What I am about to tell you all is without a doubt the worst thing that has ever happen to me in my 11-year business career. This problem has cost us money, time, and severe mental stress. If you don’t get anything else out of reading our blog, please get this. It will save you from having to go through what we have. Without further ado, let me get to explaining.

For as long as I’ve been involved in affiliate marketing I’ve had a very powerful dedicated server housed at The Planet in Dallas, Texas to run our campaigns on. It is monitored by The Planet, a third party security group I hired, and has been provisioned to not only run extremely fast, but with one of the most hardened operating systems online (secure). I used to own a web hosting company, so I’ve had my ups and downs with dedicated servers. I understand Red Hat Linux just as well as I do the English language. I consider myself highly advanced and a seasoned Internet veteran when it comes to servers. Given all this, what could go wrong with our server that would cost us money? I know my stuff… Don’t I?

Assuming in affiliate marketing is one of the worst mistake you can ever make. Don’t EVER assume that your server is working fine. For the past five months we’ve noticed some inconsistencies in many of our campaigns. Some would go from being very profitable one day to the exact opposite the next. As any affiliate out there, we just assumed it was scrubbing/shaving or some other external variable. We would normally turn to another offer, change up a creative, and forget the problem. We remained profitable and just assumed that’s what was going on. Our landing pages loaded fine on my office computer in West Virginia, my home computer in West Virginia, and on John’s computer in North Carolina.

As 2010 hit, the inconstancies in all of our campaigns became even more noticeable. While this industry does change daily, we found it odd when we would see these severe inconsistencies on two or more completely different campaigns (i.e. one lead gen, another per sale offer). They weren’t even limited to our United States campaigns. Our international campaigns were also having inconsistencies. What the heck could be the problem? Surely EVERY campaign out there wasn’t like this?

This past weekend I was in Beckley, West Virginia visiting family. During my visit I noticed I was unable to access any website on this server or the server itself (eliminating a DNS problem– what EVERYONE tries to blame it on). I contacted my third party monitoring group and they began to investigate. I logged into my office computer (in Huntington, West Virginia) via a remote connection and noticed I still couldn’t get the server to load. Finally, my third party techs said ‘try now’. I was able to access the server fine from my remote office connection but still not at the location I was in Beckley. I assumed it was their Internet Service Provider and dismissed the issue.

Once I returned to my office on Sunday, I noticed everything was working fine (I thought so at least). I didn’t think much of it and continued my work as normal. As this week began, I thought more about this issue, and attempted to access this server via numerous proxies. On about 80% of the proxies I was unable to access any site on this server nor the server itself (via the IP address direct). This made me more concerned. I submitted a ticket to The Planet and explained to them what was going on. The technician from The Planet attempted a trace route from my server to the IP address I was on this weekend. The connection timed out and they said it was a problem with their Internet Service Provider, Sudden Link.

I assumed the C Class IP address this server is on had accidentally been placed on a SPAM blacklist (we don’t use mail on this server, just the web server). I proceeded to contact Sudden Link’s NOC Director who quickly began to assist. After multiple trace routes from various locations we discovered the server was able to connect across the Sudden Link network. The problem wasn’t contained to just one Internet Service Provider. I then took to my AOL IM list. I messaged about ten or so people asking them if they could get sites on this server or IP addresses on this server to load. Everyone was in various locations all around the world (London, Canada, California, Virginia, etc.). Only one person couldn’t get my server to load. This person is another Internet marketing veteran and someone I trust. He was using a dedicated AT&T fiber connection in his office in San Francisco. So the problem defiantly wasn’t limited to ONE Internet Service Provider.

Next, I decided to review some numbers. We track everything on our campaigns, however there is one number I had neglected to look at. The number of people who clicked our ads as compared to the number of people who saw our landing page. While this seems like an obvious thing, it’s something we normally don’t monitor on a daily basis. I pulled a report from one of our media buys last month and compared it. Out of 53,000 clicks on one creative our landing page was only viewed 33,000 times! That is 20,000 clicks that went NO WHERE! While the majority of our traffic (60%) was being sent to landing pages, 40% were being sent to a ‘Cannot Find Server’ page. I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. I should have been watching these numbers more closely. Problem is, you don’t really notice this on a daily basis. Even though this number was off around 700 daily, I NEVER NOTICED IT.

