Adminder http://www.adminder.com

An online tracking system that will enable you to track an entire advertising campaign. It will enable you to see how many visitors were generated by each of your ads, keep track of sales that were generated by each ad and calculates cost-per-click, cost-per-sale, and click-to-sale ratios for each ad. Cost - $19.95 mo. (for a limited time)

ROIbot http://www.roibot.com

ROIbot is a complete collection of tools for increasing your "Return on Investment." One of their many tools is ROIbot Ad Tracker. This powerful system will enable you to track your clickthroughs, where they come from, what browser your visitors are using, what operating system, and more. Cost - $17.00 mo.

Statcruncher http://www.Statcruncher.com

Statcruncher tracks and reports exactly which ads, banners and links are producing results. They provide you with access to their powerful web-tracking system that will enable you to track your ad campaigns 24 hours a day in real time. Cost - $49.00 yr.

If you'd rather not use any of products and services listed above, you can use some alternative methods. Below are some example tracking methods you can use to track your response rates:

URL

You can track your ads simply by adding some special coding to your URL. To code your URL, add a question mark followed by a special tracking code to end of your web address. Your coded link will still open your web page. Your code should look something like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/?ad1

The text after question mark should identify a specific ad. You can code it however you'd like.

To view your results, you'll need to look at your log files. Your code will be displayed within your log files beside your URL.

Email

You can track your email responses to specific ads by using email subject. Select a specific word to be placed within email subject for each ad. Although you can request that a certain word be placed within email subject, many times it won't be supplied. To avoid this problem, you can create a special email link that will automatically fill in subject when clicked on. Your link should look something like this:

mailto:you@yourdomain.com?subject=ad1

Testing and tracking your strategies is an essential part of doing business. By concentrating your efforts on strategies that produce results, you can not only increase your sales, but you'll also save yourself a great deal of time and money.

Would you believe that programs exist on net, now, which can actually do this for you? This is true for all online media. Just go to your browser and search for ’Ad Trackers’.

What you must look for is a system which is fully automated, easy for user to work, and one that in fact does furnish all basic data you need to determine effectiveness of you ads. Some systems are better than others and they all cost money. You must carefully examine benefits you receive compared to costs involved. You have more than likely spent money placing your ads and now you are spending money to track how well these ads are bringing in customers. You must make judgment here. Only you can judge where these activities are taking you.

It makes sense that money considerations dictate that you start something like this on a small scale. One or two ads on one or two media so you may learn first hand what is working and what is not. We must throw away any pride of authorship regarding ad copy we write. The only important criteria here is that ad works or does not work. If it works you use it more widely and keep using it until it loses it’s effectiveness. You keep this process going on a constant basis, exploiting effective ads and replacing bad ads. And you do it based on factual data you gain from whatever ad tracking system you employ.

For those of us who are really serious about making a success of our own business it makes a lot of sense to be able to know what our advertising is doing for us. Not only that but we need to identify ever changing audience out there so we may change directions as we may need to. Tracking your ads is a key to this capability. None of us can afford millions large Corporations spend for this purpose but we have to dig in our pocket and somehow find money to purchase one of these affordable ad tracking systems.

Such an action is critical if you are going to successfully compete for business on Internet. Some would say that your survival counts on it.