I was on vacation and didn’t have regular internet access. Luckily this wasn’t one of my main boxes and this was a site that didn’t get much traffic. But you can see why if you’re paying for traffic why it’s 100% worth it to buy a box management service.
“THIS IS A REPOST FROM A POST I MADE AT WICKEDFIRE” But I think it’s important so I’m going to republish it here.
For those you who don’t know I bought a network to be annouced later. But this has allowed me to see things from both sides of the coin. I think a lot of affiliates don’t understand how all this stuff works. And I’d like to share with yo some stuff I’ve learned with regards to shaving and scrubbing from owning a network being and affiliate the last 4 years.
First off yes there are shady advertisers and networks that get greedy and shave and scrub just to be greedy! As you would with any business partner make sure you know who you’re dealing with.
With that said there’s also a TON of good advertisers and networks out there as well. And I’d like to share with you some of the ways they look at things from their perspectives.
From the Networks perspective:
What’s the only two things network sales reps have to sell you to bring you on board? We all know the typical AM mantra….. We have a better payouts…. and unique offers.
Have you heard that before?
I’m sure you have if you have traffic and have been around long. So lets examine the better payouts as this is what comes into play here.
Alright so 90-95% of affiliate managers have never run campaigns themselves. That’s industry knowledge. So most of them are salesmen, they come into interview and get the job because they have a good personality. This is fine but they don’t know the business that well from an affiliates perspective. So their managers arm them with “Affiliates are looking for unique offers and better payouts.” And off they go to start working with us as affiliates.
Better payouts:
Now I’m not saying all networks do this by any means but I have seen it on some ( and I’m not going to mention them so don’t ask ) now that I’m on the other side. Honestly when it comes to payouts on a network it’s all about how well their side can negotiate and how good of a deal they can get. People often talk about volume, I don’t agree with that. I find most advertisers would rather have a smaller amount of very quality traffic that converts well on the backside for them rather then a large amount that sucks. Just like we’re buying traffic from sources like adwords and ysm they’re buying traffic from you. So if the network has strong publishers they get strong payouts, bottom-line.
However there’s a lot of advertisers that offer the same payout to everyone. Networks have employees and overhead and need to make a certain % on the traffic coming through in order to make a profit and cover costs. But they also have to compete in the “higher payouts” space. So this puts them between a rock and a hard place. So what’s their other options. Shaving leads. Basically making is so your pixel won’t fire sometimes going through the network. I hear this is a “feature” in Directtrack. I run a directtrack system and have yet to find it personally, but that’s not to say it isn’t there. Now lets take an example of how this plays out in real life.
AM: hey what are you running?
You: I’m running ringtones.
AM: What’s your payout?
You: $13/lead
AM: I can get you 14$ on that
Now I’m not going to preach EPC like I always do but it’s the ONLY NUMBER THAT MATTERS!
Now lets say the advertiser is only paying 14$ a lead on this how does this new network make money and still allow them to “up your payout”? Yep you guessed it they shave.
On your old network you send through 100 clicks and 15 convert to make you 13 * 15 = $195/100 clicks = 1.95$ EPC.
On your new network you send thorugh 100 clicks and 15 convert but 1 or 2 aren’t shown in your system. Which means they converted with the advertiser but you’re not getting credit. The affiliate company gets the money and we don’t get paid on it.
$14 * 13 lead = $196/100 clicks = $1.96 EPC
Effectively nothing changed for you but everyone is still making the same money and the new network got you business. So you can see the motivation for them to do this.
Now from the Advertisers Perspective:
Email submits are a classic example here so that’s what I’m going to use. But really this applies to anyone promoting free submit or lead type offers.
Stop and imagine you’re an advertiser for a second. I know we as affiliates don’t do this to often but lets do it for a second here so you can understand why things happen.
Now most advertisers know affiliates only really look at one thing, at least newer affiliates well and even some verterans for that matter. And that’s payout.
As an advertiser they’re really buying traffic/leads just like we are with PPC. They have a conversion ratio they look at as well.
Back to email submits, lets say they pay you $1.00/submit. Then you send a email submit then they send them through a co-regestration path and on average lets say make 2$ for each visitor that fills out an email submit. Every advertiser is different of course. Now lets say the traffic your sending only makes them 1$ for example so they’re breaking even with it. In that situation they have a three choices.
1. They could call the affiliate company and say this persons traffic isn’t converting for us please cut him off of this offer ( I get these calls some times )
2. They could not fire your pixel sometimes to bring their conversions into line
with your traffic. Now this is the most transparent to us as affiliates. It sucks, no question. But how do we expect the advertiser to take traffic that doesn’t make money for them.
3. Tell the affiliate manager to cut your payout and for traffic from these pubs we’ll only pay X rather then Y. This is the one I prefer mostly.
Often times when I get cut off to an offer I go back in a re-negotiate for a lower payout if you can believe that. Because it still makes good money even at the lower payout and then everyone is happy. At least that’s straight forward and not shady.
But honestly I think most advertisers just scrub/shave on the backside because it’s transparent and they think they’re not rocking the boat as much.
So when we as affiliates hear higher payouts always question it. EPC is ALLLLLLLLLL that matters. Everything else can be fudged with.
I really think there’s a lot of secrecy on both sides of the game and the more open, honest and relationship you build with your network the better. I run all my traffic sources by AM’s I work with. But I have a lot of trust in them that they’re not going to hand it out to other people. If a traffic source is questionable I ask if they’ll take the traffic. Most of the time the networks I work with say yes lets try it and see how it does. That way when you run into issues both sides know what’s going on.
Hope this sheds some light what’s going on behind the scenes as I think it’s a huge unknown. I’ll try and cover more on these relationships and how things work as I go through my learning process.
