Setting up proper tracking for your network

If you are running a network of blogs or free sites, you need a proper tracker. Google Analytics is fine for basic traffic, but it won't tell you which specific link on which specific blog is making you money.

You need to set up sub-IDs in your sponsor links. Almost every affiliate program supports this. It allows you to pass a unique identifier in the URL. For example, if you are sending traffic from your "Asian Babes" blog, you set the sub-ID to "asianblog1".

When you get your stats at the end of the day, you will see exactly which sub-ID generated the sale. This is crucial. If you have 50 sites and you don't use sub-IDs, you have no idea where to focus your efforts. You might be spending hours updating a site that converts at 1:5000, while ignoring a site that converts at 1:200.

I use a self-hosted tracker like Matomo or a paid one like Voluum to track my clicks. It costs a little bit of money, but the data is invaluable. It tells you exactly where to put your hardlinks and where to stop wasting your time. If you aren't tracking, you are flying blind.

This is something I wish I knew when I first started. I had like 20 blogs and I was just slapping the main sponsor link everywhere. When I finally set up sub-IDs, I realized that two of my blogs were making 90% of my income. The rest were just dead weight.

Do you use tracking on your free sites too, or just the blogs? I feel like free sites are too much volume to track individual clicks.

I track everything. You don't need to track every single click, just make sure your sub-IDs are unique to the site. Even if a free site only gets 10 hits a day, if it converts, you want to know about it so you can clone it.