There you have it. For however long (I don’t even want to think or look), we’ve only been getting 60% of our purchased traffic. OUCH. I’ve yet to come to a resolution with this server. Still at the moment, I’m unable to access the IP address from certain locations. The Planet continues to dismiss it as a DNS issue (which is impossible given I cannot access the IP address).

So what the heck is the problem here? I honestly have no clue. One Internet veteran I spoke with suggested it was a problem with The Planet’s 3rd party bandwidth they’ve purchased. Another says there is something not getting through the firewall at The Planet. Some, still say it’s a DNS issue. Fact of the matter here, no one really knows the reason why.

Where do we go from here? We’ll first, we’ll never put everything on ONE server anymore. We’re going to be purchasing separate dedicated servers for our unique, high-volume campaigns. Next, we’re going to be keeping a close eye on the number of clicks compared to the number of landing pages views. Finally, I’m going to QUIT assuming. If I see an inconsistency, I’m going to get to the bottom of it. No matter what. So for all of you out there reading this, please learn a lesson from this HUGE disaster. I can’t just blame The Planet here, because I should have been watching my numbers more closely and should not have been assuming my server was reaching everyone.

As promised, I’m going to be providing some solid SEO (search engine optimization) information on this blog.  Please note that I will not be discussing (nor do I condone) any blackhat techniques.  I want to help you get lots of quality traffic for many years to come, therefore blackhat is irrelevant.  With that said, I want to share an excellent free resource with you.

For the last several years Social Bookmarking sites such as Digg, Propeller.com, Fark.com, Reddit.com, etc. have provided many sites with high quality backlinks that get your site listed in Google within minutes!  While they are very effective it is time consuming going through and submitting your link to each one.  SocialMarker.com has actually developed a solution for this.  From their website:

All you need to do is simply drag this button to your Firefox bookmarks toolbar, in order to create a submission bookmarklet. When you are on a website that you want to socially mark, simply select the text and click the SocialMarker button to pre-populate the submission form with the selected information.

Here is a brief video demonstration:

While I’ve been in the industry a little over ten years now, I’ve been able to experience the best-of-the-best and the worst-of-the-worst affiliate networks.  From companies that don’t pay  to companies that pay weekly (even some daily) I’ve seen it all.  Today, in somewhat of a rant, I want to talk about what I like to see in a network as an affiliate.

To obtain an affiliate…
- This is one of the hardest things for some networks.  How do you convince an affiliate to join your network over the next?  Are you offering a prize or a contest?  Do you have a rewards program?  What separates your network with the others.  Below are some of the things I like to see.

* First, the most important thing each network should do is treat every affiliate like they’re a ’super’ or ‘high volume’ affiliate.  I’ve personally known guys go from $5 or less one month to nearly a million the next.  Just because an affiliate is not pushing traffic to your network doesn’t mean they don’t have traffic or the potential to drive serious volume.

* Don’t annoy the affiliate to try to get business.  Approach them as a friend, make a personal connection.  Don’t block your number or call during dinner hour (you seriously would not BELIEVE what some people will do).  To get business, the best way is to send email updates.  Keep your affiliates in the loop of what’s hot and what’s not, and if something catches their eye, they’re going to contact you.  I personally don’t have the entire day to devote to just affiliate marketing (I own other businesses too) so I can’t always respond to an instant message or chat on the phone.  Send an email with hot offers, be down to earth, and business will come.

* Take advantage of Affiliate Summit, Ad Tech, and other conferences.  This one is big.  If you know an affiliate that you want on your network is going to be attending a conference make it a point to speak with them.  I cannot tell you how many networks just stand behind the booth and wait for business to come to them.  Find out who’s going to be there and personally go up to them.  How bad do you want that affiliate’s traffic?  If you want business bad enough you can get it.  It just depends how hard you work for it.

