With all the different "free" traffic generation techniques that are available its very difficult to try and and track what is being successful and what isn't. 

I have recently installed Google Analytics on my site and blogs:

www.moneymakingguide.co.uk
www.amillioninthemaking.blogspot.com
blog.moneymakingguide.co.uk

I am currently using the following different ways of trying to generate traffic to my sites. 

PPC Campaigns - FREE Credits
(Using Google Adwords & Bidvertiser on very cheap very specific keywords)

Social Networking Sites
(Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati, Delicious, Twitter etc)

Forums
(DreamteamMoney, GlobalGoldTalk, MoneyMakerGroup)

Answering Questions
(Yahoo Answers, Answerbag)

I can then track these via Google Analytics to see where the majority of my traffic is coming from.  



I can then use this information to determine where I need to focus my efforts on in order to get and increase in traffic and it will also enable me to look back at what is doing well and then try and replicate this in other areas. 

The data above is taken from a day last week when I posted an article on "How to Monetize your traffic"

As you can see on that day almost 90% of my traffic came from referring sites. 

The majority of these sites will have been Social Networking sites like Stumbleupon &  Digg, as mentioned earlier.

This will be down to the fact that recently I've spent a fair bit of time building my networks on these sites,  Stumbleupon in particular, as mentioned in my previous post - Social Bookmarking Traffic Generation

By taking a look at a more detailed breakdown we can see that Stumbleupon produced by far and away the most referrals.



You can also see that the rest of the traffic generation is coming from other Social Networking sites, Forums, and a few back links as well. 

With regards to Stumbleupon I spent alot of time building up my Network of people who have likeminded interests, this way the chance of them being interested in the article being written is higher.  

After doing this and posting an article it was clear to see that the amount of traffic generated has deemed the process a success, therefore well worth replicating across the other Social Networking sites. 

Hopefully, by continuing these trial and error tasks I can get my websites and blogs to grow,  it also goes to show just how important it is to have a tool such as Google Analytics or other tracking tools as part of your website. 

Its very easy to use and simple to install, all you need to do is signup for a free Google Account and select Analytics. 

Once in, enter your website details, you will then be given a piece of code (see below) that needs to go on every page of your site. 

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("##-########-##");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

Once this is installed, and its confirmed data is being received there are a whole host of options available to you to determine where your website is failing and where its being a success.. 

To important to do without in my opinion.