Even after I began making money as an affiliate marketer, a lot of what I was doing was based on guessing (usually resulting in movements backwards, not forward). I would change or tweak something and then wait weeks or months while keeping an eye on my sales history to know whether I was doing something right or wrong.


Today, I realize this was a really stupid strategy.


I missed out on hundreds if not thousands of dollars because I didn't use completely free tools to track my visitors and watch their behavior on my website. That's a "Grade A" rookie boo-boo. Oops!


Fortunately you've found these lessons, and today I'm going to make sure you never miss out on those hundreds or thousands of dollars because you didn't use the free tools available to you.


If you're smart and you approach internet marketing the right way, Google Analytics will slowly become the backbone of your business. You can see how many visits you get each day, how long visitors stayed on your website, what pages they visited, what page the exited your site from, and a WHOLE lot more.


Over the coming weeks, months, and years as you will learn to use Google Analytics a great deal. When you get used to them, you'll be able to quickly and easily see EXACTLY what you're doing wrong on your website. Like everything else it takes some practice, but you should start now.


Once you have your website setup analytics are really simple to install. In yesterday's lesson I linked you to a few free tutorials, and that same program has another awesome lesson on installing and learning analytics.


Use this lesson on setting up Google Analytics and learning the basics of interpreting them. After you've done that, let's talk about why Google Analytics are so important.


Let's say you're selling a product on your website, but first you want to get users to opt-in to receive a free eBook. You're probably going to test different headlines to see which one is most effective. Otherwise, you're just guessing.


It's kind of important to know if you're converting 0.7% of your visitors into email opt-ins, or if you're converting 12.5%. Google Analytics will give you that information. It's referred to as conversion tracking and it's an essential part of internet marketing.


You NEVER know what works vs. what doesn't work in this industry by simply guessing. Even long-time professionals use A/B split testing. If Barack Obama's hired copywriter (world-renowned copywriter, by the way) tested this many email marketing subject lines while trying to get Obama re-elected, self-employed internet marketers like you and me should do the exact same thing.


You can't guess your way to success in this industry. You need to familiarize yourself with Google Analytics and start practicing how to make decisions based on data. It will cut your time spent on trial and error in this industry by AT LEAST 50%, but probably much more.


So that concludes today's lesson. Install analytics on every website you ever run, and begin learning how to interpret your analytics. This video is a really good start to interpreting and taking action on your analytics.


So you've read a lot of information over the past few minutes, but the tasks for this particular lesson (down below) really highlight the take-aways.


We're two lessons in and just getting warmed up. Look at how much we've already covered! In the next lesson we start getting into the REALLY juicy, important stuff.