Understanding How To Use Prosper202

Posted by Mike Wong

April 26, 2009

by Mike Wong

Most PPC campaigns only have a limited amount of keywords that actually convert into sales. Weeding out any non-converting keywords is an important part of optimizing your campaigns and getting them profitable. So how do you determine which keywords are converting for you? That is where Prosper202 comes in.

Prosper202 is the self hosted version of Tracking202, a real-time PPC analytics script. It is completely free to use and you need to install it on your own web host. Keep in mind that if you send a lot of traffic through Prosper202, that it is quite load intensive. I recommend that you install it on a VPS or dedicated server if you are a high volume affiliate.

Once you have everything installed, you will first want to setup your campaigns. Under the setup tab, there is a submenu that displays the various setup steps. You will first need to add in your PPC accounts (ie. Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter, etc) and then input any affiliate networks you are using (Hydra, NeverblueAds, etc).

Next, you will want to add in the required info for the particular offer you are planning to send traffic to. The important part here is to enter the correct affiliate url. You can get this from the CPA network you are currently using. Just make sure to include the subid parameter in the url so Prosper202 can pass along the subids correctly.

You will also have the options to rotate and cloak your links. If you only want to send traffic to one offer, you can ignore the rotate option, but this is useful for testing the conversion rates between several similar offers. Cloaking your links makes it so your Affiliate Manager will be unable to determine where your traffic is coming from and I would suggest you use this to protect your traffic sources.

For PPC campaigns, you can normally direct link to an offer, or send the visitor to a landing page. If you use a landing page, then you will need to put it in as well. Once you have done that, you will get a piece of javascript to place onto your landing page. You will also have to change any links to your offer to the one the Prosper202 gives you as well.

Finally the last required step is to get your link. This is what you will input into your PPC account when setting up your campaign. Depending on the PPC platform you are using, you also may need to append an extra parameter to dynamically track the keyword associated with each click.

If you want to have real-time tracking of the leads you receive, you will also need to email the global tracking pixel that Prosper202 gives you to your affiliate manager. They should install it on the offer’s confirmation page and whenever you get a conversion, the pixel will fire and it will notify Prosper and update the stats. This is an optional step, but if you don’t do this you will have to manually enter in the converting subids into prosper202 yourself.

Once you have done this a few times, you will find that adding campaigns to Prosper202 is quite simple. Now you will be able to track your clicks and leads in real-time and look at all the spiffy charts and graphs. You will now be able to see exactly which keywords are profitable and which are not. With this information in hand, you can further optimize your campaign and turn it into a profitable money making machine.

About the Author:

Mike Wong is an expert PPC and affiliate marketer. He figured out most of what he knows about internet marketing from PPC Kahuna, a great membership site with tons of info on PPC. He also loves Prosper202 and uses it to keep tabs on all of his PPC Campaigns.

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