Today I finished setting up the backbone to my website. I ensured that my website is extremely flexible to allow me to change my landing pages easily and I also wanted good tracking of my campaigns to ensure that I can tweak and refine my ads based on the landing and conversion statistics. It is important to know which ads are working for me and which ads are not so that Darwinism can be applied by survival of the fittest.

Backbone #1: Redirect Page
A redirect page is a very simple PHP script. When the user clicks on my ad, the ad URL points to the redirect page which will then forward me to the appropriate landing page. This is important because I want to route my user through the tracking software before showing the landing page. Also, if I wanted to change what I show to the user, I can easily modify the redirect page without changing the ad URL and resubmitting the ad for approval. The URL that the user clicks will contain a parameter string to track which ad the user saw when it was clicked. The tracking software will then show me for the ads that were clicked, which ad actually led to a sale. It is not only important to see which ads out there people are clicking, but also which of those clicked ads also result in a lead/sale. This is how I will ensure survival of the fittest ad.

The URL that the user would click looks like this with the ad identifier parameter embedded (i.e. ‘ad=1′).

http://www.mysite.com/redirect.php?ad=1

A very basic PHP script for redirect is as follows:

<?php
if ($ad == ‘1′) {
header( ‘Location: http://www.mysite.com/tracking/stats.php?ad=1′ ) ;
}
?>

Backbone #2: Tracking Software
For tracking, I am using Prosper202 which gives me the ability to track which ads users were clicking, how much did those clicks cost me, which ads were resulting in a sale, how much were those sales, and finally how much I earned for on each ad campaign.

This kind of tracking is a must if you want to survive in this industry. You need to know what works and what does not. Advertising is a trial and error process.

1. Some ads will catch on like hot cakes and convert to sale at a high percentage.
2. Some ads have only a short lasting effect and quickly tapers off after the first few days/weeks/etc.
3. Other ads just fail. You can throw money at it, but if the ad is not catchy or misses the demographic, you will not get see any success with it.

Once the successfull ad is found, it is a process of refinement because even good ads can be made better. And after refinement comes scaling, which may include finding other advertising mediums other than Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc.