I’ve had this question asked by one of my clients last week so let me explain:
1) One way, and you should always use them, is to use 12SC trackers. The only problem with them is that in most cases you can’t get access to any page to place the 12SC Ad Trackers Cookie Based Tracking Code on which means you can’t track what’s really important – your conversions. You can only track hits which are only a tiny part of the full picture you need to gain the most profitable results.
2) Even if you settle for hits only, let say you want to track the Top 7 Safelists, a half dozen Traffic Exchanges and six Solo Ad Campaigns. You end up with so many trackers it gets soooo confusing and so time consuming that most give up on doing any real tracking. And pay the price of that neglect!
Here’s a better answer:
1) Use your 12SC trackers to track the total hits to any campaign – ie use a tracker for the total hits from ALL safelists. That can be useful just to make sure you’re getting what you’ve paid for – or that you aren’t whipping a completely dead horse with that particular type of traffic source.
2) Use the utility below to organize and track each and every ad you place at any source (maybe it’s all your Solo Ads for example). You will discover the best sources, the headlines that work best for you, the ad bodies that grab attention and action. Detailed, specific and valuable information!
http://www.12path.com/2012/OrganizeAndTrackMailings/
3) Add the utility below into the mix and the magic happens! You will get your conversions recorded without needing access to place a conversion code. (They call them actions because it will track subscriptions or sales)
http://www.12path.com/TrackYourCONVERSIONS/ (No longer available – use the new internal tracking within the utility above.)
Putting 2) and 3) above into play has saved me a heap of money and made me a lot of money by allowing me to get the very best out of my advertising. I recommend both of them highly.
Keep in mind that you need both of these to get the magic working for you. But look what you get!
With both these utilities working together you get an extra stats column that tells you how many actions (subscriptions) you got from each safelist – and this is what you really want to know. If you looked only at the clicks on your ads above you would conclude that SOTAM at 2.46% was the best safelist, but look where the arrow is pointing! YourEZlist reported much lower clicks at 0.94% but 42 subscribers joined your list, so it’s clearly the best and you might very well decide it’s worth upgrading to a paid membership in that one. I already have 
Enjoy your improved tracking and increased profits.
AllanJames -theStartBusinessMentor
