I posted this on a couple of forums recently because I kept seeing questions related to it and very incomplete answers being given, so I did a brain dump of as many reasons as I could think of to cloak links or use some kind of affiliate redirect / tracking script / URL shortener.

1. To shorten links so they look pretty/branded for your own brand
2. To make a link look like it is a clean link to someone else’s brand (you need permission to register domains for other people’s trademark quite often, and always best to ask)
3. To shorten links so they don’t get broken in emails due to the way some characters are handled
4. To boost the number of citations of your domain (SEO benefit)
5. To add in specific tracking code for clicks to determine popularity
6. To add in specific tracking code for conversion tracking (think Prosper202)
7. To gain social proof and boost viral impact (Tweetmeme buttons)
8. To add in various javascript based tracking such as Google Analytics in situations where you can’t use onclick.
9. To track activity from referrers that don’t pass on useful referral data such as Twitter clients
10. To improve email delivery on your own behalf – you have built up a good sender score, so want to use it for your advantage
11. To improve email deliver at the request of a vendor – often for product launches you are required not to use direct links.
12. To split test landing pages
13. To split test different products
14. To be able to change the link at a later date
    1. Dead links
    2. Updated offer
    3. Fallen out with vendor
    4. Better convering offer
15. As an affiliate tool for viral marketing (see Harvey’s Ultimate Super Tips for inspiration)
16. To achieve deep linking to anything even when it is not supported by the affiliate system.
17. To have a URL bar for branding aka hootsuite/prettylinks
18. To have a URL bar for additional viral sharing buttons
19. To have a url bar offering a search box or related content suggestions from your own site
20. To have a url bar offering top rated content from your own site (think Stumbleupon su.pr)
21. To mask the URL of the page
22. To mask the title of the page
23. To stuff cookies – I am not advocating stuffing affiliate cookies without network or vendor explicit permission, and there are “whitehat” scenarios
24. To boost view counts for sites like Alexa
25. Redirect page can be blocked with robots.txt
26. Redirect page can link to further redirects that are blocked, but have links back to your own site
27. Pretty URLs
28. To hide referrer details from affiliate network
29. To hide referrer details from ultimate destination (as affiliate)
30. To hide referrer when you link to something from a private member site
31. For load balancing
32. To prevent SEO juice for affiliate network
33. To prevent SEO juice for vendor/3rd party (not a vote)
34. To get a framed page to rank
35. When split testing a landing page on a site without php, you might use various shortened links as you can’t easily use dynamic subids for every visitor
36. As a SEO safeguard especially for viral marketing when doing something pointing to a money site. e.g. you release lots of free themes with spammy footer links – Google decide to slap you, how do you repair the damage?
37. To hide that a link was initially seeded by you – if you use a branded shortened link, it is obvious you had something to do with it.
38. To include disclosure – say you direct link to an affiliate offer from Twitter – you could have an iframe with a disclosure statement, or a delayed meta refresh.
39. To use some sneaky popunder advertising
40. For geo-targeting
41. For language targeting
42. For behavioural targeting
43. Because a “guru” told you to and you don’t want to look like a newbie
44. To hide affiliate links from Googlebot (Search)
45. To hide affiliate links fromMediapartners-Google (Adwords)
46. To hide affiliate links from spy tools used by other affiliates – some really smart things can be done to block people sniffing out your various sites
47. To block bots grabbing your content
48. To Rickroll people
49. To help you rank a frame for another geo-location
50. To unify brand ownership of white label systems (Google Apps, Raven Tools etc) though this is more often cname than cloaking

This isn’t a comprehensive list, I just did a 30 minute brain dump

Can you think of any I have missed?

Reasons Not To Cloak Links

Here are some reasons not to cloak links

1. Sometimes any form of url masking is banned by the affiliate program
2. You may want people to be able to see that a link is going to a nice safe place on Amazon.com as people often don’t care if there is an aff in there or not
3. Sometimes some forms of redirects/cloaks dont work with some affiliate programs
4. Some methods as I mentioned require explicit permission or are almost universally frowned on
5. Some vendors or networks want to know where your traffic is coming from, even down to monitoring what keywords you bid on. (they can go to hell or pay for it)
6. Security – various tracking scripts can get hacked just as easily as WordPress
7. Centralization is only a good idea if it is secure, backed up etc
8. In some situations where you have a coupon, you might want to use a clean link
9. Some methods of hiding links with javascript don’t work when the content is syndicated
10. It places some small extra load on a server
11. It is something else that needs to be migrated if you switch server
12. If you switch tracking software, how easy is it to migrate links?
13. As mentioned, you might not want people to know that a link being spread originates with you, so you might use bit.ly with no other tracking so it looks organic
14. The more you get into it, the more complex it can become thus you need better systems and a better technical understanding. Lots of marketers don’t even split test their email campaigns on a big launch, though they might not do it suggesting they are trying to be more transparent
15. The method you are using is incompatible with an advertising partner, such as Google Adwords requiring the back button to work.

