Prosper202 vs. Google Analytics (Simple breakdown?)

Some things Google Analytics doesn't do that you might want in a tracking system:

• Track costs, revenue, profit and ROI of advertising other than Google AdWords
• Independently track the cost and revenue from Google AdWords rather than taking Google's word for it
• A single site to log-in to and see the performance of all your marketing campaigns, rather than logging in to GA and all the sites you advertise on
• Click fraud auditing
• Split test the clicks on your ads among multiple landing pages (without logging into yet another site)
• Have conversion attribution that doesn't default to "if an AdWords click ever occurred before this sale, let's say AdWords is responsible for it, even if other ads were clicked before or after that", which is what you get from Analytics or AdWords when they're linked
• Have a reliable measure of unique people, not just 'visits', clicking your ads and coming from organic/search sources
• Track affiliate marketing -- add subids to your affiliate links when they're clicked and import commission reports to link them back to those clicks, rather than tagging links by hand with only campaign/source names; doing this lets you do things like measure which keywords lead to conversions without creating a different affiliate link for every keyword in your PPC campaigns
• Do all of this without having to dig through 3-4 levels of menus then add filters to get the report you want to see

Have you looked at Kissmetrics? It works with Google Analytics but provides much more data and insight.

Hey thanks for the detailed answer, Dan!

Perhaps it's a silly question, but why would anyone want to use Google Analytics beside Prosper 202? Is there anyone that GA does and P202 doesn't?

The two programs give you completely different data. Google Analytics (and StatCounter, WebTrends, etc.) are not tracking programs, but rather statistical analysis programs.

Stats programs are useful, but will not tell you which sales came from which keyword link or ad network or campaign. They cannot track sophisticated sales funnels by user. Instead, they give you an overview of your traffic in aggregate:

Which sites your visitors come from
What kinds of computers they use
How long they stay on your site
What keywords they use to find you
Their browsers and operating systems
Where they are physically located

This is very important stuff, and you should know it for a variety of reasons, but it doesn’t replace the data you get with actual link tracking from Prosper, CPVLab, or even Hypertracker. If you are running any sort of paid media campaigns, or you plan to, learn about link tracking first. It'll tell you whether your ads are making money or not.

Damn, guys... I'm at loss, now I'm even more confused than I was before. I've worked in highly technical jobs before, and I wouldn't call myself a newbie either, but at this point I'm not even sure if any of this is even for me.

Jonathan, you say "learn about link tracking"... but where can I learn all there is to know about it, and how can I know whether I need it or not?

Okay, maybe it's time to explain what I'm trying to do and then hope I don't get insulted for asking silly questions.

I'm a copywriter and a product-creator, and I've created a fairly sophisticated, top of the line mind-set product for the trading community. It's a unique product, one of it's kind, with high class writing and several years of research behind it. I've written some killer copy for it, set the product up nicely with OP and DAP, have it all nicely designed. I have heatmaps and GA set up, and it's all going to be ready to launch soon enough.

But the problem is that's as far as my knowledge goes so far... and I have no idea about what the next step is.

And now I'm kind of lost in the jungle of upsell/downsell/OTO-s, exit popups, complicated funnel setups, and all kinds of different marketing techniques... media buys, solo ads, PPC... Tracking systems, merchant accounts, affiliate promo systems like jvzoo, paydotcom and clickbank... Not to mention affiliate tracking systems...

My head is spinning from just typing it all out!

All I know is I have a friend who will promote the thing to his email list once it's all ready... Which could essentially result in a lot of testing data, that could be the basis for effective ppc and other campaigns (right?), so it would be nice to have all the tracking systems set up before that happens, so that I get all that data, wouldn't it?

His list is _big_ and he has nice contacts so I'm about to hit the ground running, but I'd really appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction that explains what my next step should be and which direction I should be headed, because if I keep up like this I'm just going to waste months trying to make sense of all this.

Should I, as a product creator, try to go out and hire affiliates who will take care of all of the tracking and things like that for me? Should I be thinking of doing all the ppc campaigns media buys and solo ads myself? What do I need to attract high class affiliates, and how do I get in contact with them? How do I motivate them without big up-front expenses? Do I really need to find out how to set up all the tracking stuff for myself to make the most of my time and assets?

What I have come to realize is: I'm a perfectionist so I have to get everything right for the first time... But I'm lost in trying to do all these tactical things for a lack of strategy.

And the lack of strategy comes from a lack of knowledge and experience.

And that's a dangerous zone to be in, isn't it?

So, I guess, the question is: is there any infoproduct, coach or just about anyone else who you guys think would be able to point me in the right direction and help me set things up so that I'm profitable? How did YOU guys learn this, anyway? How does one start in all of this if they want to be really top of the line professional but all they have is the product, the design and the sites set up?

What I know is I have the strategic marketing knowledge, the ingenuity and the copywriting skills to be the basis of a highly successful direct response marketing based company.

But is there anyone here who knows what they're talking about, have done all this before and has an idea on how to manage this sort of operation in a cost-effective and profitable manner including sorting out what seems to me like a big, confusing mess above?

I know this is kind of a "big" question, but I'd really appreciate some feedback and being pointed in the right direction with this.

Thank you so much,

-Ben

1. Stop being a perfectionist on this project. Give yourself permission this one time. You'll screw up parts of it regardless, so learn to laugh.

2. Stop worrying about anything more than a simple funnel with a great sales page, and maybe a squeeze. No pop-ups, no upsells, no downsells, just the main offer. In other words, make sure you have "sells" before you worry about upping or downing them;-)

3. If you have a friend with a big list, ask him if he'll help you test your offer with a series of small mailings. Offer him extra commission or something, but you can start adding sales funnel features back when you know how the core offer does.

4. Use Analytics or whatever stats program you want. But use Hypertracker or another link tracker when you buy media, clicks, on PR, etc. There's not much to learn, you make the link and put some code on the thank you page. I didn't mean to make it sound complicated.

Jonathan

Never had the pleasure to use Prosper202 , but I used to use Google Analytics, Clicky and sitemeter

Sitemeter had registration issue, so I cut them off

Clicky some how breakdown so I cut them off

Finally, I am back to Google Analytics and I guess I will stick with it. For some reason people take Google Analytics for granted

Hi! Is anybody here using Analytics has any clue of how to implemente the ecommerce tracking code?

We basically used some sample code from the page, but we are unable to receive any post data in the thank you page.

Can anybody help us please?