Article by: Bruno Klampfl

1) What is the problem with tracking splash page referrals?

In order to track splash page referrals, program that you're advertising, must record origin of each referral on your downline page. If it doesn't, then you're out of luck. But more and more advertising programs have this feature. If you're using generic referral links and not splash pages, you will see where your referrals came from. But advertising generic referral links is not recommended because splash pages are much more effective.

If you use standard splash pages that advertised program is offering for promotions, then in most cases you will have a problem. On your downline page it will say that your referrals came from splash page URL and that doesn't help you very much because splash page is on the same domain as the program that you're promoting. Using tracking programs doesn't help either. They can tell you how many clicks your splash page got in each advertising program, but not how many people signed up from each advertising program. So, how to tell where did your referral saw your splash page and signed up? I will show you that on one example.

2) Using standard splash pages.

Here is one standard splash page: http://a.easyhits4u.com/splash14a.php?ref=bklampfl

What we're interested in is that underlined part at the end. PHP is a server-side scripting language and in this example it enables EasyHits4U script to recognize my referral ID in splash page URL, so that people that sign up, go into my downline. And .php is an extension for pages that use PHP scripting language. Don't worry you don't need to learn PHP to track your splash pages.

So we covered .php part. Next is that ? sign. It only shows to server that there are variables in the URL. After that there is ref=bklampfl . In this case it means that there is variable named ref with value of bklampfl . And now EasyHits4U script can use this variable info to take new member into my downline.

And now here we come to interesting part. You see, you can put more than one variable in URL. You only have to separate them by & sign. So we can create one new variable that will show us where did we advertise that splash page. Here is the example:

http://a.easyhits4u.com/splash14a.php?ref=bklampfl&FROM=Article

So I added & sign to indicate that there is another variable in URL, I made variable with the name FROM and value Article . EasyHits4U script doesn't really uses FROM variable, but that's OK. It does record URL of the splash page where new member signed up. So if someone clicks that URL above and signs up, I will see that URL in my downline area. And I will see FROM=Article , so I will know that referral came from my article.

You don't have to name your variable FROM, you can name it as you want just limit your variable name to letters (Aa), numbers (123) and underscore (_). But try not to name your variable the same as variable that program script might be really using. And if you're buying traffic you can even know from which of your campaigns referral came from. Just add another variable (don't forget '&' sign). For example:

http://a.easyhits4u.com/splash14a.php?ref=bklampfl&FROM=TrafficSplash&CAMPAIGN=BannerDec4

That would show me that referral came from Traffic-Splash, from banner ad impressions that I bought and assigned on December 4th.

Example of tracking standard splash pages.

3) Using personal splash pages.

In the best case you're using your own personal splash pages instead of standard splash pages. In that case your splash page URL is something like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/somedirectory/splashpage.html or maybe even .../splashpage.php

For example: http://splash-pages.co.cc/presents/FreeLifetimeUpgrades.php

Now, there is the same problem. When you get a referral, you will see that this referral came from your splash page. But where did your referral find it? You can't tell because only your spalsh page URL is recorded. How do we solve this?

If you're using .html page, just change file extension to .php . It will work the same. There is no referral ID in splash page URL, because your referral link is somewhere on your splash page. Now you just have to add variables to URL, and we covered how to do that above. So, your URL will be:

http://www.yourdomain.com/somedirectory/splashpage.php?FROM=something&CAMPAIGN=somethingelse

For example:

http://splash-pages.co.cc/presents/FreeLifetimeUpgrades.php?FROM=Article&CAMPAIGN=BannerDec4

Don't forget ? and & signs. I explained what those signs represent above.

Example of tracking personal splash pages.

I hope this will help you to clear some question in your advertising efforts. And If some program that you use doesn't track where referrals are coming from, ask owners to add this feature. As I said more and more advertising programs are implementing this already.