Frequently Asked Questions:
Below are brief answers to the questions we hear most frequently or that we anticipate that you may have.
More questions? Please click the "Send Feedback" button to the left!
GoTryTHIS Overview
GoTryTHIS is for people and companies who publish ads or content that provokes people to click through to any web page, affiliate link, or web object such as a PDF or video. Our clients use it to improve the effectiveness of their marketing, increase affiliate commissions, and for competitor research, all while saving themselves loads of time.
How does GoTryTHIS help me improve the effectiveness of my marketing?
You might send e-mails, blog, comment on blogs, tweet, publish articles, link in social networks, buy PPC ads of any type, post in forums, and do many other forms of marketing to drive traffic. Those links may be or may end up anywhere on the Internet.
GoTryTHIS lets you quickly see which of your marketing efforts are failing or succeeding at any given moment and over time. With this information, you can experiment to see which efforts should be dropped, which are most effective, and how often they need to be replicated in order to maintain or grow traffic.
Now you can see all your marketing for all your web sites and other links in one place. Graphs update as visitors click so you can quickly respond to spikes or drops in clicks, which need immediate attention. Many of our clients keep GoTryTHIS open all day long, even years after they started using it.
How does GoTryTHIS increase affiliate commissions?
You do work to drive traffic to a product and aren't getting commissions to match all of the sales you generate. GoTryTHIS helps rectify this so you make more of what you earned. Within the terms and conditions for each affiliate program, you can create review pages or even better sales pages for products, and drop a cookie for the product on that page, or in the link to the product's order page, bypassing their bad sales page, while still getting your commission. You're doing the work, you should get the commission!
Products you used to promote may stop selling well or go out of business, leaving all your published links useless. And people are clicking on links you put out there, years after you forgot all about them, even if they go to an outdated affiliate link. GoTryTHIS keeps you aware that people are still clicking and lets you instantly change where they all end up, even if the links are posted on web sites out of your control.
New products appear all the time, which may be better for your audience and more profitable for you. At any time, you can start split-testing links you already published and track with GoTryTHIS, wherever they may be on the Internet. This lets you test different affiliate programs to see which one gives you the most sales and affiliate commissions in the same time period. Once you found the winner, start promoting the one the people clicking on your content have voted for, and increase your income.
GoTryTHIS also hides or cloaks where the link goes, without tracking code, which generally increases click-throughs. To keep you organized, you can also store your affiliate login information along side your links, so you never lose it again.
How does GoTryTHIS give me competitive data?
If your competitors have affiliate programs, there is a beautiful process for building products and letting your competitors offset or outright pay for your lead development and product development.
As you progress, you can use the GoTryTHIS link split-testing ability to find out which competitor has the best converting sales letter, and when you've finished your product, you can split-test your sales letter with your top-competitor's until you know your sales letter out-converts their sales letter. People who follow this model have a huge competitive advantage.
You can use this same technique to create a better sales letter for an affiliate program too!
How does GoTryTHIS save me loads of time?
You only need to setup one link per destination, which takes seconds. Automatic and custom traffic source comparisons for each link can be "setup" without any setup. You never have to jump around to monitor your marketing because everything is tracked in one location with one login. You can quickly find links with multiple search capabilities, including tagging, text-search, filters based on activity, and more.
Whenever you have a new link you want to track or be able to go back in time to change, take a few seconds to create it in GoTryTHIS. It instantly becomes a link that you specify, anywhere on your web site domain, without cluttering up your html folder with pages. Send people to that link and they are immediately redirected to the actual destination and statistical data is sent to be analyzed by GoTryTHIS.
What setup is required to make this work?
A small bit of software needs to be installed on each of your web sites. No databases are required and we've automated the process for you, so it takes only a minute or two in most cases.
GoTryTHIS Hosted vs. Dashboard License
Are there different versions of GoTryTHIS?
There is only one version of GoTryTHIS, available as either a monthly hosted solution or as a downloadable version you can install on your own web site by purchasing a Dashboard License.
What is a "Dashboard License"?
The dashboard is where all your links are created, maintained, and where stats are viewed. It is also where all the data is stored for all your links on all your domains.
GoTryTHIS Hosted is a pre-installed dashboard, where we do all the data storage, data processing, install updates, and provide support for a low monthly fee. Alternatively you can purchase a Dashboard License to install the dashboard on your own site. You may only install one dashboard per Dashboard License.
With 200,000 clicks per month included and low overage/spike charges, the GoTryTHIS Hosted greatly exceeds the requirements of most marketers and site owners using the previous version of GoTryTHIS.
Who is the Dashboard License for?
If your sites get hundreds of thousands to millions of clicks per day, not including occasional spikes, consider getting a dedicated dashboard server, a Dashboard License, and an "upgrades and support" subscription so you keep getting updates. Institutions with additionally stringent data protection concerns should also go this route.
When upgrades are released, who gets them first?
New upgrades will be available immediately to users of GoTryTHIS Hosted. We will gather feedback from them, fix any problems, and then release them to customers with a Dashboard License and an 'upgrades and support' subscription. Later, various updates will be bundled together and made available to those people with a Dashboard License who do not have an 'upgrades and support' subscription.