I am writing this article because I keep on being asked the same questions, not with the intention of beating the drum about Blogrush, or to promote my referral link. In fact you won’t even find my referral link in this article. Go and use someone else’s, or look at one of my previous articles.

I thought about adding some “notice me” links in this post (that was more just to say thanks), but that isn’t my style.

Lots of the people who have been making mistakes in their professional analysis in theory subscribe to my blog, thus I am not going to single them out.
There have been a lot of anti-hype articles, and I also still have some reservations, but that doesn’t justify articles full of criticism that don’t contain facts, or contain interpretation of facts that are so obviously full of mistakes, I am amazed they were written by the person credited.

I thought I would show you a little bit of proof that Blogrush sends traffic to small blogs.

First of all here is the traffic to my WordPress Plugins site which hasn’t really been touched for 12 months.

So that is 60 readers, and 131 page views since Blogrush launched – the site is 2 years old, PR5, so it does get a little seasonal search traffic, which is picking up this time of year.

Here are the stats from Blogrush

So when I took that screenshot earlier yesterday to show to someone, I had had 5 referrers. I should have possibly waited with my screenshot, it is actually 75 readers, 179 views and 10 clicks through from Blogrush.

That Doesn’t Mean I Had A Great CTR

That blog hasn’t only received 149 credits, it has gained lots of bonus credits, though it is impossible to tell how many.

Many people really didn’t understand this message on the stats page.

Special Note: All Members are currently receiving BONUS CREDITS that are not yet reflected in these statistics.

Your referral credits are not being used currently… there is no way to allocate them if you have multiple blogs.

Some blogs are in categories where they can’t use all the credits they have been generating.

John Reese said in an email to members yesterday (summarized) CTR problems can be solved with:-

1. Better titles, and gave some great examples
2. More categories are needed for better targeting – also of note in that point is that if you have people averaging 0.5% CTR, the widget itself is averaging 2.5% CTR – that is a conceptual difference people might not realise.
3. Fraud – expect a big clamp down and permanent bans – I hope people weren’t being evil and expecting to get away with it.

I am not going to show off a load of referrals, though I have got quite a few. I am also even more happy that my downline have got referrals and are benefiting from the free credits in the system. Not everyone has had great success, there are some inherent problems, but these things will be ironed out.

Here is an easy way to understand this.

A few people are referring to Blogrush as a pyramid scheme

However there isn’t any money changing hands, and there is another problem with their theory. What happens with all the excess inventory that isn’t spoken for by referral credits?

Until the referral matrix gets deeper than 10 levels, and referral credits are actually used, there are a lot of spare credits that need to be assigned to something, and those are the credits that created additional visitors to my plugins site.

Lots of the high traffic blogs are in the top level of the referral structure, so there will always be a large amount of these free credits. Blogrush had a very explosive start, and there are 100s if not 1000s of blogs in the top level.

A blog with 30,000 pageviews per day in the top level is generating 150,000 RSS impressions, but only gaining 30,000 for itself. Blogrush use 10% to cover their costs.

That leaves 105,000 credits per day for Blogrush to hand out for free. They are not being handed out to an upline that doesn’t exist.

I have no specific details of how the credits are being shared out, but it seems smaller blogs are receiving windfalls (in my estimate) of 1000 credits or more per day.

The Blackhat Threat

Alex Goad pinged me about some of the blackhat games that Blogrush faces. It is true, but I wouldn’t class any venture by John Reese as low hanging fruit.

Over on Problogger John Reese has stated:-

That’s for all the great feedback. We’re working really hard to make some “must needed” improvements due to some unforseen issues we’ve encountered. Fraud has really hurt us in the early going and is dilluting the CTRs across the entire network. We’re moving to a 100% Manual Review Process and this will not only eliminate most of the cheaters but will also eliminate all the low-quality blogs in the network.

