Don’t Be Lazy with Tracking Codes
October 10, 2007
In this post I discussed how one of my affiliate providers canceled an offer that I had built a website around. Because I wanted to preserve all of the hard work I put into the development, I was forced to find another affiliate company who had the same offer. Although the process was a pain, I eventually got everything back in order…or at least most of it.
I probably spent three hours going through my website changing all of the affiliate links that I dropped in pages and posts. I purposely took my time to avoid having to go back through the process again. However, much to my dismay I am still getting 5 to 10 clicks a day reported by the old provider. They do redirect these clicks to another offer, but it really is a waste of targeted traffic.
The bigger issue is that I can’t find what links are producing these clicks! I have gone through every post twice now (all 83 of them) without any luck. Since I use very basic tracking codes (post, banner, sidebar, etc) it doesn’t really help me find the source. Even worse is that I gave the site a major overhaul this summer and some of the tracking codes are left over from the old site.
The bottom line is that you shouldn’t be lazy with tracking codes! Make them as targeted as possible not only to track performance, but to make your transition between offers much easier.
