Affiliate Tip: Know the CPA Offer You Promote

May 6th, 2009

First newbie tip:

When you are looking at offers on Hydra Network, make sure you look at how you are allowed to promote the advertisers product before doing anything. If you don't, you might end up paying a lot of money and get nothing for your efforts.

For instance, in the Automatic Toilet Cleaner affiliate marketing study, I had to make sure that the CPA offer allowed me to promote through both Search-SEO and Search-PPC. In order to check this, I looked here:

Hydra Network Offer Overview

Hydra Network Offer Overview

So as you can see, I am allowed to promote this offer using both Search-SEO and Search-PPC, provided I did not use the search keywords they listed below the offer in bold.

If you pick a CPA offer that does not allow you to use Search-PPC, and you run a PPC campaign using Adcenter or Adwords, you can be denied payment for any sales that you make - effectively, you have flushed money down the toilet. Be sure to read through CPA offers and follow their rules to the letter to help avoid being denied payment.

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Posted in Affilate Marketing Tips | No Comments »

Automatic Toilet Cleaner

April 30th, 2009

In my last couple attempts, I tried using paid advertising to drive traffic to the affiliate link directly. Now, I'm going to create a blog post, try working hard on SEO and backlinks, and hopefully get to the top of the search engine pages for the terms to sell the product.

Target:
The Kaboom NeverScrub automatic toilet cleaner, which is Hydra Network Campaign ID 4156.

Mode of Attack:
In this attempt, I'm going to use SEO along with an MSN Adcenter campaign to drive traffic while optimizing the page. You can view the page at automatic toilet cleaner.

Expenses:
$$ Adcenter PPC Campaign
$$ Adwords PPC Campaign

Results:
As soon as I get my first sale from this page, I will update stats here. If you have any ideas about this project, let me know!

Update 05-06-09:
Just had the first sale today, and I'm 90% sure it's from a Google Adwords campaign, which so far has cost me $0.78, giving me a profit of $8.22 on the landing page. Not amazing, but it's a start.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Affiliate Marketing Studies | 1 Comment »

Blogger Spammer

April 30th, 2009

In my quest to become an internet marketing overlord, I created a script that will take an article, break it into pieces, and then post it to blogs through the post by email function. I just used it with Blogger, but I'm sure you can use it with any blog software that allows you to post by email.

blogrocker.php

 
<?
 
// username and password to log into script
$conf[adminuser] = "blogrocker";
$conf[adminpass] = "ohmyshit";
 
// authenticate administrator
if ((!isset($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'])) || (!isset($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW'])) || ($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'] != $conf[adminuser]) || ($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW'] != $conf[adminpass])) {
    header('WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="BlogRocker"');
    header("HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized");
    print "This page requires authorization.";
    exit();
}
 
// blog post by e-mail addresses; add as many blogs and email addresses as you want
$blog = array();
 
$blog[0] = "myblog@myblog.com";
$blog[1] = "myblog@myblog.net";
$blog[2] = "myblog@myblog.org";
 
$a = $_GET['a'];
 
if ($a == "") {
 $html = "
<form method='post' action='blogrocker.php?a=sendthatbitch'>"
        ."
<table>"
        ."
<tr>
<td>Post Title:
<input type='text' size='60' name='title'></td>
</tr>
 
"
        ."
<tr>
<td>URL:
<input type='text' size='60' name='url'></td>
</tr>
 
"
        ."
<tr>
<td>Anchor Text (comma delimited):
<input type='text' size='60' name='anchor'></td>
</tr>
 
"
        ."
<tr>
<td>Text:<textarea name='text' rows='20' cols='80'></textarea></td>
</tr>
 
"
        ."
<tr>
<td>
<input type='submit' value='Rock those blogs!'></td>
</tr>
 
"
        ."</table>
 
"
        ."</form>
 
";
}
 
if ($a == "sendthatbitch") {
 
 $title = $_POST['title'];
 $url = $_POST['url'];
 $anchors = explode(',', $_POST['anchor']);
 $text = strip_tags($_POST['text']);
 
 $length = strlen($text);
 
 // turn one article into a bunch of articles
 $i = 0;
 $j = 1;
 $sub_art = array();
 
 while ($i <= $length) {
  $end = 500 * $j;
  $sub_art[$j] = substr($text, $i, $end);
  $i = $i + 500;
  $j++;
 }
 
 // use the url and anchor text to build links
 $link = array();
 $i = 0;
 foreach($anchors as $anchor) {
  $link[$i] = "<a href='" . $url . "' title='" . $anchor . "'>" . $anchor . "</a>";
  $i++;
 }
 
 // Heavy lifting: pick a sub article, combine it with a link, and send it to the blogs
 
 $html = "Blogs updated: ";
 foreach($blog as $send) {
  $subart_num = array_rand($sub_art);
  $link_num = array_rand($link);
 
  $post = $sub_art[$subart_num] . "... " . $link[$link_num];
 
  mail($send, $title, $post, "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\nContent-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\nFrom: MFE <email@mcfarlanenterprises.com>\r\nX-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion());
  $html = $html . "<br/>$send";
 }
 
}
 
?>
 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
 
<head>
<title>BlogRocker</title>
<style type='text/css'>
body {
 background: #e0e0e0;
}
td {
 font-size: 10pt;
 font-weight: bold;
}
</style>
 
</head>
 
<body>
<? echo $html; ?>
</body>
 
</html>
 

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Posted in Affiliate Marketing Tools | No Comments »

“Green Tea” - Part 1

March 29th, 2009

There are three or four green tea weight loss affiliate programs on Hydra Network. While agonizing over which program to choose, I ran across a landing page that had multiple programs listed under the guise of reviews...

