The Tracker Blog is here to help members with tracking related issues and news. Together we can get the most from Your Ad Tracker and other ad tracking resources.

We have made a lot of improvements lately. It makes sense to setup a central spot for members to stay up to date and informed about future updates and improvements. We’ll also help members get the most from their membership by offering helpful tips, advice and resources.

Here’s a handful of our recent site improvements:

• We have added the ‘editable‘ feature to the tracking links.
• We now have the exclusive Cloaking Switch
• Members can now organize trackers in groups
• We added a free 30 day trial to all new memberships
• Both domains are now run on an improved dedicated server
• And perhaps the biggest change was going to an All Paid – All Pro membership site.

I recommend you take advantage of our most recent improvements by subscribing to our two lists. Both lists are brand new, absolutely voluntary and highly recommended.

List One: We have setup a list with AWeber so members can receive immediate updates, news and notices about your membership. This list is used exclusively for site related issues and will not be used for advertising and promotion. This is the ONLY LIST we send to. You will not receive important information via our script to the email you provided for your account. You MUST subscribe to this list to receive these important updates:

List Two: You can subscribe in a reader or by email to our RSS feed. This will insure you don’t miss a thing that we post on this blog.

We hope this Blog helps more members understand ad tracking and improves our site’s effectiveness. It’s all about communication. We want to offer a clear path of communication with Your Ad Tracker members. It’s a two way street so feel free to comment on any topic or post.

Brian D. Hawkins

For example, purchase 10,000 Banner Impressions for $20.00 USD and get another 10,000 Banner Impressions free. You can use these free banner impressions for the same campaign or choose a second product to promote.

This includes all YourAdTracker.com banner impressions. We have top and bottom banners ads. Top Position Banner Ads are $2 per CPM (1000 Impressions) and Bottom Position Banner Ads are $1 per 1000 Impressions. You can purchase up to 100,000 impressions.

How To Order:

Order the first set of impressions using the three step process at http://www.4u2bn.com/advertise.php Then repeat the first two steps for the free order skipping the PayPal button step. I will activate the ads from my end. It’s that simple!

• All banner images must be standard full size 468px × 60px images. Animated images are fine.
• No refunds please
• Membership to our ad tracking site is not required to advertise.

Any questions? Comment below or contact us through our HelpDesk.

Thanks, Brian

Image Credit: “I Heart” T-Shirt Generator

A: I recommend you only cloak when necessary to protect an affiliate link. Cloaking can cause problems with certain scripts and it’s better to only use when necessary. See ‘Cloaked Tracker Fails On Affiliate Site‘.

If you are using an affiliate link and worry about the site visitor stripping off the affiliate portion of your link (affiliate thieves) I would then cloak the link. See ‘Affiliate Marketing Is A Waste Of Time Without This!‘.

I hope that helps, Brian

If you want tech support or customer support and contact us through our HelpDesk then PLEASE use something other than a Comcast email. Otherwise you are wasting your time. I don’t like it, most membership sites don’t like it and anyone using a third party service doesn’t like it but that is just how it is. Comcast sucks, I don’t know how to be any clearer than that.

I have a member right now saying he can not log in but he’s using a Comcast email so he’s just wasting his time. He registered with a Comcast email, he paid with a Comcast email, he subscribed to the newsletter with a Comcast email and he will more than likely cancel his membership with his Comcast email. Personally, I don’t know why anyone would use an ISP email anyway. When you leave to get a better or cheaper service you will loose that email address. What sense does that make? I recommend Gmail.

That’s it, use Comcast if you like but don’t expect any support from us as we can not communicate. Thanks for reading, Brian

What is click fraud? This is when clicks are created artificially. It can be done by robots or repeated self clicking. Other ways include the use of frames and software. As technology advances Pay Per Click (PPC) engines have become more adept at detecting click fraud. However the cheaters have also become more cunning and develop more new software and techniques to counteract the detection software. It is a constant war to cut down click fraud in PPC advertising.

There are several ways that people engage in this form of deception. This is why it is so hard for PPC engines to keep up with all the cheaters:

Network click fraud: This is some of the most common and is done by syndication partners. These are smaller search engines and publishers who send false numbers which is click fraud to the parent PPC engine. The cheaters get paid but the advertisers lose out. These cheaters manage to send false information by means of robots and frames.

