Installing Prosper202 for Affiliate Marketing

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Things you’ll need to get setup with Prosper202 and affiliate marketing:
> A webhost or VPS or Dedicated server (web host is cheapest, Dedi’s are most expensive, VPS is a good compromise)
> A domain name, just use a .com in case you want to run international in the future. Godaddy are pretty good.
> An ftp client. I use fireftp, a firefox addon. Just type ftp into the addons search of whatever browser you use.
> Some basic image editing software like photoshop
> A bank account with a debit card and some funds

If you have a website setup already you can skip through this first bit.

Ok so first step is to point the DNS of your domain name towards your servers IP address. So basically all your stuff is stored on a remote computer called a server and your domain name is like an address that needs to be linked to that server.
Log in to Godaddy or whatever company you used to register your domain name and get into their DNS manager. Change all the IP addresses to the IP of your server, this should look something like 23.53.121.5
There’s some more info on DNS http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/680/managing-dns-for-your-domain-names?locale=en

Basic DNS Settings should be something like:
ARecord        @        123.123.123.123
Cname        www.    @
MX            @        mail.mydomain.com

OK so now it’s time to start playing with your server. Hopefully you have a control panel like plesk or cpanel.
Google “set up new domain cpanel” and follow instructions.

Once you have your new domain setup you’ll need a MySQL database ready for Prosper. Again Google is your friend.
Google “set up mysql database cpanel”

Make a note of the database name, username and password. You’ll need this when you edit the prosper202 config file.

Download the Prosper202 current version from: http://prosper.tracking202.com/apps/download/

Unzip it and edit the config file. Rename it to 202-config.php
When you open the file it will look like this:

// ** MySQL settings ** //
$dbname = ‘The name of the database’;
$dbuser = ‘Your MySQL username’;
$dbpass = ‘Your password’;
$dbhost = ‘localhost’; // Dont worry about these lines.
$mchost = ‘localhost’;

Don’t take out the ‘s just edit in between them.

OK now fire up your ftp client and log into your server using the ftp credentials you put in when you created your site.

There should be a folder called httpdocs or something along those lines. If you see an index file you are good to go. Delete all the standard template files that are in the httpdocs directory and copy in all the prosper202 documents along with your saved config file.
Have a read of this slightly more in depth guide to installing Prosper before you give this a go: http://prosper.tracking202.com/apps/docs/

When you login for the first time you’ll be asked to choose an admin password along with entering some other details.

You are now ready to setup your first campaign. We’ll use a direct linked campaign from Facebook to a CPA network as an example.

So the first thing you need is to get an affiliate link from a CPA network or someone who you want to send traffic to.

It should look something like:

http://www.website.com/lander.php?affid=213423&bid=12341

You may also have an option to put a subid in. Make sure you add this subid just input the subid as abc and pull off the link from your affiliate panel so it looks like below.

http://www.website.com/lander.php?affid=213423&bid=12341&subid=abc

Now open up your favourite text editor. Windows has notepad.exe, Notepad ++ is better. Change the abc to [[subid]] so the link looks like the below:

http://www.website.com/lander.php?affid=213423&bid=12341&subid=[[subid]]

Now login to prosper202 and click setup then #1 Traffic Sources
prosper202 > login > setup > #1 Traffic Sources

We will setup Facebook as a traffic source. THe next step is pretty straight forward type Facebook into the top box and click add
Then next step is to select Facebook from the next box down and type in your account username. Leave the pixel type and pixel code boxes blank, click add again

That’s your traffic source setup. You only need to do that once for each traffic source you use

Next step categories, so click #2 categories in the menu
Then what most people do is categorise everything by cpa network or whoever is buying the traffic.
So type the name of your CPA or Affiliate network into campaign category and click add

