| Blitz
Ezine #281 ~~ April 1st , 2008
Thinking Creatively,how to use an ad tracker
The Blitz-Promotions News Letter
Issue no. 281, April 1st , 2008
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Blitz Comments
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This month we'll be talking about thinking creatively and using an ad tracker. Hopefully you have a wonderful April.
Every day or two we talk some about promotion (as well as fun things too on our blog)
http://smallbizpromo.blogspot.com/
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In this Issue
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- Thinking Creatively
- How to use an ad tracker.
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Food for thought
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"...remember, the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something." - Randy Pausch.
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Seven Fundamental Strategies for...
Superb Creative Thinking
By Dr Jill Ammon-Wexler
Peak performance expert
© 2005 All Rights Reserved.
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Strategy 1. Embrace Your Problems
One of the most fundamental skills of creativity is the ability to recognize an opportunity and seize it.
You have countless opportunities to expand your creative thinking skills. Such opportunities present themselves daily at home, while driving to work, during meetings or lunch -- or while just hanging out with friends.
There’s really no shortage of opportunities to refine and develop your creativity. The most basic approach is to recognize that a “problem” may actually be a golden opportunity for a creative explosion – and seize the moment.
Strategy 2. Challenge Your Assumptions
It’s natural and necessary to make assumptions about the reality of our everyday world. We would otherwise spend all of our waking hours performing unnecessary mental analyses of ordinary things.
As a result, many times we see only what we expect to see. Our analysis of a situation or a problem is based entirely on assumptions based on our past experience or “accepted knowledge.”
Plus assumptions can become so entrenched it doesn’t cross our mind to challenge them. This often occurs later in life – when one’s assumptions are no longer questioned, although time has passed and things have changed.
A problem may arise simply because we perceive a situation or condition through a set of false assumptions preventing clear thinking.
Challenging your assumptions is an important component of creativity. This allows you to look beyond what is obvious or already accepted. And it leads straight to the creative breakthroughs you’re looking for.
Truly creative people in all fields of interest tend to automatically challenge both their own assumptions, and the “commonly accepted knowledge” about a problem. This mental attitude is the true source of all of the world’s great inventions and businesses.
The moment you choose to challenge one of your assumptions as possibly “untrue” or “incomplete,” you are on the way to discovering something new and different.
Strategy 3. Take Some Risks
A willingness to take risks is at the very heart of creativity.
No creative person succeeds without first failing – as failures are part of the process of testing one’s assumptions. There is simply no creativity without “failure.”
To experience major creative breakthroughs, it’s important to become comfortable taking risks. Each “failure” you encounter will actually supercharge your creativity by generating new information.
If you’re unwilling to take risks and deal with what ordinary people call “failure,” then you cannot expect to become a great creative thinker.
Modern neuroscience has shown that our brains are literally rewired each time we learn something new by “making a mistake.” The brain is designed to learn through the trial and error process.
Strategy 4. Use Alternative Thinking
To come up with a creative idea, you will often need a new vantage point. Creating a new solution to an existing problem, for example, may require looking at the problem from a fresh perspective.
There are many tools used by creative thinkers to create such a fresh perspective, including: Brainstorming, MESV creative visualization, and considering the problem from a fresh vantage point.
The tools of brainstorming and MESV creative visualization can be further explored by clicking the links in the above paragraph, or at www.quantum-self.com
Additionally, a great way to kickstart your creativity is to look at your problem from the vantage point of another profession. If you are a mechanical engineer, for example, how would an architect view your problem? Or if you are a product designer, how would an interior decorator approach your problem?
This approach can lead to some remarkable creative breakthroughs.
Strategy 5. Accept Ambiguity
Many people prefer that everything be clear and unambiguous. They are uncomfortable with anything that seems vague, or could have more than one meaning or application. As a result they tend to be rigid, highly predictable thinkers.
A touch of ambiguous thinking during the idea generation stage of the creative process has the power to bring out genius-level ideas.
People who can think ambiguously are fluid and flexible thinkers. The ability to think ambiguously can yield amazing creative insights. This is ability is experienced (and built) when you indulge in wordplay or humor.
Strategy 6. Expand Your Vision
An excellent way to build your creative muscles is to read and explore outside your normal area of interest. This can be especially useful when you are struggling to solve a creative problem.
Strategy 7. Massage your Brainwaves
Creative thinking best occurs when your brain is in certain states called “alpha and theta.” You are in an “alpha/theta” state when your brain is producing a predominance of slower brainwaves, as opposed to the faster beta brainwaves associated with normal waking consciousness.
