When I asked around, there was a unanimous answer that Google Analytics is the best web tracking software. And what else do you ask for when the service is free.

But I beg to differ.

Though I have installed it on almost all of my sites, I still find Google Analytics lacks something I really want. (Maybe it’s there but I find it hard locating it) I also find out that GA’s interface was not friendly enough and it has too many levels of drill downs – if I want to get more details on something.

That prompted me to embark on the journey to search for another web tracking software that can provide what I need… be it free or paid.

What is web tracking software?

Generally, web tracking software can achieve many things. It keeps track of traffic (how much and from where it come from) and visitors (their demographics). Some require you to install on your server, while others host the software for you.

The most critical feature for marketers

As a marketer the most useful feature a tracking software can provide is the conversion tracking and its corresponding source of traffic features. In other words, I want to find out what traffic converts best and where it comes from. With such stats, I can find out which source of traffic is most profitable.

(Of course, other information is useful as well such as keyword phrases visitors used to find your site, referral URLs, and so on.)

I have been searching for tracking software that gives me this feature but after investigating some of the more popular ones, I was disappointed to find out that most of them do not offer what I want.

The good thing about most tracking software is you can check out their live demo version before subscribing to it. Better still, you can try it out as many offer a trial period of two weeks to a month.

Here’s what I found

One day, while reading my emails in Gmail, one ad stood out. It was about a web tracking service called Web-Stat. To be frank, I hardly click on ads in Gmail but this ad got my attention and I decided to find out more.

After playing around with the live demo, the software looked like what I was looking for. I gave it a try by installing it on my site as I wanted to further confirm the features it could offer. Sure enough, Web-Stat has the feature I was looking for: conversion rate and its corresponding traffic source. This is what I am looking for besides other features like live stats.

Web-Stat has since got me as a new client. When the trial period expired, I gladly signed up for the service. I took up Web-Stat Premium which costs me $9.50 a month.

Another handsome feature that is included in the package is its watchdog feature. It will monitor your site if it is up and will send an email alert to you when your site is down. This enables you to know how reliable your webhost is.

A limitation that you must be aware of before using Web-Stat is – though you can do so – it’s not advisable to use it on more than a site as it can mix up your stats of different sites. But this is not a big problem as the fees are affordable enough for you to install one for each site.

To start tracking, it’s very easy. All you need to do is to install a piece of code (tailored to your account) on all the web pages you want to track. And the software will do the rest for you. To check stats, you just need to log in to its member page and all the information and stats are at your finger tips.

I like its no-frill interface. Web-Stat’s report layout is simple and easy to navigate. You can get the info with one or two mouse clicks. Personally, I find this more user-friendly than Google Analytics.

My final words…

I have been using Web-Stat for a few months now and do I recommend it? My answer is yes. In fact, I am very satisfied with the software and I have no regrets using it. The customer service is excellent too.

I don’t encourage you to sign up for the paid version without trying as you might not know if this is the one you need. To get a better understating of what Web-Stat can offer, there is no better way to do this than visiting the live demo. Or if you wish, you can take advantage of the 30-day trial.

For live demo, trial, or more info about Web Stat, goto:

http://www.abelcheng.com/webstat (my affiliate link)

OR

http://www.web-stat.com (the “naked” link)

At a Glance

Product Name: Profit Loophole
Creators: Dave Kelly and Chris Rempel
Product Topic: Site Flipping
Product Specifications: A PDF blueprint and 10 videos
Price: $147
Rating: 7/10

If you keep tabs on the never ending product launches in the Internet marketing world, you wouldn’t miss this new product. Profit Loophole was officially launched last week. In fact, it’s the backend offer of another free product called Authority Loophole.

Despite what the authors say, Profit Loophole is still about flipping websites… even though they promise a crucial twist to the traditional creating and selling websites.

If I am not wrong, Profit Loophole is the second collaboration between Chris Rempel (of TheLazyMarketer.com) and Dave Kelly (owner of Linkvana) after Ranking Loophole. As usual, Dave is the author while Chris is the mind behind its marketing and promotion.

What Is Profit Loophole?

In short, Profit Loophole is a systemic process of finding a niche, creating a simple website (10 pages of content), driving traffic to the website, monetize the website, and finally sell the website for a profit.

