For an ezine distributed as plain text it is not possible to see if it is actually opened or read. But what you can do is insert tracking URLs at appropriate points, such as product offers or special articles, and get comparative figures for which items are being read.

AT YOUR WEB SITE

#12. The Problem Of Permanent URLs

Web sites are continually evolving and changing.

You may want to rename a page to make it more consistent and logical but there's a huge problem. You have given out URL in an ebook, or a directory submission, or an article or wherever. There's no way you can undo this.

The solution ?

Never provide actual URL, just a tracking URL. You can then just edit link at tracking centre whenever a page is moved or renamed.

The external links, in your ebook for example, stay same but they will redirect to your new page.

#13. What Are Your Visitors Doing ?

You have text links all over your site, links to your other pages and links to recommended sites.

Where are your visitors clicking ?

Where are they leaving your site, why, how can you stop them ?

Which graphic do they click on most ?

Do they click on text link more than graphic link?

Your log files may tell you at best which are most popular pages at your site but it is vital to know how your visitors move through your site and what is tempting them.

Use tracking URLs to replace actual links wherever you need to monitor click activity.

#14. Sell Website Advertising Space

You can offer tracking reports to your advertisers in same way as for ezine publishers (above).

#15. Stop Piracy

If you have invested man-months of time setting up a vital resource site involving a directory of links it's very easy for a pirate to simply copy your page and provide useful content for his own site.

If you use tracking URLs for those directory links you can detect this copy - because ad tracking program will record referring URL.

At same time of course you can measure popularity of directory links.

USING PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES

#16. Better Click Activity Reporting

Pay per click search engines will report to you click activity on your URL. Engines vary in frequency and format of reporting so you can use tracking URLs instead to obtain better information.

#17. Prevent Fraudulent Activity

You can compare your figures with engine's and should query any large discrepancy.

If click activity is unusually high you may have a competitor clicking on just to incur costs against you. You may be able to detect this by comparing figures for unique hits and actual hits (several hits per visitor).

OFFLINE MARKETING

#18. Check How Successful

If you have ever wondered whether it was worth advertising off line because of supposed impossibility of measuring response then ad tracking URLs will answer that problem. Just include them in your ads in

- newspapers - magazines - flyers - billboards - press releases - shop notice boards - and so on

#19. Use The Time Reports

The date and time when clicks are made will allow you to check progress of your ads, for example

- has your newspaper ad been submitted yet ? - has your billboard notice been removed ? - how long does a magazine ad stay around ?

For a long running ad you can study response and switch link midstream if necessary to an improved web page.

EBOOKS

#20. Do Free Books Work ?

The main purpose of a free ebook is to get reader back to your site. But how successful is it proving ?

Put tracking URLs in book and you will find out.

#21. Maintain Control After Download

Once your ebook is downloaded it would appear that you no longer have any control over it. Not so. You can redirect reader to other pages of your site by changing tracking Url links.

OTHER WAYS

#22. Become An Ad Tracking Affiliate

Since ad tracking programs are high demand marketing tools you can profit by joining their affiliate program (if they have one).

Owning product that you promote always gives that extra advantage e.g you can give an example of how you use it or a personal testimonial as to how it has benefited you.

#23. Privacy

You may want to post an URL somewhere and - for reasons of your own - not let it reveal your website. You can do this with an ad tracking program where supplier domain name is used in tracking URL.

For more details about the above tips and yet more ways to use an ad tracker see Harvey's free ebook Ad Tracking SuperTips

http://www.ad-tracking.com/adbook.html

4 - Test, test, and then test some more!

The key to maximizing ROI of any ad campaign is testing, and PPC is no different. Set up test campaigns using various keywords/phrases and different ad copy. Analyze results after a few days, and then drop ads that perform poorly and expand ones that do well.

5 - Experiment with bid prices for your keywords.

For example, you might well find that a bid of $0.35 results in almost as many clicks (and customers) as a bid of $0.55! This means you save 20 cents on each and every click! Remember, your ad doesn't have to be displayed in top position for it to be effective.

Good luck.