* Don’t make promises you can’t keep.  If you can’t make it for drinks don’t say you will.  If you can’t provide a certain offer, don’t say that you can.  I can’t tell you how many times my plans have been thrown off because I scheduled to meet up with a network for them to ‘forget’ to call.  I’ve also spent HOURS creating landing pages for campaigns only to have the network say they ‘don’t have that offer anymore.’  Ugh…

To keep an affiliate…
- Once you get an affiliate’s business it is essential that you take necessary actions to keep that affiliate.  This industry is cut-throat, and at the end of the day, business comes first.

* Customer service must be priority.  Many networks use Link Trust to track commissions.  While this is OK software, you can only place one pixel per offer.  This is the most aggravating thing in the world to me!  I seriously will run offers with networks that use Direct Track before Link Trust, just because I like to add/edit/delete my tracking pixels on my own time.  I don’t want to email anyone.  With that said, if you do use Link Trust, you MUST have an affiliate manager available 24/7/365 to place pixels.  There is no substitute, affiliate don’t like to wait.

* Pay on time every time.  No matter WHAT you must see that your affiliates are paid (as long as they are in compliance with your TOS) and paid on time.  If an affiliate earns commissions you have to pay them.  If the advertiser shorts you, that’s the risk you have to take.  If there is a bank holiday on the day you send out wires, be sure to notify the affiliate that their payment is going to be early or delayed.

* Don’t focus on one niche.  I don’t have to tell anyone that this business changes daily.  Campaigns are going to come and go but not affiliates.  Bring on multiple offers in multiple niches and keep several backups.  If one offer goes down, you better have another one ready to back it up.  If not, you are likely to lose that affiliate to another network.  Don’t just focus on re-bills and/or lead generation.  Have a mixture of all the top campaigns in various niches.

* Maintain open communication.  It is always VERY important to keep affiliates in the loop.  If you’re going to be re-directing an offer let affiliates know as soon as you can.  I personally like to have 12 hours notice, but I realize sometimes that’s impossible.  The absolute worst thing you can do though is redirect an offer without notice.

So who do I recommend?
I couldn’t end this post without mentioning some of my favorite affiliate networks.  While no network is perfect, in my experience, these are the best!

* Eagle Web Assets

* Convert 2 Media

* Azoogle Ads

* COPEAC

* CX Digital

In conclusion, you can have the best rewards program or the sickest parties in the world, but if the above items aren’t fulfilled it’s likely your going to have a hard time getting or keeping business.  I’m not writing this post with any particular affiliate network in mind nor am I ‘calling anyone out’.  I’m fairly happy with every network we currently work with and have been very impressed with some of the newer networks that have came on.  I felt that this post would be an interesting post to share with other affiliates what we like to see with affiliate networks.

Google announced last week that in the weeks to come they will be re-branding their Ad Manager software to DFP Small Business. According to their official blog, they’ll be bringing ‘many requested features such as new web services API, an improved interface, and new reporting capabilities.’ They will also be re-branding DART (for larger publishers) to DoubleClick For Publishers.

For those of you unfamiliar with Google Ad Manager, it’s a free platform that allows you to setup, manage, and sell advertising inventory on your website. As I explained to John yesterday, without this software, I would be unable to successfully manage the ad inventory on many of the websites I own such as WrestlingNewsWorld.com. Google Ad Manager has allowed me to make sure we sell each available impression for the highest CPM as possible. It has very advanced targeting options and is overall some of the best online software I’ve ever used. While I would pay big bucks for this software, Google is able to integrate Adsense/Adwords and distribute it for free. You actually have the option to list some of your inventory on Google Adwords.

DART (now DoubleClick For Publishers) is their paid solution. Many large websites/networks utilize this software to manage their inventory. It’s basically the same concept as Ad Manager, but had the capability to handle a lot more impressions.

