Business
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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…
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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…
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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%…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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
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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…
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How not to do maintenance
This was from an affiliate programme for a site which used to have an Alexa top 500 listing!
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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. >…
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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:
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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…
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346 million clicks handled by Prosper202
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: Some tips on running prosper at volume: 1) Check your…
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Some info on popular traffic sources…
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…
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EWA Gone Under
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.
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Las Vegas 2013, Affiliate Summit West, iDates etc.
Four shows and countless parties in 8 days. Here are some pics from Las Vegas this January: Some takeaways I had from this trip: Don’t ever book meetings before midday and preferably later still. Even if you can party till 4am and get up and sober for a meeting at 10am the chances are the…
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Out of Bounds Thailand March 2013
Just had the email come through confirming a place! Looking forward to seeing everyone for Out of Bounds Thailand. The official dates are 13th – 18th March but I am thinking of going out on the 9th and staying till the 24th. Let me know if anyone else has plans outside of the OOB dates.
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Firing a S2S tracking url from an image conversion pixel
Use this on your landing page: setcookie(“cid”, $_GET[‘accid’], time()+7*24*60*60, ‘/’, ‘.mydomain.com’); This sets up a cookie so you can track a click id in www.mydomain.com?accid=123 You could also set this up track any other data you want, subid, affiliate id etc. Then setup your conversion image pixel as <img src=”http://www.mydomain.com/conversion.php” height=”1px” width=”1px” /> This code…
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Maxbounty setting an example
Credit where credit is due this is awsome from Maxbounty: Hello James, For the past 8 years, MaxBounty has made it a tradition to give back to our community during the holiday season. This year is no different, and once again we are inviting you to help us out. On Saturday, December 22nd, 2012, we…
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Stupidly Simple AB or Multivariate Testing
Here’s a simple way you can setup a simple multivariate or A/B split test without any software just using the subid variables provided by an affiliate network and some really basic php. <?php $out = ‘http://www.myaffiliatelink.com/page1.php?affid=123&subid1=’; if (rand(0,1) == 0) { $out.=’g1′; $girlimg = ‘1.png’; } else { $out.=’g2′; $girlimg = ‘2.png’; } // this…
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Lessons learned from writing a bespoke tracking platform
For a recent project I wanted to develop a tracking platform which was specifically designed to suit my needs. It needed to be simple to use, capable of handling seven figure audiences daily and built on technology I understand so it can be customised on the go. I decided to build it arround php /…
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Loading a conversion pixel on click through
Mobile campaign optimisation throws up a number of issues in regard to tracking. One thing I’ve found really useful is to load a conversion pixel on click through from the landing page to the offer page. This can be a traffic source pixel which can then be used to give some indication of site/device/carrier quality…
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Mobile Multivariate Testing with SubID’s
Due to slow page load speeds it is advised to keep tracking software to minimum when running mobile campaigns. This caused me a problem when trying to develop and optimise a mobile landing page. Because I wasn’t using prosper or any other tracking software I couldn’t plug in my custom multivariate testing scripts. I was…
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Neverblue Out of Bounds Whistler 2012
Some photos from the Whistler trip with Neverblue. Top of Whistler Mountain Neverblue Party Crew Ice bar View from ATV ride Victoria home of the Neverblue offices It was a great opportunity to spend time with the Neverblue team, other affiliates and spammers alike. Alot of fun, left handed drinking, good food and all the…
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Prosper202 Mod – Set preferences before crashing server
Had a bit of an issue with Prosper crashing once the database got too big. I would log out and leave the analysis preferences set to my biggest traffic source and when I logged back in the server would crash as it tries to pull a report before you can modify the search critieria. I…
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Romania Advertising Agency – Oops Media
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Reasons to Love Neverblue in 2012/2013
Looks like Neverblue are taking their affiliates to Phuket Thailand in March 2013! Wow!
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Anyone planning on running $15,000,0000 to Clickbooth this Summer?
