Luke, Author at Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur

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Surfing Affiliate Offers with GeoSurf

May 1st, 2013
Affiliate Marketing, Reviews
6
1,144 views

One of the most common questions that I get from my publishers at PeerFly is “how can I view the offer landing page?” or “why am I being taken to the wrong landing page when I try to view my affiliate link?” and those are very good questions because it is important that you know what you are promoting.

Nearly every affiliate network and most smart advertisers have geographic redirect scripts setup on their landing pages so that if someone from outside of the countries they want to receive traffic from comes to that page they are redirected elsewhere. So, if you have a CPA offer that you are only looking for leads from the United States on and someone from Canada tries to go to it you redirect them to an offer that allows Canadian traffic. This makes a lot of sense to do, but if you are an affiliate that wants to promote that offer and you live outside of it’s allowed countries it can be really annoying to try to view the landing page for that offer.

There are free browser based proxies available throughout the web, but they not very reliable. Instead, I recommend you use a premium proxy service like GeoSurf.

What is GeoSurf?

GeoSurf is an awesome proxy service that allows you to connect to their network of proxies to make it appear as if you are surfing the internet from that location. They have 110 proxy servers available to their members from all over the world and many ways you can connect to those GeoSurf servers (more information on that below in GeoSurf Features).

GeoSurf’s 110 proxy servers are located in many different locations including 25 in specific designated marketing areas within the United States.

Screen Shot 2013 04 24 at 10.14.36 AM Surfing Affiliate Offers with GeoSurf

For those looking specifically for proxies in the United States, here are the 25 cities they have proxy servers located in:

Atlanta (GA)
Austin (TX)
Boston (MA)
Charlotte (NC)
Chicago (IL)
Columbus (OH)
Dallas (TX)
Denver (CO)
Houston (TX)
Kansas City (MO)
Las Vegas (NV)
Los Angeles (CA)
Mclean (VA)
Miami (FL)
Minneapolis (MN)
New Orleans (LA)
New York (NY)
Philadelphia (PA)
Phoenix (AZ)
Portland (OR)
Raleigh (NC)
Sacramento (CA)
San Diego (CA)
San Francisco (CA)
Seattle (WA)
St Louis (MO)
Tampa (FL)
Washington DC

As you can see, they have a lot of great locations that are definitely needed. For international affiliates looking to view landing pages for offers that only allow traffic from the US, there are 25 different locations you can try. There are also international proxy servers for all the top countries there are offers on PeerFly for.

So, what tools and features are available to allow you to surf the GeoSurf proxies?

GeoSurf Features

GeoSurf Toolbar
The GeoSurf Toolbar is probably my favorite tool out of their nice collection. It allows you to easily surf using any of their proxy server locations directly from your browser. All you have to do is install the toolbar for whichever browser you prefer. They have one available for all the major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer).

GeoSurf Plus
GeoSurf Plus is a pretty cool features that allows you to view display campaigns that are being run on sites, which advertisers are running where, and which ad networks are being used in the campaigns. You can find more information on GeoSurf Plus here.

GeoSurf VPN
With the GeoSurf VPN you can change your entire computers IP to one of the proxy servers available from the various GeoSurf locations. This allows you to use applications on your computer from a different IP whereas the GeoSurf toolbar is simply for viewing sites within your browser.

GeoSurf for Android and iPhone
The GeoSurf for Android phones, iPhones, and iPads is really cool. It allows you to use the GeoSurf proxy network from 98 locations directly on your phone. If you’re running mobile campaigns this is a great way to truly see and get the local perspective for your campaign.

GeoSurf Mobile Emulator
The Mobile Emulator is a lot like the GeoSurf mobile application for iPhone and Android except it emulates those devices directly in your web browser rather than a native application.

GeoSurf Direct Connect API
If you are a developer you may want to check out the GeoSurf Direct Connect API that allows you to connect to the gateways within the GeoSurf proxy network through an API.

For most affiliates the GeoSurf Premium Proxy Toolbar is a must. If you do a lot of mobile marketing you should definitely check out the native applications (iPhone or Android) and the Mobile Emulator. GeoSurf Plus is nice, but I’d recommend getting in touch with the support at GeoSurf and getting the free report they offer before you dive into that.

The support at GeoSurf is fantastic so if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact them. If you are frustrated with viewing landing pages and media from outside of your country you need to check out GeoSurf and considering buying their proxy service.

Let’s make some money!

How to Install Prosper202

April 15th, 2013
Affiliate Marketing, Landing Page Tutorials
21
2,424 views

A common question I have received over the past 2 years from my readers on this blog is “how do I install Prosper202 on my server.” I have been using Prosper202 for a few years now and have installed it on numerous servers without any trouble, but I can see where someone who is not experienced in setting up a database or using an FTP client could get confused.

So, I am going to explain the entire installation process from download to setup. This should answer many of the common questions that come up while installing Prosper202, but if you get to the end and you still are unsure do not hesitate to ask in the comments below.

First off, we need to actually download Prosper202 to your computer.

