How HubPage Tracking Works

If you haven't read it already I suggest you check out the light introduction to HubPage Referrals.

It's a quick read and outlines the basics.

Referrals work in two ways...

1) If someone signs up for a HubPages account via your referral link, you get 10% of their pageviews for the life of their hubs. That doesn't take away from their own pageviews, HubPages Inc graciously give up 10% of their share to you for spreading the word and getting others to join up.

2) You can refer other peoples Hubs and get a cut of the pageviews. 9% or 12% depending on whether there's an signup referrer already involved and getting their 10% cut of the pageviews. This is taken again, from HubPages Inc's share of the pageviews. So it's a win/win situation when you promote or link to a fellow Hub Authors page. Their article gets exposure and you get a reward for sending them traffic.

These splits apply only to HubPages and User Profile pages. On all other pages, such as a referral to a Tag page or the HubPages home page, you’ll receive 30% on a traffic referral, with HubPages getting the rest.

How does the Traffic Referral program work?

You can drive traffic to the Hubs of other Hubbers and receive a percentage of the overall impressions. The traffic referral program works the following way:

1. We start with Unique Trackers

Every HubPages account has its own default referral tracker – referred to as a Unique Tracker. You can create additional referral trackers as you organize your link campaigns.

2. Use the Unique Tracker to link to someone’s Hub.

Before you can link, you must be signed in to HubPages. Then, when you’re at the Hub you want to link to, look at the bottom of the page (or click the green share it button). There will be two boxes marked “link to this page” and “email this page”. You can click on these links and choose the Unique Tracker you want to insert in the email, URL or HTML code we will generate for you. From that point, you can either send the mail, or cut and paste the URL link or HTML code and place it wherever you’d like.

3. The Traffic Referrals is guaranteed to be yours for 120 minutes.

If someone clicks on your link to a specific Hub, you are entitled to the traffic referral impressions for 120 minutes. We set this limit because there may be multiple Hubbers referring people to a particular Hub. No other tracker can replace yours during that 120 minute period. This is called the ‘first dibs’ rule.

Source

They'll give you a default tracker which will look something like this: 1pk0ue4rz5p3q

Now if I wanted to send someone to my hub on How HubPAges Works I'd give them this URL: http://hubpages.com/_1pk0ue4rz5p3q/hub/howhubworks

On every hub, yours and others, there is a bit down near the bottom that says "Share It". If you click on that and then click on "Link To Page" you get given a nifty little feature that makes it easy for anyone to get the code you need to refer others.

There is a better option, and that is creating your own unique referral ID. You can create up to twenty independent trackers, each with a unique name and descriptions, to help you see which linking strategies are working best for you.

Get clever with the way you use them. Don't make it look like it's you that's referring the page. On one hand I think that the default tracker looks far too random. I prefer to use a generic term for the tracker ID.

eg:

join

recommended

read

main

click

about

_recommended if you're referring someone elses hubpages: http://hubpages.com/_recommended/hub/Parents-Guide

_main if you're sending them to the homepage: http://hubpages.com/_main

_about if you want people to read the FAQ: http://hubpages.com/_about/faq

_join would be excellent for encouraging someone to sign up: http://hubpages.com/_join/user/new/

Some people can be a bit wary of signing up to sites through affiliate links. So disguising them as something subtle and inoffensive can improve your sign up ratio. Personally I have no qualms with signing up for a legitimate offer through someone elses referral link. They were after all the person who brought it to my attention and they deserve a reward.

This is where you set up your URL Trackers.

Please note: A referral tracker is unique. Once claimed it is yours and yours alone. No one else can set up a tracker with the same name. And you won't be able to set up a tracker that is already taken. The system will immediately notify you if the one you're trying to claim is already taken.

If you're the first one to introduce someone to HubPages the information is stored for 30 days. So anytime within the next 30 days if they go from being just a visitor to becoming an Author, you get credited with the referral. And of course all the benefits that come with it.

Now if someone else has already claimed that "prize" and the visitor comes back via your URL tracker they're all yours for 2 hours. So 9% to 12% of page impressions will carry your ads.

It also means that within that 2 hour time frame if a person signs up to HubPages then you land the 10% of page impressions for the life of that new Authors soon to be published Hubs.

Signup and hub statistics for URL Trackers are processed every 20 minutes or so. They are not be updated immediately when the account is created.

Also, if the user has clicked on another link with a tracker in the previous 2 hours, the tracker in your link will be ignored.

The page you link to within hubpages.com makes no difference as far as the tracking goes. You can link to almost anywhere on HubPages, you don't have to limit yourself to your own Hubs.

When a visitor clicks on a link with a tracker in and they don't have a tracker already it is set so it will last for up to 30 days.

The tracker stats on your user profile page are updated every 20 minutes. They won't show new sign ups or published hubs immediately.

If you have multiple HubPages accounts, don't try and refer your new account from your old account. HubPages has the ability and will exercise their right to remove self-referrals.

It should immediately resolve to the page you had inserted your tracker into, with the tracker disappearing. That computer, if it hadn't been cookied in the last 2 hours by another referral tracker, will be cookied with your referral tracker for 30 days (although it could get overwritten by another after 2 additional hours).

When should you refer?

Whenever you link to another hub. Whether it is yours or someone elses. Linking from one hub to another, use a tracker. The sooner you can get in and claim that cookie the better.

Here of course.

Read more about it in the hub I've called Trackers - Episode III