Trev 2.0» Reviews | Trev 2.0

I’m $2.02 richer today after checking the mail!

Trevor — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:55:51 +0000

Just ran out to check the mail and had a letter from Justin Barr from Revolution 202. Justin also runs AffBuzz which is a really sweet affiliate blog aggregator (in case you don’t already know). I have talked to Justin a few times and he has always been a really helpful guy.

So back to today, I opened up the letter and heard *clink clank* on the ground. I looked down and there were two pennies. I picked them up and checked out the letter and it was from the 202 team. I would have to say, it caught my attention and I thought it was a pretty good job at branding themselves.

If you haven’t heard of revolution202, this is a network started by the 202 team (prosper202, tracking202 pro, stats202, etc). These guys provide a lot of good services and are now expanding their cpa network to the public. If you don’t have an account, I recommend signing up with them and checking out the service and offers they can provide for you!

If you have worked with revolution202 or the 202 team before leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s affiliate marketing blog.

Case Study: Starting a CPA Network w/ HasOffers

Trevor — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:43:49 +0000

Not to long ago I started playing around with the idea of starting my own network. I wasn’t sure which affiliate platform to go with off the bat so got demos of linktrust, direct track, and hitpath. I had my likes and dislikes of each platform, but the biggest thing that kind of sucked was the way they priced things. You are basically looking at something like 5-10 grand in setup fees, then anywhere from 1-3 grand a month in fees. I wanted to be able to test starting a network, without dumping out 10-15 grand or whatever on setup and monthly fees just to see if it was my thing.

Around the same time that I was getting demos from all these companies, about ready to go ahead and sign a contract on the platform, a new affiliate tracking platform hit the market. The platform was called hasoffers. I signed up right away and started testing things out. Since I have seen a lot of hype lately about hasoffers, I thought I would add in what I could to the matter since I have actually been USING the hasoffers platform for awhile now.

I wasn’t sure what to expect off the bat, or if I should even be trying out such a low cost solution. I seem to place unreliable and low cost in the same category. After doing a bit more research on the matter, I found out that the technology that hasoffers uses for affiliate tracking is supposed to be over twice as fast as all the competitors. Because it is twice as fast and far more efficient, it takes far less hardware and computer power to process everything. THIS is why the platform is free/so low cost.

Once I got my account rolling I picked up 2 domains, my networks domain and my networks’ tracking domain. A dns change and couple clicks later and everything was rolling fine with my network domain pointing right to my network hosted on hasoffers’ hardware.

Next step was setting up the basics of the script. You can change the way the script looks to customize your network, however it is pretty limited to what you can change. You can basically change the color scheme, add your own custom header, add a custom footer and insert javascript (for tracking/analytics reasons). You can also setup your terms and conditions and create any and all additional questions to have your affiliates answer when they are signing up.

Next step is to get some offers loaded into the network. For most people their options would be to start/have their own offer, broker offers, or go direct through the advertiser. For my testing phase I chose to put up a couple of my own offers I have and to broker some offers from other sources that I have built relationships with. Setting up the actual offers was simple, it consisted of creating an advertisers account for the offer/offers and then creating the offer. When you are creating the offer in the network there are many nice options such as:

Lead caps
Cookie lifespan
Using custom variables
Geo redirection (You can set which countries the offer is available to and forward countries to a different offer.)
Target browsers (You can set which browsers the offer is available to and forward other browsers to a different offer.)

Now that I have the network setup and some offers loaded, I needed some affiliates (or myself) to push the offers. Since I buy traffic myself, I ran internal traffic to the offers and also brought on a couple of close friends who do some good volume to help me test everything out. One benefit of this platform that I found out about right off the bat was its ease of tracking. All of the affiliates were able to add there own pixels to whichever offer needed at any point. There pixel management portion of the platform works really well and is all automatic, not requiring affiliate managers to waste there time adding an removing pixels for people.

Once you do all of that, you are pretty much good to go! There is extensive reporting for the network, the advertiser, and the affiliate. The reporting seems to be fast, accurate and easy to use.

Last of all is paying your affiliates! Hasoffers has designed their platform to help you with this task by showing account balances and payments due, along with managing invoices and other things.

So far, starting a network for me has been a really easy and fun experience. Hasoffers has made this much easier by allowing me to test everything out using their hasoffers platform. If you are already doing good volume, have good relationships with some advertisers or networks, and know even a few good affiliates that will drive traffic to your offers, then you might as well think about starting your own network!