Alpha/theta brainwaves are the reason many people have creative ah-ha experiences during a nap, a stroll, or some other mentally-relaxing activity.
But consciously entering into an alpha/theta state can be a challenge. Meditators spend years learning to initiate this state on will, but modern technology has introduced a much faster method of building alpha/theta expertise – brainwave training. Be sure to check it out – your creativity will never be the same.
Incidentally, a great side benefit of entering into the alpha/theta brainwave state is virtually instant stress reduction!
Dr Jill Ammon-Wexler was one of the first to introduce brainwave training to the corporate world. She has served as a consultant to the Pentagon and a Presidential Commission, and provided peak performance training to thousands of executives and executive teams. Her brainwave training is available online at the web’s first mental workout ezone – the Quantum Brain Gym.
Come visit the exciting Self Discovery Community. Discover the most interesting, unusual, stimulating and creative methods of self discovery on the web today! Free sizzling weekly ezine, and the web's first Brain Gym ezone. http://www.quantum-self.com
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23 Ways To Use An Ad Tracker
by Harvey Segal
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FOR AFFILIATES
#1. The Long Url Problem
Have you ever seen an ad where you are asked to click on an affiliate URL so long that it stretches over 2 lines, like this
http://www/anysite.com/cgi-bin/dir1/dir2/.cgi?code=
123RT&type=102
35&subid=89715
Do you think your reader will bother to do the necessary cut and paste to put it in a browser?
Probably not.
And that's probably one lost sale.
And even a one line affiliate link may exceed the permissible length for some ad posting requirements.
The solution: use a short tracking URL.
#2. Losing Your Affiliate Code
As an affiliate you may have your affiliate code embedded in a link something like this:
http://www.abc.com/123
Some customers will bypass the affiliate code and just type in the home URL http://www.abc.com (possibly because they think that they will be paying extra for an agent's
commission)
The solution: use a tracking URL - so that your affiliate code number is never seen.
#3. Make Your Ad Stand Out
You may have seen search engine results showing near identical listings for the same product, differing only in an affiliate code appended to the URL.
Your listing here will be just one of many unless you make it stand out. So bypass the standard affiliate URL and use a tracking URL.
#4. How Effective Are The Links
You can measure and compare the effectiveness of the different banners or text links the affiliate programs provide you by using a tracking URL.
#5. Changing Links
If an affiliate company change their links then your existing ads, wherever they are posted, become worthless.
But if you use a tracking URL you simply revise the affiliate URL at the tracking control centre.
#6. Affiliate Program Discontinued
Similarly if an affiliate program is discontinued you just change your tracking URL to a new page where you explain the circumstances and point your visitor to your other promotions.
#7. Better Affiliate Stats
Not all affiliate programs provide you with stats about visitors.
And if they do are they adequate ?
Compare a basic monthly figure say
- Jan: 39 hits
with a detailed analysis such as
- Jan 12: 10 hits
- Jan 13: 2 hits
- Jan 20: 21 hits
- Jan 21: 6 hits
where you can relate those dates to particular ad campaigns.
Tracking URLs will give you these improved figures.
#8. Checking Affiliate Stats
Even if you do receive good stats from your affiliate
program it still makes sense to use tracking URLs so that
you can compare your figures with theirs.
A large discrepancy could mean errors in their software or
(hopefully not) fraudulent activity on their part.
An alternative reason is that their measurement takes place
when their page is fully loaded rather than at the start,
indicating that visitors are clicking away because it is
taking too long to load.
FOR EZINE PUBLISHERS
#9. Win Advertisers With Tracking Reports
If you sell advertising space in your ezine you can offer to
your advertisers to replace their URLs with your tracking
URLs and Email them the results.
Tell your advertisers about these benefits in your
advertising guidelines
- They will know the number of clickthroughs their ad has
generated. They can then decide how to improve the ads for
better performance
- If they use a tracker program with your own domain name in
the tracking URL your ezine subscribers will be more
inclined to click
- They can use your ezine as a test centre, modifying their
ads until they are happy, before launching with other
publishers
#10. Use Tracking Report Results
The tracking reports above will provide you with information
on your subscribers' interests, influencing your editorial
content and helping you select which potential advertisers
to approach
Also, once your advertisers have seen for themselves the
benefits of an ad tracking program they will be inclined to
purchase one. So set yourself up as an affiliate for a
program and promote it to them.
#11. Measure Your Readership
You may know how many subscribers you have but how many
actually open and read your ezine and which parts of it
attract most attention ?
Here's how to find out if you distribute your ezine in HTML
Format: include an image on your page, e.g a banner or logo
or a single pixel GIF. Then reference this image with a
tracking URL.