I know there are other prizes further down the list but really… That works out at $166,666.66 USD a day in revenue. If Mark Zuckerberg is reading stick some 300×250’s on your site and you could keep the new shareholders happy and get yourself an island. For everyone else if you can get their offers…
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Cupid PLC Kildermorie Lodge Scotland
Thank you so much to all the team at Cupid PLC for organising an amazing trip to Kildermorie Lodge, near Inverness, Scotland. I’ve never been so surrounded by forward thinking people and whiskey. Here’s some photos from the trip: Fishing, shooting, Glenmorangie tour, great food and possibly the darkest game of charades ever played! Thanks…
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Googler Helping Affiliates…. in 2012!
Just when you think everyone working under advertising at Facebook and Google has been treated to a common sense bypass I get a lovely message like this. Hello James, Thank you for writing in. Hope you’re doing well! I’m Jaya, from the Google AdWords Support Team and I’ll be assisting you with your queries today.…
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Virgin Media Blocks Piratebay.se
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Internet World London 2012
Earls Court, London was home to Internet World 2012 and on a wet Wednesday morning in April I jumped on a train to check it out. It was my first visit to this show and I came away with mixed feelings. I was hoping it was going to be like ad-tech but there was only…
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Direct Response Marketing Pushing CPC Prices Up – The Future for Google Adwords
I was asked to setup a little campaign for an offline electrical company on “The Google”. The business they operate in is electrical testing or PAT testing as it is known here in the UK. It’s the kind of industry where I wouldn’t expect to find much competition when it comes to online marketing. That…
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The Neverblue Velo Bankruptcy Saga
On April 3rd Velo Holdings the parent company of Vertrue which in turn is the parent company of Neverblue (have I got that right?) filed for bankruptcy. Performer insider released an “affiliate marketing is dead” post and I’m sure alot of affiliates, myself included, panicked. A generic email followed which stated “we intend to make…
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Engage BDR – Self-serve RTB
Have you seen these ads all over the internet? Chances are pretty high it was probably served by Engage BDR. Up until now their minimum deposit just to test a campaign was $25,000 USD. Which for most affiliates is completely out of reach but now they have released a new real time bidding platform which…
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Handling large volumes of data with Prosper202
IMO the default version of prosper202 isn’t really designed to handle large volume media buys. The latest version 1.7.2 does make it easier with a simple click to clear click data button but it can still prove difficult to pull off reports once the ammount of data you are analysising exceeds a certain limit. The…
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Rotating Offer Pages and Landing Pages in Prosper202
It is really easy to setup rotation of urls in Prosper but if you actually want to track which url is doing better or you want to test different landing pages it can be a little more challenging. One way to do this is to set each url or landing page up separately and then…
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SiteScout RTB – A Walk Through
Update 23/08/12 – If you are interested in working with Sitescout make sure you check out their superb knowedge base. Sitescout is a great traffic source for display advertising. They basically act as a reseller for remnant traffic from some of the biggest ad exchanges in the world. There is needless to say massive volume…
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Jim.am Acquired
With more than just a slight nod of the head to my favourite online marketing blog MrGreen.am I have moved the blog away from the business website to jim.am OK 3rd best might be a little bit of an exageration but if I can get the content flowing and get some interest I think it…
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In-Text Advertising | Ultimate Guide
Updated April 2020 In-text advertising is a form of digital advertising that replaces words on a website with links paid for by advertisers. An advertiser bids for keywords and provides a destination URL. These keywords are replaced with links using a Javascript snippet on the publishers website. In 2020 the leading in-text advertising networks are:…
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Tracking CPS Networks With Prosper202 and CPV Lab
In the UK alot of affiliate marketing is done through cost per sale networks. The big ones being Tradedoubler and Affiliate Window. Here is how to integrate their backend systems with a performance based tracking system such as prosper202. TradeDoubler add &epi=[[subid]] Affiliate Window add &clickref=[[subid]] Affiliate Future add &tracking=[[subid]] Commission Junction add &sid=[[subid]] nb.it…
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Prosper 202 Mods 2012
Prosper202 mods 1) increase session life – stops it logging you out every five minutes when you are trying to work add the following line just before session_start(); in 202-config/connect.php ini_set(‘session.gc_maxlifetime’,99999); 2) bypass adverts on first page – bit naughty but I prefer to jump straight into the spy section to see whats been going…
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Big Thank You To Neverblue for Out of Bounds Dominican Republic
