BBP 026: Using Google Analytics to Make Better Decisions as a Blogger

Tools and Resources Mentioned:

• Google Analytics: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/provision/#/provision
  
• Google Tag Manager: https://tagmanager.google.com/#/home
  
• Google Data Studio: https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/navigation/reporting

About Matt Giovanisci

Founder of MoneyLab.co. Entertaining entrepreneur, website wizard, podcast producer, music maker, video veteran, and alliteration addict.

Shownotes

Hey Boss, welcome to the Blogger Breakthrough Podcast, I’m your host, Liz Stapleton from ElizabethStapleton.com and founder of the Blogger Breakthrough Summit.

Today we’re talking about the power of a free tool, Google Analytics. Matt Giavonisci of Money Lab is who I learned from when it came time to super cool stuff you can do with Google Analytics and was awesome enough to speak about it at the 2020 Summit.

Remember, if you want to make sure you get notified when registration opens for the 2021 Summit, be sure to join the Blogger Breakthrough Summit newsletter and the link to that is included in the show notes.

Now let’s take a listen to part of his summit session to learn just how much you can accomplish with Google Analytics.

[00:00:44].870] – Matt
But what I’ve learned is not to do everything at once or not to look at Google Analytics as like solving all my problems. It’s I have a question and you have to come up with the question first and then go into analytics and figure out how to answer that question with data. And so that is the way like when I set up anything in Google Analytics or whatever, like I usually write out a list of questions in in Asana and then kind of like go.

[00:01:15].830] – Matt
I have to scrutinize each question and say, well, is that question actually going to make me more money if I answer it?

[00:01:24].150] – Liz That’s a good point.

[00:01:25].460] – Matt
Is it going to bring me, depending on what your goal is..

[00:01:28].100] – Liz
Is it worth trying to figure this question out?

[00:01:30].050] – Matt Yeah.

[00:01:30].230] – Matt
You really need to, like, hone in on the question and then go, like, is this worth my time to answer? And then if it is, you can probably answer the question using free tools from Google, including Google Analytics, Google tag manager and Google Data Studio. Now, which is really just essentially all Google analytics, you know, and then there’s some questions that you’re like, well, maybe Google Analytics isn’t a tool to solve this answer.

[00:01:56].220] – Matt
Like maybe, you know, like, oh, are people subscribing to my website on this page? Well, maybe your email service provider answers that question and not Google Analytics, and they both can, but there’s going to be discrepancies. The thing for me is like, well, I just need one set of numbers to trust because or at least one KPI to trust that I can go. OK, well, I’m just going to solve… I’m just going to make that number better.

[00:02:22].020] – Matt
Right. And when it comes to affiliate marketing, which I know that’s primarily the reason we’re talking about analytics on this…

[00:02:28].900] – Liz
Yeah, I like there’s got to be a way for me to figure out where people are clicking on my affiliate links.

[00:02:33].300] – Matt And yes,

[00:02:34].300] – Liz
I started there. And then, getting your course, I was like, yes,

[00:02:38].850] – Matt
yes, there’s definitely a way to do it.

[00:02:41].460] – Matt
You know, depending on the affiliate program. You know, the part of the issue that I always run into with affiliate marketing and measuring is finding out like the actual dollar amount conversion rate number, again….

[00:02:55].830] – Liz
You can figure out the number of clicks….But how many of those clicks from that page converted? Maybe the small number, and a page that doesn’t send as much but converts people better. Yes, it gets its nity grity data.

[00:03:06].500] – Matt
One hundred percent. And so there are clever ways to do it. And the biggest question you have to ask yourself is, is it worth my time to do it? Because because the gathering of data and building out these spreadsheets or these data studios or whatever, like, is a lot of work. But, you know, once you do the work, you’re like, OK, well, then once you do this work to figure out the answer to your question, like, OK, what’s the answer?

[00:03:37].290] – Matt
In my case, it would be like which page on my website is bringing in the most affiliate income or which pages on my site are bringing the least amount of affiliate income, because maybe that’s because that’s maybe a better question, because let’s say if my if I went with the first question, which page on my website brings in the most money, it’s already bringing in the most money. So what would you do knowing that information? Well, I would go cool.

[00:04:05].070] – Matt
I would be like, yeah, dopamine hit. But…

[00:04:07].680] – Liz
Create some new Pinterest pins for it or something. Maybe.

[00:04:10].020] – Matt
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yes. You could say, well, I’ll just drive more traffic to that blog post and since I know it converts the best. So yes, you’re right. That’s one way to do it. The other way is or the other question you could ask is like yeah. Which pages on my website are bringing in the least amount and go, well, that’s an easy win because then you can say which pages on my website are bringing in the least amount of affiliate links but get the most amount of traffic.

[00:04:33].270] – Matt
So just going on to those pages. Yeah, just going on of those pages and adding useful affiliate links will actually earn you more money like that day. Yeah. You know, and then and then you can start getting more nitty gritty like well OK, which affiliate links on this page are bringing in the most clicks and which aren’t, you know, and then that I mean I’ve done that too where you can start to say and again, we’re just talking about click data.

[00:05:00].840] – Matt

We may not be talking about actual revenue, but, you know, you could you can make an assumption that, like, OK, well, if I can get more clicks on affiliate link, I can essentially make more revenue.

[00:05:10].650] – Matt Right.

Wrap Up

Okay, hopefully this little snippet has given you some ideas on how to better utilize Google Analytics. I hope you’ll join me next week when I share another snippet from the 2020 Blogger Breakthrough Summit.