Don’t doubt for a minute whether John has the resources to hire 10 or 20 people to manually review every single site if that becomes necessary, but lots of tools are fairly easy to create to make the process much more efficient.

Lots of people have asked me about what traffic I have received. It has possibly decreased over the last couple of days due to the spamming, but here is a screenshot I took yesterday.

So we don’t just trust MyBlogLog tracking, we also should compare it to another source. Google Analytics will do for this purpose.

I actually waited for a day so that the Google Analytics data could be compared.

How to see this in Google Analytics?

1. Go to Traffic Sources >> All Traffic Sources
2. Find source medium [containing] widget.blogrush.com
3. Click on what is probably just a single result listing containing the combined referrals

Now whilst there is an obvious decline, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is all caused by spammers. It might also mean that the free credits in the system are being applied differently, or that they are being spread thinner.
If they are being spread thinner, that actually makes me happy, because that means more of my referrals are gaining a little free traffic. Maybe it is just an extra 10 visitors per day, but when you have less than 100 visitors per day, that is significant if it is targeted.

The decline can also be caused by articles that are just not compelling enough for people to click on them. I am sure this article will not receive a lot of traffic, and will probably only be read by my regular readers.

I don’t write articles specifically to get high traffic from every single one. I just try to provide useful information and title it appropriately.

I have lots of referrals, and so do many of my downline, but those credits are not being used currently, because there is no interface to allocate them.

My guesstimate is that I have probably had 15,000 to 20,000 impressions so far.

• Do your own testing and tracking
• Compare it to the value of screen real estate
• Decide whether it works for you
• Give it some time, and think of your readers (sharing traffic is good for you)

Update

John Reese responded to the discussion on Alex’s Blogrush post with a couple of comments, one explaining the algorithm a little explaining why Blogrush shouldn’t be looked on as a Pyramid or Ponzi scheme (all credits in the system are earned, nothing is projected forward, upwards allocation of credit), but also made the following statement which I feel is very significant.

The only reason some impressions are “held back” and not immediately delivered are because the system continues to ‘adjust’ based on the network size itself, as well as how many members in each category — because we serve each members’ credits in the category they choose. There ‘can’ be an imbalance of inventory in certain categories, but we’re able to make up that adjustment based on the “breakage” of math that occurs because all the accounts that immediately signed up essentially joined ‘under’ BlogRush — and so the network has a large percentage of surplus; which we are currently auto-distributing to all the members equally to help them get more traffic. We have plans to eventually give most of the bonus credits to our SMALL USERS since they need the traffic the most.

Whilst many people are looking on Blogrush as being a pyramid scam and the rich are feeding off the poor, I am increasing feeling that in many ways this will become more of a Robin Hood scenario.

Whilst the big blogs will generate more credits themselves, and lots of referrals, they will not gain the same CTR as smaller unknown blogs, because people are using Blogrush for discovery.
With John highlighting that the surplus inventory is mainly going to go to smaller blogs in the future, this really is going to be robbing the rich to feed the poor, and a blog like Shoemoney or Problogger probably signed up directly.

Andy Beal being such a smart marketer probably signed Marketing Pilgrim up under his wife’s Hawaii Vacation Blog. Despite the drama, if he removes the widget, his wife’s blog will receive less credits to allocate – what a dilemma to be in ;) – note those credits can’t be allocated currently.
Andy hasn’t yet published any real stats (from 3rd party tracking), but I would love to see what traffic his wife’s blog has received in Google Analytics, and whether that traffic was more worthwhile than the traffic Marketing Pilgrim receives.
I honestly wouldn’t click on one of Andy’s ads, because I am already a subscriber, but I did just see my WordPress Plugins site advertised on his site, and that doesn’t have a compelling title.

Stumble Popup

How often do you read a great blog post and forget to share it with your friends? The Stumbleupon toolbar is often a long mouse move away, and most people don’t use shortcuts when browsing, because they can’t remember them, or because of conflicts between different toolbars and other applications that are running on a system by default.

You hold down the right mouse button and up pops some custom navigation

Then you just move your mouse slightly, either to navigate within your browser, or to do various things with Stumbleupon.

This is brand new software, so you would expect a few bugs or shortcomings.

• Registration – The registration procedure isn’t very automated, and requires you email a hardware key to them, and in return you are sent a registration code. Whilst having a human element in the chain limits people cheating the registration process, it does cause some inconvenience and confusion.
• Hotkeys – The software relies on sending hotkey information, and if you have a few popular toolbars, you are going to hit conflicts. In my case the hotkey to stumble something conflicts with Roboform, although that was easy to fix.

