Home > Technical & Creative Skills > Tracking Campaigns

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Best Tracker option (Need dat depth) (24)

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Hey Team,

So I saw in someone's follow along Vortex mentioned that the discover plan of Voluum doesn't go deep enough.

I was wondering if Binom does enough on it's $69 plan? or if theres a tracker that gives the depth required that i should be looking at instead.

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Binom is the one that you might want to use.

Voluum Tier 1 plan is like a trial - you get just basic tracker functionalities and need to upgrade to Tier 2 to get anything more, really.

Starting AM journey with Voluum is more than fine to get your feet wet but I'm opponent of getting annual plan instantly, when starting out.

You might just end up with tool that becomes REALLY pricey when doing higher volumes later on (due to 1 milion events limit) and costs are already there so you just need to live with them as they have no refund policy.

I can only speak for Binom and Voluum myself as those are the two I used but there are also another tracking solutions up there and running worth checking out before making up your mind.

Trackers that I'm aware of: RedTrack (one of the main Voluum competitors), Funnel Flux Pro, BeMob (it's free up to 100k events)

Do note that Binom is self-hosted and require your own server to host it.

Setting it up is stupid simple and can be done for free by Binom support for you.

You can check THIS thread, maybe it will help you

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Yup, Voluum is a great tracker, but the discovery plan is not sufficient for any meaningful usage, it's like a trial as plutus mentioned.

Binom is a great option if the server stuff doesn't scare you.

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Cheers guys, this is really helpful. Not sure i have the funds atm for tracker plus hosting, but i'll have a look at a few of the other offers in the list and see if i can find a middle ground

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RedTrack has a $49 plan that is not as limited as the one from Voluum and it offers 1.000.000 events, which is good enough for the starters... that might be an option too.

It comes down to how many events you need to track. Binom starts at $99 (when billed monthly) plus the server costs, but any decent server will handle the load of several millions of events. Based on their FAQs... a $20 or so digitalocean droplet should do the job for up to 6.000.000 events per month. Any hosted/cloud tracker would charge way more for such an amount of events.

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I am also dealing with the question which Tracker solution? I am looking for a solution suitable for beginners. What about CPV Lab pro or would you prefer RedTrack?

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Im also on Voluum discovery plan and really is like a paid trial!

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This thread may help: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...sing-a-Tracker

If money is the consideration, Binom is the cheapest and best one I know. For STM they're offering first month free, 60% off second month, and $100 to use on Digital Ocean on hosting.

If you REALLY want to save money in the beginning, you CAN try to run campaigns without a tracker. Here's what you can do:

-Only test one offer in each campaign. And one lander if you're using one.

-Limit your targeting as much as possible - e.g. either wifi or carrier, one major device (desktop/smartphone/tablet), one major OS, one major browser.

-Put the postback of the traffic source in the affiliate network (please see an example of this in the $1 guide).

-If direct-linking i.e. not using a lander, put the affiliate link + the "clickid" of the traffic source as the "destination url" when setting up campaign on the traffic source. In the $1 guide which uses PopAds, this would be the [IMPRESSIONID]. Other traffic sources have different ids each. PropellerAd's has {externalid}.

-If using a lander, you'll need to put as the "destination url" when setting up campaign on the traffic source, your lander url + the "clickid" of the traffic source. Then on the landing page, the CTA/outgoing link needs to be the affiliate link + the "clickid" of the traffic source.

And that's about it! If you need to test landers, you'd need to set up multiple campaigns that are the same. Say you're wanting to test 5 landers, then set up 5 campaigns that are exactly the same except each will go the a different lander. Set campaigns to be on pause when they're approved. Then manually start them at the same time and go from there.

Some traffic sources allow you to specify multiple destination urls - like PopAds.

The downside of running without a tracker though, is that you'd only have access to whatever stats the traffic source can provide. So make sure that the traffic source provides at LEAST zone/placement stats. This is why I advised to limit targeting as much as possible - because many/most traffic sources won't provide stats on stuff like wifi/carrier, device, OS, browser, etc.

If you actually want to test this, let me know which aff network and traffic source you want to test, and we can work out the details.



Amy

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Thanks for the responses guys! That Binom package looks really appealing or RedTrack if I really need to cut costs, I want to pay for a tracker as long as I can because i can see that analytics are basically the lifeblood of me making any real progress here.

It's great to know there's a method to run this without however, i may well come knocking if things get tighter down the line.

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I totally forgot about the great discount Binom offers to our members, thanks for pointing that out Amy.

Here is the link to the discount thread if you guys want to have a look: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...or-STM-Members

Another option, there is prosper202 that seems to be free, you would just need to pay for hosting so it seems. Mr Baffoe is that right?

