Having recently become a ClickMagick user I decided to put together a plugin to make link tracking easier within the WordPress environment. To this end I created the ClickMastery Plugin.
The plugin is aimed at getting more traffic to your sites, improved click-through rates and better tracking. Its features include:-
- management of large numbers of outbound links on a site
- improving precision of link tracking
- SEO of the links to minimize the negative impact of outbound links
- compliance with Amazon link policies
- improving clickthrough rates
The plugin has several modules. More will be added based on our own needs and on member suggestions.
Standard Modules
Core Module
As well as specifying your tracking domains here you can also specify whether links are launched in a new tab/window and whether or not they should be marked as rel="nofollow". These settings are side-wide however you can override them on individual links as required.
Aliases Module
This module allows you to use aliases or short names for your links. So if you want to change your tracking domain you can do this with one setting rather than having to edit all the links in all posts, pages and widget that refer to that domain
ClickMagick Amazon Links Module
This module applies tracking to your Amazon links while remaining in compliance with Amazon rules as regard representation of their links.
ClickMagick Automatic SubIDs Module
ClickMagick now allows you to have 5 sub-IDs so you can extend your links as follows:
http::/trackingdomain.com/link/subid1/subid2/subid3/subid4/subid5/
The module allows you to auto-generate sub-ids so you know the location and type of each and hence can report of which links are performing best
- Site Code - the site on which the link is located- e.g. diycm - is my code for this site
- Page/Post - the page on which the link is located - e.g. p123 - page ID 123
- Location - the position of the link on the page which may be in the content or in a widget - e.g widget-text-1, c1, c2, c3
- Link Type - the type of the link - e.g. text, image, button or html
This allows you to have several links on the page to the same destination, maybe a couple in the text, one on an image, one on a Buy Now button, and each will automatically have its own sub-ID added so you can see in your reporting on ClickMagick which links are being clicked.
ClickMagick Bonus Module
This module makes it easy to capture an email address on your landing page. The visitor is motivated to give their address by the promise of a bonus offer. The plugin will automatically use the email address as a subID and this makes it easy to track any subsequent affiliate sale and hence you can know exactly who is entitled to your bonus offer.
ClickMagick Country Module
This module drops a country cookie using a ClickMagick rotator. This then allows you to use the country cookie to customizer your page content or typically redirect the buyer to a different landing page in their own language that has relevant offers.
ClickMagick Domain Module
This module simulates a ClickMagick Tracking domain. As this simulation is running under WordPress it is much slower compared to the normal solution of 2 files, .htaccess and index.php. Therefore we recommend you use this only for testing purposes or for very low traffic offers.
Hush Button Module
This module allows selected links to be replaced by big friendly buttons which can yield higher clickthrough rates. The use of a form button means that the browser does not reveal the link URL in the status and Google does not follow the link.
Mask Module
For example, on http://www.yoursite.com, an affiliate link of http://yourtrackingdomain.com/yourlink/ might be masked as http://www.yoursite.com/recommends/great-offer.
When the link is clicked the user is redirected to the affiliate link.
Of course, the recommends folder name can be configured to be anything you like
Personalization Module
This module allows you to define shortcodes that allow you to use input parameters that appear on the querystring in the content of the landing page.
Let's consider a traffic source such as Plenty of Fish. When an advertisement is clicked, you can pass through the gender, age and state of the person who clicked the ad, and hence you can use this to customize your landing page.
So, for example, a headline could be personalized to read: 50 year old women in Georgia are looking for fit men like you.
Your target market may cover 50 states and a 10 year age range so by personalizing the content with a shortcode it saves a whole heap of time as without a shortcode you would need to set up 500 slightly different landing pages.
Premium Modules
Affiliate Product Chooser
Next on the todo list is a product chooser module which uses isotope to create an attractive interface to select and display product images. Here is an example at the Genesis Theme Chooser
ClickMagick API Integration
When the ClickMagick API is available then the plugin can tap into performance results
Plugin Release
There will be a beta release of the plugin in the first quarter of 2016.