Success,
Smaxor
If you’re looking to inspire more trust with your users an SSL Certificate is always a good way to go. For example if you’re promoting auto loan leads and have a private label offer then you should have the form page be SSL protected. Both for security and improving your conversions. Up until now it’s been 50-100$ for a SSL certificate, so normally I’d roll out a site/campaign and then if it did decent I’d get an SSL certificate for it. Honestly it will increase you conversions.
Now you can get one for free with every domain purchase. Amazing!
My favorite domain registrar has been Namecheap.com for some time. They’re interface is amazing a quick as opposed to some of the other domain reg’s out there * cough godaddyd cough *. And now they’re offering free SSL certs so I’d suggest you go check them out if you’re not already a customer. Here’s the link for the offer ( not an affiliate link as I don’t think they have a program ).
Free SSL Certificate at Namecheap.com
Also you can add this nifty little badge to your page as well.
Enjoy!
As some of you know I’ve been moving to building my own offers and some other things on the advertisers side I’ll sharing later. In this quest I’ve found the most challenging thing is to flush out the fraud from the legitimate users. Everyone thinks being an advertiser is the way to go right? Affiliates send traffic and you pay them 5$ and you make 7-10$. Well if only it was that easy. Honestly being the advertiser or network would be the greatest thing since sliced bread if there wasn’t so much affiliate fraud. Now I’m not talking about Blackhat tactics or spam traffic generation stuff. I’m talking straight fraud such as stolen credit cards and lead stuffing. There’s large organized rings of fraudsters primarily in China, India, Phillipines, Vietnam, Russia, Turkey and a few other countries. So if any of my readers on from those countries and get denied for networks and offers a lot that’s why.
Why you should care
Fortunately most of the fraudsters aren’t that sophisticated from what I’ve seen, so there’s a lot of ways to flush them out of the bushes and cut your losses before they start. There’s very good reason to catch them “Before” they start. As an advertiser the last thing you want is a large number of charge backs or stolen credit cards running through your system. If enough of this happens you can be blacklisted for any merchant account. Therefore the prevention of these transactions going through is a good place to begin.
One of the hard parts about owning a network or running an offer is the careful balancing act between what you let through and what you block. You could lock down your affiliate approval or purchase system tighter then a drum and approve hardly anyone. Or you could let everyone through but these are extremes of the spectrum of course. So the goal is to build little checks in to weed out most of the fraud before it starts. One thing I’ve chosen is anyone signing up with a proxy is going to get denied. If you can’t signup with your real IP I don’t want to do business with you. Maybe I’m going to knock out some sales and some affiliates this way but it’s worth it so I don’t have to deal with as much fraud.
Now there’s no way you can block all proxies, I know this but you can weed out the simple ones by checking the regular open proxy ports which are 80, 8080, and 3128. I’ve written a little function that you pass the IP address to and return 0 or 1 based on whether those ports are open on the IP. So that when an affiliate applies or a sale goes through I check if the IP ( address of the computer) is coming from computer that has those ports open. 99.9 out of a 100 home users aren’t going to have any of those ports open.
Just take this code and stick it in your sign up form or registration form and decide how you want to deal with these orders or sign ups. You may want to just throw them into a queue to be manually checked. Or build a rating system based on points. How you handle things is up to you.
PHP Proxy Port Checking Code:
function ipProxyPortCheck($ip){
//timeout you want to use to test
$timeout = 5;
// ports we're going to check
$ports = array(80,3128,8080);
// flag to be returned 0 means safe, 1 means open and unsafe
$flag = 0;
// loop through each of the ports we're checking
foreach($ports as $port){
// this is the code that does the actual checking for the port
@$fp = fsockopen($ip,$port,$errno,$errstr,$timeout);
// test if something was returned, ie the port is open
if(!empty($fp)){
// we know the set the flag
$flag = 1;
// close our connection to the IP
fclose($fp);
}
}
// send our flag back to the calling code
return $flag;
}
// call our function and check the IP in there
echo ipProxyPortCheck('69.217.73.52');
?>
Hope this saves some advertisers and affiliate networks some time and money.
Originally I posted this over at Blackhatworld.com but thought I’d repost it on here for my readers.
Someone asked what is a pre-pop offer and how do I use it?
First of a pre-pop offer means that they allow you to populate the data in the offer with a GET uri. So for example if your form had fields “fname”, “lname”, “phone” your url to pre-pop it might look like this:
http://www.affiliateoffer.com/lander.php?fname=Smaxor&lname=Musings&phone=4082931938
So what this would do is take the user to the landing page with their first name, last name and phone number already filled in so all they have to do is hit submit and makes your conversions go way up. Not all offers support this however a lot do so just ask your affiliate manager what pre-pops they offer.
Pre-Pop is awesome especially if you have a white label or private lable offer you’re promoting. Bascialy once they fill out the first offer, we’ll use a mortgage lead as an example, you forward them to a second page or throw them a pop-up already pre-populated with the data that they filled out from the first mortgage lead offer so all they have to do is hit submit.
Some examples of numbers, when we used to run a lot of mortgage ( sucks now for mortgage ) we’d pre-pop a home owners insurance lead form. 15% would hit submit and we’d get a second 8$ pop for the same lead. Then we’d pre-pop a new window install lead offer and on and on.
1000 leads * 15% = 150 leads additional * 8 = $1200 extra for the same traffic
Good stuff. The other thing pre-pop’s are great for is if you are a mailer and have data then you can make the links that they click on have their info in them already so that when they click and go to the landing page it’s already pre-populated with their info.
So your link in the email might look like this
http://www.offer.com/page.php?name=t…one=theirphone…….
