Trackers - Episode III

I've written two hubs on referrals and tracking. They're still worth reading, and you're probably better off reading them before you read this hub.

This hub is less formal. I've often dished out advice on the forum, and via email, to people wanting to know more how tracking and referrals work. Questions that weren't directly dealt with in the first two hubs.

This hub will cover the bits that sort of slip between the cracks. If you read my two other hubs and didn't understand, then read them again. And follow the instructions outlined.

You might not get it the first time. That's alright. That doesn't mean neither I nor you are stupid. I didn't fail in explaining and you're not that dumb that you don't understand. What HubPages has created is a real mind blowing system. You won't get it in the first pass. I didn't when it was explained to me by someone else a long time ago. And to understand it better myself I started taking notes. Which after a bit of polishing became the Introduction to Referrals.

One reason why grasping the HubPages Referral/Tracking thing is so elusive is that trackers do two things at once. Which is very clever.

You can get 10% of the traffic you send to someone else as your own ad views. This is a nice little reward for sending people to hubs that are not your own.

The same tracking token directed at the new user sign up page also allows people to sign up and you get credited. For the life of that persons account you get 10% of the pageviews for your affiliate IDs on their hubs (taken from the HubPages share of the impressions).

So that means, if you send someone to someone elses hub and this visitor ends up signing up to hubpages, you get the credit for it! Or you can directly send people to sign up at HubPages from your own profile, hubs or anywhere else on the internet (ie: your own blog or website).

So HubPages have two ways of rewarding you, the person who is bringing fresh traffic to the site (for sending traffic or referrals), and it being the same tracking system.

Talk about a win/win/win situation (you/me/hubpages).

Use Referral Trackers to generate impressions and monitor referrals.

HubPages is all about interacting with the Internet community, and there's no better way to spread the HubLove than through links to HubPages. Every time you place a link to someone's HubPage in an email, forum post, or website, you'll receive a share of the impressions the Hub generates.

To keep tabs on these referrals, you'll need to attach a Referral Tracker to your links. The default tracker is all that's required, but you can create up to twenty independent trackers — each with a unique name and descriptions — to help you determine the best linking strategies.

Two easy ways to link using a Referral Tracker:

1. Just click the "link to this page" on the footer of the page you want to link to.

2. To create a unique Referral Tracker, you'll insert an underscore and a unique referral tracker into the HubPage URL. For example, let's say your unique tracker is "signups" and you want to create a link to a hub with the URL "http//hubpages.com/hub/Seattle_Coffee_Shops". You would insert an underscore, followed by your unique tracker "signups" into the URL. The new link will read http://hubpages.com/_signups/hub/Seattle_Coffee_Shops

Source

The format is that the tracker is always after the hubpages.com/

So if you're directing a person to hubpages.com it is hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/

If it's to the forum it is hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/forum (Yep, you can send tracked traffic to the forum).

Your profile would be hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/profile/sunforged (if you are infact Mr Sunforged)

A hub: hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/hub/capsules

Provided a person has an underscore and their tracker name straight after hubpages.com/ it should work without problem.

Alternately you can always use the SHARE option on any hub page. Click on SHARE then choose "Link to this page". Step 1 allows you to select your HubPages Referral Tracker. Step 3 has the URL with the Tracker inserted.

It's an easy way to create a tracker, but it's not set up for other pages (New User Sign Up, Forums, Profiles, etc).

People are often concerns about whether or not their tracker is working right.

Provided you've followed the advice above, then there shouldn't be a problem.

There have been in the last 3 years, perhaps twice, when the referrer stats have 'frozen'. (once for a couple of days, the other time maybe three days). But when the stats came up online and refreshed it appeared to have still kept tracking the referrals even when it wasn't updating. So they still kept doing the right thing.

This was confirmed to me even more so when I had signed up a new account under a friends referral tracker in between the first and second day of the frozen stats (I check them every morning, so I didn't realize until the next day after I had signed up the new account that the stats were frozen). I was of course concerned that it may not have credited the referral, but once the stats had updated my friend had confirmed that the new profile was indeed credited to him.

So don't worry about whether those stats are working properly. Provided you are doing the right thing, HubPages Inc are always going to keep up their end of the bargain.

I've kept track of my referral stats since December 2007. Occasionally at first but then I just got into the swing of it by having the referral page as one of my Firefox homepage tabs.

I'll share a sample of my stats for January 2008, January 2009, January 2010 and January 2011.

NB: If you ever see the hubs, referrers or traffic numbers go down (rather than remain steady or rise) it will be because one of your referrals had hubs unpublished or their account deleted. Which is something that will happen to people scamming or disobeying the rules.

Traffic views that you see in your URL Trackers Stats Page aren't actually counted in your own page view count that you see in your account page.

I came to this conclusion on my own using a sophisticated method involving my brain.

There are two 120 minute windows involving the tracking system.

Here's scenario #1:

A visitor stumbles onto HubPages via a referral tracker you have somewhere out in the world wild web, and its not even to one of your hubs, its to one that you thought was very interesting. Lets assume they have absolutely no intention whatsoever to sign up to HubPages, but they are going to stumble aimlessly around the site because they've got 4 hours to kill and they have a thirst for knowledge.

1 in 10 ads are going to carry your Adsense Publisher ID. So if they happen to click on such an ad, you get the revenue. This only lasts for 2 hours... 120 minutes.