Just like to say a big thank you to Neverblue for organising Out of Bounds Dominican Republic. It was an amazing experience to be surrounded by like minded people and have all the luxuries the Neverblue team laid on. Sun Rise Punta Canna 2012 My main takeaways from the trip were:- Mobile advertising is expanding…
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Using Adsense Section Targeting
If you are getting lots of Groupon and Three ads on your adsense niche site the chances are it isn’t optimised correctly. By simply writing a short, keyword rich, snippet of what your site is about and surrounding it in the following tags you can manipulate which ads are shown. <!– google_ad_section_start –> Jet internet…
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Googles Panda Update, Brands and Negative PandaRank
More information has been coming out about the Panda update. Google have released a article on their webmaster blog describing how they see quality content. There were a few things that really stood out:- Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name? This seems to be a big hint towards…
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Affiliate Network and Payment Terms
There has been news this week of Epic/Azoogle stopping all weekly payments to affiliates. This has sent rumors of financial difficulties and cash flow problems circling the forums for one of the giant CPA networks. Just when the dust settles Maxbounty sends out a network email informing all affiliates they are improving their payment terms…
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Slow Site Speed Prevents Google Indexing Pages
We had a problem with one of our database sites not getting indexed as well as we have come to expect. After about a month it still only had arround 10% of the urls indexed from the sitemaps. We looked at the differences between this and other sites we had which were all going well.…
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Domain Trust Ranking Sites Without Backlinks Or Social Network Indicators?
For the last decade or more the SEO community has been obsessed with backlinks. Whether it be filling out profiles to get a quick link such as the famed Angela and Pauls packages or automated tools such as Xrumer and SENuke. Blog commenting, shout boxes, wordpress templates, sql injection, website widgets are just some of…
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The future of MFA (Made for Adsense) sites after the Google panda update
The big content directories such as ezinearticles, hubpages, articlesbase etc. All took a big hit with the Google panda update. It seems Google targeted low quality article databases with heavy blocks of adverts. These article directories have been abused by black and white hat link builders for the past decade. They allow people to post…
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Custom WordPress 404 Page For SEO
I have recently been purchasing used domain names from Godaddy Auctions and Dropcatch. When I get the domains the first thing we do is look at what traffic they were pulling for what topics via google cached web search. If there is some good content on there and things we want to keep we will…
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Setting up twitter feed to post to Twitter and Facebook accounts
If you don’t already have a facebook and twitter account for your company they are really easy to setup. On facebook remember to click the “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business” link on the homepage. Once you have those accounts setup head over to twitterfeed.com and sign up for an account. Enter…
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Perfect Site Structure
It is widely accepted that Google places the most weight on the first 100 links it finds on a web page. With that in mind we can design a website that is optimised so that every single page is as close to the root domain as possible. Even with a 1,000,000+ page website you can…
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Two php functions for scraping content and extracting links
////// Grab webpage ////// function webFetcher($url) { $crawl = curl_init(); curl_setopt ($crawl, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($crawl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); $resulting = $resulting.curl_exec($crawl); curl_close($crawl); return $result = $resulting; } //////////////////////////////// //// extract links //// function extract_links($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]; $anchortext =…
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CPA Tips
Maxbounty tracking with subid in prosper202: /tracking202/static/gpb.php?amount=&subid=#S1# The standard conversion rate I use (probably out of date): //$ > £ = x 0.64 Note that what you buy and sell dollars for is very different, 2-4% Consider setting up US bank account. Not possible without visiting the states to the best of my knowledge. Phi…
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Prosper202 Hacks and Modifications
JiM’s Prosper202 mods 1) increase session life (stops it locking you out every few minutes) add the following line just before session_start(); in 202-config/connect.php ini_set(‘session.gc_maxlifetime’,99999); 2) Cchange the first page you see. edit 202-login.php line 80: header(‘location: /202-account’); to header(‘location: /tracking202’); or /tracking202/spy/ If you are doing email submits or any volume loging into spy…
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Welcome to the blog
Thanks for visiting this is the first post at JiM’s Blog. To tell you a little about why we are starting a blog could take a while but in short we are trying to improve our communications throughout the industry and this is one method we are using. If you are interested in getting in…