Now you’re conversion is going to go up quite a bit if their form is already filled out with their info. Also if you don’t want to use that big link in a mail or the affiliate url ( always a good idea ) you can send them to your domains and keep a database of records. So for example you use a link like this
http://www.yourdomain.com/jump.php?id=38357
Where 38357 corresponds to a record id in the database. You pull their record and then forward them to the offer with their pre-pop info.
Simple code to do this would be
<?php
// connect to your db
dbconnect();
// pull the id from the uri
$id = htmlentities(trim($_GET['id']));
// build your sql for pulling the record from the database
$sql = "SELECT * FROM records WHERE id = '$id'";
// get the result from the database for the id
$sql_result = mysql_query($sql);
// put that result into an array
$row = mysql_fetch_row($sql_result);
// here we're redirecting the user to the landing page with the pre-pop uri, this is
// assuming that first name is the second field, last name the 3rd field and phone number
// the 4th field.
echo "<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.affiliateoffer.com/lander.php?fname={$row[1]}&lname={$row[2]}&phone={$row[3]}"/>";
?>
Hope that helps and explains some stuff.
He has moved it to his own domain. He’s posted all his enlightening archived content posts from the past.
I Know I don’t usually post crap that’s not specifically coding related but I thought I’d reach out and see who of my readers is going to Affiliate Summit West? For those of you who don’t know ASW is a small to medium sized affiliate tradeshow that really caters to the smaller affiliate crowd. When I say “smaller affiliate crowd” I don’t mean income wise. The show is filled with the guys that aren’t giant corporations with 50, 100, 1000 employees. Most of the people you’ll find at this show run their own stuff or have a small team of people but are very close to the action. The only ones this doesn’t apply to are the vendors. I suppose after being around for a while there’s nothing that bothers me more then not being able to talk with the owner or one of the founders of a company. As I’m the owner and founder of my own company. Now I know organizations have to grow and most of the time that means loss of someone that knows everything that’s going on. It also means it’s a lot harder to get in contact with that person that does know what’s going on as they move higher up the food chain. If you’re interested in meeting some of the owners/ceo’s of the companies you promote first hand this is the place to do it. Introduce yourself, shake their hand and tell them how you can make them money. Really an opportunity you’ll never get dealing with an online form for signup and an affiliate manager. I don’t care what people say…. the people at the top do know more, get to them and meet as many as you can.
I’ve had the opportunity to attend both Afilliate Summits last year and AdTech SF. All were worth their weight in gold for helping our affiliate marketing company ( if you could call it that ) move along.. I’ve had some people ask me what was so great about it…. well in my experience it really wasn’t the speakers or the vendors but rather the people walking around that are affiliates just like all of us. If you, like me, don’t know a single sole off line that knows the first thing about “what” affiliate/internet marketing is then your’e not alone. Here’s an opportunity to get around some like minded soles looking to achieve a similar outcome as you. I don’t care what anyone says you’re much better off sharing information and working with other people. You can just get so much more accomplished so much faster when you have 2-3 people thinking about a problem rather then just yourself sitting there. I’m no brain but I think I’m a pretty smart and a creative guy however the people I work with come up with great ideas I never would of thought of and we all benefit. In all honesty it’s hard to know who is legit online and who isn’t. And one way to advance those relationships much faster is to go sit down with people and meet them in person. It’s much easier to get a guage on someone when you’re sitting having a drink with them rather then some forum posts.
Well I’ve said my piece. I hope to see everyone who reads my blog out in Vegas. I’m the 6′5 240lbs fellow with the blackhat on . See you there.
P.S. leave a post on here if you’re going to be there or email me and we’ll see if we can connect. I leave for Brazil tonight and am flying direct to vegas but will be occasionally checking my email while I’m down there. Have a great week. Smaxor
I’ve been having a few people ask me for my class to login and pull stats automatically from the different affiliate networks that run on Directtrack’s Affiliate Solution. In one of my previous posts there’s a section of the db called conversions. Well what that section is for is to put all your conversions in from Directtrack. If you go into your directtrack account and hit advanced stats you’re going to see all your subid’s you’ve passed for conversions. This class does that automatically. You’ll need to write a little script to implement the class. But it’ll save you a bunch of time on trying to figure out how to login, grab and parse your affiliate stats. To use this you’ll also need to setup a writable dir for you cookie files. Because when this script log’s in it needs to save a cookie so that it can tell copeac or cpa empire that you’re a verified user.
<?
class DirectTrack {
private $loggedin;
private $login;
private $password;
private $site;
private $cookiefile;
private $start_day;
private $start_month;
private $start_year;
private $end_day;
private $end_month;
private $end_year;
/**
* logs you into the dt system of your choice
*
* @param string $login - login for directtrack
* @param string $password - password for directtrack
* @param string $site - i.e. affiliates.copeac.com or monetizeit.net
* @param string $cookie - cookie location
*/
public function __construct($login,$password,$site,$cookie){
$this->loggedin = false;
$this->login = null;
$this->password = null;
$this->site = null;
$$this->cookiefile = null;
$this->start_day = null;
$this->start_month = null;
$this->start_year = null;
$this->end_day = null;
$this->end_month = null;
$this->end_year = null;
$this->setLogin($login);
$this->setPassword($password);
$this->setSite($site);
$this->setCookieLocation($cookie);
$this->DTLogin();
}
/**
* deletes the cookie file on destroying the object remember to unset your object
*
*/
public function __destruct(){
unlink($this->cookiefile);
}
/**
* login setter, url encodes
*
* @param string $login
*/
public function setLogin($login){ $this->login = urlencode($login); }
/**
* password setter, url encodes
*
* @param string $password
*/
public function setPassword($password){ $this->password = urlencode($password);}
/**
* Directtrack site domain setter
*
* @param string $site - i.e. affiliates.copeac.com or monetizeit.net
*/
public function setSite($site){ $this->site = $site;}
/**
* setter for the cookie directory, randomizes the cookie as well incase multi threads are running
* Please make sure your directory is writable
*
* @param string $cookie
*/
public function setCookieLocation($cookie){
$this->cookiefile = $cookie.”/cookie”.rand(11111111,99999999).”.txt”;
}
/**
* getter for the currently generated cookie file location
*
* @return string
*/
public function getCookieLocation(){return $this->cookiefile;}
/**
* Checks the status of being logged In
*
* @return array - array(’msg’=> ”,’status’=>”) 0 logged out, 1 logged in.
