Affiliate marketing is a dog eat dog world; it’s no secret affiliates push the envelope, hell its a fact. You might think that awesome lander converting super well is clean of malicious code that shaves 1-20% of your traffic without you knowing, but you could be dead wrong and losing money.
We’ve been checking LPs for click steal code since the dawn of the dinosaurs (jk)… no really part of our internal procedures includes checking LPs for malicious code; today I am going to share with you some of these methods.
If the LP you ripped contains jquery, replace the links with the official jquery min links and see if that breaks the LP, if it does; that means you caught something sneaky.
Edit the source code of the LP in your favorite editor (like notepad++) and search/find window.screen. — this is super common one that redirects based on window screen size.. clean it out by removing the window.screen from in between the <script></script> tags..
Another trick to look for is, the location variable. Again, search the source code and change it to your own from someone elses.
Look for href inside the source code; this could be hiding tracker links of other peoples and/or redirect chains.
The getURLParameter is also a sign that someone might be stealing traffic from your LP, could be a footprint of a famous tracker.
If the src= variable is linked to some 3rd party URL, then that could contain code to redirect the user onLoad.
Setting up a new affiliate marketing campaign might look easy to an outsider; they think, throw it up on a traffic source, optimize, profit BIG right?
I’m sure you agree; what they don’t realize is all the stuff that goes into launching a campaign; hell it’s made up of soooo many steps, requiring so much knowledge and experience that no wonder, most who try fail at this affiliate marketing game.
Million dollar per year campaigns can be made, but it requires systems. Charles Ngo talks about systems, all the time because he’s right – that IS the key to success.
So let me share with you my system and process of launching campaigns…a system made up of many steps…
Today we live in a very competitive time, where new affiliates are jumping in each day stealing our campaigns, it really is coming down to survival of the fittest.
That means, we need to be on our toes, launch more campaigns faster, and with bigger budgets.
This might sound impossible, especially if you are one man show, but with good organization and a few virtual assistants you can solve it – and I will teach you how easily really.
As My internal team grew it was time to get shit organized, so we could do more projects at the same time and not get lost in all the TO DOs.
We started using a tool that can help delegate tasks better, and also track how much each part of the project costs. To stay on budget, and on time.
There’s a shitload of tools out there to manage projects, unfortunately most seem to focus on freelancers where they charge by hours worked, and don’t offer the option to track all the little expense pieces that go into every campaign. Anyway…
Here’s the golden giveaway, my typical campaign process for a health campaign that is broken into tasks in my project management tool:
Grab the FB Pixel and or Adwords Pixels – establish different events in code
Place the pixels in the safe site / landing pages
Place the pixel with tne CPA network
Test the flow with cloaker off/on
Create campaign on Facebook or Adwords
Wait for approval, and note down once approved – also note down if disapproved – solve issue
Monitor voluum making sure clicks are coming in
Monitor facebook and/or adwords pixel to see if its tracking properly and sending data back
Look at the data, optimize as needed by stopping adsets/adgroups
Increase budgets when there’s statistically significant data and SCALE $$$
This is a LOT to keep in your head, it’s a shit ton of post it notes on someone’s monitor.
Every element has a price, usually an estimated budget, and an actual cost. For example, when registering domains you can save some bucks by using coupons, so even though budget is $10 lets say, you can sometimes come in at $5 which is awesome.
With the project management tool we use now, the costs associated with each task in the project can be tracked, and it automatically ads it up.
Another awesome feature it has is TEMPLATING. So you can create a typical project flow, like I’ve listed above and save it in templates.
Let’s say we want to launch a SKIN campaign in US,UK,CA we can duplicate the template 3x, rename it so it looks like this
US Skin
CA Skin
UK Skin
and open each, then delegate all the tasks to our VAs and ourselves. And set deadlines, plus save all the required files, and/or login info all in one place so it’s easy to keep track of. And keep tabs on our budget, and or expenses.
NOTHING will be missed, everything will be done fast, and you will end up doing more in the same ammount of time than before. Very important, especially now when everyone wants to be an affiliate marketer so competition is fierce.
This awesome project management tool is FREE for 14 days, so try it here and experience it yourself to understand WHY I LOVE IT.
I am sharing this post from my friends’ blog over at EricGyepes.com. Â He wrote this post, and all credit goes to him, it’s awesome! Check his blog
Your campaigns are running, and everything is fine with the usual ups and downs.
Then you wake up one day, check your stats, and find out that some disaster has just happened.
All your campaigns are dying, and your CTR is suspiciously low.
Your domain is flagged by Google.
What does that mean?
Well, this issue has been around for a while, and if you haven’t dealt with it yet, you are one lucky bastard affiliate.
“Deceptive site ahead.” What is it?
Internet browsers are getting smarter, especially Google Chrome, which is always one step ahead of the game. Google has an internal database, called Safe Browsing, to protect its users from malware.
Safe Browsing is a list of dangerous sites that could harm your computer/device. Google also shares it with the folks at Mozilla and Apple. So if you visit a URL that is on the list, you get the warning posted above.