After that time, even if they stick around for another couple of hours and open up and read another 20 hubs, your ads will no longer be showing.

Scenario #2:

A person comes to HubPages (much like in scenario #1) and they're clicking around and at some point they decide to sign up to HubPages. That initial 120 minute window of opportunity is yours and yours alone. It wouldn't matter if they clicked on one of my trackers sending them straight to the sign up page at 1 hour and 45 minutes, they'll still be all yours.

(How HubPages tracks all this is through a 'cookie'. A little bit of information that is cached in your browser temp folder on your computer. Though if people have cookies turned off by default then you're all outta luck.)

Of course the cookie lasts for 30 days, but for that initial 120 minutes, they are all yours.

Now if some time after that initial 120 minute window they click on one of my tracking links, then I get a 120 minute of opportunity. But once that time is up, it will revert back to your 30 day cookie.

If they eventually sign up (within that 30 days) and provided they haven't clicked on a tracker within the last 120 minutes, you'll get the sign up.

If you're sending people to a specific hub, then that's easy. Just send them to the hub. Whether it be yours or someone else's.

Interlinking related hubs is a good way to get referrals without forcing it on the visitor. It helps if you do have related topics. That might be why I've done so well, having large collections of hubs dealing with specific subjects, ie: Roman Emperors, Greek Philosophers, Australian Animals, Weight Training Exercises.

But if you want to send them straight to the sign up page you need to send them here: http://hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/user/new/

(Please note: if you are signed in and visit that page it will say "You are currently signed into HubPages as user 'YOUR NAME'". If you are signed out, as a new visitor will be, you get the sign up page)

Alternatively you can also send people to a 'landing page':

http://hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/help/landing_paidtoblog
http://hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/help/landing_e1
http://hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/help/landing_e2
http://hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/help/landing_e3

That will give a little bit more information if the people are unaware of what HubPages is about or what they have to offer.

There is also a Tour of HubPages which might be a good start to the uninitiated:

http://hubpages.com/_YOURTRACKERHERE/tour/hubpages/

You don't have to use the default tracker, you can have your own custom name.

Doing so is a useful way to keep track of where the traffic is coming from. As well as allowing the tracker blend in.

For instance, all my How To Hub hubs use the _learn tracker. It looks appropriate.

For links to forum threads I use _punbb, because that's the software that powers the forum. So _punbb/forum doesn't look out of place.

For official FAQ and help pages I use _about

For sending people to the sign up page I use _join

For my internal traffic I use _click

When linking to the excellent hubs of my fellow hubmasters I use _featured

It also allows me to check my stats and see how well they're performing.

Here's a few other trackers I use:
_facebooked/
_tagfooted/
_gather/

This way I am able to see just how well the traffic I send from Facebook (and other sites) perform. Whether it's me sending it to my own hubs or the hubs of other people who have written something I enjoyed and want to share with my friends, I use the same link.

You can follow my example or come up with your own system. But the ability to name trackers is a very powerful tool and can be used in your online traffic campaigns to measure just how effective you are.

Fifty.

You might not find an official mention of that on the site. They had previous limits of 20, then 30. When I hit 30 I asked nicely if I could have some more, so they upped everyones limit to 50.

Someone recently asked in the forum: "Is it limited to two outgoing links like other affiliate codes?"

They are internal links, not outbound. So there is no limit to hubpages.com links with or without the tracker.

HubPages has, without a doubt, the best referral system for any online publishing site (The only way they could make it better is if there was a second tier, getting even just 1% of a referrals referrals ad impressions, from HP's share of course).

Factoidz.com had a similar system to HubPages, though the only referral was one direct to the sign up page, they didn't have tracking for individual pages. But then they changed all that. They made it that if your referral publishes 20 articles you get $10. They've probably changed it a few times since then too, Mike Quoc is renowned for moving the goalposts and changing the rules as he sees fit. But that's a discussion for another hub.

Squidoo gives $5 when a referral hits $15 in earnings (Adsense, Ebay and Amazon). In my first three years of using HubPages (and referring 2666 people) I had been at Squidoo for 4 years and referred about 300 people. And in that time I saw just 5 of those pay out.

HubPages has a system that rewards in the short term in a small way, but in the long term, it... never... stops.

There are other sites that have other referral systems, but not as powerful, flexible or rewarding as HubPages. If there is any that compare, feel free to show me, and if everything checks out, I'll gladly sign under you.

HubPages introduced a Link Suggestion Tool. You'll see it when you view your own hubs when not in Edit Mode.

It encourages you to link to other hubbers hubs. By doing so you increase your "HubKarma".

I have a problem with that. Giving away my hard earned traffic for free. So my HubKarma hasn't never got over 50. And it doesn't concern me.

And I'm seeing people link keywords in their hubs to other hubs (or topic pages) that have little relevance.

If you want to fill your hubs with links to other hubs, go for it. If you want to link to mine, even better. But I'll only ever link to other hubs for a good reason, and if I find it beneficial to my audience. And it will always have one of my trackers in it.

I'll be answering these questions:

• Do Trackers count as Backlinks?
• Where does the 10% come from?
• Where shouldn't I use referrals?
• Can I see how much my referrals have made me?
• How can I get more referrals?

Also feel free to ask any Tracker/Referral related questions in the Comments Box below and I'll try my best to point you in the right direction.