*/
public function LoggedInStatus(){
if($this->loggedin){
return array(”msg”=>”Logged In!”,”status”=>1);
}else{
return array(”msg”=>”Not logged in!”,”status”=>0);
}
}
/**
* sets the start date for the report you’re looking for
*
* @param int $day
* @param int $month
* @param int $year
*/
public function setStartDate($day,$month,$year){
$this->start_day = $day;
$this->start_month = $month;
$this->start_year = $year;
}
/**
* sets the ending date for the report you’re looking for
*
* @param int $day
* @param int $month
* @param int $year
*/
public function setEndDate($day,$month,$year){
$this->end_day = $day;
$this->end_month = $month;
$this->end_year = $year;
}
/**
* Combo function which gets the advanced report from direct track that has all the
* specific sub-id data then parses it into a multi dimensional array
*
* @return array - array[line][fields]
*/
public function AdvancedStats(){
if(!$this->loggedin){
$this->DTLogin();
}
$stat_page = $this->DTfetchAdvancedStats();
return $this->csv2array($stat_page);
}
/**
* extends AdvnacedStats, and then inserts the data into the db
*
* @return array - advanced stats array incase you want it for something else
*/
public function AdvancedStats2DB(){
$stats = $this->AdvancedStats();
$this->DBconversionInsert($stats);
return $stats;
}
/**
* gets totals based on account for dates set
*
*/
public function Totals(){
$csv = $this->DTfetchTotals();
return $this->csv2array($csv);
}
/**
* NOT COMPLETE
* -Needs the regex to work properly
* -paging for sites that have multiple pages of results
*
* @return array
*/
public function AllOffers(){
$campaign_page = $this->DTfetchAllCamapigns();
$regex_sections = “/</a></td>.+?program_id=(d*)&.+?’>(.+?)<.+?top’>$*(.+?)/*<*.+?’>(.+?)<.+?’>(.+?)</s”;
preg_match_all($regex_sections,$campaign_page,$matches);
foreach($matches[0] as $section){
echo “<br><br>$section<br><br>”;
//get section name
$regex_section = “/Category: (.+?)</”;
preg_match($regex_section,$section,$match);
$section_name = “<b>”.$match[1].”</b>”;
$regex_offers = “/program_id=(d*)&/s”;
preg_match_all($regex_offers,$section,$matches);
var_dump($matches);
exit;
$offers = array();
$sets = 0;
foreach ($matches as $data){
if($sets != 0){
$i = 0;
foreach ($data as $offer_data){
$offers[$i][] = $offer_data;
$i++;
}
}
$sets++;
exit;
}
array_unshift($offers,$section_name);
var_dump($offers);
}
return $offers;
exit;
}
//// Private //////
/**
* the function that logs into your directtrack account
*
* @return string - curl output
*/
private function DTLogin(){
$url = “https://$this->site/index.html”;
$post = “DL_AUTH_USERNAME=$this->login&DL_AUTH_PASSWORD=$this->password”;
$ch = new CurlPost($url,$post);
$ch->setCookie($this->cookiefile);
$ch->SSL();
$c_out = $ch->execute();
unset($ch);
if(1){ //parse for successful login
$this->loggedin = true;
}
return $c_out;
}
/**
* gets the advanced stats once logged in
*
* @return string - curl output - csv format
*/
private function DTfetchAdvancedStats(){
$url = “https://$this->site/partners/monthly_affiliate_stats.html?program_id=0&affiliate_stats_start_month=$this->start_month&affiliate_stats_start_day=$this->start_day&affiliate_stats_start_year=$this->start_year&affiliate_stats_end_month=$this->end_month&affiliate_stats_end_day=$this->end_day&affiliate_stats_end_year=$this->end_year&breakdown=cumulative&get_lead_info=Download+Optional+Info”;
$ch = new CurlGet($url);
$ch->useCookie($this->cookiefile);
$ch->SSL();
$curl_stats = $ch->execute();
unset($ch);
return $curl_stats;
}
/**
* breaks csv data into a multi-dim array with array[line][fields]
*
* @param string $curl_data - csv from advanced page
* @return array - multi-dim array[line][fields]
*/
private function csv2array($curl_data){
$return = array();
//lines to array
$stats = explode(”n”,trim($curl_data));
foreach($stats as $line){
//fields to array
$fields = explode(”,”,trim($line));
$record = array();
foreach($fields as $field){
$record[] = trim($field);
}
$return[] = $record;
}
return $return;
}
/**
* takes the multi-dim array from DTparseAdvancedStats and inserts it into a db
*
* @param array $stats
*/
private function DBconversionInsert($stats){
$count = 0;
foreach($stats as $row){
if($count != 0){
//assignments
$click_id = trim($row[2]);
$source = $this->site;
$date = $this->_ChangeDateFormat($row[0]);
$campaign = addslashes(trim($row[1]));
$campaignID = trim($row[3]);
$transactionID = trim($row[4]);
$lineitemID = trim($row[5]);
$commission = $this->_CleanCommission($row[6]);
$sql = “INSERT INTO `conversions` (`click_id`,`source`,`date`,`campaign`,`campiagnID`,`transactionID`,`lineitemID`,`commission`) VALUES (’$click_id’,'$source’,'$date’,'$campaign’,'$campaignID’,'$transactionID’,'$lineitemID’,'$commission’)”;
//echo “$sql<br>”;
if(!strpos($click_id,”blogs”))
{
mysql_query($sql);
}
//if(mysql_error()){ echo mysql_error().”n”; }
}
$count ++;
}
}
/**
* gets the totals for all sales by campaign
*
* @return string - curl output
*/
private function DTfetchTotals(){
$url = “https://$this->site/partners/monthly_affiliate_stats.html?program_id=0&affiliate_stats_start_month=$this->start_month&affiliate_stats_start_day=$this->start_day&affiliate_stats_start_year=$this->start_year&affiliate_stats_end_month=$this->end_month&affiliate_stats_end_day=$this->end_day&affiliate_stats_end_year=$this->end_year&breakdown=cumulative&get_csv=1″;
$ch = new CurlGet($url);
$ch->useCookie($this->cookiefile);
