One of the frustrations of online marketing is getting an integrated picture of how effective your marketing efforts are, especially which are the traffic sources are working effectively.

I’d given off up some off-the-shelf free and paid software and decided to develop my own tracking system a couple of months ago. Besides getting a better picture of what’s working and what’s now in promoting my own products and affiliate/CPA offers, I’ve decided to offer my in-house link management and tracking system. I believe new and intermediate level marketers who don’t have their own tracking systems in place, or are doing a lot of redirects manually are going to see a productivity boost out of this.

Introducing: Smart Link Manager

What it is:

• Creates different types of redirect links (301 redirects, iframes, meta refreshes, double meta refreshes and cloaked links)
• Option of creating keyword-optimized redirects or with a random structure (minimizes the footprint)
• Web stats, including referring URLs, geographical location, browser type
• Option of setting up CRON jobs to email you your campaign stats on your preferred schedule

Recovering profit in real time: Some CPA (cost per action) offers may hit their caps or may be redirected to other offers. Being able to edit, update and control which offers you’re promoting from one central location, with changes made in real-time are a major boost. No more scrambling to update multiple traffic sources/networks. Do it from ONE location. No more “offer not found” headaches, resulting in lost sales and profit.

Integrated marketing: This tool was created for traffic promotion types like article marketing, social bookmarking, blogging, forum promotion, social networking (squidoo, hubpages), video marketers. Having one universal tracking URL saves you the hassle of creating multiple links to track different channels.

I’ve also used the tool for PPC and PPV marketing and it scales without any issues even if you’re sending bucketloads of traffic through the script.

Some technical details:

• You need your own webhosting account
• PHP5 support and ioncube support are required
• Fantastico/cPanel admin interface would make setting up MySQL databases and CRON jobs a whole lot easier

I’m not a coder by any means, so I’ve documented the process from installation, setup, configuration, campaign launch and optimization. I’ve also written a marketing guide on techniques to integrate Smart Link Manager into existing or new campaigns.

Here’re some other reasons why Smart Link Manager is a great tool:

• It’s evolved from an in-house tool, and we’re running live campaigns using the script now.
• It’s self-hosted, so all the data resides on your own server. Your data remains yours.
• Constant upgrades: In the course of running campaigns, we make enhancements to the script constantly. You’ll get regular updates (we expect one upgrade each month).
• Low resource utilization: Whether you’re using a shared webhost or a dedicated server, the script has been designed from scratch to be reliable and scalable, even if you’re running a high volume traffic campaign.

The greatest advantage in using Smart Link Manager on a daily basis is that it creates redirects, incorporate tracking and cloaking within seconds, shaving a lot of manual work and getting the links correct each time (perfect for copying-and-pasting links). An easy-to-use, intuitive web-based interface makes campaign setup a snap.

Launch offer: You can get about 40% off the $47 price by using promotion code “WIAWPROMO” to get it for just $27 (limited to 20 buyers).

Be sure to check out: Smart Link Manager

I was reading Lorenzo’s post about the data from recent split testing case studies (be sure to check out his post if you haven’t. You’ll probably learn a thing, or two, or three.).

Then in the comments, Anne Holland (founder of MarketingSherpa and publisher of WhichTestWon?) mentions a free online training event. Looks like a good one and it’s free too.

Check it out: Online Marketing Summit

Since the Google Slap took place some time back, it’s been no secret that many affiliates and internet marketers have been switching to alternative traffic sources, including social network advertising (primarily Facebook Ads and Plenty of Fish) and dabbling in impression-based advertising and media buys (like AdSonar, Pulse360).

Depending on your experience, it could have been a better experience compared to bidding on the big 3 PPC network, or a terrible one.

What’s worked for me in recent months has been looking at Tier-2 PPC ad networks. Which shouldn’t be a surprise if you’re constantly looking at and testing new sources. Just like any other traffic generation strategy, some smaller PPC networks will have low traffic, poor lead quality or all of the above. It’s a matter of testing and tracking your campaigns that’re going to show you the winners and give you enough information to pause or delete losing keywords.

In this month’s InternetMarketingCookbook update, I go through:

• Some of the key differences between the Big 3 PPC networks and their smaller tier-2 brothers.
• How you should structure your campaigns differently and ways to implement tracking
• Strategies to test offers and determine the winners.
• Tips to decrease your PPC costs and increase traffic
• And much more!

Visit the InternetMarketingCookbook to find out more.

In case you’re wondering if it’s worth the hassle of setting up your own lead generation business, compared to just getting offers from a CPA network. Here’s my local lead generation story. You make the call.

About a year ago, I was involved in renting out real estate to tenants. I’d run about $500 worth of classifieds and display ads in the local media. I had a number of prospects contact me, but they didn’t proceed to make an offer.

I’d also added the property to internal realtor databases (MLS – multi listing services) and that didn’t generate any leads, even if there were at least 20,000 realtors accessing the system.

So I went through some of the most popular community sites in my geographical area (Singapore) and posted a number of ads on these sites. They were a combination of social networks, forums, chat sites. Total investment: about 2 hours.

A couple of days later, I got an email enquiry from a prospective tenant and I brought them to check out the property. They made an offer about 6 hours later. 2 weeks later, I collected a nice $3,500 check from the property agency.

With about 5 hours invested into the deal for a $3,500 ROI (or about $500/hour), looking at possibilities outside the networks can be very rewarding (This is not factoring that the 50+ leads which could be sold or distributed via a revshare basis to other realtors).

–

If you’re interested in finding out more about local lead generation, be sure to check out my review of Chad Frederiksen’s Local Lead Plan.