This activity results in worthless traffic, or simply no real visitors to the advertiser’s websites and sales pages. Click fraud like this is simply wasting or even stealing money from the advertiser. Surprising enough many advertisers are not aware of this or just choose to ignore it. This results in substandard advertising and is how PPC advertising gets a bad name.

Competitive click fraud: is a serious problem for those companies that are competing in high paying brackets. Here we are talking about $10 per click and up. Here is how this click fraud works. If your competitor really wants to rack up bills for you, he just clicks on your ad and each $10 adds up rapidly. This form of deception is plainly unprofessional and malicious.

Impression click fraud: This is an insidious attack on your PPC campaign in Google Adwords. It is based on the fact that keywords are ranked by Google according to the quality of traffic and activity on the links they attract. What is this click fraud? It works like this. A competitor will pause his campaign and sends a large amount of impressions with no clicks to competitor’s keywords. This type of deception will make all the keywords for the competing ads that are active become worthless, because Google will disable them. The competitor will then make a new active campaign and dominate the market.

Click fraud has created many pitfalls for the PPC advertiser, but there is a way to fight back. You can do this by carefully monitoring your PPC advertising campaign. When you keep a close watch on every aspect of your campaign you can stop cheating in its tracks.

With all these click fraud wars the advertiser finds himself stuck in between the 2 warring factions of thieves and PPC engines, but smart marketers know that they must take steps to protect themselves against click fraud. One way to do this is to track your ads, with a 3rd party ad tracker. When you do this you will know exactly what is happening to your ad.

Q: I am new at this and am trying to learn all of this on my own.

A: Hi Rose,

Our tracking service is very simple. Basically you setup a tracker for whatever link you want to track. This has nothing to do with any other sites or web pages, only the link taking you there. For example, I have an affiliate link with Elegant Themes. Here’s a short text ad I often use in email campaigns:

Unlimited access to great looking and expertly coded WordPress themes – Just $19.95/year! http://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=1041

So what I do is remove the actual affiliate link http://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=1041 and replace it with a tracking link that I have set up that will count the click and then redirect the person to my affiliate link. So now the add looks like this:

Unlimited access to great looking and expertly coded WordPress themes – Just $19.95/year! http://4u2bn.com/in05

You see, the person on the other end ultimately goes to the same website but by using our tracking links we know how many people actually clicked the link. The tracking link also looks better and is much shorter than most affiliate links. You can do the same thing for any site. One of my blogs, Extreme Ezine, can be accessed via the tracker http://4u2bn.com/a40. So if I was running a promotion I would use a tracking link such as http://4u2bn.com/a40 in place of the actual URL http://extremeezine.com/

You can also track banners by replacing the destination URL in the HTML with the appropriate tracking link.

<a href=”http://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=1041_0_1_3” target=”_blank”><img border=”0″ src=”http://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/banners/125×125-2.gif” width=”125″ height=”125″></a>

Now the code looks like this with the tracking link replacing the affiliate link:

<a href=”http://4u2bn.com/in05” target=”_blank”><img border=”0″ src=”http://www.elegantthemes.com/affiliates/banners/125×125-2.gif” width=”125″ height=”125″></a>

Basically, YourAdTracker will help you determine how many people are clinking the links in your promotions. It will not track traffic statistics on your website or blog. I’ll list a couple blog post links that should help you understand even more if you need it:

Our blog can help you with most issues. To learn how to use the trackers see:
http://blog.youradtracker.com/?page_id=78

All see our FAQ section:
http://blog.youradtracker.com/?cat=12

Tracking On My Own Domain
http://blog.youradtracker.com/?p=159

Different Trackers For One Site
http://blog.youradtracker.com/?p=105

I hope that helps,
Brian Hawkins

ps If you are new to making money online I have a recent post offering a little help at: The Truth Why You Are Not Making Money Online! http://blog.youradtracker.com/?p=195

The Policy:

• All reinstated* accounts must pay annually at the current rate of $49.95 year.
• No refunds
• No exceptions

The Why: First I would like to say I fully understand that today’s economy is even effecting online business and it can be tough to stay in the green for many. I completely understand when members need to cut costs and must cancel their memberships. I hate to see you go and thanks for giving us a try.

