So where's my traffic coming from?   This is a very important question for me to get my hands around.

I just earned my first commission, so it's time to get an idea of what's going on on my site: CreditMighty.com. There's an easy solution to this that we've built right into siteMighty.  Easy integration of Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool.  It helps you figure out where your traffic is coming from, understand what visitors are doing on your site, and optimize your site based on the goals you have.  It's an incredibly powerful too, that was developed by a company called Urchin.  We used to use this software when it cost $299 a month.  Google bought this company a couple years ago, and immediately release the software for free.  If you haven't tried it yet, now's your chance. So let's get started:

1. Start by heading over to Google Analytics. Follow the instructions there to open up an account.
   
2. I then click [add a new website profile], in enter in the website I want to track, in this case www.creditmighty.com.
3. On the next page I'm presented with a block of code that I need to add to every page of my website.  The good news is that we've made it easy to do this through siteMighty.com. Copy the block of code from Google Analytics. In siteMighty, click  [Analyze], then [analytics setup]. Click the [+] in the blue bar that reads edit analytics. This opens up a field, where I can paste the Google Analytics code that I've copied.  Once I've done that, I click the [Save] button in the lower right.
4.  That's it my Google Analytics tracking code has now been placed across my entire site.  In about six hours I'll be a little login to Google Analytics and start seeing some stats for the traffic on my site.

That was easy, and now have a good idea where my traffic is coming from.  Onward and upward from here. Stay tuned for more come.

 

I logged on this morning to check out things on CreditMighty.com and to my surpise I'd earned my first commission! Yeah! This is exciting and feels great on a lot of levels, (not the least of which is that it proves that siteMighty works!). 

I haven't been too active in promoting CreditMighty yet, and so I really don't quite know where the traffic came from that lead to the commission, but I aim to find out.  As I've mentioned before, I am live blogging about everything that I am doing on the site and so what you see in the previous two blog posts is all I've done so far.  I've been a little bit slack about working on CreditMighty, but earning my first commission after less than a month as a user certainly is inspiring, so here we go. 

Here's what I did to find out that I had earned my first commission:

1. I logged into siteMighty this morning, and checked out my stats, located by clicking the [Analyze] link on the blue nav bar.  I noticed that I have been getting a decent amount of traffic over the past month.  What this "Offer Stats" page tracks page tracks is what we call conversions.  A conversion is a user to my site who clicks on the [apply] link to a credit card offer and then is transfered to a credit card application form.  We don't have any way of knowing if that user actually applied for that card (because the application is hosted on a secure web page by the credit card issuer), but we do know that he/she made it to the application page.  So, the stats presented here show me all the credit card offers that users have actually clicked through to the application page from CreditMighty.com.  During the course of the last 30 days, I can see that some cards had 4-5 conversion, while a good number of cards had at least 1 conversion.
   
2. Once I realized that CreditMighty had sent this much traffic over to the card application pages, I wanted to check to see if any of those people actually applied for the cards.  I logged into Icommissions (the affiliate network that provides the offers for CreditMighty).  From the Icommissions dashboard, I headed to the [reports] tab, and there I can see a snapshot view of all of the traffic I have generated from CreditMighty.  At the bottom of the screen I noticed that I have earned $5 in commissions.  Wow, that is a great start!
   

Now, I realized that I can't be paid by Icommissions yet, because I haven't filled out my W-9 yet.  So, I'm going to do this in the next blog post so I can get a check.  But for now, I'm celebrating my first commission earned by CreditMighty.com.  Plus, I beat Blake to earning the first commission. 

Keep reading, and good luck with your own siteMighty powered affiliate marketing websites.

PS: Just to be clear, I haven't actually begun any paid marketing campaigns for CreditMighty yet like PPC advertising.  I plan to, but right now, the only work I've done on the site so far has been this blogging, so its off to a good start. 

Today I decided "claim this blog" in Technorati so that I can keep tabs on the blog popularity in Technorati and also hopefully it may drive some awareness of the blog to have it tracked in Technorati.

•  To do this, follow this link to the Blog Claim in Technorati, then follow the instructions there.
  
•  I then copied and pasted the text that you see below to prove to Technorati that this is my blog.

 Technorati Profile

• After I paste that code in, I get an opportunity to "tag" my blog.  Tags are similar to keywords or categories for your blog.  They can really help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Here's how I am tagging this blog:
• creditmighty.com, credit cards, chris schultz credit cards, apply for a credit card, credit, credit card application, chase credit cards, discover credit cards, american express credit cards, low interest credit cards, credit card reviews, credit card site, apply for a credit card, credit card blog
• In addition you can write a brief description of your blog.  Here's what I put:
  
• CreditMighty.com is a credit card blog where you can apply for credit cards and learn how to launch your own credit card affiliate marketing website powered by siteMighty.com.
• Once I do that, I click save, and I'm done.  Click here to see my finished blog claim on Technorati.

• Blog Pinging - once you've claimed your blog, you'll see a button to "ping" Technorati when you write a post.  This is something worth doing, whenever you write a blog post, click ping on Technorati.  It basically lets them know you've updated your blog and it then goes out and spiders your new post.

That's it! Easy as that. 

As always, if anyone has any questions, please send me a comment below.  I'd love to hear from you.