Tracking Ad Performance

Every time I make something in Excel, I want to share. Rather than randomly drop advertisements here and there, like I've been doing, I'd like to be more educated about it. So I've started tracking ad performance so that I can see which ads produced sales, which produced brand awareness (aka no sales), and which ads flopped. And because it's in Excel, I can SORT variables, like Type, Season, Visitors, etc. Over time, I'll see if I can see patterns. Based on the 3 ads I've placed so far, I'm hedging that summer is a bad time, and that email newsletter features are more effective at producing sales.

Here are the fields I'm looking at:

Advertiser
Date Placed
Type (newsletter; small placement)
Components (text with coupon code; product picture with description)
Coupon Code?
Coupon Type (10% off order; free shipping)
Visitors (from that day if a newsletter or the like)
Click Through
Monthly Visitors (if the ad is archived, or if add is up for 3 or so months)
Pages/Visitor
Season
Price
Sales?

Your website stats can show you some of this information, like how many pages a visitor from a destination (or referal) visited. Google Analytics is a free analytic program for capturing your stats, and is awesome.

As a note of caution, one thing I learned right away, is that websites are charging varying rates. When I advertised on Scoop du Jour, the owner had 14,000 subscribers. For $210 (which was a Spring sale rate down from $300) to be a bitty PS link on the bottom of her weekly newsletter, I took the risk and did see sales and visitors and newsletter sign ups. Later, I was pitched to by another company, and they claimed around 1200 subscribers, and wanted about $140 for a newsletter feature. For that price, I chose not to do it. For $25, maybe...and then...let the tracking begin.

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