Download Prosper202

To be able to upload Prosper202 to your web server you are first going to need to download it to your computer. You can download Prosper202 for free from the official Tracking202 page here.

Make sure you download Prosper202 somewhere on your computer where you will be able to easily find it. I usually just download it directly to my desktop.

Create Subdomain or Setup Your Domain

Once you have Prosper202 downloaded you will need to setup the directory on your server where you will install it. There are two options I use:

Install directly in the public_html folder of the domain.
Create a subdomain and install on the subdomain directory.

If you are going to use your domain just for tracking your campaigns with Prosper202 then I recommend installing it directly in the public_html directory for that domain. If you are going to use that domain for other things then you may want to setup a subdomain to host Prosper202. I have had several people tell me they could not install Prosper202 on a subdomain, but I have done it a bunch of times and never had any issues.

Now that you know where you’re going to install Prosper202 you need to setup your database.

Create a Database for Prosper202

Prosper202 is powered by a MySQL database so you will need to create one on your server. If you have cPanel then creating a database is a really simple three step process. If you do not have cPanel installed on your server you will need to search how to create a database. With cPanel simply:

Create a database
Create a user
Grant user permissions on database

Create Database

Screen Shot 2013 04 07 at 6.56.44 PM How to Install Prosper202

Create a user

Screen Shot 2013 04 07 at 7.39.21 PM How to Install Prosper202

Once you create your database and MySQL user you will need to grant permissions to that user.

Screen Shot 2013 04 07 at 7.41.17 PM How to Install Prosper202

Screen Shot 2013 04 07 at 7.41.33 PM How to Install Prosper202

Now that you have granted permissions (privileges) to your MySQL database user and created your database, your Prosper202 database setup is complete. It’s time to upload Prosper202 to your server.

Upload Prosper202 to Your Server

If you have a FTP client that you already use then uploading Prosper202 to your server should be pretty simple. If you do not have a FTP client I recommend you download FileZilla. FileZilla is free and really easy to use. Upload the Prosper202 files to the directory for either your domain or the subdomain you created previously.

Screen Shot 2013 04 07 at 7.47.25 PM How to Install Prosper202

Install Prosper202

Once you have uploaded all the Prosper202 files you are ready to finish up your installation. Go to your domain or subdomain you installed Propser202 on and you should be promoted with a window that looks like this:

Screen Shot 2013 04 14 at 4.57.36 PM How to Install Prosper202

Click to create a 202-config.php file so you can create your Prosper202 configuration file. Click let’s go and you will be prompted with the following form:

Screen Shot 2013 04 14 at 5.16.17 PM How to Install Prosper202

You will need to complete the form with the information for the database you created earlier. The only things you should need to change are Database Name, User Name, and Password. Once you have entered your information push Submit. If you made a mistake on the form you will get an error message saying a database connection cannot be made. Otherwise, you will get this message:

All right sparky! You’ve made it through this part of the installation. Prosper202 can now communicate with your database. If you are ready, time now to run the install!

Click run the install and you will be taken to this form:

Screen Shot 2013 04 14 at 5.31.12 PM How to Install Prosper202

Creating your account is the last step in the Prosper202 installation process. Once you click Install Prosper202 you are all set. You can login to your Prosper202 account and you are all done!

Installing Prosper202 is not that hard and if you have everything in place you should be able to do it pretty easily. Once you have installed Propser202 make sure you check out my guide on how to setup your affiliate campaign using Prosper202.

With the right tools you will make your job as an affiliate marketer a lot easier. Prosper202 is a great start and should definitely help you analyze your traffic. Please let me know if you have any questions. Let’s make some money!

PeerFly Banner Rotator

April 9th, 2013
Affiliate Marketing, PeerFly FAQ, Web Development, WordPress
16
5,147 views

One of the goals at PeerFly is to provide our publishers with all the tools required in order for them to be successful. Not only is this a company mission, but it is my personal mission as well. The main reason I write in this blog is to share my knowledge and experience with affiliate marketing so you have an easier time being successful than I did.

About a year and a half ago I made a site called PeerFlyBanners.com. The site provided a script that allowed you to easily rotate the banners available on our offers at PeerFly. Although it works pretty well, has been used by over 1,000 PeerFly publishers, and has generated nearly 20,000,000 banner impressions, a better option has finally been created.

I am happy to announce that we have officially launched our own in-house rotator finally at PeerFly. It is much better than my script and here are a few reasons why.

The New Banner Rotator Features

The new PeerFly banner rotator, named Ads By PeerFly, is much more complex than the simple banner rotator I previously provided my publishers. Not only is it more stable because it is being hosted on our amazing servers at PeerFly, but it will also be updated more frequently because we have our in-house programming team working on it. Over time I expect this new tool to be more than you can even picture at the moment and I have no doubt it will help my publishers make a lot more money.

On-Page Rotation

The banner rotator is setup to automatically rotate banners while your users are on the page. After a banner has been displayed for 15 seconds it automatically rotates to the next best banner based on our automated optimization. This should help increase your CTR and that should help you make more money!