I strongly suggest you grab this software before they start charging for it. (and I am not making a penny from suggesting it)

Converting Traffic From Digg & Stumbleupon

There are so many articles about how to get traffic from Digg and Stumbleupon, but very few that analyze the difference in behaviour once you get traffic from a social media site.

Tim is one of the few people who has actually tackled the difference between Digg and Stumbleupon users and also how they interact with different page elements.
If you want to maximise the value you give to visitors from these services, and thus the benefit you receive, you should definitely read both articles multiple times.
Notice the emphasis – you have to give people what they want for them to take an action that is a benefit to you, such as:-

• linking to your article
• subscribing to RSS feed
• sharing your article with friends

Stumbleupon Friends

Stumbleupon isn’t just about gaining lots of traffic to your own sites, in many ways that is just a bonus of a little reciprocal stumbling of the blogs you read on a regular basis.
You should avoid “over-stumbling” the same domains – I have noticed that there can be a reduced effect of stumbles if the same people stumble the same domains all the time, even if they have powerful accounts.
I have learnt a lot about Stumbleupon from Maki – in the past I pointed my readers in the direction of his comprehensive guide to Stumbleupon.
Now Maki has written a followup which emphasises that not only can you gain traffic from using Stumbleupon on a regular basis, but you can also find lots of great content suggested by your friends.

How To Test The Effectiveness of Social Media Traffic?

This is something I am in the middle of setting up on my own sites, so I will have a more in-depth post coming soon.
My friend Alister Cameron has some interesting code set up on his site, that detects referrer traffic from various social media sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon and offers them a different user experience, by simply asking them to take a different specific action.
You could also take a look at the landing sites plugin for inspiration (uses Google search terms) and my friend Rob over at Yack Yack also offered some code a few months ago for handling search queries.
I know many Digg and Reddit button display plugins also work by using the referring URL, so there is plenty of code to play around with.

What tools would you use to measure the traffic?

• Crazyegg – this is one of the obvious choices – you would be able to measure user activity using a heatmap
• Clickheat – this seems to be a great script you can host on your own server, and it is possible to do some quite sophisticated tracking with it, though you might hit performance issues if you go overboard.
  It would be possible to set this up not just as an A/B splittest, or multivariate, but also based on the source of the traffic.
• Google Analytics – you could probably do something with Google’s analytics which has just had it’s interface revamped, though my account is still set for the old interface. Extracting data from Google Analytics has always been fairly difficult, hopefully as they roll out the new version, things have improved.

You might think Clickheat is going overboard, but I know among my readers there are some very fanatical testers who would be quite happy to set up a dedicated server just to run a script like Clickheat, if it allowed them more granular testing results.

Here is the simple code you place on your pages

<script type="text/javascript" src="/clickheat/js/clickheat.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
clickHeatPage = 'ABC';
initClickHeat();
</script>
<noscript><a href="http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html" title="ClickHeat: clicks heatmap">clickheat</a></noscript>

ABC – you can make this as granular as you like, depending on the limits of your server hosting your tracking script. If you are just testing one sales page, you could easily change that to a source of traffic or adwords keyword group.
No Script – I would probably remove this link

It would certainly be possible to write a simple WordPress plugin to insert code based on a specific tracking code within your pages, or based upon a page ID or referring source.

I still have to test to see how well it works if you have multiple copies of the code on each page – with the current code (though it is GPL) there is no way to get specific birds-eye-view information based on groups of pages IDs.

The King Of Blogging Gobshites

About a month ago Gavin wrote a post about dofollow which I thought was remarkable, but not because of the content. The content was good, anyone talking about dofollow immediately gets a huge plus in my book, but the title he used for the post in my mind just hit a sweet spot, in a typically Irish way.

I Dont Trust Blogging Gobshites

I gave the post a Stumble just because of the title.

A month later Gavin has followed up the post with the following, and as intended it has piqued my vanity. I have been looking for the best opportunity to link through to him from a post that will actually give him hopefully even more traffic.

Andy Beard – The King of Blogging Gobshites

Actually the original post didn’t get a huge amount of Stumbleupon traffic, but even light Stumbleupon activity is far more significant than a couple of Diggs.

Quintuplet?

I decided as I had 5 things I wanted to talk about all on the same subject (Stumbleupon) to add it to Darren’s group writing project.
I don’t expect all of these items to be of interest to everyone, but I hope both beginners and my most advanced readers find something useful.