Once that is done move on to next step #3 campaigns
OK so starting from the top box and working down.
> Affiliate network select yours
> Campaign call it what you want. I would call it something like “Male Dating UK”
> rotate urls leave as no. You can test landing pages or divide traffic if you want by using this in future
> affiliate url paste in the link
> payout set it at 10 for now you can always update it later
> Cloaking leave this to off. Basically its a way of hiding where traffic is coming from.
Then click add

Now we are going to skip a few steps and move on to #7 Get Links
OK so click #7 Get Links then from top to bottom again.
> leave get text add code as direct link setup
> select cdate from affiliate network
> Select the campaign
> Select direct link from method of promotion
> cloaking leave as default
> PPC network select facebook
> ppc account select your username
leave everything else as it is and click generate tracking link

You should get a tracking link at the bottom of the page. This is the link you use when you upload your ads to facebook

So to upload an add you need that link. A title and description for the ad and an image 110×80 pixels

There’s one more thing I want to show you on Prosper202 though.
if you click #8 Get Postback/Pixel you will see half way down the page there is a heading saying Simple Global Tracking Pixel
This is the pixel you give to your CPA network to use as a conversion pixel.
<img height=”1″ width=”1″ border=”0″ style: display: none;

Neverblue Out of Bounds Thailand 2013

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Thank you Neverblue for a great trip to Phuket Thailand, was good to see everyone in the Neverblue team and meet some new faces. Just when you think the out of bounds trips can’t get any better…

The Westin Siray Hotel where we stayed

Everything required for an OOB trip was supplied

Boat trip to Ko Phi Phi

Sunset over Siray bay

Particular thanks to Amanda who couldn’t be there, get well soon. Katrena who stepped in to babysit 20 affiliates + Scotty, Leanne & Bjorn for scouting it out (tough job but someone had to do it), Kenny for being the responsible one and Nadia for being a great “buddy”. Hope everyone who went enjoyed it as much as I did!

If you aren’t signed up with Neverblue now is your chance to get on the next Out of Bounds. Join Here

Coding PHP for Affiliates | A Getting Started Guide

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Coding for me is one of the most important skills you can have as an affiliate marketer. I’ve met plenty of affiliates that are running huge volume, making millions and can’t write a single line of code. “I just outsource it all” but for me I couldn’t imagine coming up with a tweak to a landing page or a new concept and not being able to impliment it there and then. So here are some basic steps in getting started with PHP for the absolute novice who has never coded anything in their lives before.

What will you need:

  1. A text editor – I recommend http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
  2. A ftp client, I user fireftp for firefox but there are a million and one you can choose from.
  3. A Server, VPS or Web hosting for your new site/landing page, plus a domain name.
  4. WAMP is a good tool if you want to check your pages load from a local PC

OK so that is about all you need and all that software above is FREE.

First Steps – Hello World

So first step is to open up a new document in Notepad++ and copy and paste in the following text:

<?php
echo “Hello World”;
?>

Save that file somewhere and name it index.php

Using your FTP client connect to your web hosting account and upload the index.php file to your server. Be careful not to overwrite anything importnant, create a new directory if necessary.

Open up your favourite web browser (If you stil use Internet Explorer, go download Chrome/Firefox) and load the url for your web site i.e.

http://www.mydomain.com/newdirectory/index.php

If it’s worked you should see a blank page with Hello World written at the top…

Possible Errors:
404 – File not found “This just means your web browser is looking for a file that isn’t there did you get the path correct. File uploaded OK etc?”
403 or anything else. Google the error code and find out what you did wrong.

So what you are basically doing is writing some computer code on your home PC, transfering that to a webserver so the world can see and then viewing that code in your browser like a normal internet user would.

OK so that is a basic page. Now you have that down I’m going to provide some basic functions, loops etc. Then go through some examples.