Keyword Search

You can now filter banners by keyword term. So, if you want to rotate the iPhone offers from PeerFly simply enter the keyword iPhone and the rotator will specifically look for iPhone offers to display. You can also break this down by vertical or verticals (iPhone email submits).

Country Specific Offers

One of the features missing most from PeerFlyBanners.com was the ability to only display banners for offers that allow traffic from the visitor’s country. This was the first thing we added to the new banner rotator. You do not have to worry about your visitors being redirected because they are clicking on banners for offers that do not allow traffic from their country anymore! This will help increase your conversion rate and revenue.

Display or Hide Adult Banners

Another feature not previously supported by PeerFlyBanners was the ability to hide or display adult banners. You can now choose to display all banners, never display adult banners, or only display adult banners.

WordPress Plugin

I have also created a WordPress Plugin you can download and install on your WordPress blog to easily add the banner rotator script without having to touch any code. Once you download and install the plugin on your blog you will see a new PeerFly Banners Rotator widget on your Widgets page. You can drag and drop that into any sidebar on your blog and create your rotator using a simple form (shown to the right).

You can add this widget as many times as you want to as many sidebars as you want. I recommend a maximum of 5, but feel free to test out various locations to see what works best for you.

I am hoping to get this plugin added to the WordPress Plugin Directory soon and once it is you will be able to update it directly from your WordPress admin area.

Click the button above to download the latest version of the plugin from my Dropbox.

I’m really excited to see how beneficial our new banner rotator is going to be for our publishers at PeerFly. We are already serving millions of impressions a day and I expect that as we continue to see this tool grow and we’re able to optimize it and add new features everyone is going to enjoy the amazing results it has to offer.

If you have any questions about the new banner rotator or the WordPress plugin that goes with it please let me know. I’d also appreciate some feedback so don’t forget to comment once you get it all set up on your site. Let’s make some money!

LPF is Two Years Old!

April 4th, 2013
Affiliate Marketing, Personal
42
3,278 views

Yesterday I got an alert on my iPhone that told me that today was going to be this blog’s birthday and to be honest, I thought it was a mistake. It seems like just last week that I was writing my article about LPF’s first birthday. Time really has flown by over the past year and that is probably because it has been such an amazing year. I got a new blog design that helped propel this blog forward in a way I never even thought was possible, I published a bunch of posts that have gotten an amazing response from my readers, and I have launched a few new projects that have helped me extend my reach throughout the affiliate marketing industry.

New Blog Design

Last year I decided that it was time to get a custom design done for this blog. I had been using a theme I purchased on ThemeForest and had modified it quite a bit. I knew a custom design was really necessary to take this blog to the next level so I got in touch with the guy that had made our new PeerFly design. After a few stressful weeks and about $1,000 I finally had the awesome new blog design you see today.

Amazing Blog Growth

As I predicted in last year’s birthday post, LPF has continued to see amazing growth over the past year and traffic has more than doubled. Although I published 27 less posts than the year before, my pageviews over the past year have tripled, the amount of comments posted has doubled, and Alexa shows this blog as one of the top 20,000 visited in the world. My Alexa rank is now better than one the blogs I admire most, ZacJohnson.com (who recently interviewed me).

Blog Stats since April 2012

60 posts
1,602 comments (92,000 spam)
1,500,000 pageviews
2,137 Likes (http://www.facebook.com/LukePeerFly)
Thousands of Affiliate Manager Exclusive subscribers

My top 10 posts list from last year included some of the posts below, but even the top post had less than 10,000 views. Now, my most read article, Setting up a 7Search Campaign, has had over 40,000 views and should hit 50,000 in the next month or so. I am hoping by next year my top post will have been viewed over 100,000 times!

POF Case Studies

For a few months my primary focus was setting up campaigns on Plenty of Fish (POF). Although I had previously published my 4 tips for a successful POF campaign, I had not been actively running any campaigns so I deposited some money on POF Ads and went to work. I published 3 different POF Case Studies that have been read over 40,000 times.

Product Reviews

I also tried out and reviewed quite a few different products and tools over the past year. Some of the reviews were paid, but I only accepted paid reviews for products that I knew would be useful to my publishers and any affiliate marketer in the space.

Something I did not expect when I started writing these reviews is that I would rank so well in Google for the various product and tool names. It has definitely been a pleasant surprise and has helped generate thousands of pageviews for these product owners.

New Projects Launched

I can never seem to stop working on new projects. Over the past year I have added 4 new projects to my list:

I have also made a lot of updates to PeerFlyOffers.com, which has had over 300,000 searches since last April.

LPF’s second year has been awesome and it has really changed my outlook and goals for this blog. I get compliments every single trade show I attend from people I have never met about how much they like my blog and how helpful it has been. It is my goal to keep building on that over the next year. I’m hopeful that I will start setting aside more time to write articles so I can publish them more frequently. I’m also hopeful that my newsletter will reach 10,000 subscribers and my Alexa rank will drop below 10,000.

I appreciate everything this industry has given me and I’m thankful for being able to give back through this blog and my various projects. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any subjects you’d like me to cover or any questions you think I can answer for you. Together, we can both continue to grow. Let’s make some money!