URL tracker eg. bitly.

[hs247]

Hi, I'm thinking of creating a website to sell products, but want to check how many visits my link gets first. Currently it's set to forward to my Amazon product using 123reg forwarder.
Previously I used bit.ly which would forward the "user", and count how many times the URL was visited. But, the free version of bit.ly doesn't show stats any more, (and not forward I think) and there's only an annual $96 option.

Does anyone know of a website/tool which can do this - for minimal cost?

 

[fisicx]

$96 isn’t costly. Less than $2/week.

Why don’t you just use analytics to track visitor movements?

 

[hs247]

I only want to try it for a few weeks to see if it gets enough traffic to justify time building a website.

What kind of analytics do you mean?

 

[fisicx]

A decent site analytics application will show you where visitors came from, what pages they looked at and where they left.

TBH, I’d avoid bit.ly. Many people don’t trust shortlinks. I won’t ever click on them.

 

[hs247]

I haven't got a website yet. My domain name forwards (via 123reg) to my Amazon product page.

I want to track how many people visit my domain, so it would forward to bit.ly, which would forward it to my Amazon product page. This would allow me to track how many times my domain is visited.

The bit.ly link would never be visible - it would just sit in the middle of the domain and Amazon product page.

Maybe I'll just pay the $96 for the bit.ly years subscription..

 

[fisicx]

As I said, a free analytics package will do this for you. No need to pay bit.ly anything

 

[hs247]

I thought an analytics package wouldn't work for me as there's no actual website.

Can you recommend an analytics package for my scenario?

 

[fisicx]

You have a domain name. Which means you can track all forwarding.

Don't know how you do this with 123reg but if you ask them I'm sure they will be able to help

 

[hs247]

You have a domain name. Which means you can track all forwarding.

Don't know how you do this with 123reg but if you ask them I'm sure they will be able to help

Thanks - I'll raise a ticket with them to find out how.

 

[hs247]

Excellent support from 123reg as usual:

"Hello there.

Unfortunately, we don’t have something like that.

Kind regards"

 

[fisicx]

Move to a different registrar. A Google search shows lots of them do offer this service.

 

[rsshep]

You could also look into DNS service providers and find one that provides analytics, that way you can keep your existing domain registrar, but have your DNS managed by someone else.

I've used a number of registrars and DNS providers, but I've not come across any that provide analytics, so I couldn't make any recommendations based on experience, sorry.

Another thing you could do, but it's more long winded, is host a simple page on your domain that forwards the user to your Amazon page, then stick Google analytics on that page. I don't recommend it, and it won't be good for SEO (based on my limited SEO knowledge), but it would work.