If spending $97 on an ebook is a major financial commitment, don’t read any further

Ok, for the rest of you lets get on with the review…

• There is no hype in the sales letter
• There is no hype in the ebook
• There is no hype in this review

Another Web 2.0 Social Media Ebook?

After you read the sales letter that is probably the impression you will have, and in fact you will still have that impression shortly after you start reading the ebook.

Here are some interesting facts for you

Pages 56 (+bonus guide on video, crib sheets and tables)

In fact those few references that were included were mainly in facts and figures like usage data.

So What is this Ebook Talking About?

Traffic Secrets

Whilst many people don’t appreciate the value of ebooks, claiming that the information is out there if you look for it, or join and participate in various forums, that isn’t strictly true.
We live in an age of information overload. Quite often different ideas and new ideas take a long time to rise to the surface, or never make it, not because the ideas are not valuable, or supported by hard evidence.

I often see “specialists” in SMO (Social Media Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) claim that their methods and expensive services can work in virtually any market place.
I am not going to dispute those claims, but that very statement tends to drown out other methods that could be equally effective for traffic generation that might be equally, or potentially more suitable for certain markets.

Traffic Strategy

The fundamental value from this ebook is that it challenges you to examine your social media marketing strategy, and optimize it for best effect.
This is nothing to do with writing better headlines, or coercing top users at Digg, Reddit or Netscape to add you as a friend and to plug your content.

Whilst Laura’s intention was to target the ebook to beginners in social media marketing, in many ways consultants in social media marketing should read it because it will place a new perspective on information and strategies you think you already know.

Professional Writing

Laura has written a lot of ebooks as a ghost writer, and this isn’t her first outing in publishing an ebook in her own name. This ebook oozes quality production with footnotes on almost every page and links to resources that back up the data and strategies she proposes.

The professional tone may also be one of its shortcomings – The Stampede Secret isn’t a light refreshing read, or suitable for people who prefer information in short 400 word chunks.

To get the most benefit you really will have to read through the ebook a couple of times taking notes – in some ways it reminds me of some of the more serious marketing reports you might receive from Marketing Sherpa.

Recommended Audience

Ideal

You are already making money, and probably think you know everything there is about SMM. You might even skim read the ebook once and think there is nothing new, but if you take the time to sit down and read it slowly a couple of times, you will pick up a new perspective.

• Marketing consultants
• Blogging consultants
• Business owners in niche markets
• Owners of Virtual Real Estate in Niche markets including blogging networks
• VCs and Angel Investors
• Researchers
• Journalists

Possible

Beginners who have tried SMM for their niche websites and blogs with little success, and who have money to invest to accelerate their learning process.

Don’t Buy It

This isn’t an ebook showing you the secret route to success and instant wealth. This isn’t something you should spend your last meal ticket on for that one chance of financial independence.

If the price of the ebook is more than you would spend on a night out, think again.

It will probably take you 3 hours to read this ebook unless you have been studying various fast reading techniques – if 3 hours of your time is worth less than $97, this ebook probably isn’t ideal.

You Can Find This Information Elsewhere

I honestly haven’t gone searching for all this information elsewhere, but I am sure somewhere among the millions of pages of content that are created on the internet every day, you would find at least 90% of this information. The value is in the way it is collated and presented.

Just as an example some of what is discussed in the ebook you could find on my blog, and potentially in more depth, especially in regards to things like tagging. Laura even quoted from one of my articles and linked through, highlighting that people should read the article, and the valuable discussion afterwards.

Unique Information

Analysis of one of Laura’s niche sites in a very competitive market (Acne Treatment) with real proof of traffic numbers from Quantcast – not just screenshots.
This isn’t a high traffic site, it is very much a simple niche website, running on WordPress that anyone could create and generate some income – I wouldn’t expect Laura to expose her most profitable sites.

Discussion of traffic strategy – some social media consultants charge $5000 per day to help you formulate a social media marketing action plan. Most of the consultants concentrate on the search engine optimization benefits, and not how to participate in social networks to find real customers.

How to Write an Ebook – whilst this isn’t one of the lessons taught, the production quality and style is something to learn from.

I am going to finish off with a few select quotes from the ebook that don’t give too much away, but at the same time highlight how much different the overall perspective of the information is.

If anything is going to hold you back in being a fore-runner in the new web, the need to measure and record every click or movement to and on your site would be the culprit. The internet is changing at such a rapid rate that controlling and metering every change you make has the potential to stall your success.

