The latest version of WHM (11.25 I think) is pretty damn buggy, so if you are using WHM check your version and if you are on it use a service like pingdom to track the uptime.

What I woke up to was bad, hours of downtime just going up and down like a see-saw. Pages were either being sent to cPanel’s 404 pages or Installed successfully pages. I’m pretty sure there was a DNS issue somewhere.

How have you been treating Affiliate marketing? Do you treat it like a lifestyle, hobby or a business? Is this something you spend a couple of hours a day on working, to get you by or is this a long-term business you’re building?

I was thinking back on the year, and what’s changed for me. I was treating it like a hobby / easy money kind of thing, and not really taking it too seriously. Which led me to slack and get VERY lazy. When I got thinking, it made me think this wasn’t what I wanted or what was best for business.

I realised I needed to treat this like a legitimate business, like any other business. Which is what I’ve started doing, and it’s helping me become more productive and efficient as well as helping the numbers out. I decided I want to build my business and make it long-term and to see how much money I can really make, instead of spending/wasting it on stuff I don’t really need.

How do you see Affiliate Marketing?

Keep my productivity up is something I’ve been having real issues with recently, and staying focused is not easy for me. Sometimes it’s getting carried away on IRC / AIM and Wickedfire, or whatever but I haven’t been getting work done.

There’s 2 things that have helped me get on track a lot recently, and neither of them are Aderall (which i don’t have ). Those 2 things are simply a whiteboard and a notepad.

I use the whiteboard for writing things down I need to do for example a new campaign or new traffic source. Then on the notepad I’d break down what I need to do within that, to get what’s on the whiteboard complete (if that makes sense?).

If your having trouble focusing on work or are just to lazy, you have to realise the competition and money waits for no one. While your being lazy, your competitor is testing, building campaigns and optimizing away making more and more money. Oh and if your problem is there’s to much work or you don’t enjoy what your doing then get the fuck out of this industry – it’s not for you .

I’ve found that if I suddenly have an idea, i’ll write it down and later in the day or when ever i’ll see it again and get a chance to follow up, rather than relying on myself to remember it and get it done. Useful stuff for buisness. The total cost of both these are under $100 too, so it’s worth a shot if you were having the same problems as me.

So as you’ve probably heard facebook have relaxed their rules and started approving a lot of new and very profitable stuff. They’ve decided to unban alot of stuff like IQ and Mobile which before, people spent ALOT of time getting on. However, they did recently ban grants – but people were on that shit like hot cakes. Complaints were coming in fast, so they can’t ignore it.

Now with facebook relaxing, the world balance has to be restored. MySpace have become assholes and started getting stricter and more shittier with billing, so beware. I heard they are completely revamping their platform, but we’ll see!

Another of the big things this year is Direct Track fucking up yet again. There was crazy downtime on a lot of the big networks. So I just want to say, don’t lay all your eggs in one basket. Two great non DT networks in my opinion are CX Digital and Hydra which are both custom systems. However, if they broker any offers from other DT networks you’re still messed.

With all the good that has come in 2009 (a lot for me, and I hope a lot for you too) I got my share of the bad. My server at The planet got compromised and they couldn’t careless. They wanted $130/hr to fix it, and wouldn’t look at it till I paid them. They basically left me in the ditch. So I went around looking for a good alternative. I found Liquidweb with their truly heroic support. I cannot thank these guys enough. I started a live chat, and we got a custom quote within minutes a call to confirm and the box was live within 2 hours. Within 4 hours, I Was migrated manually (I used to use interworx, they migrated it to cPanel) to the new server. In the morning I got a follow up call to make sure everything was going smoothly. When my HTTPd failed, I went on chat and a tech called me and fixed the problem on the phone with me! IMPRESSIVE stuff.

What I figured out was, any down time would have probably lost me a few hunred if not a few thousand depending on how long it was out for. Now the different from my new server and the old one is $80 roughly, and the new box is all managed. So they do all the leg work and ensure it stays up. Now if you ask me that $80 is fully justified because now I can relax knowing my server isn’t gonna go down.

I know I haven’t updated the blog in a while, but I have another post drafted so keep an eye out

This is going to be a long post and I’m gonna say a lot of stuff and I’d appreciate it if you read it all. So last night, I was doing some clearing of stuff from college (before I dropped out). I found a load of my old folders on top of my old computer and my server. So I opened them up, and found stuff I’d written and one thing that stood out to me was “Why is a goal needed?” as on of the questions in my Business folder. Then I read along a bit more and it said “To provide direction” which got me thinking about my business. I currently have no goals, and I usually laze about (recently atleast). So now I’ve set a goal and personally I’ve been doing more things to reach it. One thing that has helped me to stick to it is an incentive:

If I make X by Y I get Z. So If I make $50,000 in a week, I get a holiday for example. It gives you something to work for and towards. Make sure your target is achievable though, don’t try and set $1m a day, because the chances are you won’t see that and when you don’t it will demotivate you. I like to set a long and short term goal, then write out objectives to meet the goals and targets. $50,000 a week short term, with $500,000 a month or $125,000 a week longterm. The little prizes and rewards for your self go a long way – trust me. Make sure you have a nice big reward for when you hit your long term, and splash out once in a while. What use is ALL that money if your not gonna spend it ey? Make sure you save some for emergencies and always 1-2 years worth of living set aside never to touch incase Code Red.

Another thing I’ve found that really helps me stay focused (besides coffee) is writing stuff down / taking notes on paper rather than the screen (which you prefer is up to you). I have paper lying around everywhere, and when you see it – you remember it and do it. I also like to have a To-Do list of the day, week etc and that really keeps me in drive. I have the occasional breaks through-out the day, but the work still gets done faster. A To-do list is something I’ve only recently started using, and hell it’s useful. If you’ve not got one – get one. There are online ones too, that integrate with iGoogle and stuff so get what works for you.