I’m personally really excited for the upgrade and to see the new features. If you currently own a website that sells ads and your not using Google Ad Manager, I suggest you definitely signup today!

This past November at Ad Tech: NYC, I spoke with one of my good friends in the industry (and veteran affiliate marketer) about taking a holistic approach to affiliate marketing and online marketing in general.  It seems like now days a lot of affiliates are media buyers, pay-per-click guys, cost-per-view guys, emailers, SEO gurus, etc.  Rather than taking a holistic approach to their campaigns, they pick one ‘medium’, master it, and that’s all they run.

Honestly, it’s easy to fall into this trap.  For example, when media buying, you’re able to purchase your inventory, sign insertion orders, and have tons of traffic pretty much instantly.  You don’t have to wait to build an email list or for Google/Yahoo/Bing to index your site.  However, by picking just one medium, you are setting a ‘ticking time bomb’ on your campaign. What if the network you’re buying media on abruptly decides they don’t want your offers to run on their sites?  What if Google de-indexes your site?  What if someone comes in and out bids the crap out of you on your CPV platform?  What if Adwords slaps your campaign silly?  By taking a holistic approach to your affiliate marketing campaign, you’re not only setting yourself up for long-term revenue, you’re able to increase your profits immensely.

Yesterday, I decided to challenge myself.  I wanted to see how fast I could SEO a campaign and get it to making money.  While most of my SEO jobs take about a week or so to garner good positions, I decided for this campaign I was going to be extra aggressive but not use any blackhat techniques.  At 2:00 p.m. ET I registered my domain, put together the site, and by 5:00 p.m. ET I was ranking number 1 in Google for my target keyword.  SICK!  How?  Rather than being lazy, I didn’t leave the computer for those three hours!  I developed my website with tons of unique content, built up tons of backlinks, and really concentrated on my target keyword.

Once I was ranking in Google I began to see conversions.  I didn’t stop there.  I did some more research and decided to setup a pay-per-click campaign focused around some other keywords that looked profitable.  Then, I added an email opt in box to my site.  Rather than just seeing SEO conversions, I was getting PPC traffic, collecting opt-ins, and making a lot more money than I would have if I would have been lazy or just picked one medium.  As the night went on I became tired and lazy.  Today, I’m going to setup a CPV campaign in addition to my other mediums.  By taking a holistic approach I’m attacking my audience from several different angles and am able to make much more money than if I was to just pick one.

Are you taking a holistic approach to your affiliate marketing campaigns?  If you’re not, you’re missing out on a boatload of money.  Best of luck!

I finally updated our photo gallery to include photos taken at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, Nevada.  I apologize as these were taken on our iPhones (we forgot our digital camera).  Enjoy

Happy Presidents Day everyone!  Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and a day that many affiliate marketers made a lot of money.  Over the year’s I’ve known affiliates that plan all of their campaigns on certain Holidays, tax season, etc.  They spend months analyzing data, preparing landing pages, and come into ‘attack’ once the Holiday hits.  Some of my pay-per-click friends come in and make $1,000+ an hour on the day before and the day of Valentine’s Day promoting flowers!

While the ideas for Holiday/special occasion campaigns are limitless, I’m personally glad to see this one go.  Over the year’s we’ve promoted some of these campaigns, however I’m personally not a huge fan.  While the money can certainly be rewarding, it really frustrates me to see it disappear a day later.  I would much rather spend my time and energy promoting several smaller-scale campaigns that make a few hundred each day consistently rather than promoting a handful of campaigns that have a very short lifespan.  Also while media buying, companies such as Pro Flowers, come in and suck up a lot of our impressions (they had a huge campaign running this year)!

If you’ve followed our blog, you probably know, I’m a huge fan of optimization.  I like to test several different variations of landing pages, creatives, etc to find the winning pair.  It’s a challenge to me to up the conversion rate just a few percent.  I get a rush out of it!  With campaigns such as Valentine’s Day you really don’t have much time to optimize.  You have to come in strong, base your data on your experience, and cash in while the time allows.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s very doable, but with a short lifespan.