One thing I would like to note… if you are thinking about trying out hasoffers, I would recommend signing up right away. When hasoffers first came out, I signed up right away to test them out and was fortunate I did so. When I signed up, hasoffers was free up to 1 million clicks a month. Some time in the last couple months, they have now changed their free plan to only include up to 250,000 clicks a month. However, because I was signed up under an old account, I was grandfathered in and was able to keep the old 1 million clicks per month limit. Because of this, I recommend signing up as soon as possible so that if another change goes through minimizing what the free account includes you will be grandfathered in!

As of this posting, hasoffers offers the free account up to 250,000 clicks, a professional account at $99/month which is good up to 500,000 clicks, and a enterprise account at $799.month with unlimited click volume.

If you have tried or are trying hasoffers, let me know what you think about it. If you simply have a question regarding the platform or starting a network in general, ask away, and I will try my best to answer your questions!

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s sem blog.

Make WAY more $$$ with Prosper202 Tracking

Trevor — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:43:57 +0000

One thing that I stress to all new affiliates is to MAKE SURE and use a good tracking platform. There are MANY different products on the market and it isn’t all that hard to whip up your own solution…however many just put off the fact that they NEED to track to stay profitable in this industry.

It wasn’t that long ago that there wasn’t a tracking platform out there that could do what I needed. Because of this I used a custom solution for quite some time. My custom solution did everything I needed and I let a handful of friends use it also. This was great…but I and the others would run into “bugs” here and there and I didn’t have the time to fix them…nor did I want to push this off onto a programmer and have them do it. Not only that, but the way my tracking solution was coded it took forever to pull up my stats because of the traffic I was driving. The mass amounts of traffic were filling up the database which caused load times to slowly increase.

It had come to a point where I needed to either revamp my tracking solution, have a new tracking platform coded, or find a new tracking software. I had played around with prosper202 in the past but at the time it was encoded and wasn’t nearly as developed as it is now. I decided because of all the hype around the 202 apps, that I would give prosper202 another shot. Not only that, but the development and documentation is tremendous. After downloading prosper202 and playing around with it for a few days I was really impressed with what Wes and the other 202 guys have brought to the table!

Since many of my readers email me looking for a great tracking solution or asking what I use, I thought I would go over prosper202 on one of my campaigns to give you an idea on how it can help you make TONS more $$$ with your campaigns!

First of all, you need to download prosper202 and upload it to your server (or webhost). Next you need to create a mysql table and user (usually done in cpanel). After this its all a breeze in the whole setting up the script process, shouldn’t take more then 5 minutes.

(Click the images to see full sized version)

Once you login to your prosper202 script, you will notice a screen like above. You can setup the different sources you buy traffic from, the different affiliate networks you are a part of, landing pages, text ads, and more. The screen above is of the area where you setup your actual campaign. You can see how simple it makes it. You simply select your affiliate network the offer is at, choose a campaign name, tell prosper202 to rotate urls (if you want to), add your affiliate url, and your payout for the offer. All simple stuff.

Once you get some traffic flowing, when you login you will be taken to an account overview screen. This screen gives you a quick overview of all of your campaigns, then if you scroll down a bit farther it also breaks down each campaign by traffic source. This is nice for a quick glance at everything to make sure it looks right from a “macro” level. You can see from the screenshot it breaks it down by the amount of clicks, the conversions (leads) you have had, the conversion rate, epc, and cpc… all very useful information. Prosper202 also simplifies things by calculating your revenue and ad costs to give you your ROI and net income. I love the fact that with a simple glance you can tell if something is making money (green) or losing money (red).

Besides getting a complete account overview of everything, you can break it down much more. Here I have filtered everything out but one offers traffic and am viewing the daily statistics for the offer. Depending on where you are buying your traffic from, you can then cut out any costs for days that aren’t converting on your offer. This can help you get a viewpoint on the days that your traffic is the most active for your offer.

Now instead of breaking down your traffic by day, you can break it down by the hour! This can be HUGE for many offers. If you are using google adwords platform or a multitude of others, than you can daypart your traffic and cut out any times of the day where your visitors aren’t converting. I can’t even tell you how many offers where I have cut out like 4-6 hours of the day and it has saved me hundreds of dollars a day.

Now we get to the real power behind prosper202. Here is where everything gets broken down on a keyword level. As you can see above I have some keywords really making some decent money, and some keywords that are definitely draining my funds and not returning anything on my ad spend. These are keywords that need to be shut off. By knowing which keywords are converting on what traffic sources, it is VERY easy to know what you need to focus on expanding.

