I am a digital marketer, strategist, speak fluent data and I’m also a front-end developer. This isn’t a common combination. It’s kind of like Black Tea and Strawberry, a rare but excellent combo that should be more availible. I’m based in Newcastle, Australia.

I started this blog in response to a deal I made with a friend. He’d buy me a beer, I’d launch a blog. 7th January 2015 I did exactly that. This blog has been around for a while now. I write occasionally.

Having worked at a few companies, led a large(ish) team and spoken to a wide range of people and at the odd event, I feel that there tends to be a lack of depth in the understanding of digital marketing. People struggle how to answer the why behind what they are doing and consequently, digital activities often tend to feel disconnected from business outcomes.

Working with data and drawing insights out of it really excites me. I believe it is the critical missing piece in many organisations. I’m the kind of guy that watched ‘The Great Hack’ film about Cambridge Analytica and was more impressed by their data-driven marketing rather than horrified by their violation of people’s privacy.

I am a passionate person. I have a lot of fun with my work and have a pretty dry sense of humour. I want to share my passion by writing informative and entertaining articles. I hope you enjoy my articles as much as I do writing them.

The man behind the blog. I am aware of how lame that is. This is a little preamble about me and why I am writing this. in short - because why not?

About Me - Josh Wayman

Hi, I'm Josh

I didn’t think this day would come. I thought that Google Analytics 3 AKA Universal Analytics would always be a part of my digital world, I didn’t think it couldn’t be—but here we are.

I was extremely sceptical when the original sunset date was announced. I thought GA4 was nowhere near ready for mainstream and that the GA3 sunset would be pushed at least 6-12 months. I was wrong, the day is here and it has happened.

GA3 is dead and GA4 is still kind of confusing.

10 years ago(ish) was the first time I witnessed eCommerce tracking enabled in GA3 on a website—it was honestly life changing. The fact you could directly attribute income to a marketing activity (i.e. an email, a social post, a blog), and see the behaviour in between was a brand new paradigm.

The marketing I studied at university was largely conceptual, big picture and driven by opinion and anecdote. It was grounded in focus groups and self reported surveys, not data and immediately observable behaviour.

Assessing impact and performance would require marketing research, a brand index, or something else that is only accessible to those with deep pockets and then inclination care.

Google Analytics—a free tool—changed all of that. Shattered it.

Who cares if the industry is saying sending emails at 10am is the most effective when I can look at my own data and know that 8am is better.

Who cares if the big boss thinks this copy is the best when we can prove that an alternative is better. The fact some people don’t care about data was a more nuanced lesson I was yet to learn...

I remember previously being in arguments about button size and colour, or copy changes or position of stuff on a page and they would drag on, unresolved. Now we could just say we’d test it and pick what performed best (often without any kind of statistical significance mind you).

Everyone wanted the best outcome, so this was an easy option that was previously nonexistent.

Marketing, in my mind, could now become a science. And for me, it did.

Everywhere I’ve worked since I’ve strived to bring about a curious, data driven and informed culture. I’ve spruiked the value of a well implemented GA to anyone that would listen. I’ve pushed people to reflect, learn, and be better, because we now knew what was possible.

Google Analytics transformed the way I approach my work and totally changed how I think about things. No other tech platform has consumed more of my time, inspiration and passion than GA3.

I understand the benefits of GA4 and I understand why there needs to be change, but I will sorely miss GA3. 

I’ll miss the familiarity of the reports, the quirks and getting lost in drilldowns and even the moments when you accidentally click the bubble chart diagram button.

Thank you and goodbye Google Analytics 3—I'll miss you.

Thank You and Goodbye Google Analytics 3 | Josh Wayman

Thank You and Goodbye Google Analytics 3

I spend more time than I’d like to admit talking clients out of adding a blog to their site. They simply don’t need one in the current state of the internet.

Whilst they can be an amazing source of traffic, they often become abandoned or an unproductive time sink that doesn’t yield results.

Why is it like this? Why do people still think they absolutely need a blog? This is where history helps provide context.

Over time blogs have gone from being everywhere and the main point of information to being one of the many options in a sea of never-ending content.

Before the age of social media blogs were very influential. People read blogs, people used blogs to find answers. Traditional media didn’t really understand the internet and blogs filled the gap they left.

Google was the traffic source and a blog was the way to capitalise on it. SEOs were the primary content creators.

Optimise it and they will (the traffic) come.