The Basics

<?php
// Number functions
$number = 1;    // this sets the variable $number to 1
$number += 3;    // $number now equals 4
$rand = rand(0,1)   // sets the variable $rand to either 0 or 1
$total = $number * $rand;   //  star is used for multiplication

// String functions
$paintitblack = str_replace(“white”, “black”, “<body text=’white’>”);   // String replace
$jackson = substr(‘abcdef’, 0, 3)    // takes first 3 letters of a string i.e abc

// Basic loops
$c = 0;
while ($c <= 5) {
echo $c;
$c += 1;
}

if ($affiliate == ‘john’) { echo ‘Hey John’; }

// Other “fun” stuff
echo date(‘l jS F Y’);    // output todays date

if (isset($_GET['w'])) { echo ‘Landingpage2′; }     // if you load the url like index.php?w=whatever it will say landingpage2

$searchlink = ‘http://www.uksite.com’;
echo “<meta http-equiv=\”refresh\” content=\”0;url=”.urlencode($searchlink).”\”>”;  // basic metarefresh redirect
?>

OK so lets look at some examples of how we can use PHP in affiliate marketing.

Example 1 – Split testing landing pages

<?php
$landingpages = array(
‘http://www.mycpanetwork.com/test.php?affid=123′,
‘http://www.affnetwork2.com/test2.php’,
‘http://www.affnetwork3.com/anotherlp.php’
);
$searchlink = $landingpages[array_rand($landingpages)];
echo “<meta http-equiv=\”refresh\” content=\”0;url=”.$searchlink.”\”>”;
?>

The above is a really simple script you can use to test different offers or networks. It uses a meta refresh but you can just as easily use links like below in your html:

<a href=”<?php echo $searchlink; ?>”>Click Here</a>

Example 2 – Dynamic Content

<?php
$img = $_GET['pic'];
?>
<html>
<body>
Hello World, Like my pic?
<br />
<?php echo ‘<img src=”‘.$img.’” />’; ?>
</body>
</html>

You then load the url in the browser like http://www.mysite.com/myphpfile.php?pic=prettygirl.jpg

And it will load prettygirl.jpg on your web page if that image is in the same folder on the web server. For all the pros out there I know this isn’t secure coding but it’s meant to be a basic example.

Example 3 – Using a function to extract links from html code

<?php

function extract_links($text) {
preg_match_all(‘/<\s*a[^<>]*?href=[\'"]?([^\s<>\'"]*)[\'"]?[^<>]*>(.*?)<\/a>/si’,
$text,
$match_array,
PREG_SET_ORDER);
$return = array() ;
foreach ($match_array as $serp) {
$full_anchor = $serp[0];
$href = $serp[1];
$anchortext = $serp[2];
if ( (preg_match(“/http:/i”,$href)) &&
(!preg_match(“/cache/i”,$href)) &&
(!preg_match(“/google.com/i”,$href)) &&
(!preg_match(“/youtube.com/i”,$href)) &&
(!preg_match(“/wikipedia.org/i”,$href)) &&
($href[0]!= ‘/’) ) {
$anchor_array = array($href,$anchortext) ;
array_push($return,$anchor_array) ;
}
}

return $return ;
}

$html = file_get_contents(“http://www.domaintoberipped.com”);
$mylinks = extract_links($html);

print_r($mylinks);
?>

OK hope that is enough to get you started. There are some more great resources at:

As always if you get stuck https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=google+the+fucking+problem

High CPU usage on mysqld but low memory usage

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Had a problem with a server that was running alot of traffic and doing a lot of logging and updating mysql tables. The CPU usage was through the roof and it’s an 8 core server with 30GB of RAM. The strange thing was that mysqld was using all the processing power but hardly any memory was being used.

You can check what is using all the CPU/Memory by running “top” from the command line. Ctrl-C to exit.

A quick fix to balance out the load was to add the following line to /etc/mysql/my.cnf    (might be /etc/my.cnf on alot of servers)

innodb_buffer_pool_size=20G

20GB stands for 20 gigs of RAM so adjust this to suit your hardware specs. A rule of thumb I read was to use 70% of the total RAM but I would suggest using 70% of the free RAM on the system just to be safe, especially if your server isn’t only being used as a database server. So if you have a 4GB VPS with 2GB of currently free RAM use 1.5GB for the innodb buffer pool.