Note: If you are buying traffic from facebook, you can simply use a numbered system to track your ads. For instance if I break down a dating offer by males age 18-24 with the keywords mtv and vh1, I would name my facebook ad 001 and after &t202kw= add 001 so it looks like http://xxxx.com/tracking202/redirect/dl.php?t202id=xxxx&t202kw=001 I would do this for each ad in facebook so that I can track which demographic/keywords in facebook convert. Not only this but by only passing numbers to prosper202 none of the notorious spybots can ripoff any information you may be passing on in the t202kw variable…they would only get a meaningless number.

Not only is it important to find what keywords, days, and times your offer converts the best, but it is also VERY important to monitor the different ads you are split testing. This was one flaw many different tracking platforms didn’t have in the past. So many people focus on the ctr of their ads (which is very important) but you also NEEED to know which ad CONVERTS the best also. By knowing the actual ads ctr AND conversion rate, you can find which ad would benefit you the most to be running. As you can see in the screenshot above my ads are all getting very different conversion rates. With this particular campaign choosing the right ads has been vital to the campaign. I have tested some ads that have gotten killer ctr’s but the conversions were very low. It took awhile to find a happy medium where I could get a stellar ctr yet keep the conversion rate really high also.

One thing that needs to be gone over about using prosper202 is getting the conversion data into prosper202. The best thing to do is to use the postback tracking solution if the cpa/affiliate network offers postback tracking. If they don’t there is pixel tracking, however in my opinion it is FAR to inaccurate to use. The last option you have is to upload the subid stats yourself. On most tracking platforms this can become a really big pain, however prosper202 made this a fairly easy task. All you have to do is grab your conversion subids from the cpa network and copy and paste them into prosper202.

HOWEVER…

If you are like me and absolutely hate doing this gruntwork there is an easier way to automate this. If postback tracking isn’t offered by the network I’m dealing with, I simply use stats202 to import my subids into prosper202. All you have to do is login to stats202 and add your cpa networks account information. Stats202 will then monitor the account and update your subids in prosper202 accordingly.

The really great thing about prosper202 is that they switched to open source. This means that anyone now has the possibility to go in and modify or add to the code prosper202 uses. Because of this, many affiliates have created some great modifications to prosper202 to perform exactly as needed.

If you aren’t already using this great script, then download prosper202 now and find out how easy tracking your campaigns can be!

Let me know what you guys think of prosper202 and the other 202 apps. I would love to hear about any modifications or custom apps you have that work hand in hand with this great script.

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s web 2.0 blog.

Interesting Affiliate Summit Affstat Report…

Trevor — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:45:12 +0000

I ran across a report compiled by the affiliate summit crew which gives some decent information to give you an idea of the “average” online marketer. I found some of the stats kind of surprising….like the fact that 42% of affiliates have never asked for an increase on their offer payouts. I was also kind of surprised that 15% of marketers don’t track anything. That is like campaign suicide in my opinion.

The most shocking information I saw was that the average gross monthly income with affiliate programs chimed in with 46% making $0 – $500. Guess that one kind of stunned me I would have thought that number to be far higher. I guess there are lot of factors that could have skewed the results a bit but for the most part I would guess its fairly accurate.

Anyways, here is the report….enjoy!

2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report

Oh yeah, I noticed that my blog was listed in the “Blogs for Affiliate Marketers to Read” so thanks to whoever made that possible!

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s ppc blog.

Affiliate Summit West 2009 Recap

Trevor — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:55:25 +0000

Well this post may seem a bit late but the truth of the matter is everyone else was posting about Affiliate Summit West 2009 right after the conference ended, and I figured there wouldn’t be much interest in another post at the time. Because of that I thought I would save the post for awhile after when things have tamed down. I didn’t quite mean to put it off THIS long but here it is!

Affiliate Summit West always seems to be the bigger of the summits, so this year was no surprise when things were bigger and better then ever. The exhibit hall was packed with affiliates, merchants, cpa networks, and about anyone else related to the industry you could imagine. I have been to the last few summits so a lot of the booths contained the same companies and people, but there were still many new contacts I made at the convention.

This is probably THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to me about these conventions: the networking opportunities. Not only is almost anyone that you would want to meet coming to the exhibit hall and meet market, but everyone is pretty damn open about wanting to talk and open new doors for opportunities in the future.