When Facebook became the dominant social force and social media was something businesses felt they needed to do, blog articles then became a useful tool for engagement.

Facebook was happy for people to put content on their platform and rewarded you by sending you traffic. That traffic signed up to email lists, purchased products and all was well.

Twitter and LinkedIn came into existence, they were additional channels for content and people had success with them.

The big media organisations were just starting to work out how to internet, and whilst there were big blogs, we were yet to see a consolidation.

Blogs thrived with these new channels of traffic open to them. Businesses were rewarded for playing in this arena. It was lucrative.

Everybody started making content. However a blog’s original marketing purpose as an SEO tool was lost on most.

Facebook changed the rules. It wanted people to remain within the platform to view more ads rather than visit another site. It made more money this way. Link posts were only rewarded if they received higher than average engagement (or a paid boost!).

The next wave of social media became more prominent (Instagram, Youtube, and later TikTok) which are less link friendly than previous networks.

Social media was becoming closed. The platforms no longer needed to send people off-platform in order to garner engagement. More time on-platform meant more ad-revenue.

Meanwhile every business, influencer and their dog was now creating content. People are making a living out of filming themselves for Youtube or TikTok. People were even charging for access to exclusive Facebook groups!

Mainstream media had established themselves online by now. The established large blogs were able to compete, but this increased competition meant blogging was becoming no longer viable for some parties.

The content landscape had dramatically changed. It has become saturated and much more complex than the original SEO age.

With this change user behaviour had changed with it. People had options. Why read a ‘how to’ post when you can watch a 5 minute video?

Google is no longer the sole information provider and traffic driver. Blogs were far from the golden goose and driving traffic with them to your site became harder than ever.

We are now living in a golden age of content. There is more content created in a day than what could be consumed in a lifetime, and if you have an internet connection it is accessible. There are many different mediums available to people now all with a global reach.

The podcast renaissance has led to an explosion in volume and variety. Streaming services have given a local band’s EP global distribution without requiring any kind of intermediary.

Video is everywhere –YouTube, Tik Tok, Twitch. How the format, creativity, quality, and technology is so rapidly evolving so rapidly amazes me! Not to mention the far too many streaming services available (both paid and free).

Blogs were once the only format for content on the internet, now they are but a tiny slice of the pie. There are still many amazing blogs doing well out there, but it’s no easy feat.

We are currently in the gold age of content.

However, this isn’t ‘Field of Dreams’. Build it and they won’t come.

With limitless competition and finite attention, being average doesn’t work.

Being average is a waste of everyone's time.

Why does everyone think they need a blog?

Blogs worked amazingly in the past. But the past is the past. Digital marketing moves quickly, books and courses typically do not.

Without understanding the content landscape today a lot of people think and operate like we are still in the golden age of blogging.

The golden age makes a great story: anyone can have a blog, post things on Facebook and watch their followings grow. This couldn’t be further from the truth now.

Content creation is hard and it is time consuming (well creating great content is, asking ChatGPT to spit something out is easy and ordinary). Content markets are absolutely saturated and you need to know what you are doing.

Your blog is now competing with all mainstream media, content creators who make a living from it and a consumer whose content consumption habits have drifted to different mediums (i.e. video, audio/podcasts).

People talk up the importance of having a blog, but rarely discuss the downsides. Here are 5 reasons as to why you shouldn’t have a blog.

Reason #1: Abandoned blogs undermine your credibility and devalue your website

An abandoned blog is a bad look. You want your website to feel relevant and up to date and the quickest way to prevent that is to have your latest post being from 2018.

Abandoned blogs make users ask questions: is this business still active? Is this information reliable and accurate? Is this credible?

It doesn’t matter how frequently you are updating everything else on your site. If your last article was published on it is a date from a long time ago it will make people question everything else about your site.

You will improve your credibility without your blog. If you are not updating it, remove it.

Reason #2: If you don’t know what you are doing, you’ll receive no traffic

After reading a few enthusiastic articles about the wealth a blog will bring, the naive will jump in and publish their first post–and promptly receive no traffic.

Or they will keep publishing posts and not check their analytics and wonder where the money or leads are.

Blogging is so competitive that you need to know a lot more than just writing to break through.

There is a lot of knowledge and skills required to run a successful blog that isn’t necessarily just writing. You can be a brilliant writer, have very funny, clever and insightful articles and not have any traffic.

 - what do people want to read? What other content exists out there about your topic? What new or novel thoughts can you bring to your topic?

