A very good friend of mine, who I have known in the marketing world for over six years now, told me this really fascinating story that I’m going to share with you in a second. And while this story has a happy ending, I assure you that not all of the stories like this one do. I’m talking about marketing in the dark, something that a lot of marketers do. Anyway, let’s get to the story.

My friend was talking with a friend of his…a very successful marketer in his own right. Anyway, they were chatting and my friend says to him, “So tell me, where does most of your traffic come from?” Know what the guy said to him? “I don’t know. I just do a whole lot of stuff and it brings me sales.” My friend was speechless. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “You mean you don’t track anything?” The answer he got was a flat out “no.”

This totally boggles my mind, especially for somebody who is actually successful. Think of how much more successful this person could be if they tracked their ads, articles, whatever. I mean it doesn’t take much effort. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. If the guy is successful, what does it matter? Well, here’s why it matters.

Let’s say you use three forms of advertising. One is pay per click, one is article marketing and the third is putting links in your signature when participating at forums. Let’s say you average 3 sales a day and you assume that you’re getting a sale from each form of promotion. But what if you found out that the $10 a day that you’re spending on pay per click wasn’t making you any sales at all and instead you’re getting 2 sales a day from article marketing and 1 sale a day from forum participation. This means that you’re throwing away $300 a month for no reason at all.

Obviously, this is a very simplified example, but I think I’ve made my point. If you don’t track where your sales are coming from, you don’t know what areas of promotion to put the most effort in. Imagine what you could do with $300 in the area of article marketing. You could hire somebody to write articles for you and make even more money.

Point is, unless you’re tracking where your sales are coming from, you’re not running your business as effectively as possible.

And that’s just bad business.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to discover what you’ll need to know about testing and tracking as well as everything you’ll need to start, run and market a successful business online? Check out My Secret Articles at http://www.mysecretarticles.com/report.html and find out why you’re having a devil of a time making a good income online