Uptight control and playing it safe is seldom the stance of a pioneer. It is the pioneer who wins in profits, fame and visitor traffic – not the followers and whiners. I am not guaranteeing success by any means, nor am I advising you to risk your life savings on some promising new start up, but I am saying that the occasional ‘play your cards or go home’ attitude is one of the keys to success.

Web 2.0 is a very creative, innovative and fluid environment. Most Web 2.0 sites cannot be put in a box and measured in any consistent and reliable fashion – they are simply too young. There is a level of intuition at launch, an element of change and growth throughout the life of the web property, and yet another level of intuition used for assessment when determining a reasonable sale value.

Conclusion

No hype, no bonus, though if I do see enough interest and sales I might write up a supplement to the ebook going into some of the topics in more depth, especially on the benefits of tagging.
I would probably make that available free to all Laura’s customers.
I may even go into some of the topics that Laura has missed – Web 2.0 grows at an alarming rate, and there is a limit to how fast you can research strategies enough to be able to offer conclusive proof.

Disclaimers are unheard of in most ebooks, but Laura takes this to a new professional level, this is just part of it.

Information within this report may be speculation and are therefore within the meaning of the securities litigation reform act of 1995 and contain verbiage such as ‘expected’, ‘anticipated’, ‘estimated’, projected’, ‘believed’ or variations of those.

I have actually been chucking a few emails backwards and forwards to Laura over the last couple of days, and I thought I would include one small excerpt.

You know you really rock! You don’t even ‘know’ me and you’ve given me so
much of your time. It’s a dying art in our world.

I am not going to include my exact reply, because it mentioned names of people that if internet marketers were actively using LinkedIn, would certainly appear between myself and Laura as shared contacts, and over the last 2 years I have certainly dropped by her blog a number of times.

This comment also shows the benefit of “paying it forward” and the value of providing information for free to eventually reach your goals.

There are quite a few expert marketers who normally charge their clients a great deal of money who I correspond with on a regular basis, simply because they have gained value from what I have offered for free.

One of the bonuses that Laura provides is some very specific email support – she states that she will answer 2 emails from her customers, and highlights the importance formulating those questions to receive maximum benefit. She is not going to exclude pleas for help, and win / win relationships can develop to extend the level of help provided.

I have always been happy to answer emails regarding the products I review both before someone makes a buying decision and afterwards, or you can just ask here in the comments.

I gained a great deal of value from Stampede Secrets. I might not realise that value immediately because I already employ many of the strategies and techniques discussed, and it is hard to quantify the effect any changes might have on my income.
Reading the ebook has certainly helped me highlight the action I should be taking to revitalise some of the niche websites I have had for a long time and hardly ever modify, because each is bringing in a small trickle of income.
Laura has helped me realise that it is possible to employ a few extra traffic strategies for these niche websites that could turn the flow of traffic into a gushing fountain.

Disclaimer:- I am one of the few people who received a free review copy of this ebook, possibly because I offered to take a look before publishing, that Laura reads my blog, and because she quoted me in the ebook. To be honest I might not have purchased the ebook just based upon the sales page. That is the value of affiliate marketing in pre-selling, or explaining the benefits of a product in an ethical manner

As far as I am currently aware, Clicky, developed by Roxr Software Ltd are not a direct competitor, and thus in my mind them having access to my data is potentially less risk.

Accuracy of Tracking Data

The accuracy of your tracking data is important, thus I am doing a test

Clicky
Performancing Metrics
Mybloglog

Just to give Performancing Metrics a slight advantage, I am going to include their tracking data first in my page.

Clicky does seem to have an edge currently on interface over MyBlogLog, but remember that as I previously wrote, MyBlogLog might well have an API available soon and that historical data is highly valuable if you have been using them for a while.

Also what happens if Clicky gets acquired? I feel more confident in a change over and longevity of the service if it is not being hosted on 3rd party servers.
If Performancing Metrics was just an affiliate white label, and they didn’t have anything to do with my data, I would be much happier to recommend them, but at this stage, Clicky direct gets my vote.

Update

Performancing Metrics and Clicky don’t seem to want to co-exist, thus one of them has to go at least until they improve their scripts so that they truly are different. Maybe there is a problem with shared declaration.

Performancing Metrics

Nothing highly personal, I would just prefer Clicky to have my data rather than Performancing.