This new policy will effect members that allow their PayPal accounts to fall below their monthly fee and PayPal cancels the payment subscription due to inadequate funds. We are being inundated with members that lost their payment subscriptions and want it fixed. Assuming their account hasn’t been deleted from our site, we then have to create a special button, upload it online to help the member start a new subscription. Once we do this our script doesn’t associate the member with the account any longer and everything must be done by hand for the life of that account. Over half the members that request this action don’t even bother re-subscribing. Many others need this done almost every month. If this were a small matter I would let it go. Unfortunately it’s taking up a couple hours a day so I am being forced to make an unpopular decision. All accounts requiring reinstatement must pay annually at the current rate of $49.95 year. No refunds and no exceptions. Trying to manually update hundreds of accounts every month is simply too confusing.

The Solution: I have put this offer out there before. We are committed to helping our members succeed. If you fail online and cancel your service we fail. See My Personal Offer Of Help on our blog. Our Blog is loaded with tips and tricks to help you get the most from your membership. We also offer articles to help you make money online.

I also just published a lengthy article on our blog called, ‘The Truth Why You Are Not Making Money Online!‘

*If your membership has already been deleted you are welcome to sign-up for a new account. The deleted account, including the tracking links, are unrecoverable.

Here’s where my dilemma comes in. Frankly, there are plenty of people that can and will quickly take the place of the lost members. In business that is common practice – to simply move onto the next member. I’m a little hard-headed on some things and I don’t want to just re-cycle members. I would like to help as many members as I can before they give up. Over six months ago I posted ‘My Personal Offer Of Help‘ and few took advantage of it. That offer still stands. Have a question about what you are doing to earn money online? Just ask!

A huge percentage of our members are having little luck at profiting online. According to our own poll, 45% are not making any money online and another 35% are not even making enough to cover expenses. That’s an 80% failure rate. I keep every member’s information completely private so I will not show any details as to which sites and programs anyone is using but I can make some general observations.

I’ve been around a long time and I went many years struggling to make any money at all using the internet. I would spend eight, ten and even twelve hours a day online without making a penny for months at a time. There are some cold hard truths that I had to face before I began making any steady profit. These are generalizations and many are going to resist and disagree but I truly believe them to be the honest truth.

1. First, you have to treat your online business just like any other business. It takes commitment, research, and yes, some investment in order to succeed. If you are using only free methods to promote what you are doing then you are doing yourself a huge disservice.
2. Don’t fall for those marketing emails and online promotions you see everyday. When you hear that marketer say you can earn up to ten thousand a month simply close the page. How do they get away with all the far fetched lies? Look at the disclaimers and you will understand. The truth is that over ninety percent of them are flat broke themselves and have no idea what they are talking about. They are just hoping you are just a little dumber than they are. Hey, someone has to say this!
3. If you are using a free web hosting page or have no site at all you might want to ask yourself why. Everyone else already knows. How many successful people do you see raking in virtual dollars on Blogspot or some advertisement laced free website? If you can’t see the value of having your own website for just a few dollars a month and your own domain for around ten dollars a year how can you ever convince anyone to buy anything from you?
4. I am horrified at the programs I see our lost members trying. It’s none of my business and I can’t jump in and scream, “What are you thinking” but I want to. Let me list a few that I believe are a waste of time.

1. • FFA: The worst is FFA (Free for All) sites. I highly recommend you stay as far away from these as possible. Don’t sign up for them, don’t promote them and never ever place your site on one. They are simply and completely a waste of time at best. The only people that a FFA works for are the ones that own them.
   • Surfing Sites: I have actually made several thousand dollars from surfing. That is, until the federal government came in and froze everyone’s accounts, shut the sites down and arrested the owner. Most surfing sites are completely legal because money isn’t exchanging hands. If it is, close your account and get away from the site. ALL surfing sites are a waste of time if you are surfing for free exposure. Not a few, not most of them but EVERY SINGLE surfing site you join is another nail in your virtual coffin. I can’t get any clearer than that. Anyone that wants to argue with that needs to prove it or shut up.
   • Cash Gifting Programs: This is another one where you want to scream, “What are you doing!“. Gifting programs are scams. I don’t care what kind of spin or tweak the site tries to put on it to make it legal it’s going to get shut down if the owner doesn’t take the money and run first, which they probably will. Don’t Get Suckered Into Gifting Programs
   • Multi-level Marketing/Pyramid Schemes: This one is going to upset a few people. Sure, there have been a few millionaires made from MLM, I even know a couple of them. Let me just say this: If you have tried other MLM programs in the past with no luck, in all likelihood you won’t do well with the one you are in now. Don’t waste your time. Find something legitimate and real so you can actually make a little money.
   • Forex Scams: Another scam. Never participate in one. Forex scam
   • Ad Blasters: A very shady advertising scam to avoid at all costs. Ad Blasters Are Dag-Blasted Junk!
   • Buying Traffic: Think about it, if someone had an unlimited supply of ‘real‘ traffic why wouldn’t they be the next Google or Yahoo? Instead they’re going to sell it to you at a very deep discount? Come on, you are smarter than that. Buying Traffic Is A Waste Of Time