The speakers I saw this year did a really good job and it was enjoyable to bring in information on some of the areas of affiliate marketing that I don’t play around with as much. I had a bunch of videos and pictures from the convention and the speakers, however my memory card flaked out on me and I lost EVERYTHING related to the actual convention!

Just like before, the parties were again awesome this year. Advaliant and Copeac both had great shindigs going on. I didn’t go to the company parties I would normally go to this year, instead I checked out other company parties that I hadn’t ever experienced before. I would have to say although I had a really good time at them, I wish I would have spent my time at the more “popular” ones. They really seem to know how to show their affiliates a good time!

Besides the parties, I met up with a few different companies for dinner and drinks which was great. I ate at so many great restaurants this time around I just couldn’t believe it. That is one GREAT thing about Vegas, there is such a great variety of AWESOME restaurants to indulge in. This is a pic of one of my favorite restaurants in Vegas…

I have to admit, with a name like that I can’t resist the place!

I have stayed at many different hotels in Vegas, and instead of staying at the Rio where the convention was held I stayed at Planet Hollywood. This seems to be one of my favorite places to stay. Prices are reasonable, its a pretty modern style hotel, good music is always playing, and its a perfect location on the strip because its within walking distance of everything. I would have to admit though, if you plan on going to an Affiliate Summit in the future, I think your networking opportunities are much better if you stay at the hotel where the convention is held. It seems most of the people take this option and you are surrounded by a lot of smart minds you can BS with at any point.

Besides the actual convention, I had a blast just doing the usual things people do in Vegas. I have really been digging blackjack since last years ASW convention and decided to spend a bit more time this year at the tables. That was a really great idea but I ended up pretty much not being able to ever leave so I spent WAY more time playing good ol’ 21 than I should have. The good thing is I came out over a grand ahead which paid for the few expenses I did have for the trip, so it was a win-win except it ate up a lot of my time.

Last of all I have to thank Affiliate Summit once again for supplying me with a press pass for the convention.

The next Affiliate Summit will be held in New York on August 9-11, I hope to see this one succeed as much as all the past ones and I hope to see you all there!

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s internet marketing blog.

Affiliate Summit West 2009 in Las Vegas…Don’t Miss Out!

Trevor — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:58:48 +0000

Today I got an email from Affiliate Summit offering me a platinum pass and press credentials. This will be the first time attending the summit with press credentials so I plan to actually try to get some decent sessions in and post some juicy info during and after the events.

In the mean time, if you aren’t signed up for Affiliate Summit coming up on January 11-13, then take my word and if at all possible, get registered and make it. I more than QUADRUPLED my overall profit level after the first Affiliate Summit I attended because of: a) finding new traffic sources b) being around and networking with the right people c) strengthening relationships at certain networks and with certain people.

Also, ASW is in Las Vegas, which is by far my favorite town for the conventions to take place in. There is always something hoppin going on, and it seems to be the biggest (most affiliates/advertisers/parties) Affiliate Summit convention that takes place throughout the year.

Affiliate Summit has been kind enough to provide me with a 10% off promo code TREVOR10 for all of the readers here.

Sooo…….

If you haven’t signed up yet…

CLICK HERE FOR YOUR DISCOUNTED ASW PASS!

See You All There!

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s internet marketing blog.

Millnic Media will Rip You Off!

Trevor — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:40:17 +0000

Just wanted to quick put this post out there for anyone thinking about promoting anything through Millnic Media.

DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT PROMOTE ANYTHING THROUGH MILLNIC MEDIA.

I setup a couple smaller campaigns at Millnic Media last year to test out the network and how they treat me. Now unlike most people I don’t always care about the highest payout, I look more for things like great service for the affiliates, fairness, honesty. Now it isn’t often you run into these companies, which is why I tested/test out many networks. I can weed out the losers.

I can now say that Millnic Media is definitely one of those loser companies. They have owed me a decent chunk of change for quite awhile and are always filled with excuses. I have caught them in so many lies its not even funny. However, to catch them in a lie you have to actually talk to them, which seemed like a nearly impossible task every time I attempted to talk to these guys.

Anyways what finally pissed me off enough to out them like this, is the fact that they claimed my SALES i was making for the advertiser weren’t backing out. What they didn’t know is that I run this offer at another network where they are backing out just perfectly fine and have been since MONTHS ago when I switched it over from Shitnic Media.

I was always told that Millnic eventually fucks over everyone….I’m just glad I found out so quick and terminated everything with them. I hope all of you do the same if you are running anything with these guys.