 - How can you position what you want to write about in a way that people want to read about it?

 - how are you getting your content out there? Who can you work with to ensure your content has a wider reach?

 - are you able to look at your analytics (i.e. Google Analytics) and turn what you see into something actionable?

You don’t need to be a master in all of these things, but being aware of them will definitely help you more towards success.

If you don’t have time to learn some of these things and more, you don’t shouldn’t have a blog.

Reason #3: It takes a lot of time and effort, which you won’t be willing to put in

I think the biggest reason people stop writing for their blogs isn’t the lack of traffic or success, it is because it takes so much time and effort!

Writing a good article is time consuming! Researching, writing, editing, formatting, editing, and editing. I put hours into the articles I write which is why I don’t write much.

Launching a blog is exciting and it is fun to write the first few articles. But then it becomes a chore. Then it becomes a burden. Then your blog is abandoned.

Building a successful blog takes consistency and dedication. This takes a lot of time and effort that most people won’t be willing to put in.

Reason #4: Your time and resources are probably better spent elsewhere

We’ve established that content creation is time consuming. Where time is spent, opportunity cost needs to be considered.

Blogging and content creation is all about opportunity cost. If you could spend the time elsewhere, would it be more productive for you than creating this content would?

Say it takes you 2 hours to write a great blog–this would be on the quick side–and you publish weekly. Could you be doing something else for two hours a week that would yield a greater return on your time?

Would cold calling for two hours a week create more leads than your blogs?

Would emailing existing customers two hours per week lead to better loyalty?

Would working two hours less help you be more productive in the long run?

A lot of businesses pay freelancers or third-parties to write content for them. This makes your opportunity cost calculation even easier.

If you put the money you’d spend on creating the content and then promoting it directly into ads, would that be more productive?

It is important to note that content creation is a long term plan that takes a long time to see fruit. When creating content your time and money is invested into the life of that content.

You can’t be shortsighted when thinking about it, and you can’t be shortsighted when evaluating the opportunity cost either. To have a successful and productive blog you need to write a lot more than one article which means your time investment will be a lot more than two hours.

Could your time and money be better spent elsewhere? Is content creation the best return on your investment in the long run?

In most cases, the answer is an obvious yes.

Reason #5: Chances are better content already exists

You will not be the first person to think about writing about your given topic, chances are better content already exists than what you can create.

There are some insanely talented and creative people out there. It amazes me the quality of content you can get on YouTube. The length and depth of the articles on some of my favourite blogs is intimidating.

This is what you are competing with. Are you willing to put the effort in and do better than that?

What can you do if you want to have a blog?

There are many reasons to not have a blog, but there are still opportunities out there. The two biggest ones in my mind are the curation and underserved niches.

Opportunity #1: Use your expertise to curate other people’s content

The problem with a world where content is in surplus and the barriers to entry are ultra low is that you get a lot of really bad content out there. If you are researching something like dieting without prior knowledge, it is really hard to decipher what is fact, opinion, conspiracy or simply rubbish.

We see this problem with the rise of fake news and conspiracy theories. People are unable to discern for themselves between fact and fiction. It’s overwhelming.

Who or what can you trust as true and right?

You have a particular expertise that you can use to curate other people's content. Your audience/customers trust you (well they should) and will trust your recommendations.

You can bring value to people by discerning the quality for them.

A master sommelier is sometimes in higher regard than the winemaker whose wines they recommend. The sommelier doesn’t make wine, but uses their knowledge to benefit their clients/patrons.

Be a sommelier! (But content for your audience instead of wine…)

The email newsletter and website MorningBrew is doing this to huge success at the moment. They aggregate and summarise news from a lot of different news networks. They have built a huge following based on their curation whilst doing very little content creation themselves.

Opportunity #2: Start with a very specific niche

There are still niches out there that are underserved by content. They are exactly that though–a niche.

It would be really hard to break ground writing about general diet and exercise. However, if you find a specific diet that doesn’t have much information or specific type of exercise then that could be your starting point.

You build an audience serving that niche and then expand from there.

An obvious opportunity to me is local news in regional cities in Australia, which is where I live.

A blog takes a lot of time, effort and smarts to yield any fruit. You are probably better of spending that time and money on ads or anything else than writing a crapy article no one will read.

Why you shouldn't have a blog on your site | Josh Wayman

Why you shouldn't have a blog on your site

URL parameters are an essential part of digital marketing, yet one that is often overlooked or not understood.

