Spend $10. Save $1,000.

So one Saturday I stopped guessing and actually checked.

I went backwards through a whole month — DMs, emails, receipts — and traced every single client to whatever she saw first. It took the entire day.

Twenty-seven of those were evenings. Me on the end of the bed rewriting a caption, while the rest of my life carried on in the other room.

But the wasted nights weren't the real problem. Because I couldn't tell which three were working, I couldn't drop any of the thirty — what if I dropped the wrong one? So I carried all thirty, every month, for two years.

Then I spent one afternoon setting up a way to see it. I haven't had to guess since, and I've never repeated that Saturday.

What you get

The whole setup, written out in order.

• 1How to build a tracked link — two minutes, free tools, no developer
• 2How to name them so they still make sense to you in six months
• 3Where the numbers actually live, and how often to look at them
• 4The one number that means a post worked — and the three that don't
• 5My own setup, written out, to copy exactly

Set it up once. Next month you won't be guessing — you'll know which posts did the work, and which ones you're free to stop making.

What this costs vs what you've been paying

Everyone else sells you more marketing. This tells you what to stop.

• —A marketing course — hundreds, often thousands. Teaches you to post more. Still can't tell you which of your posts brought anyone in.
• —An agency retainer — thousands a month. They'll track it. You won't learn how, so you'll never own it.
• —A strategist for an hour — a few hundred. She'll open by asking you the same question I just did.
• —This — $9.99. One afternoon, and the answer is yours permanently.

You have almost certainly spent more than ten dollars on a course you never finished. This is the one that asks you to do less.

Five-second test