$ch->SSL();
$curl_stats = $ch->execute();
unset($ch);
return $curl_stats;
}
/**
* once logged in curl to get the campaigns
*
* @return string - curl page
*/
private function DTfetchAllCamapigns(){
$url = “https://$this->site/partners/search_program_categories.html”;
$ch = new CurlGet($url);
$ch->useCookie($this->cookiefile);
$ch->SSL();
$curl_stats = $ch->execute();
unset($ch);
return $curl_stats;
}
// private functions
private function _ChangeDateFormat($date)
{
$parts = explode(”/”,$date);
$date = $parts[2].”-”.$parts[1].”-”.$parts[0];
//echo $date.”<br>”;
return $date;
}
private function _CleanCommission($dollar)
{
return str_ireplace(”$”,”",$dollar);
}
}
// THIS IS HOW YOU USE THE CLASS
//$cookieDir = “cookies”;
//$dt = new DirectTrack(’my@email.com’,'password’,'copec.com’,$cookieDir);
//$dt->setStartDate(1,6,2007);
//$dt->setEndDate(18,6,2007);
//var_dump($dt->LoggedInStatus());
//echo $dt->getCookieLocation();
//var_dump($dt->AdvancedStats());
//var_dump($dt->Stats2DB());
//var_dump($dt->Totals());
//var_dump($dt->AllOffers());
//unset($dt);
?>
P.S. Sorry for the crappy display of the code. Unlike Uberaffiliate I don’t make money from my blog so it doesn’t get that much attention. 
The other day someone told me about the new Pepperjam Affiliate network and being as I like to check out everything new in the industry I decided to sign up. They accepted me so I logged on and took a look.
First thing I noticed is it’s a based on acceptance by the advertiser network. So I did like I do with all those kinds of networks and applied for every single advertiser. I got a bunch of approvals right away and it seems like a lot of the advertisers are on auto approve. So cool I let it sit as I’ve had other things to do. When today I get this email from PepperJam.
“Dear <affiliate name>,
Blockbuster has opted to terminate you from their affiliate program. Please remove your links, as you will no longer be receiving a payout for leads or sales effective immediately. If you are interested in the reason, please contact the aforementioned advertiser. Thank you.
pepperjamNETWORK
Advertiser Support Team”
Now keep in mind I’ve never even sent 1 click to a single link on PepperJam as I just signed up. And already I’m getting canceled?
So my question is this as a network owner do you care about consistency? Say I had just spent 3 days setting up blockbuster campaigns to earn us ( pepperjam and I ) money and then got this email? Instability in advertisers is a good way to lose new affiliates don’t you think? Anyone else had a similar experience yet?
I emailed support and we’ll see how they respond. I’ll post the response when I get it.
As far as I’m concerned there’s a ton of unknown about pepperjam. Are they going to pay on time? How consistent are they? I know they’ve been selling seo services for a long time but that doesn’t mean they know how to work with affiliates. We’ll see how they handle all these situations.
If you haven’t guessed by now I’m not the kind of guy to give fish out, I’m a strong believer in the “Teach and man to fish” theory.
Not sure how this is going to work but I thought I was a great conversation on some of the basics of blackhat. Now this isn’t get rich quick stuff it’s more more focused on how to approach things and how to learn “how to do Blackhat” from a root base level. If you’re looking for the answers and a just do X, Y and Z and you’ll get rich this isn’t the post for you. Hell this isn’t the blog for you. Let me know what you think as this was about an hour conversation with some friends of mine on IRC.
All Names except mine have been changed to protect the innocent 
************************************************
<Smaxor> ladies
* Joe has joined #cakes
<Joe> f*** 82 clicks yesterday not one f***IN conversion…f*** ppc i need to get into some blackhat sh**.
<Joe> nice shades
<Joe> yo man, point me in the right direction for getting sh**loads of traffic through BH techniques? im a coder too….
<Jerry> Joe, syndk8.net
<Joe> yeah i got that on my rss feed
<Joe> i guess right now, my main goal is to make some FAST cash to get me started, then i will start building up slower, but more reliable forms of profit
<Jerry> doesn’t work that way
<Jerry> you build slow so you can learn how to properly build fast
<Joe> there’s tons of methods damnit…blogging….arbitrage, i donno
<Jerry> well pick one and try it
<Joe> do autoblogs really work? i mean…most people only see $5 a week lmao
<Joe> or…most people i’ve talked to
<Jerry> if done properly they can make some money
<Joe> do you use wpomatic
<Jerry> no i write my own software always
<Joe> or autoblog
<Joe> oh ok
<Joe> think it’s better to slap adsense on them or some aff links
<Jerry> or both
<Joe> are directory submissions worth it
<Jerry> helps get indexed
<Joe> i heard about this SQUIRT sh**
<Smaxor> Eli’s a good guy
<Joe> yeah he’s very creative
<Joe> and a coder…f*** if i was creative, i’d have some dough because people on WF all the time say if you can code you should be makin some money
<Joe> so i must have somethin wrong with me goddamnit
<Smaxor> would you quit with the self hating
<Smaxor> that sh** gets old
<Joe> nah im not self hating
<Smaxor> <Joe> so i must have somethin wrong with me goddamnit
<Smaxor> that’s self hating
<Smaxor> now shouldn’t you be doing something to make some money
<Joe> yes i should
<Joe> don’t know exactly what though. f***.
