These days I look back on the advice that Steve and I got when we were newbies and I sometimes wonder if it really was as valuable as we thought it was at the time.

Sure, we were given some great advice about how to design websites that would sell ... we were given encouragement to rely on our own creativity when it came to the marketing messages that we used ... and we were often given hints on which were the best sponsors to use.

Without a doubt that was all great information that helped us get started in the industry but there was one piece of advice that may have sounded ok at the time but was probably not such good advice after all. Back then we were told not to become obsessive about the stats that our sponsors supplied because that would be a waste of time.

We took that advice on board and we didn't get too obsessed about our stats ... heck we hardly even looked at our server stats and we never ever considered installing any form of stats package on any of our sites. Hey, we didn't need it ... we didn't want to waste time looking at our stats ... we just wanted to go on making money and the only way to do that was to go on building free sites and galleries.

So why might that advice not have been such good advice? Well we were probably part of a generation of webmasters who thought of stats as being an evil waste of time. That was something that some of us carried around for quite a few years and the reality is that stats can give you some power in the marketing game.

How do stats and an analytics package give you power? It may not be obvious at first glance but whatever analytics package you might use can tell you a heck of a lot about the people who visit your website.

Now for years the fact that we can't see the people we're selling to has always been a bit of a problem. Most sales people will tell you that it's far easier to make a sale to a person you can see ... measure ... assess ... than it is to someone you can't see ... don't know what they look like ... and can't even be sure what sex they are.

And that's always been a problem for affiliate marketers who want to make money on the Web. We've known absolutely nothing about the people we were trying to sell to.

These days though ... if we bother to take the time to install an analytics package on our websites ... we can learn a lot about the people who visit our sites. We certainly still can't see them and, unless we have a fairly advanced package on our sites, we still can't talk to them but we can still gather a lot of information about them and draw some conclusions from that information that will better help us identify the type of people who are visiting our sites.

Once we have some idea of what type of person is visiting our sites we can better target our marketing message so that the message speaks to people using words, concepts and even tones that will have meaning for the people we're trying to sell to.

So where do we go to start learning more about the people who visit our sites? Well if you have Google Analytics tracking your sites start with some data that's not quite so obvious in your analytics reports. Open up the Visitors Overview page and then follow some of the links that appear under the heading of Visitor Segmentation.

The very first link under that heading will tell you what languages the people who visit your sites speak ... you might be surprised to find that more people who have French or German as their first language visit your site than do English speaking people.

Check out the browser link and the operating system link to and cross that information with what you will find behind the ‘screen resolutions' link. You may be surprised at the information you find there too. It could be that there are more people using Firefox to visit your site than use IE and their screen resolutions might be bigger too.

That might suggest to you that the people who are visiting your site aren't casual Internet users that could be easily convinced to buy what you're selling. Firefox users tend to be more Internet savvy and those who change their preset screen resolutions are even more Internet savvy.

Selling to those guys isn't such an easy task and you will really have to work hard to establish a level of trust that will make them feel comfortable to the point where they're willing to buy whatever it might be that you're selling.

Be sure to look at the map too. It will show you where your traffic is coming from and if there's a regional flavor to your site be sure to drill down below the map overlay to get more information about your site visitors' location.

The keywords that people have used to find your site will also tell you something about them. If you're selling an adult product you'll be able to tell from your analytics report whether people are using hardcore terms to find you or terms that are more soft or perhaps even in general use.

Spend some time playing in your analytics package and you will soon discover other things that the data can tell you about the people who visit your site. Once you have that information you have the knowledge to kick your sales up to a whole new level so don't think that time spent looking at your stats is ever wasted ... because it isn't. Instead that knowledge is giving you power over the people who are visiting your sites and you should be able to use that power to make more sales.

07/09/2010 - Repeating the Obvious

05/31/2010 - Knowledge is Power

05/10/2010 - Reaching Out for Newbies

04/09/2010 - Think Beyond Being Just an Affiliate

03/01/2010 - Keep The Message Simple

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