With that said, I hope you all had an excellent Valentine’s Day and spent it with someone special.  I surprised my girlfriend with a cruise to Mexico for next month:).  Now it’s time to get back to making money!

If you’re a media buyer, chances are you’ve either ran beside, competed, or seen a site advertising Jillian Michaels’ website where she sells several of her dietary supplements, weight loss DVDs, and other products. Today, it was revealed to the media, that Jillian is being sued because “taking two pills before eating does not miraculously cause weight loss.”

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Christie Christensen of Lake Elsinore, California, claims that the product has failed to lessen her appetite or cause her to lose weight as advertised. Christensen is seeking damages that are not expected total more than $5 million and states in her filing that she has “struggled with weight loss her entire life” and bought “Calorie Control” because of Michaels’ endorsement.

Maybe Ms. Christensen could have had better luck combining Calorie Control with some Acai & Colon Cleanser for maximum results!  Be careful making false claims!

With all this talk of Super Bowl commercials, I was reminded of a textbook example of a terrible commercial that aired during Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000.  Although I personally can’t remember it nor would have even noticed it at the mere age of 11 years old, I still find it amusing that this particular commercial for OurBeginning.com was so horrible.  The website now is some kind of day care center in Seattle, which I was very disappointed to see considering the fact that the airtime cost them a couple million dollars.  The site used to be a website that produced, of all things… wedding invitations.  I just can’t understand what made these entrepreneurs think that this was good targeting.  Perhaps I was too young during this Super Bowl and only recently have all commercials been geared toward beer, Coke, and Hyundai cars…

Yet another example of my nerdiness became apparent to me when I was the only one in the room that was astounded after watching the Google commercial.  One of my friends commented, “Now John is going to text all his cyber friends”. Sadly, I did…

After thinking about the horrible wedding invitation targeting incident, I started to think of the blunders Ryan, Rich and I have made with our targeting in the past.  One particular example I had in mind was some of our first Facebook campaigns that we started with in the education niche.  In fact, they were so bad we couldn’t even use most of the data in order to turn the campaign profitable so it just had to be scrapped.  Have you made any particularly stupid targeting mistakes in your career? Surely not as stupid as the wedding invitation blunder, right?

Yesterday, I continued my Media Buying 101 series of posts talking about finding a good offer to promote besides a rebill (which have had a lot of trouble recently). With media buying, one of the most important things to keep in mind is your acquisition cost. This is pretty self explanatory, but sometimes overlooked by affiliates.

The acquisition cost to your media buy, is the amount you spend before receiving a conversion. Sometimes ad networks will abbreviate this as CPA (cost per acquisition). This is often tracked by placing a pixel on your offer provided by the ad network. It is completely normally to start off with a high acquisition cost as it takes some time to optimize out the sites that are spending but not converting. It’s very rare to have a campaign meet your CPA goal right off the bat.

This all plays a very important role when selecting your offer for your media buy. Believe it or not, I’ve known people that absolutely blow up email/zip submit offers on pay-per-click (a must before even thinking about a media buy) and are soon disappointed when it doesn’t work with a media buy. This boils down to the acquisition cost. Most ad networks/exchanges and sites are going to charge a CPM average anywhere $0.80 – $3.00 sometimes even more. Therefore a low paying offer to work (generally less than $5) you’re going to have to have one heck of a CTR (click through rate).

In conclusion, when selecting which winning offer (that’s already running successfully on PPC) to do a media buy with, keep the following in mind:

* How much does the offer pay?

* What is the CPM you’re paying for traffic?

* Given the conversion rate on your PPC campaign, what CTR is it going to take to work on a media buy?

* What is your acquisition goal (how much you’d like to spend before seeing a conversion)?

Once you are able to successfuly access these points, you’ll be well on your way to a successful media buy. Good luck!