Do links work on my own domains, branding my sites?
Yes, your links are branded to your sites and continue to work through your sites, even if GoTryTHIS vanishes. We host the dashboard and all the large databases that make GoTryTHIS run so quickly and allows you to maintain the links on your sites. For each of your sites, you install a small bit of code that sends the click data to the hosted dashboard for analysis.
Performance and Accuracy
How "mission-critical" is GoTryTHIS?
Great care, thought, and expense has gone into preparing GoTryTHIS for large-scale web sites, and its performance is exceeding our expectations. The following discusses the most common concerns we have addressed.
What happens if the dashboard (hosted or installed) goes down?
GoTryTHIS is hosted with RackSpace's cloud computing platform Mosso, which as a 100% uptime service level agreement. GoTryTHIS is also designed so that your links continue to work if our services goes down for scheduled maintenance, or for an unforeseen reason. No click stats will be lost during that time. In addition, each client's costs cover the hosting costs for that client, so there is no foreseeable reason for us to stop offering the service.
How long are stats stored for?
Detailed stats (down to the hour) are stored for three months, and then summary stats (down to the day) are kept after that point. We may make adjustments to this at later dates to optimize database size and speed.
How many clicks per day can it handle?
In our tests, each client's dashboard can handle a sustained rate of about 2 million clicks per day from all their sites combined.
What happens if I go over that limit?
If you are getting sustained spikes of more than 1,500 clicks per minute across all your sites (over 2 million a day), a backlog of click data will start to build up on your sites. As soon as there is a dip in traffic, this backlog will reduce until it catches up. During this time, your stats will not reflect the backlog . We will be working on ways to increase this limit even further.
In a stress-test involving 120 people running scripts to simulate months of activity, we compared what was supposed to be sent to what actually arrived. Only 20-30 clicks out of 4,500,000 clicks did not get recorded. That is only 0.0000067% missed clicks, under very high load. Considering all the ways a click can missed being recorded, this is extremely accurate.
How fast is GoTryTHIS under high load?
In stress-testing, the dashboard operated very fast with 4,500,000 clicks across three sites and three months of data. We will report back once we've done even bigger tests.
System Requirements
Each of your web sites needs a small script installed and a configuration change to redirect "file not found" errors to that script. We use technology called SetupBOT to reduce this process to a few simple steps that takes minutes per site. If you have purchased a dashboard license, also known as the installed version, you will also need to install the dashboard onto the site you will use to control links on all your sites.
What are the system requirements for a dashboard license?
Installing your own dashboard is a paid option, not necessary for most users. Your site that you install the dashboard to needs to be running PHP 4.3 or higher and MySQL 4.0 or higher, and requires one database. There are also considerable additional bandwidth and storage requirements.
What are the system requirements for each of my sites?
Your sites need to be running PHP 4.3 or higher and need access to change where 404 (file not found) pages are directed. There are no databases on sites, only on the dashboard.
How much extra bandwidth will my sites use?
For every 10,000 clicks there will be around 4MB of outgoing bandwidth from your site to the dashboard and 1MB of incoming bandwidth to your site from the dashboard.
How much extra storage will my sites use?
If you have a Dashboard License, GoTryTHIS will consume about 16MB (0.016GB) for every 10,000 clicks. Clicks are only stored temporarily on individual sites.
Does GoTryTHIS work on Windows servers?
Your GoTryTHIS enabled sites can be hosted on Windows servers. The optional Dashboard Licenses may work on some Windows servers, but it is not officially supported at this time. Any support issues with Windows servers will be billed by the hour.
Upgrading From Version 1
I bought a previous version. Do I get a free upgrade?
Yes, you get a free upgrade to the new Dashboard License, not GoTryTHIS Hosted. Your license will allow you to have the same number of domains you were licensed for with the old version.
What if I have the previous free version?
There is not a free version anymore, but you can upgrade to GoTryTHIS Hosted.
My old license allows for only one domain. How do I get more?
When you upgrade, you will be given the opportunity to buy a license for additional domains or you can switch to GoTryTHIS Hosted with a lifetime discount. It has unlimited domains and more frequent, automatic updates.
My old license had unlimited domains. Do I get that when I upgrade?
Yes, you will be able to add unlimited domains to your upgraded version.
Does the new version have all the features of the old version?
No. In the more advanced version of version one, there were two embedded link fields, both of which could rotate through multiple embedded links on each loading of the page. There is now only one embedded link option and it no longer rotates through links. When you upgrade, only the first embedded link that is found will be migrated to the new version, and the rest of the embedded link information will be lost. If you are using the second embedded link field or rotating embedded links, you should not upgrade.
What's new in the new version?
The major change is that you can maintain and see stats on all your links from all your sites in one place in real-time. There are also many other improvements, including a new interface, and massive speed increases. A full list will be available soon.
I'm hoping it does X, Y, and Z. Does it?
We have been working on the complex infrastructure, which required a lot of R&D. New features will come out faster now. Please help support development by buying an ongoing upgrade plan, or moving to GoTryTHIS Hosted. We will start working on a long list list of new features shortly after launch. The more people who upgrade to GoTryTHIS Hosted or subscribe for ongoing upgrades, the faster we can complete all those features.