The year is almost over, and what a year its been. It’s been good for me atleast, and I hope  it has been a good year for you too. I’ve met a lot of new people online (Wickedfire + IRC mainly) and hell spending that time getting to know people is probably the best thing I’ve done this year. Just want to Give a shout out to a lot of people here: foucist, Bofu, Ricdes, Harrison, Eagle, Yaxxx, Norman, Proxyhub, Cracka, d03boy, gigidawg, digga, circa2k, Eli, JustAIMe, HyperionXL, Yubrew, MatthewK, Mattaw, taky, Jon, Zigroo, BB_Wolfe and Invisible. These guys and girls have made my year great and have been an absolute pleasure to work with. I’m looking forward to a crushing 09 with you guys

Now not to forget the networks I’ve been working with which are: Advaliant, Ads4Dough, Convert2Media and Affiliate.com. These networks have been the talk of the year and have moved the industry to a new level. 2009 is gonna be imense for these guys, and let me say – if your not with them, join now! Shout outs to Ruck, Yubrew, Kaveman, Steve , Josh Todd, Smaxor, Geoff Marcy for helping me through out the year and helping me learn the industry, I owe a big thanks to these boys!

Christmas is right round the corner, and it’s gonna be a great one! This christmas, don’t be trying to whore sales and what not. Set some lower daily limits and log on maybe once or, not at all and enjoy it. Have some wine, and relax. It’s one of the few holidays your gonna get with your family and every one you know and love around you. New years eve is gonna be hottt and a good start for every one.

I hope every one has a good christmas, a good end to the year and a brilliant new year! Good luck to you all! I’ll be back in the new year! Let’s get em!

So as you’ve probably heard, if your doing decent volume with anything your going to need MySQL 5.1 on your server. All good right? WRONG! MySQL is hard to upgrade to from an older installation or can just go wrong completely. Theres no commands you can drop in or something in cPanel you can click to do it either (not that I’ve found anyway).

So what Wes from P202 says is if your doing 5,000 clicks a day or so (not hard with social traffic) then your going to need it. MySQL has some horizontal partitioning or something like that (correct me if I’m wrong – I’m not sure lol) and that helps it bring the data up faster. The current version most of us are on is 5.0.* and most hosts won’t upgrade it for you unless you pay $75-150/hr for their time. That’s enough to get you spanking server right? Yep, and that’s what you should do.

Right now I’m with (more…)

So it’s Sunday night and Google have me in the dog house (manual review) and I’m bored. So I decided to check out Convert 2 Media’s website. While I was checking it out, I came across their blog.

Ruck is a well known established affiliate, so he knows his stuff. What’s ever better is that he shares his wealth of knowledge on his blog. Today, I came accross 3 brilliant posts that you should read. If your fairly new to affiliate marketing or established and can’t break your income barrier, I’m sure this will help:

1. Government Grants – A Lesson In Targeted Conversions
2. Acai Craze – Break Into Weightloss Without Breaking The Bank
3. Do You Take Your Business Seriously?

Now after reading that, don’t be like 95% of the people out there who don’t put it into action. Because you WILL lose out.

In regards to the grants post, it is well worth getting into at this time (Nov / Dec) because January shows a HUGE rise in the traffic, according to Google Trends that is. As you can see, the pattern is consistent every year. So take the advise and get into it NOW.

Recently one of my FAVOURITE CPA Networks changed their name. They are now called Affiliate.com! What a domain ey? They are really bringing on changes to the company.

They had the official launch at AdTech I believe. Good time to start it in my opinion. Things are looking good for them litrally . They’ve redesigned the whole site and the Direct Track control panel.

If your not with them yet, JOIN. Put in the comments:

Josh Todd as Affiliate Manager

You won’t regret it. He’s a solid AM and gets stuff done. He’s a good guy and I’m sure you’ll enjoy working with him. He’s the second Affiliate Manager I’ve met that knows affiliate marketing properly – the first being Smaxor at Ads4Dough. It’s good to have AMs that understand the concept of Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate.com have a variety of offers to choose from and if there’s something they haven’t got – they’ll get it. You can sure as shit bet on that. They also own Ringtone.net and are very flexible and can get custom stuff done if you push enough volume. Being one of the largest CPA Networks out, your barking mad if you don’t join.

I was just thinking because I’ve been banned for no reason in the past, and had to rejoin numerous times and being banned again – how do Google find me? We all know how Big G aim to automate as much as possible and have very extreme algorithms and scripts in place to run tests on us Adwords advertisers.

So then it got me thinking about their new bullshit quality score. How do they know it all? Then I remembered the Analytics tab at the top. I was thinking if it’s linked to the account and they know the domain for campaigns AND collect full stats on your pages – do they use that towards your campaigns?

Do things like bounce rate, return users etc affect your QS and how Google will send you traffic / volume and do they adjust bid prices with it? Well the answer is I’m not sure . But I need to find out now that it’s playing on my mind. So when I have some free time (always, but I gotta sound busy) I will test this on a few zip submits for sure (yeah, when I can be bothered).

So I know I’ve not posted for a while, but I’ve been busy doing other work and important stuff. So this is gonna be my mega post with a lot of information on some of the stuff I’ve found. Just don’t expect to be spoon fed.

Well a while back now, MySpace launched their self serve ads platform (to compete with Facebook most likely). The platform is still new and lacks a lot of features, but the potential is still there – that’s for sure. Not only that, MySpace have actually taken time out to contact big spenders and get feedback over the phone. This is a sign of the good stuff to come. I’m not going to get into what needs fixing, but there’s a lot – you’ll see this WHEN you join.

The key to MySpace just like Facebook is (more…)