Need help: tracking sales

[timezone]

I posted this in the promotions category but no feedback as of yet. I need to move a little quicker and thought you all might have some thoughts.

Can anyone offer any advice on creating a way to track sales from leads, much like how it is handled by google adwords?

I use Adwords, but also have other links I would like to track from some banner ads, email newsletters, and general directory listings.
I also have some offline stuff that I could use a special url for if I had a way to track from entry point to sale.

Any thoughts? I have no experience with cookie creation but I thought that would be one way to go, or perhaps use an online service, if there is such a place that can provide this service.

I currently use Hitbox to monitor the site, but it is not a tool to really track conversion / sales from multiple sources, especially when the sales cycle is a few days to a few months.

thanks for any thoughts or suggestions.

[Dani]

When advertising your site in various places, try using a query string. For example:

www.site.com/?adwords
www.site.com/?newsletter

etc.

It's a good way to label all of the different places you're getting traffic from. Then, use your favorite traffic statistics analyzer - such as Urchin or Hitbox - and you can track visitor paths. You can see the top paths followed by people who came to your site via a newsletter compared to the people who came to your site via AdWords, for example.

[timezone]

Thanks Dani, but hitbox (as far as i know) can't track "?abcd" these types of referrals. Log files analysis programs and Urchin can, but not Hitbox Pro. I actually do not have access to logfiles, either.

I am also trying to track to a conversion, not just track traffic from a source.
I will keep searching for a solution.

Thanks