After I upgrade, will I continue to get free upgrades and support?
You will continue to get support. Further upgrades will only be available to those who continue to support GoTryTHIS financially. This can be done by upgrading to GoTryTHIS Hosted or by purchasing the "Ongoing Upgrades" subscription.
Otherwise future upgrades will be grouped together and made available for purchase at later dates.
GoTryTHIS 1 stopped loading when I had lots of clicks. Is this fixed?
Yes this is very fixed, thanks to months of optimization work. It can now handle 2 million clicks a day and work blazingly fast.
It is currently accessible. Once you choose to take the free or paid upgrade, it will no longer be. We will discontinue all support for GoTryTHIS 1 six months from launch.
Is there a discount for current owners?
There are 1,500 discounted copies for GoTryTHIS 2 and current customers will have a head start over new customers, with the exception of a handful of test cases for new customer sales.
Billing
What happens if I unsubscribe?
You can unsubscribe at any time by contacting us. We'll also be adding an unsubscribe link into GoTryTHIS Hosted soon. Your links that you setup in GoTryTHIS keep working! Stats will no longer be collected on those links, and you will no longer have access to GoTryTHIS to edit existing links or add new ones. We'll even keep your account and existing data on file for 90 days in case you change your mind.
Can I pay for the hosted version annually?
Your bills for the hosted version may vary each month with overage usage, so at this time, you will be billed monthly. We expect to offer alternative pre-paid methods in the future.
How many clicks per month come with GoTryTHIS Hosted?
Each month you get 200,000 clicks, which is well over what the vast majority of our clients used with our previous version.
What happens if I go over the monthly clicks?
GoTryTHIS Hosted comes with 200,000 clicks per month, well over what the majority of previous owners reported having. If you go over, you will be billed $0.00004 cents per extra click, rounded DOWN to the nearest dollar. For example, 387,432 clicks in a billing period will result in an overage fee of $7.
What payment types do you accept?
We currently accept Visa or Mastercard, and are planning to accept American Express. We no longer accept PayPal.
What satisfaction guarantee do you give?
Try either GoTryTHIS Hosted or the Dashboard License for 30 days, and if you don't like it, cancel and we'll refund your money and stop future charges.
Affiliate Questions
You will earn 35% of the sales that are tracked to you. This includes commissions on both the installed licensing fee and ongoing monthly fees for as long as the client remains active. There are no commissions on other fees or upgrading clients.
How much money you make depends on a lot of factors. However, we often hear that version 1 of GoTryTHIS is the only two and half year old software that people use almost every day today, so we expect people to stay on for long periods of time.
What do you do to ensure I get credited for sales?
You getting credited is very important to us. First we set a cookie, linking visitors you send to your affiliate id. We check for that cookie whenever a purchase is made. If they come through your link and sign up for more information, we also save their e-mail address with your affiliate id locally, so we know when they return and can lookup your affiliate id even if they are no longer cookied.
We are determined to make sure you get credited for every sale possible. If you know you missed out on a specific credit, let us know and we'll contact the customer to find out who the correct affiliate should be and correct any mistakes made.
Do I need to sign up as an affiliate if I'm already a customer?
No. If you are already a customer of GoTryTHIS, you are already an affiliate. Your affiliate link can be found within the GoTryTHIS software, or by logging into https://billing.gotrythis.com.
Do my old affiliate links from version 1 still work and get credited?
Your affiliate link has changed:
- Old Link: https://www.greenwebservices.com/product/?id=0000 (where 0000 is your id)
- New Link: http://try.gotrythis.com/0000
Your old links will continue to work until July 31, 2009. Visitors sent by your old affiliate link and returning visitors retaining cookies indicating you as the referring affiliate will continue to earn you credit for sales until July 31, 2009. After this date, cookies from your old affiliate links will no longer credit you for sales and your old affiliate links will redirect to www.gotrythis.com without passing on the affiliate link as the old site is shut down.
Can I cloak my affiliate link?
Yes, with provisions. While we tried to make the affiliate links look not so much like an affiliate link, we strongly encourage you to cloak yours with GoTryTHIS. This could increase the number of sales that get credited to you.
The best method is to do a straight redirect unless you are bypassing our sales pages and linking directly from a page or email promoting GoTryTHIS to our checkout page. If you do that, try split-testing your sales page against ours with GoTryTHIS, and see which one does better. You'll need to setup a second affiliate account with a different email. :-)
Warning: Embedded your affiliate link can only be done on pages that are 100% about GoTryTHIS, or you risk losing your commissions in accordance with our affiliate agreement. You also are not premitted to use any logos, content, or graphics from our site without express written permission. To request that, leave feedback letting us know your intentions and how to reach you.
Will you promote my stuff in return for promoting GoTryTHIS?
Our policy is to never e-mail anyone with affiliate links, period. However, if you have a product or service that clearly compliments or works with GoTryTHIS, please disucss it with us. We may be able to work something out. Please tell us about it using the feedback button to the left.