With the help of Ben from WickedFire.com I put together a short script that will cloak your site from anyone not coming from the exact sources you specify. You can even white list IP addresses to make sure no direct traffic comes to the site that doesn’t belong there. Be careful with that one since you might be sending away actual customers. I always redirect to the offer page just to be certain.

So, here is the script:

<?php

if(!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])) {
 $referer = parse_url($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']);

 preg_match('/[^.]+\.[^.]+$/', $referer['host'], $match);

  if ($match[0] != 'trafficsource.com') {
   header("Location: http://www.offerpage.com"); //redirect all traffic that comes from any source except the one listed above
   exit;
  }
}

if(empty($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])) {
 $visitor = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

 if (!(preg_match("/xx.xxx.xxx.xx/",$visitor)) && !(preg_match("/yy.yyy.yyy.yy/",$visitor))) {
 header('Location: http://www.offerpage.com?subid=directTraffic'); //redirect all IP addresses to this that are not the IP addresses listed above
  exit;
 }
}

?>

This should do the trick. Remember to fill out the correct information in the script, it won’t “just work.” One last thing to remember is that when you enter a traffic source, it should be the root domain (myspace.com, google.com, facebook.com) and nothing else. The script will parse the referring source down to just the root domain. You can add as many IP addresses as you want just by adding another AND (&&) operator. You can also tweak this code to cloak your site anyway you want. Hope you enjoy!

The very next day after I wrote that a lot of things changed on Facebook. They started accepting pretty much any type of advertising, as opposed to before when they were very restrictive. One thing I would like to append to that article is that Facebook is now approving ads at all hours it seems. I had a group of ads approved at 2pm PST. The prime time to get ads approved is still middle day though.

I’ll be posting an article to this blog soon, so come back soon!

Problem:
Adboard is a great place to get competitive information. You can see all the ads targeting your demographic on a single page. Because of this, I assume 95% of the clicks you get from the adboard are from your competitors. This is especially true in the affiliate marketing world. So when my competitor sees my ad and then clicks it, they also can see my landing page. This is 75% of a profitable formula. So Neil gave me a great idea (and script) to prevent my competitors from seeing my landing page coming from the adboard, which is a huge help.

Solution:
The solution to this is to send all clicks coming from the adboard to a different landing page. You can send them directly to the offer, or a different page all together. I am not certain this exact practice is allowed by FB, so I have asked my account manager and am awaiting my response.

So, how do we redirect all clicks from the adboard? A simple php script below (this is a modified script from the one that Neil gave me):

<?php
$ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
if ($ref == 'http://www.facebook.com/ads/adboard/') {
header("Location:http://www.adifferentwebsite.com");
exit;
}
?>

That’s it. This code basically detects the referring URL and redirects the click if it comes from the adboard. A few things to remember: 1. this does not catch clicks if the user copies/pastes the URL from the adboard, without actually clicking. 2. you are still paying for the clicks that you redirect. 3. this may be against FB’s TOS, so use at your own risk.

I recently ran into a problem while running an affiliate marketing campaign. The problem was that since I was changing my ad copy so often, the same people would click my ads multiple times and land on the same landing page and would leave (because they had already been to it and left). This caused the amount of clicks from my landing page to the offer page to decline gradually because return visitors thought they were going to a new site when they actually weren’t (since my ad they clicked on was different).

A similar problem was people who did click through to the offer page and were back a second time. In this case they converted and won’t convert again, or did not convert because they didn’t like the offer. Either way I had to think of something else to do with these repeat visits.

Solution:

I thought about it and came up with a solution. I created a little cookie dropping script that tested two things: 1. did they already come to my landing page? 2. did they click through to the offer page? Here is the code:


<?php
if ( isset($_COOKIE['clicked'])) {

header("Location: http://www.anothersimilaroffer.com");
exit;
}

if ( isset($_COOKIE['landed']) && ($_COOKIE['landed'] <= time()-60*5) ) {
header("Location: http://www.adifferentlandingpage.com/");
exit;
}

$month = time()+60*60*24*30;
$value = time();
setcookie("landed",$value, $month);
?>


Put this code at the top of your landing page.

In addition, you will also have to set another cookie (shown below) called "clicked" when they click your outbound link to the offer page:


<?php
$month = time()+60*60*24*30;
$value = time();
setcookie("clicked",$value, $month);
?>


Basically, how it works is when a new user visits, it will set the "landed" cookie. If they leave after that nothing else happens. If they click the outbound link to the offer page, a cookie called "clicked" will be set.

When a repeat visitor comes back it will check to see if they went to the offer page first. If they did you can redirect them to another similar offer instead. If the repeat visitor landed but did not click through (left your site), you can redirect them to another landing page for the same offer, which may give a conversion. NOTE: it gives a user 5 minutes after leaving your site before the redirect will occur.

This will at least give you some control over people who click your ads multiple times and either don't like your landing page or don't like the offer you are selling.