mb

I looked at this very issue today before posting the stats... most of them count unique hits, some of them count raw and some count 2nd page. That makes it tough to get a true ranking when looking just at the conversion ratio. To make matters worse, some programs don't even provide the other figures for me to manually calculate numbers based on common criteria. The only true way to determine conversions is by tracking the hits yourself which is something I am not interested in doing at this point.

I think some sponsors leave out certain columns of hit data to be slightly deceptive. For the casual webmaster that doesn't scrutinize their numbers, it will go unnoticed. I see the problem though because I'm trying to make decisions based on dozens of sponsor results each month.

This very reason is why I provide other information like "top money makers", "$ per unique", "traffic ranking". Hopefully using a combination of those items will help you make decisions. For instance, if a sponsor is a top money maker with a high traffic ranking, I obviously favor them over the others. Knowing that I scrutinize the numbers each month, you should rest assured that I'm concentrating my efforts on this sponsor for a reason. If they didn't convert well, they receive less traffic. I adjust my traffic every single month based on the information you see in my sponsor report. It works well.

My sponsor report also acts as a reminder to sponsors that are low on the list to have a look at my account and to offer up advice or tips to help improve the conversions. Often I am promoting the wrong tour or concentrating too much traffic on one of their poorer sites. The sponsor now has the opportunity to inform me of my mistakes and improve things for next month.

marc