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Newcomers to this industry are often told that the only number that's worth thinking about is the number of zeros to the right of the dollar sign on the checks from their sponsors ... and without a doubt that really is the one that counts. That's the bottom line ... the one that tells you whether you've made enough to live on till the next batch of checks arrive or not.

However there are other statistics that are important ... and then there are some that might look impressive and you might think give you some bragging rights but really aren't worth a pinch of you-know-what. So let's look at some of those figures now and see which ones are important for beginners ... and for those of us who have been around for a while

Inaccuracies happen
Before we go any further though just let me stress to you that tracking of hits and visits and signups is not an exact science. There are lots of points of failure where tracking can fall down and even the best tracking doesn't get it right 100% of the time.

You may be measuring the clicks you send to your sponsor but it's unlikely that they will ever correspond exactly with the numbers recorded by the sponsor as coming from your sites. The margin of error can be much more than you might think reasonable but there are a number of very reasonable reasons why that might be happening and you shouldn't immediately assume that your sponsors are ripping you off.

One very simple reason is often due to the tracking program that the sponsor might use. Your out-clicks might be quite accurate and your surfers are landing on your sponsor's front page but then some of them may leave before the sponsor's program has had a chance to record their arrival.

Another reason may be that the hit that you've recorded as arriving on your site and then heading off for your sponsor's site may not be a human at all. These days there are literally hundreds ... if not thousands ... of spiders out there run by more than just the search engines. A good analytics program will identify those as non-human and not count them so while your program may see them as human your sponsor's program may not.

You only have to install a program like Google Analytics on one of your busy sites and then compare a month's worth of data from that with a month's worth of data from Webalizer or whatever data measuring program your host has on your server to see how much variation there can be. Google Analytics does a fairly good job at weeding out the bots.

Other numbers worth looking at
Ok so now let's look at some figures that are important ... and here let me say that if you're just beginning in this business then you shouldn't be worrying too much about something like Google Analytics on your sites just yet. Even if you've been in the business for a while I wouldn't be putting Google Analytics on every free site you build but every now and again it's going to be worth doing that so you can see what the surfers that visit your site are actually doing there.

Something else you should take into consideration is that because these numbers are inherently inaccurate you shouldn't be looking at anything but trends when you look at any sort of analytics program.

Bounce rate
One of metrics that many people ... including me ... don't quite understand is the measurement called 'bounce rate'. However Google's analytics evangelist recently described this as the number of people who came, who saw and who puked. They landed on one page, they didn't like what they saw and they left without going further into the site.

Now if they left via a sponsor link then that's not such a bad thing but if they hit the back button and went back to where they came from then you should begin to start looking seriously at your page design because it's obviously not engaging the surfers and they aren't spending enough time on your site to see your advertising.

Visitor loyalty
Now this is a number that you really don't want to see if you're measuring traffic to a free site because it tells you how many times the same visitors have come back to your site.

Of course if you're running a TGP or link list then it's a very important number because you want people to keep on coming back. So if you're running something where you want people to come back and you're seeing a low number then it's telling you that your need to improve your site because people just aren't finding what they want on it.

Exit pages
The numbers that an analytics program shows for exit pages is also important. It's helpful to know where the surfers are leaving from because that can give you some indication of where you're best marketing is ... or where they've become so bored they just don't want to stay any longer.

And that's where I'll exit and head off to our office - tomorrow is a holiday here and I am so looking forward to it.