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Some sort of click through tracking is vital.
I can't control if a sponsor reports most my sales, I have to trust them on that...and assume they are keeping the skim low.
But with at least half of my galleries I no longer send my hits directly to the sponsors hoping they are giving true reports of how many hits I am sending them. I send my traffic to a tour hosted on my servers, and then am able to track EXACTLY how many surfers click through to the sponsors sign up pages.
It is amazing how with the exact same gallery, several mirrors will show up to 35% clicking the sponsor links and get to my hosted page, but on the mirrors of that same page that send the traffic directly to the sponsor, some sponsors stats show only 5% of my gallery visitors go on to them.
Also by tracking my exit traffic to the sponsors sign up page from my hosted tours I have found even then with many sponsors only report to me 25% of that traffic on average....though I have proof the surfer clicked the link going to them.
Guess what? I stop sending those sponsors any traffic, for if they are going to misreport how many surfers I send them by 400% then they will definately not report most of my sales.
I understand that with a major player such as greenguy or linkster the sponsors will not screw with their traffic as much, but they absolutely do with a small webmaster such as I who perhaps only sends them 2k hits a day.
My knowing how much traffic I am really sending them, and how much of that they actually report to me at least gives me an idea which sponsor will actually report the sales I make.
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