We just rolled out some really cool site updates to give LinkTrack a little sharper look and to address some little issues that have been bugging me. If you see something we missed, please drop us a line and let us know.

The big changes in this release include:

• Lots of minor layout changes to give the site a more “put-together” look
• Some pretty major changes to the front page of the site based on our marketing feedback
• Integration of our blog and social networking efforts into the main site
• Made the ‘link search’ feature a little more user friendly – i.e. it now searches more fields and paginates the full result set.
• Changed the default sort order of the links page to show the links you made last at the top of the list, rather than sorting them by the most clicks in the last 24 hours.
• A new contact form and re-organization of the FAQ and tutorials

As always, thanks for supporting our site and being part of Linktrack.

Here’s a quick video tutorial showing how to make a tracking link using a free account.  Watch me make a link using a demo account, place it in our Twitter stream and follow the results.

While not exactly breaking news, I still feel obligated to comment on the shutdown of the popular tr.im URL shortening service.  I was/am a big fan of the tr.im service, but from the beginning felt that its business model was going to be its Achilles heel.  Bit.ly, the other powerhouse in the industry has the same issue.  While their focus on selling tracking data to corporate customers has merit, the model requires a much more costly setup and maintenance budget just to get to the point of having a marketable product.  Bit.ly seems to have acquired the funding that they need, but their focus on data mining can still leave its users in the lurch dependent on the whims of their real customers.  LinkTrack uses a subscription based business model which puts the focus of our product on the users who rely on it, which I think is a good thing.

One of our account holders recently asked some key questions regarding the click limits and expiration dates for links created using a free account:

What page do people get when they click my link after it has expired?

An example expired link page: http://linktrack.info/expired

What page do people get when they click my link after it has been de-activated (for reaching its click limit)?

An example de-activated link page: http://linktrack.info/inactive

Is there a difference between the two?

Yes, but it’s very small. Mostly just some minor wording changes explaining why the link is inaccessible.

How will I know my link has expired? Do I get a notification email (esp. since I don’t know when the 100th click has occurred)?

If you’re using a free account, we’ll send you a notification the first time one of your links reaches the cut-off threshold or one of your links is about to expire. It’s important to note that we only send these emails one time (for the very first de-activated/expiring link).

If that kind of information is important to you, consider upgrading your account to receive various email alerts (like the click threshold alert), or keep track of the expiration dates/number of clicks by checking your tracking statistics regularly.

For those of you who have been asking, we’ve recently released our highly anticipated referral program! Now, not only can you use our service, but you can make extra money every day by referring it to other people.

All you need to get started is a Linktrack account (so we know who you are) and a Paypal account (so we can pay you). Get all the details now on our affiliate information page.

Would you like your link to turn off automatically after a certain number of clicks?

Since we’re adding new features today, we went ahead and added an option to Professional accounts that allows you to automatically disable your link once its passed a certain number of clicks.

This is might be good for limited time offers where only the first few visitors get the deal. Also might be good for selling downloadable products or sending one-time-use tracking links via email.

The dog with the glasses has nothing to do with this. I just thought he was cool.

Would you like to get an email when your tracking link gets a certain number of clicks?

For our professional users, we just rolled out an awesome new feature for alert emails. Now you can get a notification when your link passes a certain number of clicks! This is great if you’re rationing out clicks to clients or if a particular number of clicks is important to you for any reason.

Let’s say you’re selling click-throughs on a banner ad for your web site. Now, you can get an alert when then number of clicks is reached, and touch base with your customer to renew. Combine this with our already popular public tracking pages and you’ve got a recipe for a brand new business model for your web site!

Would you like to use one link to track multiple sources?

We’ve recently introduced a highly anticipated feature we’re calling Plus+ Tracking which allows you to add additional identifying information to your tracking links so you can use one tracking link to measure response from multiple sources.

With Plus+ Tracking, you can take an ordinary LinkTrack tracking link like:

http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking

and append anything you want on to the end like:

http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/awesome
or http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/super
or http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/really-cool
or http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/user_email@test.com
or http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/another-email@test.com

When someone follows your Plus+ Tracking link not only will LinkTrack record the click, but we’ll also record the additional information you added on the end.

This means you can send custom tracking links to multiple sources and measure each individual response in one location!

Our users are already using this new feature to:

• Measure email response from specific email addresses,
• Track affiliate campaigns in more than one location,
• Monitor pay-per-click conversions from specific keywords,
• and more!

This feature is available now to our “Professional” level accounts.

One of the biggest uses for the LinkTrack service is affiliate link tracking. There are several reasons to use a link tracking service for affiliate links:

1. You can trust that your affiliate partner is accurately tracking all of your commissions and leads, but it’s nice to have your own independent data for comparison.  After all, if they don’t record a few of your commissions accurately who’s most likely to benefit?
2. While many affiliate programs have a utility to show you how much money you’ve earned and how many sales you’ve made, most don’t show you how much traffic you’ve been sending their way.  If you’re very successful at sending new leads to your affiliate partner but they’re not converting them into sales, you may want to look for another partnership.
3. If you ever do decide to switch affiliate partnerships, you don’t want to have to start over from scratch.  With an affiliate link tracking service like LinkTrack, you can simply edit your tracking links to point to your new affiliate.

At the request of some of our customers, we’ve recently added a feature to our site to give premium account holders the option to make their tracking pages publicly available.

Until now, any account holder creating a link was given access to a private tracking page where they could view their click tracking records in detail by logging into their account.  Until now, they did not have the option to share that page with friends, customers or anyone else who might be interested in the data.

If you’re a premium account holder, you’ll find this option on the create/edit links page.  You can turn on public access when you create a link, or leave it at the default setting for private links.  You can toggle public/private tracking pages on and off at anytime by editing an existing link.

This feature might be useful for bulk mail campaign managers, online advertising consultants, or for-hire social networkers that need a way to display the results of their efforts to a customer or third-party.

Here’s an example of a publicly available tracking page.