How do you display the number of times a certain item was clicked?

Say I have a picture thats a link, or a text link. how would i, in php display the number of times it was clicked. for instance:

*link* hits:# here

thx

-btw i sux at php and have like 5 books on it but nothing really sticks. anyone know video tutorials for it?
i used a video series for visual basic and became really good.

you COULD create a script that just has a log (.txt file) for every image, and then write to the file everytime someone clicks, and then take the contents and echo the amount of contents back.

or you could just go to the snippets section and grab the working example of link counting, requires no installation besides CHMODing the folder the script is in to 0777.

If it's for a kind of link resporitory script then usually there will be a filed in the database to record the click count or there may be a different stat table giving the link ID and maybe an IP address or date/time.