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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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 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 the Planet and they have some specials on nice Dual Xeon dual processor servers. $115-135 will get you:

• 2 Processors with 2 cores (shows up as 4 in cPanel etc)
• 2Gb of ram
• 2x 73GB SCSI Hard drive (FASTER)
• 2.5Tb Bandwidth

The price goes up in $10s for every processor upgrade you want. 2.4Ghz is $115, and the 3.2Ghz per processor is $135 a month. Now that’s a bargain, believe me.

Another good competitor for something to host a dedicated P202 installation on is The grid layer from the Layeredtech. The best option starts from $59 and gets you 20% of the CPU power, 512 ram and 2Tb bandwidth. The beauty of this is that you can SCALE. Which you know is going to be key if you want to grow big (who doesn’t?) So you can upgrade to some very big shit.

Lastly there is Softlayer which is more of a premium but have more to offer. They start from $159 and start with Single proc Dual core stuff. They have a private network with unlimited bandwidth FOR FREE. You’ll see where this plays in, in a moment. They do automated OS reloads etc and have very good hardware and a good team behind them. As well as multiple DCs to choose from.

Now you have the hosting covered, you need to think about the software / OS side of it. Personally I like CentOS but The planet give you free RHEL 5.2 which usually costs I understand. Just stick with Cent OS 5.x and you won’t go wrong.

As for a control panel, there are a few major contenders:

• cPanel
• Plesk
• DirectAdmin
• Interworx

Now personally I prefer Interworx because its easy and you can CLUSTER. So if your load becomes high around  4, 5, 6 constantly then you can just buy another server and install interworx on the 2nd box (Easy btw) and just setup the master with the secondary and bang! We have a cluster! Now the traffic will be spread accross the two servers. Easy to setup and cheap at $25 a licence. Only problem? Doesn’t support MySQL 5.1 or have an upgrade option until MySQL 5.1 goes stable.

The most popular option is probably cPanel. cPanel is just well known and widely used. Nothing fancy and has a big footprint. Doesn’t support MySQL 5.1 either. Avoid it to be honest, expensive and waste of resources.

Plesk – just don’t. This is a nice option for windows but really, don’t go there. It won’t be for you, and it’s pricey!

Now DirectAdmin is a big cPanel contender. It hasn’t going anything fancy but does what cPanel does with a lower footprint and faster panel. Best of all IT SUPPORTS MySQL 5.1! The install process is easy and its VERY cheap. From what I understand is, you just run a script (custombuild) and it will upgrade it for you.

Personally, I’m going to run with The grid layer or The planet with a Direct Admin licence till Interworx get MySQL 5.1 then I’ll migrate out (easy process too) as I really like Interworx.

So when (not if) you plan ahead, keep scaling in mind. And plan it out sooner, rather than later. Slow LPs, redirects etc will put the customer off. It’s fucking ANNOYING. You hate it when sites are slow, and so do they. I suggest you get tracking on a seperate server (good for uptime too) then you won’t have to hassle with it again until you get some REALLY big size put on.

If you get stuff managed or have a team, then just get them to do it – simple. They’ll just upgrade it on your current system, but it will take time (few hours) I suppose.

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.

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.

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).

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 a good CTR and making a good eCPM for MySpace. High bid + Good CTR = High volume and Low Bid + Very High CTR = High volume. I’d say the CTRs should be around the same as Facebook, but the bid has to be 25c+ obviously. If you do manage to get a good CTR I suggest bidding 26c to top all of the people who are paying 25c. Easy.

I personally strongly recommend targeting with the groups if you have a product that is niche. If your product applies to the general public, then no targeting should be fine as long as the ad is appealing. I strongly suggest you test to get the best results and ROI. What better to test it than Prosper202? The tool is still going strong and is just as handy. Plus with this high volume, the spy tab comes in handy. It’ll keep ya occupied for sure.

I’ve also been playing around with Google Adwords’ content network a lot. I’ve setup campaigns with targeted demographics and timing and all I can say is the results are amazing. The volume just blasts in. The key with this again is CTR and good decent bids. I’ve broken numerous personal records with the content network, and would have broken other peoples to (I’m fucking around lol) if Google just kept my traffic constant. They love to review my campaign every few hours and stop the traffic at peak times. Other than that it’s GREAT.

What I’ve found with the Content network is, a good ad copy is a must. Now I’m not very creative myself, so I do like to ‘borrow’ ideas. So what I usually do is, search my keyword in a Search engine (yes any) and find a site with AdSense. Then see if there are any sites similar to mine in goal and purpose and see what they are doing and applying to their ads. Then I just apply that to mine and the CTR goes up. A lot of work for one ad hey? Well I’ve recently found a tool I could sex. That tool is PPC fucking BULLY.

This tool isn’t the cheapest, but it does fucking work – that’s for sure. But it does work and it does do all the hard work for you saving you A LOT of time. You just add your project, then you add keywords to the project. PPC Bully will then go out and search google for those keywords and take a note of the ads, and produce all the information related to the ad (see the video on their homepage). Then it checks those ads once a day (more if your gold) and sees if the ad is still there. If it is, then we can assume it’s profitable and worth learning from.

I really do suggest checking that tool out. If you don’t like it, get your money back. It’s that simple!

The AdWords editor is something I use often too. It saves so much time, you just wouldn’t believe it. Combined with PPC Coach’s tools it’s a lethal imo. You can launch campaigns in minutes, make mass changes in minutes and add new stuff in minutes. This tool is great. It lacks a few features like an EASY way to add multiple ads across adgroups, but if you follow the format they give you – it’s not too hard. If your not using this (I doubt this) then you should start learning it now.

AdCenter is catching my eye again too. I’ve had quiet a few emails from the in the past few months. All about updates and new features. They really are pushing the boat out and I think they’re gonna be very successful if they can get their hands on some nice volume. That’s the ONLY thing they lack. I’m a huge fan of this platform, more than any other. Their support is fucking GREAT, the platform is EASY and there’s not much competition. It’s as if they’re giving away free money. If your not on AdCenter you can get yourself a £50 (Yes, Pounds) coupon from www.tryadcenternow.co.uk. It’s well worth joining and getting campaigns running there too. The quality of their traffic is far higher than AdWords and Yahoo Marketing Solutions. They are the under dog and people don’t use them because of it. Don’t make the same MISTAKE.

Oh and if your not, get on Ads 4 Dough – You’ll make money I can PROMISE you. They are the kings at the moment for Acai berries, Tea and cleansing. They’ve generated over 70,000 leads for Acai berries in one campaign alone. With network EPCs of over $2 on numerous campaigns, get on it NOW.