewelry + .com (http://weekend-jewelry.com)
?>

Simple simon