Shorten URL service with tracking function

[Grahamh]

Have you tried this yet?

Lots of people use tinyurl.com to cloak affiliate links etc. If you post a link to Twitter then it defaults to a tinyurl link.

But here is a new one that not only shortens and cloaks your link, it also provides a tracking service so that you can check on open rates for your links.

How cool is that!

Check it out http://cli.gs/

Graham

[Mike Merz]

Seems you're right on with your preference, Graham.

Lee Odden recently took a poll, and Cli.gs actually edged out Budurl.com ... interesting.

Best,

Mike

[Grahamh]

Hi Mike,

Yep stuff floats in my little backwater every now and again and I grab it.

We all like freeeee, so I go looking for stuff that makes life that bit easier.

A bit off topic with JV stuff, but hey, we're all marketers and tools are useful.

For instance I've been looking for mindmaps that can be shared for working on projects (free of course)
and came up with these two.

www.bubbl.us
http://www.mindomo.com/

Maybe you know of others?

Cheers,

Graham

[Shawn Horwood]

I have been using tinyurl, but I am now switching over to Cli.gs.

I have also been using bubbl.us for all of my mind maps. I have never heard of Mindomo before. Thanks for the resources.

Another resource for mind maps is Gliffy.com

Shawn

[Earl Stringer]

Hey Graham, Great find! I just started using cli.gs and I love it!
Thanks,

[Garland Coulson]

This kind of tracking has some use, but it is better to use tracking that actually tracks where each sale and signup comes from.

Knowing how many people click is not all that useful. But knowing what marketing/advertising actually results in a sale is "the holy grail" of Internet marketing.

[Larry Tosten]

If I have my own domain and use a PHP redirect is it possible to imbed tracking code from a program like affiliate prophet in the coding for the php redirect so that I capture the data prior to redirecting them.

For instance:
I have a domain with a name like truthful-reviews.com. I write reviews on social sites like hub pages, squidoo, etc. but the outbound links go to my domain, something like truthful-reviews.com/recommends/productx

productx.php is a redirect that takes someone to my affiate's site with my affiliateid but at the same time it passes through productx.php I have a tracking code there to capture where the traffic was coming from. Is this possible? I've bought affiliate prophet and conversion prophet but don't want to spend alot of wasted time trying to figure it out if this concept won't work.

Anybody tried this?

[c4rves]

Hi there Graham,
Another good one is bit.ly not only does It track/shorten but also is a bit like delicious, where there is a community (twitter),people can search for tags, click your link at a later date.

[William Schuler]

There are also free and mildly priced scripts that you can install on your own domain to create your own (private) tinyurl service. Some of them give you the ability to "monetize" the redirect by displaying a quick sales or ad page before arriving at the actual inked to page.

I've installed one on my displaceddads.com blog site that I'm experimenting with now.

Bill

[William Schuler]

If I have my own domain and use a PHP redirect is it possible to imbed tracking code from a program like affiliate prophet in the coding for the php redirect so that I capture the data prior to redirecting them.

For instance:
I have a domain with a name like truthful-reviews.com. I write reviews on social sites like hub pages, squidoo, etc. but the outbound links go to my domain, something like truthful-reviews.com/recommends/productx

productx.php is a redirect that takes someone to my affiate's site with my affiliateid but at the same time it passes through productx.php I have a tracking code there to capture where the traffic was coming from. Is this possible? I've bought affiliate prophet and conversion prophet but don't want to spend alot of wasted time trying to figure it out if this concept won't work.

Anybody tried this?

Larry,

I'm not sure how those two products work, but the way you described the concept, it seems to make sense. It probably gives you the granularity that you are looking for versus analyzing the web server logs and getting statistics that way.

If you have cPanel as part of your hosting package, there is a lot of information that can be gained by looking at the domain or sub domain statistics though.... unique visitors, page popularity, search keyword stats, referring sites, etc. Most of the tools that hosting providers include with cPanel give you monthly, down to hourly statistics.

Bill