UPDATE:- based on the information I currently have, I would much prefer to use and recommend the use of the Clicky service directly, rather than a white label version hosted by Performancing.

As is a tradition on this blog, I don’t have any favoritism, and I don’t hold any punches. It is what my readers expect, especially when I am also including affiliate links in a review.

Better The Devil You Know

There is a saying “Better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t”

Another equally good expression is “A wolf in sheep’s clothing”

Is Performancing Metrics A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing?

Possibly…

Splashpress Media

Splashpress media is the owner of Performancing.com , along with many notable blogs such as the Blog Herald.

I haven’t had any direct dealings with the guys at Splashpress Media, though I have frequented their blogs, linked to them, they link to me etc.
But…

Splashpress Media Are Competitors

If you are in a profitable niche, maybe they are not in your niche now, but they may be in the future.

Their terms and conditions suggest that they will not provide your data to third parties, but that doesn’t prevent them aggregating data for their own use.

Performancing Tracks Everything

The Performancing Metrics service is tracking click data, and that could well include monetization links to affiliate programs, advertising and PPC.
Performancing also tracks page views

This data even if just looked on in an aggregated manner could be used to identify niche markets that are profitable or experiencing high growth.

Bad Taste

I was debating whether to mention this, but decided it would be best to have everything out in the open from the off.

Recently there was a blogosphere scandal regarding MyBlogLog tracking Adsense clicks. I don’t know how the “learned” A-list “reputable” bloggers could have missed it as it was reported on a number of prominent blogs previously, and it was obvious the data was being tracked.

Performancing.com is edited by David Krug
901AM is owned by David Krug

Just a few weeks ago Duncan Riley was writing for 901AM (he is just a paid seat there), and reporting on the “MyBlogLog Adsense scandal“, which didn’t really exist.

It doesn’t take much effort to research whether you have your head stuck in the sand, or whether there is something real to any story. As an example Darren Rouse first reported about the Adsense feature back in September 2006, and Michael Gray had discussed it as well.

I actually noted at the time Duncan’s piece was written that in the footer of David Krug’s 901AM blog was a reference to Performancing Metrics, pre-prepared to become a hyperlink to a sister site in the future.

I actually still have a screenshot of the full story.

It will be interesting to see how many people who attacked MyBlogLog’s Adsense tracking write balanced reviews of Performancing Metrics.

You see there were 2 key points

• Whether people knew about the tracking
• Would tracking Adsense really get you banned

As mentioned above, Darren Rouse and a number of others had reported it, and as I previously wrote, it was fairly obvious that MyBlogLog was tracking Adsense.

Can tracking Adsense get you banned? Actually it may be the opposite, the only way to defend yourself if you are accused of click-fraud, and the only way to determine whether Adsese are tracking your clicks correctly.

Jeremy Zawodny was previously asking people whether their MyBlogLog Adsense tracking results compared well with those clicks allocated by Google. Don certainly saw a difference, and discussed the differences in stats with the Adsense team. That wsn’t the first occurrence.

It should also be noted that Performancing Metrics in its previous incarnation always tracked Adsense stats. It was a known feature, as is the case with many stats packages.

As far as I am concerned the story was ill-conceived hackbait, and as 901AM was connected with a soon to launch competitor, they definately shouldn’t have run the story, even if it was topical and written by a 3rd party (Duncan has no direct interest in Performancing Metrics)

Performancing Metrics Has Great Features

So that is the negativity out of the way, lets look at Performancing Metrics and what it has to offer.

It is free for most bloggers and cheap for the rest of us
The statistics seem to be accurate
The statistics are “almost live” due to caching, but much faster than things like Google Analytics
The interface is fast – Google Analytics honestly after more than a year still runds exceptionally slowly

This isn’t the old Performancing Metrics that were highly rates, but honestly I never really liked the interface. The new Performancing Metrics is Slick.

Would I use Performancing Metrics?

Damn tough question… probably on a few sites.

Whilst I might universally use Google Analytics on every site I own, I doubt I would use Performancing Metrics on my niche blogs that are not public knowledge.

I might use them on a few public sites, including this one although I would much prefer a situation that a purely monetization company is running a statistics service, and not a potential competitor.

Once I have some more stats to compare over the next week, I will write a full review.

But Performancing Metrics isn’t Performancing Metrics

It is just a rebranded version of Clicky as is being reported.

Do Performancing still get access to the data, and why no mention of this in the terms of service?

