Tracking your traffic... ideas?

This is probably going to sound really dumb, but I need help figuring out tracking links.

As you know, the big trick to make the most of your marketing efforts is to track where your traffic comes from. I've tried several ways to do this and always get confused with my fancy coding systems.

If I put an article on EA, I can create a special page on my site to send those people. That's one option, but very time consuming and more work than necessary.

I have a tracking program installed on one of my sites that lets me create these special tracking links. This is where my coding system falls apart.

It's probably much easier than I'm making it, but does someone have a workable system for tracking your traffic?

As I said, I already have a program that will do it, but how do you name your special links?

My mistake, I think, was creating one tracking link for EA, and then using it for different articles that I post there. So I have no idea which article or resource box was the most effective in driving traffic.

Giving each and every article a special tracking link sounds wrong to me.

And then there are other forms of marketing that do not involve article submissions. Like, dropping comments on blogs, viral products, and ad placements, etc.

Any tips you can provide would be much appreciated.

Please share your tracking methods?

Thanks.

Sylvia