For an ezine distributed as plain text it is not possible to
see if it is actually opened or read. But what you can do is
insert tracking URLs at the appropriate points, such as
product offers or special articles, and get comparative
figures for which items are being read.
AT YOUR WEB SITE
#12. The Problem Of Permanent URLs
Web sites are continually evolving and changing.
You may want to rename a page to make it more consistent
and
logical but there's a huge problem. You have given out the
URL in an ebook, or a directory submission, or an article or
wherever. There's no way you can undo this.
The solution ?
Never provide the actual URL, just a tracking URL. You can
then just edit the link at the tracking centre whenever a
page is moved or renamed.
The external links, in your ebook for example, stay the same
but they will redirect to your new page.
#13. What Are Your Visitors Doing ?
You have text links all over your site, links to your other
pages and links to recommended sites.
Where are your visitors clicking ?
Where are they leaving your site, why, how can you stop
them ?
Which graphic do they click on the most ?
Do they click on the text link more than the graphic link?
Your log files may tell you at best which are the most
popular pages at your site but it is vital to know how your
visitors move through your site and what is tempting them.
Use tracking URLs to replace actual links wherever you need
to monitor click activity.
#14. Sell Website Advertising Space
You can offer tracking reports to your advertisers in the
same way as for ezine publishers (above).
#15. Stop Piracy
If you have invested man-months of time setting up a vital
resource site involving a directory of links it's very easy
for a pirate to simply copy your page and provide useful
content for his own site.
If you use tracking URLs for those directory links you can
detect this copy - because the ad tracking program will
record the referring URL.
At the same time of course you can measure the popularity of
the directory links.
USING PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES
#16. Better Click Activity Reporting
Pay per click search engines will report to you click
activity on your URL. Engines vary in the frequency and
format of the reporting so you can use tracking URLs instead
to obtain better information.
#17. Prevent Fraudulent Activity
You can compare your figures with the engine's and should
query any large discrepancy.
If click activity is unusually high you may have a
competitor clicking on just to incur costs against you. You
may be able to detect this by comparing the figures for
unique hits and actual hits (several hits per visitor).
OFFLINE MARKETING
#18. Check How Successful
If you have ever wondered whether it was worth advertising
off line because of the supposed impossibility of measuring
the response then ad tracking URLs will answer that problem.
Just include them in your ads in
- newspapers
- magazines
- flyers
- billboards
- press releases
- shop notice boards
- and so on
#19. Use The Time Reports
The date and time when clicks are made will allow you to
check the progress of your ads, for example
- has your newspaper ad been submitted yet ?
- has your billboard notice been removed ?
- how long does a magazine ad stay around ?
For a long running ad you can study the response and switch
the link midstream if necessary to an improved web page.
EBOOKS
#20. Do Free Books Work ?
The main purpose of a free ebook is to get the reader back
to your site. But how successful is it proving ?
Put tracking URLs in the book and you will find out.
#21. Maintain Control After Download
Once your ebook is downloaded it would appear that you no
longer have any control over it. Not so. You can redirect
the reader to other pages of your site by changing the
tracking Url links.
OTHER WAYS
#22. Become An Ad Tracking Affiliate
Since ad tracking programs are high demand marketing tools
you can profit by joining their affiliate program (if they
have one).
Owning the product that you promote always gives that extra
advantage e.g you can give an example of how you use it or a
personal testimonial as to how it has benefited you.
#23. Privacy
You may want to post an URL somewhere and - for reasons of
your own - not let it reveal your website. You can do this
with an ad tracking program where the supplier domain name
is used in the tracking URL.
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For more details about the above tips and yet more ways to use
an ad tracker see Harvey's free ebook Ad Tracking SuperTips
http://www.ad-tracking.com/adbook.html
Publishers can reproduce this article and change the URL
to point to their own
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Links you can use -
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A free tool to use to track your time.
http://www.toggl.com/
A good article on using Microsoft adcenter for keyword research.
Click Here.
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Some Fun Links
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100 Things we didn't know last year.
Click Here
Every Friday we talk about some fun things we do in our blog. Make sure to check it out.
http://smallbizpromo.blogspot.com/
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Useful links
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Ezine
Archives links to all our past issues (well most
of them) in one place.
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Next Issues
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Our
next issue will be May 6th, 2008
Tim
and Lisa Hamblin
Tisa Enterprises
PO Box 221
Hazard KY 41702
http://www.blitzpromotions.com
http://www.crochetnmore.com
http://www.webpageplanner.com
http://www.ineedlinks.com |