In general, that’s a good thing, and you should be glad for it…unless you’re an affiliate.
If you’re buying tons of traffic and any URL in your redirect chain happens to get flagged, you’re busted.
You’ve just flushed money down the toilet.
How?
Imagine that you are sending traffic to your landing page. What happens is that the user, instead of landing on your page, is stuck on a red screen of death. Google makes it too scary to ignore the warning and continue to the desired destination.
This was actually an issue with Voluum a few months ago. Their tracking URLs got flagged, and all their users were affected.
So what can we do about it?
We will see more and more of these things happening soon, so it’s better if we’re prepared.
Here are some of the possible solutions:
Switch domains
This one is simple, and it’s the only thing that fixes your problem IMMEDIATELY.
Go to Namecheap and buy a new domain. Then just copy all your existing content to the new domain, and you’re back in the game.
Monitor your domains periodically
Use online services that scan your domains against different malware and blacklist databases.
I recommend you to check your URLs from time to time with one of these:
Google Safe Browsing Site Status
This is the official Safe Browsing scanner from Google. If they got your domain in this database, then you’re screwed. Everyone who uses Chrome, Firefox, or Safari will see your website as dangerous.
VirusTotal
A robust service that scans against 67 different malware and blacklist databases. It’s also a virus scanner that can scan any kind of Windows executables, Android APKs, PDFs, etc. We are looking for their URL scanner that can give us perfect insights for our domains. Its DB list also includes Google Safe Browsing’s, so you may consider using this tool instead.
Sucuri SiteCheck
Sucuri is a paid service that cleans and protects your sites from malware. It also has a neat free tool called SiteCheck, which scans your remote URLs. It currently checks against 10 blacklist and malware databases.
Automate the whole process
The next step for the smart affiliate or site owner is to automate this process.
Most of these services, including Google Safe Browsing, have APIs. So it’s possible to create a simple script that checks your URLs on a daily basis. It can then report back to you when there is an emergency.
There is also a tool called TrafficProtector (google it), which has been created by some affiliates. Still, it’s up to you if you want to serve them all your landing pages’ URLs.
Warning: Conclusion Ahead!
Many moving parts may affect your campaigns.
In today’s example, you may have the best landing page or offer or the fastest server in the world, yet your campaign loses money.
Most of the time, it’s about those small things that eventually add up.
All right guys, there’s a lot of talk lately about landing pages, how to design them, what to put on them, how to make them convert, ya dee ya duh!
Well, here are some elements that in my experience can have a drastic positive impact on your landing page CTR & CR (and/or BOTH).
I’m a guy who is trying to keep things simple, rather than over complicate shit because to be frank, since discovering the benefits of traveling and not nerding it up introvert style on the computer 24/7 – I don’t want to waste time.
IT IS A SECRET but NOW YOU’LL KNOW – The guys who cloak make the biggest bank out there. Â Why? Â It is simple really, Â playing by the rules will not get you high volume anymore thanks to stupid things like Google Developer Policy updates; and other rules to make it harder and harder for affiliates to make money. Affiliates have to jump on the fence to provide for their families and themselves, or face having to go back to 9-5 job.
I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to do is go back to sell advertising in the yellowpages. Â (Yup I used to be an ad consultant many years ago at YellowPages, freakin’ hated slaving at that job 8-5PM M-F .. getting up at 6 to catch the train in time downtown, then arrive home by 6:30 then rinse and repeat – Thank god for affiliate marketing!) Â
Most people; Â actually NO ONE talks about cloaking because they are scared for whatever reason. Â Â Lucky for me, I live in a free country with freedom of speech, Â and lucky for you because today I feel like sharing a true golden nugget that can help you fly under the radar better.
Want to find out what it is? Then read on!   BTW Recognize this image? —>   one word MINECRAFT!
Many people have asked what my tips are on how to earn $1000 per day. Let’s stop for a minute and put it into a little perspective how much cash that really is.
$1000 per day, 365 days in a year, that’s $365,000 dollars/year – or $14.6 million dollars lifetime earnings.
Business Insider recently published a very interesting article titled The College Majors with the Biggest LifeTime earnings and in it, they listed Chemical Engineer career with a little over $2 million dollars at the top of the earnings ladder.
$2 million bucks over 40 years or $14.6 million over 40 years – which one sounds better to you?
Years ago… I hated slaving at my job – so I quit in 2003 thanks to affiliate marketing and never looked back!
For many years I was big time involved in building sites and SEO but when Google decided to KILL seo (with Pengium, Panda, Humminbird and other Animals) to increase their profits and please their shareholders that is when I switched to paid traffic.
It was the best decision of my life, seriously. I read everything out there, joined forums like STM and soaked in all the information; read so much stuff that I felt my head was going to explode. I’m sure you know what I mean. This leads me to into my blue print of success on how you too can earn $1000 per day. (more…)
IT IS A SECRET but NOW YOU’LL KNOW – 
Many people have asked what my tips are on