Targets:
Three top-paying green tea weight loss programs on Hydra Network. They all offer $25+ for each person that signs up for a free trial of the product.

Mode of Attack:
My first-ever landing page, modeled after "reviews" for the products. You can view the landing page by clicking here. Every link on this page links to one of the three affiliate programs offered.

Expenses:
$15 Domain
$$ PPC Advertising on Adcenter and Adwords

Results:

I will post the results of this test on Monday, April 6th, as well as any updates along the way. If you have any ideas or rants, let me have it!

Update:
After spending $55+, sending 53 clicks to the landing page, 17 clicks went through to actual affiliates, and zero purchases were made - making this attempt a failure. If I wanted to send 100 clicks to affiliates, it would cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $300, which was not worth it to me. What do you think?

Tags: ,
Posted in Affiliate Marketing Studies | 3 Comments »

Affiliate URL Redirect php Script

March 26th, 2009

Hydra Network wants affiliate marketers to redirect the links through their own system as well as host their own images. The script I use adds some stats to a mySQL database, but if you don't know php or mysql, it won't be much help.

I did write a simple script for you to use on your own site to redirect users through to affiliate links, and given the spirit of learning affiliate marketing together, I am going to let you have it to do as you please:

go.php

 
<?
/* EvilEmu.com affiliate link forwarding script. For instance,
   when a user goes to http://www.yourdomain.com/go.php?key=EvilEmu
   using the settings below, this script will forward the user to
   http://www.evilemu.com. A .htaccess file is included which will allow
   the links to look like http://www.yourdomain.com/go/Keyword */
 
$links = array();
 
/* Set up all of the forwarding keywords and affiliate links.
   Just replace "Keyword1" with the keyword you want to use and
   the URL with the affiliate URL to direct the user to. You can
   add more lines to add as many Keyword/URL combinations as you'd like */
 
$links['Keyword1'] = "http://www.url1.com";
$links['Keyword2'] = "http://www.url2.com";
$links['Keyword3'] = "http://www.url3.com";
$links['EvilEmu'] = "http://www.evilemu.com";
 
/* pull incoming key from .htaccess for url search */
$key = $_GET['key'];
 
// forward user to affiliate
header("location: $links[$key]");
?>
 

.htaccess

 
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^go/(.*) /go.php?key=$1 [nc]
 

Posted in Affiliate Marketing Tools | No Comments »

“Sell House” Part 1

March 26th, 2009

Into the affiliate marketing flames...

Target:

Hydra Network has a CPA campaign that pays $5.25 per action, and the action is just a form with nine fields that someone looking to sell their house quickly fills out. The campaign is called "Sell Your House Fast - Lead Generation", and the ID is 4477. The more people I can get to fill out that damn form, the more money I make.

Mode of Attack:

The customers looking to market their products through Hydra Network generally provide their own "creatives", which are banner ads, HTML emails, and text emails.  I'm going to take one of the HTML emails, alter it a bit to make it more personal, and then slap it onto CPanel's auto-responder. I bought a domain just to use for auto-responders, put a pretty face on it, and I'll use it for other campaigns too.

Once the auto-responder is set up and I like what it is sending out, I'm going to take out an ad in the local papers, asking people to contact me at the auto-responder e-mail address for more information. The more people I can get to fill out that form, the more money I can make.

Auto-responder message:

Hello,

My name is John, and I'd like to thank you for expressing interest in selling your home. We know times are tough right now, and it's difficult to sell your home in the current market.

If you would like more information, please click the image below and fill out the short form. We look forward to assisting you in any way we can!

Thank you,
John

Link and image omitted - you can get your own, right?

Classified Ad taken out in local paper:

Trouble selling your house? Get an offer from a direct buyer who looks at all properties in any condition. Email auto-responder@email.com for more information.

Expenses:

A domain name for auto-responders: $15
Two-week classified ad in our local newspapers: $50

Results:

No responses from the newspaper ad. I'm thinking that the town is too small to notice, or I cannot write ad copy for shit. Going to keep trying.

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Posted in Affiliate Marketing Studies | No Comments »

Affiliate fucking marketing.

March 24th, 2009

Holy fuck.

It's 12:59AM, and here I am, sitting at the computer, dreaming up my next plan to make money on the internet. This is absolutely fucking ridiculous. Shit, I started in the days of AllAdvantage.com when I thought I was the king shit with my $150 check at 14. Since then, I've been fiddley-fucking around on the internet for over a decade now, and I still haven't made millions. Several thousand might be pushing it slightly. It's pathetic really, and I have no excuses.

I'm tired of fucking around. I want to be independently wealthy, I want to work hard for it, and I want it right now. If you're like me, and you've been messing around with web design, search engine arbitrage, and other lame-ass bullshit and haven't made it - join me. Together, we'll figure this shit out and start making some money. It's going to be a tough journey, but dedication is the name of the game.

If you've made it already, feel free to criticize the fuck out of anything posted here - I can handle it. Call me a fucktard when I do something retarded - I can take it. Eventually I'm going to make it at this fucking game. Come hell or high water, this is it.

Affiliate fucking marketing, here I come.

- JB

Posted in EvilEmu News | 1 Comment »