It’s not just scams that are the problem. Many people do very well with affiliate programs. Most of them already have a respected presence on the net with developed lists and established websites. If you don’t receive a lot of traffic and don’t know how to market yet then I recommend you start learning before you try earning. Very few are going to get rich overnight online.

The truth is it takes a lot of effort, dedication, time and again, an investment. I’m amazed at the people that wonder why they aren’t making money yet they don’t visit their own site for weeks at a time. They golf, go bowling or watch TV every night and check their email a few times a week. That’s not dedication, that’s a person who’s desire is over-ruled by cheap immediate gratification.

Then there are those that are just the opposite. This is where I fell into a few years ago. They spend almost every waking minute working online. Spend thousands of dollars on useless junk that doesn’t work and get no where fast. They eat at the computer, take phone calls and even watch TV while doing online tasks. When they aren’t online they are thinking about their online business yet never make any significant money. Dedication isn’t enough, you have to have an idea as to what you are doing.

One final note: Once you have a legitimate site/program that truly has a profit potential you need to promote it. I don’t mean joining some safelist or tweeting it to death. Your Facebook or MySpace pages may look great but it’s not going to help. You need to learn where your buyers are and promote to them where they are at. You need targeted traffic for your sales page. Your sales page needs to be designed properly for your specific target market. You need to have an entire system setup that works for your niche and product. These are the things to concentrate on and learn about. Wasting your time on some guru’s affiliate program is just slowing you down if you don’t already have your system established.

I didn’t write this post to bash anyone or to blow off steam. I just want to help our members get what they are looking for and I apologize if I have offended anyone. I’m hear to help. If you need help with your online business see My Personal Offer Of Help or go directly to Just Ask Someone and ask away.

We cloak your tracking links by adding an invisible one pixel frame above the cloaked webpage. This is effectively ‘page framing’ and it is your responsibility to insure that is not in violation with that site’s policies.

One of our members recently cloaked an Amazon.com page using his tracking link and I lost my Associate’s Account. Yes, I lost MY personal account even though it wasn’t my tracking link. I own the site so Amazon.com, in all their wisdom, decided I should pay the price. That’s a whole other subject but just know if anyone violates another site’s policies using our system that member’s account will be deleted without refund and all their tracking links will cease to function.

So please check any site’s terms and policies before cloaking a tracking link to them. And, PLEASE, never cloak an Amazon.com tracking link and if you have any already cloaked please uncloak them immediately.

“Greetings from the Associates Program,
We recently noticed your Associate links are appearing as sponsored links on search engines under the term “kindle” and variations of this term using incorrect information (i.e. “FREE BONUS”).  We have also found that you are framing the Kindle detail page with the URL 4u2bn.com/ih46.
~ /—–/ ~
As you have failed to comply with these terms, your Associates account has been closed.  Thank you for your interest in the Amazon.com Associates Program and best of luck in the future.
Best regards,
Thomas – Associates Account Specialist
http://www.amazon.com“

Questions? Feel free to comment below.

Example:

For example, your groups could be setup like…

• Affiliate Links
• Banner Ads
• Blog posts
• Forum Posts
• PPC Ads
• Text Ads
• etc…

-or-

If, for example, your account will be used primarily for affiliate tracking it could go something like this…

• Amazon.com
• ClickBank
• Commission Junction
• Shareasale.com
• etc…

Those are jusr examples and you are free to setup your tracking groups anyway you choose.

Below is a quick 2 1/2 minute video tutorial on setting up and using your tracking groups. Let me know what you think by adding a comment below the video: