Money-Code

What I’ve Been Up To

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:25:07 PST

I’ve had a few people ask me what I’ve been up to. Over the last year, I’ve been laying low in regards to Money-Code.com, but I’ve been pretty active in affiliate marketing in general. Granted this past year has been a busy one with my primary business, but every free moment has been devoted to tweaking.

For 2011 I decided to make some major changes in my strategy, and focus on tweaking vs. building. I really believe that a better user experience is the only way around Panda updates and the general ups and downs of traffic. To develop community and loyalty with your users is worth WAY more than the new tools, etc. Panda hit me hard, and I still feel the sting, but thickening sites, and creating loyalty, I’m starting to see some improvement, and I feel that these changes will really shine in 2012.

I have to say that in 2011, I did do some new site development, primarily in Amazon. I’ve had issues with Amazon for years as an affiliate. It’s definitely a hard egg to crack and to see consistent revenue can be challenging. I’ve been working on a few theories and so far they have been paying off nicely.. and more importantly, consistently. I believe in 2012, I’ll put a little more emphasis. Also, on the flip side, my Commission Junction earnings have been dipping. I ended up dropping PopShops, and I haven’t looked back.

It was interesting that Panda changes hurt, and developed a significantly lower amount of sites, yet 2011 will still be a record year for me. Again, keeping a foundation is very important to float you while you develop.

Plans for 2012 include much more Amazon sites, focus on direct advertising, and developing a web application for potential re-sale. I might be developing some mobile solutions for EPN sites as well, that is still in the brainstorming stages. Oh.. and to blog a little more on Money-Code.com!

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Great deal on Dell PowerEdge T110 Server!

admin — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 08:55:37 PDT

As an programmer / affliate marketer servers are extremely important to me. Sure I do take advantage of HostGator share hosting servers, but usually with quick and dirty web sites. Anything that involves thinking outside of the box will require my own server since there are packages, centralization, globalization of code that I would like to use. I also like to use my own servers for security and managing the traffic that hit my web sites. But, I’m talking production.

I always test my sites and develop my sites on several development servers. Those servers are here in my office and are an extremely valuable asset to my business. I also use servers as file servers. I’m sorta freaky about backups. I love backups. I love incremental backups. For me to maintain these backups, I need to have disk and servers to manage them. So.. you probably get it.. servers are important.

The reason for this post, is that I buy my servers (development and file servers) from Dell. I always wait for specials that they run, and you can get crazy awesome deals for servers. I just was notified about a deal going on right now.

Currently they’re offering a Dell PowerEdge T110 Server with a 24″ ViewSonice Widescreen Black LCD Monitor for only $479. This includes FREE 3-5 day shipping. Not bad at all! This will be a system without a operating system, which is perfect if you’re messing around with Linux, but it would be easy to install Windows if needed. You should be able to upgrade or customize the server directly from Dell, but obviously the price would go up.

Here are the specific details of the offer:

Dell PowerEdge T110 Server with 24″ ViewSonic Widescreen Black LCD Monitor
Intel Xeon X3430 Processor
2GB Memory
250GB Hard Drive
Free 3-5 Day Ground Shipping!

For more information Dell PowerEdge T110 Server with a 24″ ViewSonic Monitor offer for only $479, click here.

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Chatting with eBay Partner Network – Episode 14 – Network Quality Team

admin — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 10:20:41 PST

Here is a interesting video with Chad Wehrmaker discussing the Network Quality Team at EPN. Personally, I’ve been weary of my EPN account, and work extremely hard to send ‘quality’ traffic to EPN. Work on improving sites and my EPC. He provided some great insight on the ‘quality’, and mentions it’s not about EPC only. I thought this information was quite interesting. He mentions some additional factors – Transparency and Brand Association are also factors for quality. The way I transparency could be related to registered domains at EPN, tracking pixel and clear understanding of the flow of traffic to and from the site. If you have other suggestions of what transparency means, please comment below.

Now Brand Association is interesting. Clearly using registered trademarks or brand names in the title is a violation of the TOS so this should be a no-brainer, unless brand association is related to something else. Is this related to certain products on the site? Not sure what this fully means.

Chad mentions that there is also an appeal process if your account is terminated or suspended and to write to ebaypartnernetworkquality@ebay.com. Threatening or harsh emails will not be responded to. Reading a blogs that have successfully appealed their account termination all mentioned that they would calmly AND continually write to the quality team. Persistence and patience seems to be the way.

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Rackspace Cloud Servers

admin — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 08:23:18 PST

I’ve been managing various dedicated web servers for a few years now. I do this for web development clients as well as some of my affiliate marketing efforts. One company that I’ve been with for a while is Rackspace and I’ve been nothing but pleased with their services. When I initially signed on with them about 6 years ago, their linux dedicated (unmanaged) servers were quite affordable, but since then, their prices have increased, so for new dedicated servers I’ve used other hosts. I’m not happy with those hosts, and always wished I could have additional servers at Rackspace.