<Joe> 82 mother f***in clicks yesterday not one conversion
<Smaxor> sounds like you suck at picking keywords
<Joe> this is why i need some f***in free BH traffic
<Joe> nah those same KW’s were converting well
<Smaxor> well what happened?
<Joe> maybe cuz it’s christmas time idk people are probably busy
<Smaxor> not to busy to click
<Smaxor> my conversions and traffic has gone up as we approached xmas
<Joe> maybe im just in a slump then, idk because it’s a free trial offer
<Joe> well they pay S + H
<Joe> Smaxor how did you learn BH
<Smaxor> I stopped talking on irc and reading forums and spent a few months doing nothing but watching the serps
<Smaxor> then reverse engineered what I saw on there
<Smaxor> that’s the only way to do blackhat
<Smaxor> reading forums and sh** isn’t going to get you anywhere as the really good stuff isn’t talked about
<Joe> and being creative, exploiting high-traffic sites
<Smaxor> nope
<Smaxor> none of that
<Smaxor> researching and seeing what other people are doing
<Smaxor> then copying it
<Joe> http://seoblackhat.com/
<Joe> $100 a month
<Smaxor> you’ll eventually learn your own ideas
<Joe> wonder if it’s worth it
<Smaxor> are you not f***ing listening to me
<Joe> im listening
<Smaxor> don’t ask a question then ask about something else
<Smaxor> no that’s a waste of “your” time ( not everyones just yours specifically )
<Joe> k
<Smaxor> if you want to learn blackhat do what I told you
<Joe> watch serps for months
<Joe> reverse engineer
<Smaxor> yep
<Smaxor> look at the high competition high payout niches
<Joe> education
<Smaxor> drugs, finance, ringtones
<Joe> my AM told me to try edu on ppc
<Joe> i bout slapped him
<Joe> only thing though, if i start getting BH traffic, im scared of getting banned from my aff networks
<Smaxor> quit being a pussy
<Joe> well i cant make money if i get banned from the aff networks :-
<Jerry> there are tons of affiliate networks
<Jerry> most will warn you if you’re getting sh**ty traffic
<Joe> ok
<Smaxor> yeah blackhat traffic isn’t an issue usually unless you’re stupid about it
<Smaxor> and spamming links while you have the offer up
<Smaxor> and redirecting or some sh**
<Joe> hmm
<Carl> Smaxor - you should write a Blackhat Affiliate Playbook - similar to diorex’s, but with automation involved 
<Smaxor> yeah there’s just to much to know
<Smaxor> to be honest
<Smaxor> there’s no playbook really
<Smaxor> casue there’s a million things you can do
<Smaxor> suppose I could write a playbook on sh** like read the serps
<Smaxor> but stuff evolves pretty quickly
<Smaxor> and I don’t give out direct info that’s working
<Smaxor> if I can still really exploit it then not worth publishing
<Smaxor> my blogs just for fun and helping people out, not worth losing money because I’m blogging about some sh**
<Jerry> curl tutorials are all anyone should need
<Jerry> if you can’t make money by using curl to scrape other websites then you probably aren’t creative enough for that type of stuff
<Mike> what about php?
* Mike just ordered that php book last night.
<Jerry> sigh
<Smaxor> honestly when I need something new to automate all I do is go to the serps and find what’s working then make it
<Jerry> curl/php
<Smaxor> honestly it’s all right there
<Mike> ohhh
* Mike nods.
<Mike> my b
<Smaxor> php is just a tool
<Jerry> yeah same
<Joe> (12:33:12) ~ (@Jerry) if you can’t make money by using curl to scrape other websites then you probably aren’t creative enough for that type of stuff
<Joe> true dat :- i know how to use php and curl and sh**
<Joe> just not f***in creative enough to know what to do with my goddamn skills
<Smaxor> shut the f*** up Joe I’m tired of hearing your whining
<Joe> hey, im a newb
<Joe> everyone was noob at some point
<Smaxor> Joe is a retard I told him go look at the serps but nooooooooo he just wants to whine
<Joe> im not whining homie
<Jerry> dude you are kinda whining, just go try some sh** and see what works, thats how everyone gets started
<Joe> and if i was a retard i wouldn’t even be in the business at age 16
<Joe> how could one profit off a script that creates a gmail or hotmail account
<Smaxor> dude
<Carl> you can sell it to me
<Smaxor> shouldn’t you be looking at the serps?
<Carl> if its php
<Carl> not the esrun one
<Carl> mine was Joe
<Joe> the one i make would probably have manual captcha solving
<Joe> because idk too much about captcha crackers
<Joe> or captcha solvers
<Carl> thats a bummer
<Smaxor> yeah the script to create stuff like gmail accounts is easy
<Smaxor> the captcha stuff is hard
<Joe> yes.
<Joe> ah f***
<Carl> Smaxor - hes on the right path…serps show a lot of sh** feeding to blogspot, which involves a gmail account (kinda)
<Carl> seems like the best way to make throwaway sites
<Joe> blogger creator
<Smaxor> so then start coding
<Joe> well. see the sad thing is, i’d code it, sell it for not that much, then people i’d sell it to would probably make a lot more money off of MY code
<Jerry> great attitude
<Joe> how? IDK
<Joe> im just tellin it like it is.
