Friday Archive Dive: Tracking Downloads with Google Analytics
Friday, February 22, 2013 at 5:00AM Today's Archive Dive comes from Feb. 20, 2012, when I pulled one of my famous "Being Dumb So You Don't Have To" moves. The good news -- I learned how to track downloads with Google Analytics.
One of these days, I'm going to re-name this site "Being Dumb So You Don't Have To Be."
Here's what happened. I offered a recent storyline to my readers as a digital download (PDF and MOBI versions) to test the waters for an idea I've been knocking around in my head.
Remembering Rich Stevens' impressive success with a free iBooks offering recently, I rushed to my Web stats the morning after I launched the project, eagerly looking for the section in which I could find stats on the downloads of those two files -- onlt to find that no such section exists. No worries, that's what Google Analytics is for, right? Nope.
It turns out that you must do a little forethought if you want to track the downloads of a certain type of file.
Now I know. And so do you. Too late for me, but (hopefully) right on time for you.
Here's how you do it