In my opinion, the only main difference from traditional site flipping methods lies in making the site profitable (target: Adsense income of 2-3 bucks a day). If your site is profitable, you can fetch a higher selling price.

By repeating the process, Dave advised that you should create more than one website and sell a few in a package. This, according to him, would increase the value as compared to selling one website alone.

What Will You Get?

Main products of this package are the Profit Loophole Blueprint (PDF). And 10 accompanying videos. If you read the Blueprint alone, you will get the main chunk of the course already. One thing that I find disappointing is I expected more from the videos. The visuals are nothing more than a few slides with texts (at least most of the videos). I would prefer Dave to walk us through with more illustration in the videos.

However, one of the things I like about this product is finding niches. If you are thinking of markets like dating, weight loss, or credit cards, you are totally wrong. These are not the markets that Dave talks about in this package. Frankly, all the niches shown in his bonus report 20 Most Profitable Markets was never cross my mind. The niches are so “real” and “not hypey.”

Dave goes to great lengths to show you how to list your website for sale. As many as four videos (out of ten) on this topic. That shows how important it is to get it right when you are selling your site.

When you get hold of the product, beware that there are some backend selling for other related tools and products. The obvious one, of course, is Dave’s own product: Linkvana. No doubt Linkvana is one of the best backlink services I come across but Dave is quick to point out that you don’t have to subscribe to Linkvana to make this system work.

Why Should You Get Profit Loophole? And Who Is It For?

Should you buy Profit Loophole? Yes if you can afford $147 and you are willing to spend the time keep building websites and promoting them to get free traffic. Dave mentions that he never holds onto his websites longer than 60 days. Which to me is quite a short time for promoting the site and you might not be able to get a handsome return – as what he promises.

In this system, the most time consuming task is link building. And you are not sure if what you are doing would work.

Another way to go around this and save your time doing what is stated in this package is to outsource the tasks – which Dave has covered in this package. He also shares with you an example of job posting looking for virtual assistants to help you in content creation. And for link building, you can try out Dave’s Linkvana to automate the task or hire someone to do it for you.

Conclusion

Overall this package contains solid information. And I also come to know  that Dave is a no-nonsense guy and he’s very down to earth. However I feel that the package is over-priced. Nevertheless, judging from the quality of the information, this is a package you can benefit from if you are new and want to learn the ropes of site flipping for profits.

Click here to visit Profit Loophole website

Note: If you are tight on budget, you can always check out a cheaper alternative: Flipping Websites for Instant Cash.

Okay, if you are long enough in blogging, you must have heard of premium Thesis WordPress theme by Chris Pearson of DIYthemes.

Testimonials and praise people have for this theme are fantastic. Not only is the theme excellent, they claim that Thesis support is one of the best in the market.

It’s phenomenal, I must say.

How Did It Start

I admit that I am slow in adopting new products. After making sure there’s nothing to worry about using a new product, then only I proceed to try it out.

The same goes to Thesis theme. I decided to try it out myself and this is what I think of it.

Recently I tried Thesis on my new site and the moment I installed it, I said to myself, “Boy this animal is different from the rest! It’s truly great and unique.”

And I like it so much that I use it even on this blog! For this site, it took me about (maybe less) 30 minutes to migrate from my old WP theme (also by Chris – Neoclassical) to the current one.

Old Blog Design Using Chris Pearson's Neoclassical

Nothing much to change except to create a couple new Widgets on the sidebar. Really, it was very simple to make this switch except with one minor problem: I used the wrong version of WordPress for Thesis 1.5.1. But after I upgraded to WordPress 2.8, everything works fine.

Tada! New Blog Design Using Thesis Theme

If you look at the new design, nothing seems impressive. Because it is not something that I can use to compete with other “magazine” style theme. But being a simple person, I like the simplicity of the Thesis theme. No flashy graphics and just plain transparent background with texts. Of course, you can have colored background, if you want.