With parameters, you are able to change what is displaying to users, send people to a specific part of a page, send information to a server and display personalised content. But most importantly, you are able to track and identify users and marketing activities.

Good and consistent use of parameters means you can track all your digital marketing activities, discover what is working and producing the best results. Amazing right!

However, in order to understand URL parameters, you first need to understand URLs.

A URL can have up to six different sections to it—protocol, subdomain, domain, top level domain (TLD), path, query string/params, and anchor.
Here is an example of a URL and it’s sections:

https://www.example.com.au/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Newsletter#fantastic

The protocol is the very start of the web address. Secure websites use 

 (the S stands for secure!). As a marketer, you should ensure your site is using 

, as Google is favouring secure sites now.

You will sometimes see the protocol abbreviated as just //. This is a practice used in web development and not one to be replicated in digital marketing.

Subdomains are optional and can be tricky to work out for someone learning URLs. Whilst 

 is a very common subdomain for websites, you will see sites (like this one) where there is no subdomain—the 

 is down to personal preference these days.

Think of subdomains like individual units within a housing complex. They are discrete and independent of one another, yet still, all contained within the parent umbrella.

The domain is the name of the site. It is the part people are most familiar with–Google, Facebook and Amazon, (it’s Example in my example above). When you are looking for an address for your website, it is both the domain and the TLD that you are purchasing.

TLDs were once really simple. There was the generic 

 for example). But now TLDs are getting wild!

TLD’s have a centralised governing body that regulates what TLD’s are available–the ICANN–and now there are over 1,000 different ones from

The slash after the TLD is the start of the path– 

. It represents a specific page on a website. Each slash represents a folder or path level. he more slashes, the deeper the path level.

6. URL Parameters / Params / Query String (

Everything after a question mark and before a hash (#) in a URL is the query string. A query string is made up of parameters. These are the things you can use to bring joy to your life as a marketer.

Go click an email from an email marketing platform and then look at the URL, chances are it is really really long. Look at the URL closely and find the question mark, every after that is most likely tracking. It’s actually really interesting to see what naming conventions are used!

Sometimes a URL will have what looks like a hashtag at the end of it–

. This is an anchor or fragment. Anchors are typically used to send a user to a specific part of a page, but beyond that they are not used that frequently. When you click something on a page and it scrolls you to a part within that same page, that is typically using an anchor.

A hash means the anchor starts and the parameters end. You can’t have an anchor before URL params, which we’ll explore now.

A URL parameter always contains two things: a name/key and a value. Sometimes it will look like it just has a name, however, this implies that the value is an empty string.

A name is connected to a value by an equals sign, parameters are joined into a query string by using the & symbol.

?utm_campaign=2020EmailCampaign&displayPopupBox&utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Newsletter

In the above example, there are three parameters with three values.

‘utm_campaign’ is the parameter name, so it has a value of ‘2020EmailCampaign’

‘utm_source’ is the name, ‘Email’ is the value.

‘displayPopupBox’ is the name and its value is ‘’ i.e. an empty string.

Parameters are more common than you think and when you start looking at them, you’ll notice a number of common offenders.

Google Analytics uses UTM Parameters to track links.

(Fun fact, UTM is an abbreviation of Urchin Tracking Module. Urchin was what Google Analytics was called before Google bought it.)

There are five different UTM parameters, three of which are more important than the other two.

Source and Medium are used to aggregate traffic types. Source/Medium (as it appears in Google Analytics) combinations are what Google Analytics uses to categorise its Channel groupings. Knowing what digital channels are working is super important hence why getting both the source and medium right is important.

The interplay between source and medium can be a bit confusing so stay with me here.

utm_source or source: is where the link is directing coming from. If the link is to be used on a Facebook post, the source would most likely be Facebook. If it was coming from this site the source would be joshwayman.com.

Source gets complicated when the traffic isn’t being driven from a specific website, for instance, an Email or from a QR code. In this instance, I would consider the source in conjunction with the medium.

Try and keep the source consistent. The aim of both source and medium is to aggregate similar traffic under those groupings. So the more different sources the more groups, and the more complex the analysis.

