Track results
Track results is the last building block in the affiliate marketing process.
Feedback like where your visitors are coming from, which form of advertising
returns the best results, which pages on your site are the most popular, etc are
critical to the measuring success. If you can't measure it you can't improve it.
Presumably you are using multiple methods of driving traffic to your site and
not all to the same page on your site. Knowing how many visitors your site is
getting on a daily or monthly basis is very important but so too is the source
of your visitors. Some might be arriving from a link in one of your forum posts
or articles. Others might be autoresponder responses or ezine ad responses etc.
Some might be coming to the first page they are directed to and leaving from
that same page while others might like what they see and stick around looking at
what else you have on offer on other pages.
To be able to measure your results you need an ad tracking program. You can
either use tracking software which you purchase and download to your PC
or a tracking service to which you purchase membership and access on the
net whenever necessary.
Whether to choose software or service depends to a large extent on the degree
of autonomy you desire. The software route gives you greater independence but
added responsibility for installation maintenance and upgrades. The service
route relieves you of responsibility but you're more vulnerable and totally
reliant on their efficiency for your operation. If they cease to operate bang go
all your links!