Here is the answer:-

It is not just a ploy to earn affiliate commissions – he has “officially” licensed our product and is hosting it on the Performancing servers. He believes in our product, as do we, otherwise we wouldn’t be in this position. I don’t know what else to say, but I think you are being overly negative for no good reason.

MyBlogLog API – Is There Going To Be One?

Absolutely, no doubt whatsoever, the question is when.

Scott Rafer stated this in the comments of my MyBlogLog Wish List post not so long ago.

Andy, we’re doing our best to assemble an API. Thanks for your suggestions.

What Type of Data Might MyBlogLog Make Available?

MyBlogLog Directly Related Data

• The communites you belong to
• The RSS Feed address of the communities
• Del.icio.us, Flickr and other membership details
• Your contacts and their details
• Comments

MyBlogLog Tracking Data

• Recent Visitors to your Community
• Recent Visitors to your Profile
• Specific Tracking Data of each Visitor
• Historical Data

Stanley Milgram’s Theory

“No two people are more than six degrees apart”

There is no guarantee that MyBlogLog will allow access to your extended network completely, but this is the theory networks like LinkedIn and Xing are founded upon.

You could potentially have access to:-

• The Blogs your readers are interested in
• The Contacts your readers have made
• The Sites that are most popular in your community

Mashups

I mentioned some of the possibilities in my MyBlogLog wish list. Here is a shorter version

Access to OPML will allow:-

• RSS Feed Readers
• Personal Community Meme Trackers
• 2nd Degree Community Meme Trackers
• Parse Tags and have topic based Meme Trakers
• Community Widgets
• Community Based Custom Search
• Ajax Start Page

Access to Tracking will allow:-

• Visual representation of tracking data
• Pinpoint what interests your core readership
• Combine tracking data with Adsense account data
• Tracking Data Widgets

Access to Comments will allow:-

• Community Discussion
• Merge MBL comments with comments on your blog

MyBlogLog Is Still Alive?

MyBlogLog popularity certainly took a little bit of a dip over the last month but is recovering strongly

There is a good reason I include a quote from Dane Morgan on my about page. It is not just because it was complementary, but because I know he is a very smart cookie, that has been around the block a few times with all kinds of affiliate marketing. He is vastly more experienced than I am.

I am a marketer and also like many online marketing tpes, I love tracking of all kinds, because it helps me with my business. Millions of dollars are saved each year by smart marketers using various forms of tracking and split testing to improve their Adwords performance.
If you are running Adsense, again you should be tracking and testing different things. Having some idea of who is clicking an Adsense advert such as an IP address is vital if an advertiser complains to Google about click fraud.

It also should be noted that many of the largest advertising networks are also lumped into the exact same “parasite” barrel as it seems MyBlogLog has done, but at least Dane has managed to get something corrected.

Dane knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, so if you have any questions, dont hesitate to ask him.
Continue reading Is MyBlogLog a Parasite over on Danes blog for full details.

I am very much pro MyBlogLog – most people are very much pro Google and Amazon as well, and they collect heaps of data about what you do on the internet.

I use a few of them myself, but picked up some great sites to check out, especially Wufoo, and I am sick and tired of contact form results ending up in my spam folder on Gmail, despite being sent using my own email address, whitelisting myself, and dragging form results out of the bin multiple times.

Darren Rouse Logs

Someone was checking results for Darren on Yahoo. How do I know? I spotted it in my MyBlogLog stats that they had clicked through.

I was actually quite shocked

So I decided to go and check it out…as you do, as you do ;)

Changes at Yahoo

Well I was aware that Yahoo might have had a little tweak of their algorithms recently. I hadn’t been seeing much search traffic, but then this blog really needed to “settle in” a little.
Looks like they have fixed things a little…

Yes, I bet you wish you could rank for uncompetitive terms as well

Darren Rouse in Yahoo

I think Darren Rouse is in many ways a harder term to rank for, because he gets talked about so much.

Ooh… is that a tag page

It is actually a poorly optimized one as well – now WordPress 2.1 is finally here I will get to work a little.

Actually if you look at the single post that was on the tag page (before this one), you will notice that the only mention of “darren rouse” is in the page title, and the tag on the page.

Darren Rouse in Google

Do Google still like tag pages?

It looks that way, but then it might just be an “allintitle: Darren Rouse” thing.

Anyway this is just a small demonstration on how easy it is to rank for uncompetitive terms.

There are still millions of untapped niche markets waiting to be explored / exploited