The strengths of this theme are not on the outside but inside. Let me explain…

The Good of Thesis Theme

Thesis has a different approach as compared to conventional WP themes and these are the exact differences that make it so popular among bloggers. Personally here are the features I love about Thesis theme:

• Flexible and easy to customize – With other themes, you have to mess around with the coding if you want to change something. For example the header or the footer. With Thesis, all you need to do is go to Thesis Options panel and Thesis Design Options panel. You can click your way to configuration. No messing around with complicated codes. Things you can change in Thesis Options panel include title tags, header scripts (excellent for Google Analytics) and footer scripts, navigation menu (for your blog pages), CSS stylesheet and so on. In Thesis Design Options, you can specify how many columns you want for your blog (from 1 to 3) and its order. You can pick and choose fonts and font sizes that you prefer. And other designing options.
• SEO friendly – You can do on-page search engine optimization for the site (site wide) or for a particular page (eg: title, meta description). When you use Thesis theme, you don’t need to install any SEO plugins.

• Need more customizations? Use Thesis Hooks – You can use these hooks to further add, remove, or modify the theme. For example, I use it to add Adsense code after the post. You can use hooks for just anything.

As you can see, Thesis theme is highly flexible, extremely quick to customize, and SEO friendly.

The Bad of Thesis Theme

Having said good things about it, does Thesis theme have its bad points?

I would say nothing seriously bad about it but it takes you a while to experiment with the theme to figure out how it works and how to make it work for you.

Make sure you read Thesis Theme User’s Guide on how to get started and tips on customizations.  Once you can get hold of it, it will become one of the easiest themes you will ever get.

Where To Purchase Thesis Theme

Interested in giving this theme a try? Great but unfortunately it’s not free.

There are two purchase options: $87 for personal use (one site only) and its developer’s option is $164. For the latter, you can use Thesis on any number of sites that you own. However, both options come with lifetime upgrades and support.

To find out more about Thesis theme, click here. Happy trying and see the difference in your blogging experience!

Thesis Demo Site — See the Thesis Theme in action!

I have used different types of payment processors but nothing impressed me more than E-junkie. I have used (or am using) Clickbank, PayDotCom, 1Shoppingcart and somehow I was not as satisfied as using E-junkie.

Recently I tried E-junkie for ReliablePLR.com because I need to sell more than one product on that website. Furthermore, I want to have a “shopping cart” feature which customers can use to order more than one product. And it also has an affiliate management program. Finally, I want a payment processor that will not burn a hole in my pocket. E-junkie seems to be the perfect fit for my requirements.

Features I Like in E-junkie

With E-junkie, the only cost incurred is the monthly fee and you can start using E-junkie as low as $5 a month – to me which is a steal. There are no transaction fees – which most other processors (eg: Clickbank, PayDotCom) charge you and this can turn out to be a very huge expense.

Another beauty of E-junkie is you can protect your digital download and store your ebook on its server. The download link will be expired at a time interval set by you. Or if you like, you can redirect to your own download page after payment is made by the buyers. It’s your choice.

For this website, one feature that saves me lots of time is the inventory tracking feature. Since I am only selling 100 licenses for each PLR article pack, I have to keep track of the sales and stop selling the article pack when the number of orders reaches 100. With E-junkie, this is not an issue and it’s done for me automatically.

If you are selling physical products, E-junkie provides you with VAT and shipping costs calculation on top of inventory management.

Want more? You can create discount codes in E-junkie which you can give to your preferred customers or subscribers. You don’t need to create another payment button for your special offers. Just enter a code and discount price are sufficient to create a discount.

One great way to drive free traffic to your website is to list your products on E-junkie Marketplace. Customers can purchase directly from the marketplace or you can link back to your sales letter on your website.

E-junkie Can Work With These Applications

E-junkie is not a payment processor per se and you need a backend processor to process the payment. E-junkie can integrate with PayPal Standard, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, 2CheckOut and ClickBank.

Warning: What I Don’t Like About E-junkie

With all the good things said about E-junkie, the only thing that I wish E-junkie had is it can pay affiliates commissions on my behalf (which Clickbank does offer). But it’s not a big deal after all because E-junkie will provide you with a report which you can use to make mass payment in Paypal.

Other than this, E-junkie has other wonderful features and the best part is it does not come with a hefty price tag.

It’s super fast and easy to get started with E-junkie. I have noticed many Internet marketers have embraced this wonderful tool… and even prominent bloggers like TechCrunch.

Click here to try out E-junkie one week for free.

I am very sure you will like it too.

UPDATE May 5th, 2010 (e-junkie discount code): If you plan to sign up with E-junkie, enter EJVIDEOS as the promotion code. You’ll receive 67 days free trial instead of the normal 7 days. The code is tested to be working at the time of writing.