<Smaxor> is that more whining I hear?
<Smaxor> nah you’re telling it how you see it
<Smaxor> that’s not “how it is”
<Joe> dude im not tryin to f***in whine im just speculating on what will happen because ive seen it happen
<Smaxor> so cause soemthing has happened with some dipsh** in the past means it’ll happen to you?
<Smaxor> seriously you should get a job at Mc Donalds
<Smaxor> I’m being honest
<Smaxor> that’s what you think of yourself
<Joe> thanks bro.
<Smaxor> only being honest
<Smaxor> you need to pull yourself together and be a man
<Smaxor> decide you’re going to make something specific work
<Smaxor> then not quit until you do
<Joe> been trying that for 6 months
<Smaxor> and stop talking all this sh** about well poor me I’d probably do blah blah blah
<Joe> every since I joined WF
<Smaxor> that’s cause you’re not focusing
<Smaxor> you’re wasting a bunch of f***ing time trying 10 different things and talking in forums and on IRC
<Joe> im just trying to think of ideas on how i can write code that will benefit me.
<Joe> not other people.
<Smaxor> dude what did I tell you to do?
<Joe> i know look at the f***ing serps i been doing that
<Smaxor> not enough
<Joe> even read the goddamn wiki
<Smaxor> have you spent 8 hours a day staring at them for a month
<Smaxor> looking at all the different serps
<Smaxor> looking for things that keep popping up
<Smaxor> then investigating those thing?
<Joe> wish i could spend that much time
<Smaxor> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=MG5&q=buy+viagra&btnG=Search
<Joe> but i’ve got to go to f***ing goddamn school
<Smaxor> look at that serp result
<Smaxor> and tell me what you see
<Joe> alright
<Joe> i see a sh**load of sponsored results
<Smaxor> in the organics
<Joe> some blogs
<Smaxor> what about them
<Joe> medical sites
<Joe> holy sh**!
<Joe> look at the ps3forums result, click it
<Smaxor> what about it?
<Joe> dude is smart as f*** made a profile on buy viagra so it’d get indexed then i guess found an exploit to make the page redirect to his buy viagra pag
<Joe> e
<Joe> www.ps3forums.com/member.php?u=62801
<Mike`> lol
<Smaxor> hmm look at that 1 min later and all of a sudden you looked in the serps and found something
<Smaxor> shocker
<Mike`> that is pretty good
<Joe> yeah
<Smaxor> there’s more there
<Smaxor> a lot more
<Joe> vbulletin 3.6.8
<Smaxor> that you can find out from that one query
<Smaxor> there’s at least 3 strateies to be found from investigating those rankings
<Joe> dont see any public exploits for 3.6.8 so idk how the hell he did that redirect
<Joe> because vbulletin stops <script> tags
<Smaxor> so you don’t have to see exactlly how to do it
<Smaxor> who’s to say you couldn’t just use an image
<Smaxor> and a link
<Mike`> spam blog technorati
<Smaxor> with that rank
<Smaxor> yeah
<Smaxor> there’s another one
<Smaxor> if you look at that stuff enough they just jump out “Glaring spam”
<Joe> wonder how the f*** he got that rank
<Mike`> Viagra pharmacy which key above frank. So charge. Purchase cloud so heel. For heap in bandage. Here you search gesture that was fence often packet without bake or again spoon or loss, lash was title sometime brush.
<Mike`> lol
<Mike`> nice post
<Mike`> sounds like a translation went bad.
<Joe> yeah how the hell did a dude create a blogspot and get like third in the serps
<Joe> mofo is probably BANKIN
<Smaxor> maybe you should do some reasearch on it
<Smaxor> the answer is there
<Joe> only thing i see is keyword stuffing
<Smaxor> do you know anything about seo
<Joe> and general SEO - h1 tags, meta tags
<Smaxor> if not you need to spend some time understanding seo
<Joe> i know SEO
<Smaxor> then how do you rank for sh**?
<Joe> h1 tags, meta tags, keyword stuffing
<Joe> getting inbund links
<Smaxor> ok
<Joe> relevant inbound links
<Smaxor> well then it sounds liek that might be a good thing to look at right?
<Joe> getting links
<Smaxor> what links they might be getting?
<Joe> relevant ones
<Joe> that dude with the third serp
<Joe> on buy viagra
<Joe> he spams his site on government sites
<Joe> .gov sites
<Joe> looks like .gov site links are really important
<Joe> http://www.google.com/search?q=link:+meikoante.blogspot.com&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&start=10&sa=N
<Smaxor> as I said, if you do what I say, looking in the serps, then you’ll learn if you’re looking for the answers anywhere but in the serps you’re wasting your time
<Joe> yes i think i have a very small idea what you mean, but when i look at the serps i dont know what im looking for.
<Joe> i just see results. results for my query
<Carl> what results ’shouldnt’ be there…in your eyes
<Carl> those are usually the ones you want to replicate
<Joe> ah
<Smaxor> well what’s our goal? to get to those positions right? so how about copy what they’re doing and you will probably end up at your goal
<Smaxor> it’s a fairly simple concept really
<Joe> Smaxor
<Joe> do you think landing pages are important
<Joe> or, do you think it’s cool to grab a domain and have it redirect to the merchant LP
<Joe> and then link spam the f*** out of the domain you bought
<Smaxor> I think it makes sense to copy what you see working if you wnat the same result
<Joe> k i gonna buy domain spam the domain and have it do a redirect
<Smaxor> is that what you see happening there?
