Update: April 7, 2011: We received a comment, ostensibly from Koen Berkenbosch at Link Aloha, requesting that this post be removed because “it is not true.”  The comment received was:

“Its not true and I have to explain alot of my new customers why, because alot of them read it.

Please remove the comment from your blog.”

It was unclear just what exactly is now claimed to not be true, so we revisited Link Aloha to see if any of these items need updating due to changes in the service or perhaps overlooked an issue.

After this further review of Link Aloha, the post remains, in our opinion, true.  For Koen Berkenbosch’s benefit we have also saved for our records documentary evidence from campaigns proving each statement listed here is true.

For our testing we accessed various campaigns of a current Link Aloha user, selected “Campaigns Info”, and then clicked on “Full Campaign Statistics” to obtain a downloaded spreadsheet of all link information submitted by the Link Aloha service.

Although the full statistics were requested on April 7th, only data for April 4-7 was provided by Link Aloha.  The service does not explain why data was missing for April 1-3.  Presumably, the service did not submit any links for those days.  There also does not appear to be any way to recover submission data for prior months.  However, based on the data available there was more than sufficient data for our re-review.

1. Pause a campaign by setting the number of links to be created each day to zero.

Update April 7, 2011:  A review of campaigns where the links set to be created each day was set to zero shows that no profile links for that campaign were actually submitted.  In effect, this allows a user to pause a campaign without needing to kill it.  “Kill Campaign” or “Delete” are the only options currently in the Link Aloha user interface.  Our preference is to simply set the links to be created to zero.

2. When you create a list of link text to be used, using the “|” command, this does NOT spin the text used for each link. Instead, the link text options are only used if you have that number of links to be created each day.

For example: if you use the link text LinkAloha|LinkAloha Review|LinkAloha Tips

and have the number of links to be created each day set to one: then every day one link is created using the keyword text LinkAloha. You will never get any backlinks with the text LinkAloha Review or LinkAloha Tips.

To trigger backlinks with LinkAloha Tips as the text you need to have three backlinks created each day.

Update April 7, 2011:  We reviewed a campaign with two keywords with a pipe between them as recommended by Link Aloha.  The format is:  keywordone|keywordtwo

The campaign is set to add one link per day.

The Link Aloha spreadsheet shows one link being submitted on April 4, 5, 6 and 7.  All four of those links used keywordone.  There were no postings of keywordtwo.

In other words, the anchor text does not spin or rotate.

We then reviewed a second campaign, also with two keywords separated by the pipe: keywordone|keywordtwo, that was set to post two links per day.

The Link Aloha spreadsheet showed two links being submitted on April 4, 5, 6 and 7.  On each day both keywordone and keywordtwo were submitted.

This verifies that to have multiple keywords submitted in a campaign you need to set your campaign to post multiple posts.  Note that on each day it was exactly keywordone and keywordtwo that were posted.  There was no situation where keywordone or keywordtwo was posted twice in one day even though two links were set to post.  Again, indicating the pipe does not result in spinning or a random keyword being selected.

3. Adding multiple URLs for a campaign acts the same as the multiple text links discussed above.

They do NOT rotate. So if a campaign has 5 urls but only 1 backlink is set each day, instead of 1 of the 5 urls being rotated for a backlink each day, only the first url is set each day. You will never get backlinks to the other 4 urls.

To get a backlink to each url in a campaign you have to set the number of backlinks each day to the number of urls.

Update April 7, 2011:  We reviewed a single campaign that included over a dozen urls, with the number of links to be submitted each day equal to the number of urls.

The Link Aloha data spreadsheet showed each url being submitted once on April 4, 5, 6 and 7th.  Despite over 50 link submissions over those days there was no repeat on any day, again evidencing no rotation.

However, at this point the review is not yet complete.  We have asked that the campaign be adjusted to increase the number of urls but the number of links to be submitted reduced so that there is a complete re-review of the initial testing.  This will be updated when that further testing has been completed.

But so far, the re-review is resulting in exactly the same results as before and a new result is not anticipated.

4. Link Aloha has been known to reorder your keywords for a url using the “|” command. They may be reordered alphabetically. So you need to be careful if you have more keywords than backlinks being set, because the first keyword you put in the list may not be the keyword Link Aloha is using in each daily run because Link Aloha has reordered your list.

Update April 7, 2011: We created a new url to be submitted with and in the “Add Keywords” box placed the following information: keywordone|keywordtwo|keywordthree

We then saved.  Then we immediately went back to edit and review the keyword list.  What we found was this:  keywordtwo|keywordthree|keywordone.

Again, as previously stated, Link Aloha may reorder your keywords without telling you.

This is especially important because as previously noted Link Aloha does not rotate or spin your keywords.  If there was rotation or spinning it would not matter what order they were placed in.  But because they do not, if you are only posting one link per day you will only get the first keyword posted day after day.  This may not be the first keyword you entered.

5. April 7, 2011 new issue found:

During our re-review we noticed the almost unusable condition of the Link Aloha csv spreadsheet that can be downloaded.

This is because all the data is placed in one column.

To make it usable, using our older version of Microsoft Excel we saved the file into a .txt format.  Then we opened a new blank spreadsheet and used Get External Data to import the text data.  We then told Excel that the pipe “|” was a column delimeter.

Voila.  A perfectly functional spreadsheet that properly shows each column of data in a separate column, not in one column.  This makes it so much easier to see what Link Aloha is actually submitting and doing with your campaigns.

Finally, keep in mind that all of the above can be tested and verified in your Link Aloha account.

Syndicate Kahuna – $67 per month

Notes: Put links within the article using the special token. There are no author resource boxes.

SEO Linkvine – $67 per month

Niche Press Platinum – $67 per month

Article Ranks – $39 per month or there is a pay as go option where each article costs $2 and a minimum deposit of $20 is required.