For all UTM parameters letter casing is really important–Facebook and facebook are two different sources as far as Google Analytics is concerned. It is doubly important to keep your sources consistent not only in naming, but casing.

utm_medium or medium: I think of medium as the channel. Wikipedia refers to medium as the type of link. In any analytics implementation, I try to keep the number of different mediums to a small set. Mediums I typically use are:

PPC (This is the default for Google Search Ads - formally Adwords)

Paid Social (I rarely use Paid Social unless there is a really high volume of traffic)

When I’m sending an email I would use Email as the Medium and the type of email as the Source - i.e. Newsletter, Sale, Event, Transaction etc.

Campaign is typically unique for each use of a link. Each different email would have a different utm_campaign as should each different display ad or social media post. This is the parameter that will enable you to see what specific email is working or what ad resulted in an email signup.

You can view all your campaigns in the Campaigns report under the Acquisition section of Google Analytics.

Term and Content are not used as frequently by marketers.

Term is generally used for keywords in search, and content can be used for even more granular information within a campaign.

Content could be used for tracking different email variations such as within a campaign (think A/B testing), different ad placements or event different Calls to Action.

The more granular you get with UTM parameters the more detail you can track. However, this comes at the expense of increasing the complexity of your reporting and analysis, and the time involved creating links.

At the risk of sounding cynical, more often than not, this level of detail won’t be analysed. Not everything will need the term and content level of detail.

URL parameters are the performance-enhancing drug for digital marketing. If you are serious about knowing what works, you need to know how to use params.

Without tracking links all traffic from social media, emails and most other traffic sources will just appear as direct / none. This isn’t helpful at all.

You cannot make smart decisions if you don’t know what is working or not. You need to use parameters to provide this information. You simply cannot be an awesome good digital marketer without them.

Another fun fact (to reward you for sticking with me!), you can make an assessment of the competency of a digital marketer by looking at the links they are using. Naked (i.e. parameter-less) links on Facebook? Rookie. Shortened URLs which when clicked expand into parameter rich long URLs on FB? Pro.

Are you sold yet? Yes? Good. Using parameters is in fact super easy because there are hundreds of tools, sites and chrome extensions out there to do it for you.

Because we didn’t want to be left out we’ve created a tool for you to make it super easy. It’s called Paramasaur (get it?).

Paramasaur is the URL paramatizer with the most personality. Simply put in the link and set the values of the parameters you want to set and bam! You are done!

Common Mistakes to Avoid with URL Parameters

There are a few common mistakes associated with parameters. Here is a quick list of things to avoid:

 The biggest mistake people make with params is not using them. So do it!

Lack of consistency, especially with casing.

 Google is a bit crap in that it treats a source of Email and email as two separate things. Your Google Analytics will get messy fast if you are inconsistent in your casing. 

 Always, always, always add the anchor to your link after the params, otherwise, the params will not work. Anything after a hash (#) in a URL is no longer a param.

 If there is an & symbol in a URL it means next param, so if you type & as part of your utm_campaign name it will think you have multiple params in there. Avoid the & symbol as param values. To avoid this the values will need to be URL encoded. Sounds fancy but it’s not.

 I love params, but adding params on a URL already with params will make you look like a goose. It means neither sets of params will work. A URL can only have one query string or ‘?’ as part of it. If your URL is mega long, make sure you only have one set of parameters on there. It is more common than you would think!

Remember to exclude custom Params from views in Google Analytics.

 This is getting more advanced. The Google Analytics page reporting will be cleaner if you add parameters to the exclude section of the view settings. 

Here is a standard list I use to exclude in GA to get started: email, preview_id, preview, fbclid, v, gtm-debug, utm_campaign, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content, gclick, gclid.

There you have it. Use URL parameters for tracking the performance of your digital marketing. Make smarter, informed decisions and enable your marketing to be more effective.

I hope you now feel the compelling urge to tag all your URLs with params and judge those that do not. Welcome to the club friend.

The Definitive Guide to URL Parameters for Digital Marketers (2021) | Josh W.

The Definitive Guide to URL Parameters for Digital Marketers (2023)


I love cutting edge web analytics and finding ways to better track and understand people's online behaviour. As this can seem like an 'ethics optional' field at the moment I thought I would lay down a few ground rules.

All behavior on this website is tracked in some form or another

I will use Cookies and Javascript and whatever else I can find to track usage behaviour

I will never track in a way that would allow people to be personally identifiable

I will never sell or share any personal or private data to third parties

This is a privacy policy guys. Nothing fancy here.

Privacy Policy

Keep reading

Thank You and Goodbye Google Analytics 3

Why you shouldn't have a blog on your site

The Definitive Guide to URL Parameters for Digital Marketers (2023)