In my last business announce we discussed how vital it is to scientifically measure the effectiveness of your advertising sources.

It doesn't matter whether they are free ads or paid ads... you're still throwing your resources away if they are NOT producing clicks on your links. After all, nobody wants to waste either time or money... right?

You do this by using tracking software to measure the number of clicks your ads are generating.

About four years ago I went through the process of testing over 150+ Viral Mailers and Safelists to find which ones were actually delivering clicks to my affiliate links.

Here is the process I followed:

Step 1

First, I created a spreadsheet to record my results. I included the name of the mailer, the number of credits I needed to send email ads to the maximum number of recepients allowed on the "free" level, and the number of clicks received by those emails.

Step 2

I always sent out the same ad copy on the same day of the week at about the same time. I then recorded the results for 3 weeks and used the spreadsheet to display the total number of clicks and the average clicks for each mailing.

Step 3

Finally, I used the spreadsheet to reorder the mailers by the number of clicks received. I then determined a cutoff point that I believed to be effective... in my case I started at 20 clicks per mailing... if an advertising source didn't deliver at least 20 clicks, I no longer used it.

Some things to take away from this test..

1. Your testing must be an ongoing process... several of the mailers I tested are not even in existence today.

2. The average click through rate for the mailers is barely over one percent. As a whole, viral mailers and safelists are not very efficient advertising sources. Of course they don't cost you anything either... except time!

3. There were a lot of 1's and 0's on that spreadsheet... that means I spent a lot of time and effort collecting credits to enable me to mail out my ads, and I only got one click... or NONE!

Hope this helps...

Submitted by Greg Ray

You may be asking "What Tracking Software Do You Use, Greg?" I have tried many, but the one I am currently using for all my tracking is from "Leads Leap". This is actually a suite of marketing tools, including an autoresponder, page builder, link rotator, social reviews, advertising... AND the link tracker.

Free to join, but I recommend upgrading...

It's also another income stream... my account makes me money and costs me nothing!

Here's the link ===>    Leads Leap