-
The 4 hour work week – March’s Book of the Month
The 4 hour work week – Timothy Ferris This was a tough one to include or not. I really can’t stand the guy or his writing style but a lot of what he says is good advice. I’ve read this and the 4 hour body and am taking a break before reading the 4 hour…
-
Funniest video I’ve seen in years
Damn those spammers!
-
Designing Banners in Place
Something I don’t hear a lot of affiliates talk about is taking the placement in to consideration when designing banners. Sometimes if you are targeting multiple sites/positions this isn’t possible but for traffic sources like Facebook this is something every affiliate should consider. Simply take a screenshot of the page where you intend to advertise…
-
Healthy body healthy mind – Fitness for the self-employed
I see a lot of fitness and health related post on affiliate marketing blogs, everything from how I got ripped abs in 3 weeks to why I gave up coffee for a month. These sound more like our landing page headlines than blog posts but there does seem to be a strong focus in the…
-
Google Friendly Mobile Pages Test
Google have provided a tool which checks to see if a site renders clearly in a mobile browser. The tool looks like it is setup at 320px and if your site works at this you’ll get a “mobile-friendly” tag in your organic search listings. Here’s the link to check your sites: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ Some other good…
-
The Innovators – February’s Book of the Month
The Innovators is a historical portrayal of the digital revolution. It starts at Ada Lovelace the daughter of Lord Byron who is credited with the first concept of a computer programme and goes all the way up to 2014. The book details the first computers including the one at Bletchley Park which is significant to…
-
A Simple Mobile Landing Page Template
Here’s a quick design template which is very flexible for mobile app / pin submit type offers. You can view the page at: http://jamesbachini.com/misc/simplemobile.htm And download it from: http://jamesbachini.com/misc/simplemobile.zip Obviously be careful that your button is above the fold on old and new phones. Big image + long headers can push it below which wouldn’t…
-
How to fill out a W8-BEN form
Updated March 2020 What is a W8BEN form? Officially a W8-BEN or W8-BEN-E form is a “Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding and Reporting” This essentially means if you are not a US resident but are working with US companies then you need to sign this form to declare…
-
Pics From Affiliate Summit West 2015
Some snapshots from ASW15 Meet market, people doing the rounds. The Charles Ngo Seminar Benjamin Yong doing his thing While I’m all for using public transport I’m pretty sure this isn’t how Ryan Eagle does it. Arriving into the strip on the Deuce with a blazer attached to a backpack. You walk a lot in…
-
How To Optimise Online Affiliate Marketing Campaigns
This is going to be another long post about a seemingly boring topic of optimisation. If you ask a hundred affiliates how they optimise a campaign 90% of them will tell you they just get a feel for it. Very few affiliates actually have a set process or mathematical formula they use when optimising. Whether…
-
Daily Calcs Profit And Loss Spreadsheet Download For Affiliate Marketers
Here is the spreadsheet I use to monitor my profit and loss accounts on a daily basis. It’s provided here as a downloadable spreadsheet but I would recommend setting it up how you want and then uploading to Google Docs so it can be worked on from anywhere by anyone. This document works by inputting…
-
Cashvertising Summary | My Notes On Ca$hvertising
Cashvertising is a classic and would be my first choice for anybody new to digital marketing that wanted to learn about copywriting. I’ve published my personal notes here so people can get a summary of the book or use it as a reference if they have read it previously. It was first published a hundred…
-
How Groupon’s landing page has evolved in two years
In 2012 Groupon was at the cutting edge of performance marketing. They had big budgets and were doing big business with affiliates. I thought it would be interesting to analyse a landing page from back then and then one they use today. The lander actually reminds me a bit of some of the dating landing…
-
Forgetting to spin spun text in comment spam
This made me laugh today:
-
How To Make Money Online
Historians will look back at this period of time as an information revolution in the same way we look back at the industrial revolution. In the space of 30 years we have gone from basic communications to having a small portable device connected to a network capable of delivering answers to any question, maps, shopping…
-
Disproportionate Tablet Traffc On Google Adwords
Have you checked your Adwords campaigns by device recently? If not you should definitely take a look because there is a huge amount of tablet traffic and no way to block it for desktop campaigns. You can set bid adjustments at -100% to block mobile traffic but Google have disabled this feature for tablets. This…
-
Boost Software (PC Cleaner) Shutdown
The FTC has taken another swipe at the darker side of the affiliate industry by closing down Boost Software. Assets frozen and business practices suspended! There CPI offers were pretty big but the business model was scammy at best. The FTC paid particular attention to the telemarketing “scare tactics” used on the backend of the…
-
Mobile eCPM’s still not competing with desktop
Here’s some stats I ran off today from a Google Adsense account I have for some old seo based domains with various sites and “general” mainstream traffic. It’s interesting to see that the eCPM’s for desktop traffic are still way above that of high end mobile devices: Platform Page views Clicks Page CTR CPC Page…
-
Upgrading to WordPress 4.0 a breeze
I always get the fear when doing major upgrades on any platform. Something is bound to be non-compatible and get messed up. In this instance upgrading to WordPress 4.0 took about 5 minutes, didn’t mess up the themes and everything is still where it should be… right? WordPress is, in my opinion, the best platform…
-
My Office
My office at home. Dell XPS14 Laptop, Dell UHD monitor, Madkatz strike7 gaming keyboard (never played a game on it in my life) and a Madkatz mouse. The Bakerlite phone in the background is a genuine one from the 1940’s. I’d love to rig this up to a bluetooth handset but don’t have the heart…
-