If you don’t know which networks are worth signing up at, networks that WON’T screw you over, check out my recommended CPA networks. These are all networks that have paid me on time every time, so you won’t have to worry about a thing.

Anyone else have any horror stories with Millnic or are these guys a nobody network that I should have never tested out in the first place?

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s internet marketing blog.

Free Affiliate Summit Passes!

Trevor — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:39:08 +0000

I know it has been a few weeks since I have updated my blog and I am really sorry about that. I actually have been gone for the last couple weeks on a few "mini" vacations and should have made a post informing everyone beforehand.

I should be back home within just a few days and can start pumping out some good quality posts for all of you guys!

Until then…I would like to share with you a coupon to attend Affiliate Summit in Boston this year FOR FREE. That’s right. FOR FREE! I have already registered myself but was sent these coupons to pass out to anyone who may be interested.

Enter the coupon code ASE08JUNE11 when signing up and you will get the pass completely free but you MUST sign up today!

I highly recommend going to the Affiliate Summit conventions. I would be more than happy to meet up with anyone at the convention or afterwards to just have a good time in Boston. Get a hold of me if interested!

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s internet marketing blog.

Maxbounty for the win!

Trevor — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:10:53 +0000

I know finding a good CPA network to work with can be one of the harder things to do. Its tough telling who you want to expand your business with and who will treat you right when it matters.

I HAVE been screwed around with by some CPA networks, so nowadays I like to just push SOME traffic but not nearly what I can. I continue to do this for awhile and see how that network pans out, if they pay on time, if they have good affiliate managers, if they work more for the advertisers or publishers…just get to know how the network works.

Once I get an idea how the network performs, then I choose to expand what I can do with them.

One of the networks that has been great from the start, and who has been there to help me out more than once, is Maxbounty. These guys rock!

When I was in Vegas for Affiliate Summit, I made sure to get to know the Maxbounty team a bit better and I’m really glad I did. Both of the affiliate managers, Adam and Jessica, are really rockin. Adam is definitely one of the best affiliate managers I have had, and is always working his tail off for me.

Anyways, the whole point of this post was that I wanted to thank Adam and the Maxbounty team for a gift they just sent to my son Dyson. They shipped him a pair of skates so he can partake in some ice hockey this upcoming season.

If you are still looking for that great network who is there to work WITH you, check out Maxbounty and get signed up right away. They work hard at keeping out the scammers so they can give you the attention you need. Because of this, make sure you mention that I referred you over and Jessica or Adam will get you approved right away.

Now GO MAKE SOME MONEY!

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s internet marketing blog.

Search Blingo and win cash…I do!

Trevor — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:04:22 +0000

A couple weeks ago on my plane ride back from Affiliate Summit West I sat next to the guy from Publishers Clearinghouse who brings the people their million dollar checks. It was a pretty cool experience chatting with him, especially since I had always thought that publishers clearinghouse was kind of……bogus. Ends up they aren’t as bogus as I thought. I remember at one point when our plane landed he made a quick remark something like "that guy better not be stealing my publishers clearinghouse van window stickers!". Hahaha

So anyways, this experience reminded me of another company called Blingo because Publishers Clearinghouse bought these guys out like a year or two ago. Now at the time, Blingo claimed to give out random prizes as searchers used the search engine. The deal was that they would give out prizes based on random searches all throughout the day and night. I was curious as to if this "really worked" so I signed up for an account and used it the maximum of 10 search entries per day. I never seemed to have any luck winning anything searching….however…I referred a handful of friends over and they actually won a total of three $50 visa gift cards and a free Fandango movie ticket. The great thing about Blingo is that if anyone you refer to the network wins…so do you! You actually win the exact same prize that they won. So I got $150 bucks in visa cash cards and a free Fandango movie ticket for absolutely nothing!

I haven’t been using Blingo as much as when I was first checking it out, but I am going to start using it at least 10 searches a day again. That’s not bad at all since I normally use google as my search engine and Blingo uses google to pull its results from. I have no problem using this a few times a day for my searches to get a chance at winning some cash…or maybe something like a new plasma tv. They do give out bigger prizes like these.

Either way…if you haven’t heard of these guys, go sign up now and start winning some awesome stuff!

Get more juicy info at Trevor Nash-Keller’s internet marketing blog.

Trev 2.0» Reviews | Trev 2.0

I’m $2.02 richer today after checking the mail!

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