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;