Matomy Media Group
So you think you’ve made it in the performance marketing space? Check out the figures in Matomy’s interim report for a humbling come back down to earth: http://otp.investis.com/clients/uk/matomy/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=813&newsid=441656 Overview of results ($ millions) H1 2014 GAAP H1 2013 GAAP Change GAAP Revenue 107.6 97.3 11% Gross profit 28.8 25.6 13% Operating profit 6.5 4.6 42%…
-
Affiliate Summit West 2015
I missed it last year so am really looking forward to getting back to Vegas for some blackjack, craps and roulette. No meetings before midday this time, live and learn! I first went to affiliate summit in 2012 and in my opinion it’s the best show of the year. The location, the parties, the sheer…
-
Why postback pixels aren’t good enough
What is it with the increase in use with global postbacks? This is where you send the network an id and they send it back to you if it converts. It seems that some affiliates are actually using this type of tracking and optimising on a single tracking system. For the love of god can…
-
Passing Through Landing Page Variables
This was inspired by another post which is well worth a read at: http://affplaybook.com/blog/affiliate-marketing/the-ultimate-guide-to-landing-page-tricks/ So many traffic sources provide you with tags such as {keyword} {countrycode} {device} etc. You can add these variables to your url so it would look something like: http://www.myserver.com/landingpage.htm?kw={keyword}&device={device} Then in the code to your landing page you can access these…
-
Scalling Prosper202
An excellent article from prosper202 on how to scale out to multiple servers efficiently: http://prosper.tracking202.com/blog/tutorial-how-your-current-server-setup-is-costing-you-big-time?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+prosper202+%28Prosper202+Development+Blog%29
-
Refactoring for ROI in affiliate marketing
The importance of refactoring is well documented in the programming world. But I haven’t seen it mentioned in an affiliate marketing context. So what is refactoring? Basically starting again from scratch. So instead adding variations to your banners or landing pages, start again and use everything you’ve learned to produce a better campaign. If you…
-
Simple PPC List Builder
I used to use a programme called JAH Simple PPC to build out wordlists for pay per click campaigns. Basically it would combine different key word variations. I couldn’t find it anymore so decided to build my own and get a bit of practice with javascript. Hope this is useful to someone. http://www.jamesbachini.com/misc/ppc.htm http://www.jamesbachini.com/misc/ppc.htm The…
-
A lesson in writing headlines
http://www.viralnova.com/ This site is an epic resource of great copy for headlines. Here are some examples and the techniques they employ: This $145,000,000 Spiritual Headquarters Is Just Ridiculous. I’m Sure You Know Who Built It. Questioning the reader to draw intrigue The ‘Before’ Photo Made Me Sick. Yet The ‘After’ Photo Is So Great That…
-
How not to do maintenance
This was from an affiliate programme for a site which used to have an Alexa top 500 listing!
-
Local Sims
Travel and work – a tough combination. One thing that makes it infinitely easier is to purchase a local sim card with 3G data. I’m typing this from a hotel room in Cambodia. The hotel’s wifi like most hotels in SE Asia is questionable at best. Having a local sim card allows me to tether…
-
Epic Advertising Legal Action
Legal letter we had come through against Epic Advertising Limited. Anyone else had one of these? Looks like they went bust owing about 3.2 million and someones not happy about it.
-
ATW: Singapore
Overall Singapore is the best city I have ever visited. It was like an oasis of calm after travelling in Sri Lanka and India for three weeks. Cars stop to let you cross the road, the streets are cleaner than any other city, people are generally more respectful to one another and their surroundings. Public…
-
Kerala and leaving India
Kerala was the highlight of India for me. Situated at the bottom of the country the region is made up of beautiful beaches, stunning backwaters and vibrant local towns. Fort Cochin is a small Portuguese colonial town with a few things to do and see. They have a fish market where you can buy freshly…
-
ATW: Goa
I’ve finally got round to setting up a category for travel stuff and have set a redirect at jamesbachini.com/atw Goa was a lot of fun, I’d love to go back between December and January because it gets pretty crazy apparently. In off season it’s quiet with not many western tourists. Beaches are beautiful, traffic is…
-
Mumbai Reality
Dharavi is the most populated slum in Asia with over a million people living in a square kilometer. It’s an incredibly eye opening place to visit because of the way the people there just get on with their daily business. With conditions such as running water limited to 3 hours a day you’d think the…
-
Ideas for improving landing pages
The following is a list of proven methods that can improve the ctr and cvr of a landing page. Big Bright Buttons – Have you split tested different buttons, button text etc? Copy and Text – Persuasive text is key and an art form in itself. Images – Every image on that landing page should…
-
Using Google Fonts on Landing Pages
This is how you can use Google web fonts on your landing pages, blog posts and web pages. The benefit of this is that the font is loaded from a remote server include on the Google APIs so it does not depend on the local storage of that font on the users computer. This makes…
-
Online Banner Design Tool
Need to design/modify banners but don’t have Photoshop installed? Try this online image editor: http://pixlr.com/editor/ A great little tool for the affiliate that only does image editing once in a blue moon, you lucky souls. Pixlr – The online alternative to photoshop
-
Installing Prosper202 for Affiliate Marketing
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. >…
-
Yousif Yalda Recognition
Recognition for being a complete idiot. Don’t ever run traffic to Profit Kings Media (PKM) or you’ll end up with stupid Skype messages like this:
-
Facebook Funnies
-
Neverblue Out of Bounds Thailand 2013
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…
-
Coding PHP for Affiliates | A Getting Started Guide
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…
-
High CPU usage on mysqld but low memory usage
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…
