The Open Source Marketer

Tracking clicks can be an important part of any online marketing but not everyone has the nerd muscles to set up their own click trackers. There are a number of scripts out there and home grown solutions for tracking clicks, but I want to give you a quick overview of a tool I like to use for tracking specific click events.

The tool I like to use is BoldURL.com. At first glance BoldURL looks like another long url shrinker. There are several hundred of these url redirection services in use today. In fact, you may have heard of tinyurl.com or some similar service, but BoldURL has a hidden surprise on the inside.

BoldURL not only lets you shrink your long url down into a short url, it also lets you store those urls in your account so you can update them later if you need to change affiliate links. When I want to change the destination of a short url, I just log in, change the destination address and that link is immediately ready to redirect to the new address.

But here is the BoldURL feature that I like the best. Since you store your url redirects in a user account that you can update, you are also able to access click stats and sales stats as well.

The click stats are simply a record of how many clicks that link has received. This can be useful for testing purposes. You can use it to track reader interest in email campaigns, cloak affiliate links, split test, or you can just use it as a throw away link. Remember, the value here is that you can track clicks without having to setup a local click tracking system.

The sales tracking portion gives you a piece of code that you put on a target page where you know the customer will land if they have completed some action, like making a purchase. This page can be a thank you page after the sale, or it can be a download page where you know you get a commission when something is downloaded.

When that page is loaded, the script loads and records that the customer was on that page. This is recorded as a sale. There is a portion of the initial link setup page that lets you define a cost per click and a sales value. If there is a cost per click, then BoldURL will keep a total of how much that link has cost you. If a sale is made then BoldURL will record it and keep a total of the sales that are attributed to that link.

BoldURL also gives you activity charts to give you a visual picture of when and how often your links have been clicked.

So, if you want to track link clicks, cloak affiliate links, manage redirects, split test affiliate products, or track sales and conversion then BoldURL is a great tool.

Did I mention it’s free? Yeah, that’s cool too.

Start Simple,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com