Note: I cannot tag Mr Baffoe (prosper202) properly since there is a space in the username, so anyone interrested into prosper might want to send a PM to: https://stmforum.com/forum/member.php?367-Mr-Baffoe

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There's nothing I hate more than making people feel disempowered - but at the same time, I feel compelled to make one suggestion:

If things get so tight that you're having trouble paying for a tracker, then it may be better to save up a larger sum before re-attempting to learn paid traffic.

No matter which traffic type you run, it WILL take money to learn the ropes, and then more money to test various things until you find a combination that is profitable. And profitability will typically only last a little while (unless you're running an offer that remains stable long-term).

And not having a good budget will make you vulnerable to making emotionally-driven campaign decisions - based on worry or fear.

Of course I'm not trying to discourage you from this new adventure - we'll do our best to help you succeed. I just want to cover all bases.

And my offer stands: If you ever want to run without a tracker for a while, please let me know by replying here so I'll see it (since I'm subscribed to this thread). Who knows - you may make it big with a very limited budget - which definitely does and has happened. And not using a tracker does make the lander/offer page load faster so it's not ALL bad!



Amy

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How could I have forgotten good 'ole Prosper!! When I first started I was using an STM-modified version of prosper. Thanks for the reminder!

Prosper went from free to paid and may have gone back to being free. Let me ping Mr Baffoe on skype - perhaps he'll reply directly.

EDIT: The lite version seems to be free: http://prosper.tracking202.com/apps/pricing/



Will report back when I get a confirmation from Mr Baffoe.



Amy

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@vortex right you are, always worth reminding that sometimes you need hard rules for when to call it a day, regroup and come back. I find it easy to get distracted with all the new information and forget the fundamentals.

Prosper looks like a cracking option to save some money, thanks for such a comprehensive list of options guys..

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Hi @mat4499


If you need a good and affordable tracker, you can try CPV Lab Pro. This year we launched the Starter plan, which is completely free!
But it is a self-hosted tracker, so, yes, you still need to have a hosting.

It offers unlimited plans that come without any click count restrictions.

You can check this thread for more details: CPV Lab Pro

Cheers!

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A bit late in here, but yes Prosper202 Lite is free and Pro is Paid.

The Lite version is the exact same version that was paid for many years now, no features have been removed.

The only "catch" is that there's no live chat support for Lite users. I have support docs and a FB group for community support.

All active development for the next year or so will be on Prosper202 Pro. Pro is more focused towards e-commerce and other non-affiliate use cases.

A little PSA while you are reading: Safari is now capping cookie life to 7 days for trackers that use CNAME Cloaking. https://webkit.org/blog/11338/cname-...cking-defense/

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I tried to tag you in this thread, but since you have a space in the username, the taging plugin won't work But glad to see you in here at last

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Nana is in the house! Thank you for the verification!

As for the limited cookie life: You've warned us about that, and I remember our skype conversation where you laid that out for me further.

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...iate-Marketing

Are you aware of further developments on that front that are/will allow networks to combat these issues?



Amy

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This is a brand new issue. Before this, if you CNAMEd a 3rd party tracking url to your domain, it would be treated as 1st party and got a full cookie life. Now CNAMEs are detected, and treated as 3rd party.

Eg Some Cloud hosted trackers & services that let you use custom domains by setting up a CNAME record and pointing to the shared cloud tracker domain. These will now be treated as 3rd party with a 7 day cookie limit. Same issue with any cloud hosted affiliate network tracking links that have been CNAMEd.

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I'm currently working on the winter promo for stmers and, inspired by your thread, 3-level grouping and SSL for the custom domain will be added as free add-ons to the lowest plan.


Karolina

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That would be AMAZING Karolina! Thank you on behalf of STM!

Because it's really hard to cut landers and offers when testing both at the same time, without being able to drill down at least two levels. That's why I've been recommending for everyone to sign up to the PROFIT plan. Thank you so much!



Amy

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It will be a time-limited offer available via Voluum.com/partner/stm because there are no plans to change the public Discover plan for now. However, if you get it during the winter promo, these add-ons will be a part of YOUR plan as long as you use Voluum.

I will let you know when the promo is live


Karolina

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All noted with thanks! Still an amazing offer!



Amy

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The promo is live.

If you get the Discover plan via https://Voluum.com/partner/stm/ we'll add SSL for the custom domain and 3-level grouping for free!

There are also nice presents for higher plans, I'll post the full promo on the forum next.


Karolina

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This is terrific thank you Karolina! Looking forward to seeing an announcement in the "Discounts and Bonuses" section!



Amy

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