Recently, my Rackspace server had a failing drive and a friend of mine told me that Rackspace offers cloud servers – and with the linux distro I prefer. I figured this would be a great opportunity to check out a new hosting solution, but something new that I have confidence in since it’s Rackspace. Additionally, looking at their price matrix, their pricing is great! They’ve changed the hosting payment paradigm by going with a hourly rate. I was a little hesitant of this, but after calculating their hourly rates.. it’s cheap. To calculate hosting, you determine how much RAM your server requires (includes disk space) and how much incoming/outgoing bandwidth is used. The other great thing, is that you can scale down or ramp up if needed. Since it’s in a virtual environment you can do this.

I think I would be hesitant to go with anyone except Rackspace for this, since their network is unbelievably good, and their support is second to none. I’ve never been on hold. And a *real* person answers the phone EVERY time.

I’m going to be migrating the failing physical server to the cloud server and seriously consider moving my other servers to the cloud as well. For those that are not familiar with cloud servers, here is a video explaining it:

[See post to watch Flash video]

If this sounds interesting to you, check out their pricing. I’m personally.. super psyched so far. If you’re looking for a web host and after you Buy domain names, please consider Rackspace cloud for your hosting solution!

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Chatting with eBay Partner Network – Episode 11

admin — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 08:21:39 PST

I don’t hit the EPN blog that often.. and I should try harder. I saw that on January 13th, the posted Episode 11. I thought this was a good interview, since they addressed some of my ongoing issues with EPN. I appreciate that they acknowledged that they still need to improve in the customer service sector, and also that they’re aware of their issues with rolling out new code. Nothing like ‘new changes’ followed up by reporting issues, etc. A little unnerving, so I’m glad they they’re aware and plan to do better in 2011.

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Start from inside Out

admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:10:54 PST

I’m a guy that likes a process. I enjoy procedures to maximize my time. I love sayings or mantras to help remind me how to maximize my efforts and stay on a path.

I’ve been in the technology sector for a long long time working in various areas – development, networking, server administration, etc. One of the first sayings I adopted was “start from inside out”. Simple saying, but I definitely see it applied in other areas, etc. Basically, the idea is this – you start from the closest point to the furthest point while debugging problems. For instance, your internet is down. I would first see if *all* applications can’t see the internet (browser, email, etc). Then I would see if the network cable was plugged in and link light is there. I would then check the switch.. then the modem.. then ping different areas of the net.. then eventually call the ISP. What happens a lot, is people will just call the ISP and get pissed while on hold to find out their anti-virus is blocking their Firefox application. It’s about eliminating the controllable variables first.

This leads me to the second saying. “Start with what you know”. This is a slight twist on “Start from inside out”. A good programming buddy of mine would lay that on me all the time. It’s so much easier tackling a programming challenge with areas of what you know to gradually get you to where you need to be. Versus saying.. shit, I don’t know how to do that. Break it down and isolate section you do know how to do. Start building a base and eventually the hard stuff.. is the small stuff, and the majority is done. This is a attitude for swallowing a challenge and keeps the thinking clear.. and the fingers typing.

Now, the reason I wrote this post, is the Josh Whitford’s blog posted this great TED speech by Simon Sinek. This talk was awesome and inspiring, but it touched on the same philosophy. The golden circle.. why->how->what which emanates from the inner circle to the outer.. [cough]inside out[/cough].

So why am I bringing this up on my programming affiliate marketing blog? I watch/hear things all the time, and I’m always thinking on how to leverage things for affiliate marketing. This is thinking outside of the box.. I guess, but why -> how -> what might be the outline for my future squeeze pages. Could be the new direction for PPC ads? Could be the direction for blog posts or general web content? Who knows, but the bottom line.. it’s food for thought.

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Automatic Backlink Creator

admin — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 08:18:21 PST

Here is a interesting plugin I stumbled upon. The Automatic Backlink Creator is a wordpress plugin that will automatically create backlinks for you when you create a post. There are currently 1,876 sites in their network (as of 1/7/2011). You can also use this plugin for articles as well. Basically you can write spun articles and submit them to the network form the admin panel.

For me, a few questions came to mind. Is this available for unlimited domains? Any conditions when using the plugin?

- You can install it on all of your domains. There is a activation code.
- There are terms related to the network (can’t use them on adult sites, gambling, mediation, etc.).

You purchase the plugin AND the network, so there is a monthly charge.

I found this testimonial video on the Automatic Backlink Creator

This video was submitted by BruteForceWealth.

If this sounds good to you, then check out Automatic Backlink Creator today! If you have any personal experience with this plugin, please comment below. Love to hear the good and bad!

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eBay API Change

admin — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 07:00:43 PST

Most of you already know this, but I have been getting a few emails about this, so I’ll post it. eBay changed their API to the new Finding API. This will officially be unavailable aft October 2011. The new Finding API is MUCH better and you’ll definitely benefit by using it. There is a migration guide available. Unfortunately, it does mean some major code changes. When I say code changes, I’m referring to the request and the variables returned from the response have different syntax, so it’s not too terrible on what needs to be done.

Here is the link to the migration guide:
http://developer.ebay.com/devzone/finding/Concepts/map_FindItemsAdvanced_2_FindingService.html

Hope this helps.