I would imagine this would work the other way round too so if you find RAM stats getting low, lower the pool size to free up memory.

346 million clicks handled by Prosper202

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Credit where credit is due, for free open source software, Prosper202 is great. I’ve had a few issues along the way but this software can be scalled to huge volumes relatively easily. If you aren’t using it to track your campaigns get it setup today:

Prosper202 scalling to volumeSome tips on running prosper at volume:
1) Check your maximum connection limits in MySql and Apache
2) Clean your database once it gets past 3-5gb in the administration section
3) Once a month empty the table called 202_site_urls using phpMyAdmin
4) Only use on campaigns you want to analyse the stats for, if you know you aren’t going to be bothered digging into the stats just direct link and bypass prosper all together.
5) Set the login redirect to the administration page so you can keep an eye on the DB level every time you login.

Prosper is free open source software you can download here and install on your own server.

Some info on popular traffic sources…

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I came across this summary from an old manual I wrote some time ago. Alot of it is still relevant today, I’ll get round to updating it at some point:

Traffic Sources Summary

SEO

  • Little to no cost – Free Trafic
  • Long term can take six months to rank
  • Requires large volumes of content
  • Massive potential
  • Becoming harder to manipulate
  • Backlinks are becoming less effective
  • Social signals are becoming more effective
  • Niche sites and large content sites.
  • Google algorithm looks at:
    • On site seo / meta tags
    • Latent semantic indexing
    • CTR in SERP’s
    • Bounce rate
    • Domain age
    • Backlinks
    • Social signals

Adwords – Search Network

  • Paid search from 0.02p / click
  • Text ads – No images
  • Can’t direct link
  • Landing page needs content & good outgoing links
  • Highly Competitive for popular terms
  • Massive potential

Adwords – Content Network

  • Paid search from 0.02p /click?
  • Text and Display ads – text & images on Adsense sites
  • Lots of fraudulent clicks
  • Keywords matched with content on site
  • Always separate from search campaigns

Yahoo / MSN Search

  • Less competition than Adwords
  • Far less volume
  • A lot of Yahoo searches by 3rd party sites > Fraud/Crap > Block the crap

Facebook

  • Massive volume and international traffic
  • Domestic traffic expensive starts at 36p click
  • High CTR can bring this down to…
  • Very dependent on CTR for successful advertising
  • Cleavage and weird images for the win
  • Can direct link
  • Ad size 110x80px
  • Very good targeting by:
    • Age
    • Sex
    • Location to city level
    • Interests – Category or Specific (topics liked/groups etc.)
    • Single, interested in
    • Education level (untested)

Plenty of Fish

  • Extremely good targeting, religion, postcode, hair colour, smokers etc.
  • Can target or ignore mobile users
  • Low volume, images need replacing quickly to avoid banner blindness
  • Standard size 110x80px       Larger IAB sizes for the win 300×250 etc.
  • Can direct link

TrafficVance

  • Best PPV network
  • Bids from $0.011 per pop up
  • Can direct link to offer / load cookie
  • 775 x 400px viewable window
  • Massive arbitrage potential

Lead impact

  • More expensive than TV min bid $0.028

MediaTraffic

  • More expensive than TV min bid $0.02
  • Low volume

Adon

  • Cheap from $0.005
  • Low volume in UK

Other Sources: Media Buys, Big Display Networks (Adsonar, Blade360 etc.), MySpace, E-mail

EWA Gone Under

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It’s not nice to see any company fail (especially when they owe so much to so many) but never in this industry have I seen it happen to a more deserving character. Goodbye Ryan Eagle and the joke/scam that was EWA.

Ryan Eagle EWA