<Joe> uh, im not sure
<Joe> how do domain redirects appear in serps
<Joe> does it just show the content of the redirected page
<Smaxor> well there’s a lot of ways and all the answers are in the same location
<Smaxor> become a detective
<Smaxor> and stop asking so many god damn questinos
<Jerry> haha that dude got #3 for buy viagra by parasite hosting on technorati
<Jerry> gg
<Smaxor> ;
<Smaxor> )
<Smaxor> like I said there’s a lot to learn just in that one query
<Joe> f***
<Joe> im still trying to figure out how that mother f***er got to google first page for buy viagra on a mother f***ing ps3forums
<Joe> http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:epJ4wsrrH5kJ:www.ps3forums.com/member.php%3Fu%3D62801+buy+viagra&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us&client=firefox-a
<Joe> tis google cache
<Joe> look at that, his join date. one week ago, and he’s on the first page of google for the most saturated niche ever
<Joe> UN f***ING BELIEVABLE
<Smaxor> amazing what you find in the serps ain’t it
<Joe> yes.
<Joe> now i want to know how he did it
<Smaxor> no forums talk about that sh** do they
<Joe> not ps3 forums
<Joe> but still he got to first page!
<Jerry> he means no seo forums talk about how he did that
<Smaxor> I mean you wouldn’t find that sh** out unles you look at the serps
<Smaxor> no one is going to give you the answer on a seo forum how to do that kind of stuff
<Smaxor> you have to research it and test
<Joe> yeah i know i wouldn’t find it out unless i looked in the serps
<Joe> but the serps dont tell me how the f*** he did it :-
<Smaxor> of course they do
<Smaxor> OF COURSE THEY DO
<Joe> i been thinking, and i seriously have no f***in clue, how the hell a dude can register on a ps3 forum, put a banner up in his sig, and get on the fron
<Joe> t page in one week
<Jerry> so figure it out =)
<Joe> there gotta be somethin im missin
<Jerry> the answer isn’t in this channel, that’s for sure
<Joe> indeed.
<Joe> but working alone is for idiots, thats why im in here. to talk to and learn from people who have more experience than me
<Jerry> theres a fine line between bouncing ideas off someone else and begging for help
<Jerry> if you haven’t tried to do it yet you have no idea if it works or not
<Jerry> just go try sh** dude
<Jerry> how many sites have you made to test any of this stuff today?
<Jerry> my guess is 0
<Smaxor> right however you have to have something to contribute to the conversation before you can even have a conversation
<Smaxor> otherwise you’re just leeching
<Joe> (15:05:45) ~ (@Jerry) how many sites have you made to test any of this stuff today?
<Joe> (15:05:49) ~ (@Jerry) my guess is 0
<Joe> i been building a blog.
<Smaxor> how do you consider doing one thing a test
<Smaxor> build 50 blogs, do them all differently and see what works the best
<Joe> because im sending traffic to it.
<Smaxor> all taken from ideas you see in the serps
<Joe> cant build 50 blogs in one day
<Joe> not real ones anyway
<Joe> maybe autoblogs
<Jerry> you can build more than you currently are if you aren’t chatting in here =)
<Smaxor> yuo can pretty easily build 10 blogs a day using stock templates
<Smaxor> and in 5 days you have 50
<Smaxor> now that’s all 100% manual
<Joe> yes.
<Joe> but a blog is nothing
<Joe> without posts
<Smaxor> right
<Joe> takes me a while to pump out a good, well thought out, decent post
<Smaxor> then post to them every 2 weeks
<Smaxor> so that’s 25 posts a week
<Smaxor> or about 3 posts a day
<Smaxor> if you can do more do more
<Joe> yes but the blog im building right now, is all built around one offer im promoting
<Joe> i donno how blogs do as LP’s
<Joe> so im gonna test it versus the merchant page.
<Smaxor> where did you see that idea working and copy it from?
<Joe> nowhere because im like one of 5 people who are promoting it
<Joe> not that many people are promoting it
<Smaxor> where did you see that strategy working specifically that you copied it from, not where did you see the offer
<Joe> nowhere, because not that many people are promoting it
<Joe> so im testing to see if it will work or not
<Smaxor> nevermind
<Smaxor> you don’t get it
<Smaxor> I’m done with you
<Joe> Smaxor i do get it, and im telling you there’s no one to f***in copy from because no one is f***in promoting it
<Joe> i’ve seen this strategy work in OTHER niches
<Joe> but not in this particular one. so im gonna see how it does because i’ve seen it work in other areas
<Smaxor> I didn’t say anything about the niche EVER
<Smaxor> as I never do
<Smaxor> because most of the time it’s not the “Niche” that makes money it’s the system that promotes it
<Joe> in this case, a blog
<Smaxor> once you have the right “System” you can stuff in any niche
<Joe> agreed.
<Joe> right now, the gist of what im doing, is testing: PPC - > Blog - > Merchant VS. PPC - > Redirect-2-Merchant
<Smaxor> so we return to where we started what blog that someone is advertising did you copy your system from?
<Joe> uh, when you told me to look at the serps for buy viagra
<Joe> the third result was a blog.
<Smaxor> I never look at the hard niches and see someone paying for PPC to a blog
<Smaxor> just doesn’t happen
<Smaxor> so sounds like a piss poor system to me
<Joe> but it’s not a hard niche
<Smaxor> the serps is blackhat
<Smaxor> you’re talking about PPC
<Smaxor> they’re 100% different
<Joe> well i wanna do both
<Smaxor> focus
<Joe> any traffic i can take i will get
<Smaxor> back to where we started
<Joe> i mean any traffic i can get i will take
<Joe> i’ve BEEN doing ppc but i also want to try other things, hence BH
<Smaxor> then you’ll fail at them all
<Smaxor> until you become a pro at one don’t do anything else
<Smaxor> or you’ll spin your wheels
<Joe> okay.
Let me know what you think.
Success,
Smaxor