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Analysis and Goal Settings

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 09:41:05 PST

2010 was an interesting affiliate marketing year for me. I probably spent the least amount of time while having the best year ever. This is largely in part to the foundation I laid in place in the prior years. Sites are aging and content is getting better, etc. The disturbing thing to me, is knowing that I could have made a TON more if I was working it harder.

Areas that I did work on in 2010, analyzing sites and how they’ve performed historically. Basically, find the crappy sites and make them better… or get rid of them. Even though sites might be poor performers, that does not mean they still don’t have potential. I often make test sites to see if a niche has potential with Amazon, EPN, Adsense, etc. These test sites are usually the losers and need tweaking. They might create low traffic and horrible EPC in EPN, so they might be a good candidate to focus the site to Amazon or Adsense or at the very least a *support* site. I also find sites that were good.. and aren’t so good now. What’s changed? Is it a SEO deal? Is it PPC deal? Figuring out how to get it back is a good direction to focus energy.

In 2010 I hardly created new sites.. a few here and there, but nothing like 2008/2009. I know that optimizing my sites helped with my bottom line. I should have maintained a more consistent build schedule to keep the average growth up, but these are items / goals I’m setting for 2011.

I know my decision to scale back came from the obvious data that was looking at me straight in the face. The sites that I spent the most time, that had the best content, and generated the best buyer/reader loyalty…. made the most money. Weird? Not really. My crappy thin, just whip-it-out-on-a-evening sites that I never rework… make the least amount of money. Weird? Not really.

Every year, I set up goals and expectations for my efforts. I exceeded my 2010 goals, but I feel like I left a lot on the table and sold myself short, so for 2011, I’m going to set up a few things to account for this. Normally, I set up a monetary goal figure for the year, and that could be the reason for laziness. This year, I’ve set up percentage increase over 2010 (I’m thinking 30% gain in gross), and divided this across four quarters. This way, I’ll be really seeing how it’s breaking down.. and I want a fluctuating goal to constantly challenge me. If in Q1 I’m looking at 32% gross increase, that will be the new bar, and so on.. but it won’t go down. This will push me in Q2, etc. I’m also getting to focus on Q4 a little differently for 2011. I normally just maintain consistency, and don’t go too hog-wild for x-mas. I’m thinking about adjusting my PPC budget for x-mas this year, also devote some time in Q1 for building sites targeting for Q4. This will be a little test with the Q1 sites – I’m not going to go too crazy (possibly creating 5-10 sites with the emphasis)

One consistent goal that I seem to have problems with is diversity. For 2011, I really want to improve my Amazon/CJ sales. Amazon has definitely improved, but is crap in the big picture. CJ has been consistent and I want to improve that as well. So for 2011, I set up dollar goal amounts for these networks. By separating them and analyzing their growth by quarter should help gauge where I need to focus on.

One other goal I have for 2011 is getting back to basics. I feel like my lack of time on affiliate/internet marketing took away from some of the basic SEO strategies and traffic generation. For me, it’s often hard to justify the time spent creating backlinks, commenting, etc. The basic rules for traffic generation. I know the sites I spent time on this… get good traffic. Weird? Not really. But, I remember the work is difficult, tedious and takes a while to propagate. I know that’s the game, and I need to do it, but when PPC is so quick, it’s some times hard to justify. But by going back to basics, and diversifying traffic generation methods with PPC – is a good thing. I know that. So I’ll try to be better with it.

Goals are important for staying on track, but to successfully goal set, you need to understand your history and not to extend past your potential. You don’t want to get discouraged either – so find the right balance that works for you.

eBay and Twitter.. some confusion

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:27:17 PST

It’s been well documented that you cannot promote eBay listings on social networks.. or any site you do not currently own. Meaning, you can post rover links on Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo, etc. It has been the general understanding that you can use those social networks to promote your OWN site where you’d have rover links on them.

Today, I noticed a very disturbing post on the EPN forum by mrguyhp where a affiliate had their account suspended, then reinstated, but withe following warning from EPN:

We have completed the investigation of your account and decided to unsuspend it. It is now active again. However, please be advised that as of August 20, 2009 publishers are no longer allowed to post on twitter.com or any other social network (facebook.com), even if they are merely sending traffic to their own sites. Please remove all your links on these sites and stop those campaigns. If you continue to receive traffic from these sites, your account will be expired and all your pending commissions will be reversed

Now, this makes no sense! According to their EPN blog “10 Tips to Improve Your Social Media Strategy” they have the following listed:

Although eBay Partner Network does not allow our partners to directly promote eBay through social media arenas, we want to make sure you know that you can drive traffic to your own website(s) through appropriate social media strategies.

These two statements seem to be opposite. So far no word from the ‘pinks’ on the subject. You can follow the entire thread here.

UPDATE

Looks like we have a pink reply on the post!

Hi everyone,

To clarify our policy allows social network traffic to be sent to your own site, just not directly to eBay. The blog post is correct. We are looking into the context of that response from Network Quality.

Thanks,
Casey

So hopefully, this is all cleared up now.

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