I recently poked around on the subject of "making money online". My intention was to find ways outside of the Amazon affiliate program that might generate a little extra income. So much in advance: I found a lot of nonsense, but also some good tools that are generally of interest for online marketing. One of them is the service "ClickMagick".
Chapter in this post:
ClickMagick: URL Shortener on Drugs
Originally I thought that ClickMagick was just a slightly spruced up URL shortener like bit.ly, but in fact ClickMagick can do a lot more than just count clicks and shorten URLs.
I was actually also a user of the free model of bit.ly been, but the (already somewhat older) Entrythat bit.ly I like to rewrite the affiliate URLs of his free users in order to collect the commissions myself, but that put me off a bit.
So I looked around for alternatives and turned to the tool ClickMagick encountered.
ClickMagick does not replace Google Analytics
The analysis of website visits with tools such as ClickMagick only allows the analysis of incoming visitors, for which you determine yourself what the called URL is. This is usually the case with advertising campaigns on search engines or in social media portals. You could also use it to generate special URLs for flyers and print them as QR codes so that visitors can come via this link.
What you cannot evaluate with ClickMagick are visitors who come via the organic search of Google, Bing and Co. These do not offer the possibility of redirecting the flow of visitors via ClickMagick. Without this redirection, however, ClickMagick cannot collect any data.
I just wanted to note this so that nobody would think of using ClickMagick to generate website statistics. That's not what it's meant for.
ClickMagick: the Swiss knife among click trackers
Admittedly, the starting price of USD 37 per month is a bit tough if you just want to track a few URL clicks, but if you advertise a few offers and generate some income in the process, you should look at the advantages of the tool, because next to pure click tracking has a lot more in store:
- With campaigns you can evaluate the quality of traffic or assign channels like Facebook, Instagram, Google etc. and also measure, which channels generate the cheapest conversions.
- The conversion tracking can be embedded in every landing page with a simple tracking pixel from ClickMagick and thus evaluate sales or newsletter registrations.
- By calculating the return-on-invest, you can immediately see which advertising campaigns, advertisements and even keywords are worthwhile.
- You can use your own domains instead of the standard "clickmagick.com“Insert URL.
- So-called URL rotators can be created for the "distribution" of traffic, which forward the traffic to a list of URLs according to various specifications.
- Block or “flag” traffic from unwanted countries and regions or from sources that have certain characteristics (more on this below).
- By tracking sales funnels, you can see exactly where most people leave so that you can make improvements.
- With pre-set postback URLs, you can use lead generation and conversion tracking with many different affiliate networks and see the display of conversions directly in ClickMagick.
- Also read: PHP script: How many weeks is there in a year?
- Also read: Google Ads Guide to Successful Online Advertising
- Also read: Why the advertising company Google integrates an ad blocker in the browser
- Also read: Mac insider tip: macOS tool nettop for evaluating network traffic
Affiliate Networks Supported
There are over 80 supported networks in ClickMagick that offer affiliate programs and which can be used as an affiliate marketing person. With these you can copy the postback URL from ClickMagick and then incorporate it into your profile in the respective network. In this way, the affiliate network sends a short “call” to the postback URL after a conversion and ClickMagic can record the conversion in its data.
This feature is very useful when you want to compare the quality of different ad campaigns. Often the affiliate offers are not advertised with individual blog posts, as is the case with me, but users book Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads or Solo Ads in order to generate traffic to the offers.
List of networks
A4D | Above All Offers | adcenter |
ad combo | addiliate | Adsimilis |
Adsmain | adverts | Advidi |
Adwork Media | Adyoco | adzhunt |
affiliate ads | Affiliates | affiliaXe |
affluent | AWIN | Big Bang Ads |
Buy Goods | C2M | CAKE (Other) |
Cash Network | ClickBank (affiliate) | ClickBank (vendor) |
ClickDealer | ClickPromise | Commission Junction |
CPABuild | CPA Grip | CPALead |
cpamatica | CPAWay | CrackRevenue |
Diablo Media | Digistore24 | DripRevenue |
Envyus Media | everflow | ExpertMobi |
ExpressRevenue | FireAds | FuseClick |
G4Offers | GiddyUp | Global Wide Media |
GoOffers | GothamOffers | HasOffers (Other) |
HealthTrader | HitPath (Other) | iMaxShare |
Lemon ads | LinkTrust (Other) | M4trix |
Madrid | Market Health | MaxBounty |
MaxWeb | Mobidea | monetizer |
monster ads | mooboka | MyLead |
NexusOffers | OasisAds | UC Ads |
Oppur2nity | Perform [CB] | SellHealth |
Shareasale | sitemath | SmartADV |
Toro Advertising | Traffic domination | Triad Media |
W4 | WarriorPlus | Wewe Media |
Wix Affiliates | Wordfilia | XY7 |
YepAds | Youmi |
Marked links and traffic quality rating
ClickMagick has a variety of functions for evaluating the data traffic. One of them is the evaluation of the number and quality of the visitor flow.
The clicks that are tracked by ClickMagick are evaluated in different ways. So there is the total number of clicks, the number of clicks from different IP addresses and the number of marked links.
"Marked" links are those that meet one of the following conditions:
- abusers: This is a click that comes from a source that has clicked more than 30 links (always the same or different) in one minute.
- anon: Someone behind a VPN or an anonymous proxy "hidden". Since these can also be "normal" users without malicious intentions, these links are not marked or blocked, but you can select this in the settings if you want to activate a strict visitor filter.
- Bots: If a visitor somehow can be classified as "automatic" because they access the links at the same intervals, they are classified as a bot. But these can also be uptime robots that test several times a day whether the page is still available.
- spiders: The bots of the well-known search engines fall under the name "spider" and also increase the number of marked clicks.
- Server: These are usually scripts from hosters or people who try to generate fake clicks.
- User: This area includes accesses that come from a predefined IP address range.
My conclusion on ClickMagick
I have been using the click tracking service for about two weeks and have not yet tried out all functions completely, but I can already say that the support is very helpful and the platform has built in explanations for the various functions in many places. This makes it very easy to understand and use the service even as a beginner.
I tried the link shortening and tracking functions with various traffic sources. The data that is generated from it is very helpful in the evaluation and the quality classification is also useful when you have a new visitor source and want to see how good it really is.
I think I will only exploit the full potential if I also use the campaigns area, but I was also very surprised by the functions in normal click tracking and I like to use them.
In addition, I can be sure that no one is messing around with the affiliate codes on my URLs - after all, I pay a monthly fee for using ClickMagick.
I don't know of any other ULR shortening service that offers such extensive functionality as you can find on ClickMagick. And for sure, the service is a recommendation for many online money-making videos on YouTube for a reason. I will still look for alternatives soon, as the monthly costs for my small business are not without it. For now, however, I'll keep ClickMagick.
If you are interested in the service, I would be happy if you Visited ClickMagick via this link (14 days test account possible!), Because then a small percentage of your payment sticks with me and this helps me to maintain the blog.
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Jens has been running the blog since 2012. He acts as Sir Apfelot for his readers and helps them with technical problems. In his spare time he rides electric unicycles, takes photos (preferably with the iPhone, of course), climbs around in the Hessian mountains or hikes with the family. His articles deal with Apple products, news from the world of drones or solutions to current bugs.