If your’e a regular LinkTrack user you probably noticed that we installed a new account system over the weekend.  This came mostly from the billion or so requests we received to make our link creation/link tracking system more user friendly and easier to organize.  There were also a few requests from the owners that we also do something to cover the expenses we’re racking up.

The solution was simple – we instituted a user account system where you can make links, track them, and keep them organized under an account name.  Same as always, but this way the links are tied to an account so you have more control over them and can make changes if you want.

We also added a few ‘premium’ features and gave people the option to upgrade their accounts.  Premium features are things like password protection on your  links, email alerts, set your links to expire at a certain time or not at all, turn them on and off, download account data, etc.

Lastly, we re-organized some of the data to make things easier to read, added some flashy graphs and tried to improve the look and feel without making it too cumbersome.

The result is something that we’re pretty proud of.  We’ve got a nice free system for people to use with some features that aren’t offered anywhere else and our users are already taking advantage of the paid service.  I asked a few of them and got a 50/50 mix of those who just want to support the service, and those who want to use the features which I think is awesome.

Please feel free to check out the new site.  If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please drop us a line anytime.

Let’s say you want to use LinkTrack to gauge traffic to particular web pages on your web site. Here’s what you do:

1. Pick an image on your web site like this one: this one
2. Make a LinkTrack link directly to that image like this: http://linktrack.info/36nq0en
3. Use the tracking link in your image html like this:<img src="http://linktrack.info/36nq0en">and place it on your web page.

Every time your page is loaded, it will register on your tracking page! It’s no substitute for your server log files, but you can use it to track one specific web page rather than the site as a whole, or use it on sites where you wouldn’t have access to the log files.

If you were to use a smaller image like a transparent .gif or something that’s 1 pixel wide by 1 pixel tall, you would still get the tracking benefit, but the image wouldn’t even be noticeable.

Here’s my tracking picture in action:

See the tracking results at http://linktrack.info/track/36nq0en

Neat, huh?

Email campaign tracking is pretty important. If you’re paying top dollar and investing your own time and effort into gathering an email list, writing good sales copy, and ensuring deliverability, then you want to get as much for your effort as possible.

If you’re just linking back to your site using regular URLs, consider using LinkTrack URLs instead. That way you can get an idea of what your readers are most interested in and how they’re reacting to your messages.

Once you know that, you can tailor your campaign better achieve your goals.

I’ve seen people using LinkTrack in their email signatures, and it’s a pretty cool idea. Here’s a sample email signature that I use:

Full name
Company Name
999-999-9999
name@domain.com
http://mycompany.com

Note that if you click the mycompany.com link, it’s actually a LinkTrack link. That way you can get an idea of how many people are interested enough in what you do to check out your web site.

The biggest use people have for LinkTrack is as a link shortening service. If you take a long link like:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&

q=124+Grapevine+Hwy,+Hurst,+TX+76054
&sll=37.0625,-5.677068&sspn=49.978077,92.8125&ie=
UTF8&ll=32.871721,-97.16844&spn=0.0065
24,0.01133&z=17&layer=c&cbll=32.870212,-97.168443

You can shorten it so it looks like this:

http://linktrack.info/p00wwqj

As an added bonus, you can track how often that link has been clicked on. Each page gets its own tracking page like this one.

I used this the other day when I was meeting with a client. After I sent him directions, I was able to follow up on the tracking page to see that they had accessed them.