Notes: Put links within the article. There are no author resource boxes. The divider between spinning options is ‘~’ instead of ‘|’ as used with most spinning programs, so a search and replace needs to be done when copying from another program.

Important: Based on my experience some of the sites in this network have good rankings. The quality appears to be better than some other services.

Submit Eaze – $78.95 one time fee.

This software will automatically create accounts for you at article sites. You can then add your spin ready article to the software and it will spin the article title, article body, and author resource box – and automatically submit your unique articles to the article sites. You can also manually add as many article sites as you want to submit uniquely spun articles yourself. Must have software for the price. (Also includes ability to quickly submit your site to over a thousand directory sites.)

TrafficKaboom – $497 yearly or $147 every 3 months.

I believe this is by the owners of Syndicate Kahuna (Traffic Kahuna) and I think some of the ‘testimonials’ are by that “TK” system. It is not clear how different Kaboom is.

I decided not to try this service because of the high $147 entry point just to try it, a stupid name, and a bogus scarcity of being limited to 500 members. Looks more like a pitch for quick cash rather than an ongoing service.

Not Recommended:

Articles Crush – $47 per month.

Note: Links within the article are not allowed. Must put links in an author resource box.

Horrible experience. They put the wrong author on the article plus there were other problems. The owner was an incredible jerk and quite inhospitable to a number of customers. Stay away from this if they’re still in business.

SEO Link Machine – $37 per month.

Did not try this service although very tempted at the price. Offers article spinning and a drip feed.

The problems: This is a private blog network of new, no value, PR0, .info blogs, owned by one person. The comments for the service indicated he was really struggling trying to answer if the blogs were on unique C classes – not sure if he actually ever answered that. Plus someone posted a link to a couple blogs and the content on them was absolutely horrible.

No quality control and I did not want to be associated with that even to try it out. With one owner the entire network could be gone tomorrow. But maybe in the future this will look better.

1. Within your cpanel click to add a new subdomain.

2. Call the subdomain * (yes, just an asterisk).

3. For the document root use the root domain (public_html). If the dynamic subdomains are for an add-on domain, then the document root will be public_html/youraddondomain.com.

That’s it.

Now, you can refer to a subdomain and it is automatically created on the fly. Such as using the WordPress WP subdomains plugin to create subdomains out of pages.

For that reason ‘just a PHPBay’ site can be hit or miss in Google. But there are some code customizations you can do to avoid being quickly fingerprinted as having another thin affiliate site:

1. Change up the default template. You don’t need everything created by PHPBay to be a link. All link and no text? Change it so only the graphics are linked. Or maybe just the text. And change the default text while you’re at it.

2. Randomize the number of auction listings. Instead of 10 listings per page, as everyone has, use php to get a random number, say between 5 and 15, then use that variable to control how many listings are shown on a page. It size of the content and number of links will thus be different each time the Googlebot comes by.

Within your config.php file, do something like this:

# MAXIMUM ITEMS PER PAGE
$randomnum = mt_rand (5,15);
$config['paging_num'] = $randomnum;

3. Change the default image url used for seo links. PHPBay by default makes the urls for images to be your domains/images/e/number.jpg. That ‘/images/e/’ is called a footprint. Within your ebay.php file find this line:

var $image_replace = "images/e/";

and change it to something else, such as good keyword.

Then, in your .htaccess file change all references to ‘^images/e/’ to your new location.

4. Change the default item listing for seo links. PHP by default makes each product link ‘item-’ followed by the product name. That, again, is a footprint. Within config.php, under Basic Options, find this line:

$config['url_prefix'] = "item-";

and change it to some other word, such as keyword, followed by the hyphen.

Then, in your .htaccess file, change the references to ‘^item’ to your keyword.

5. Make use of built in customization via the settings in the script and in the code added to each page.

Here are the parameters for the page code:

parameter 1 – keyword/phrase
parameter 2 – number to display (this setting is overridden if Paging is turned on)
parameter 3 – category number
parameter 4 – exclusion words (each word to exclude is separated by a space)
parameter 5 – custom id (overrides the global custom id set in config.php)
parameter 6 – true or false to use columns format or not.

6. Use the phpbay api standalone instead of just the function command

Regular function command:

<?php
require_once(" link to ebay.php ");
phpBayAPI($pagekeyword, "", "", "", "", false);
?>

Using the api standalone:

<?php
require_once(" link to ebay.php ");
# phpBayAPI($pagekeyword, "", "", "", "", false);
?>
<?php
# create the class
$ebay = new ebay();
# load the config.php settings
$ebay->config();
# settings below will override global options set in config.php
$ebay->eb_exclude = ""; // exclusion words for search separated by space
$ebay->eb_siteId = 0; // set country to 0 for the us
$ebay->eb_sabfmts = 0; // 0 for all 1 for auction only 2 for buy it now is a purchase option
$ebay->sort_by_value = 4; // set sort order 0 is best match 1 is time ending soon 2 is time newly listed
3 is price low first 4 is price hight first 5 is price plus shipping lowest 6 is price plus shipping highest
$ebay->eb_saprclo = 50; // set mininum price of items
$ebay->eb_saprchi = 9999; // set maximum price of items
# call the main function
$ebay->listings("obama", "");
# display the results
echo $ebay->html;
?>

7. How to Create a Second Template to Display Results

This is not for using two different templates on the same page. Rather, if you want to use an alternative template instead of the template on a page:

A. Change the web page reference from ebay.php to a custom name:

require_once(”/home/xxx/public_html/xxx/phpbay/ebaycustom.php”);

B. Copy ebay.php to ebaycustom.php

C. Within ebaycustom.php change all references within function getTemplate() from /templates to /templatesnew

D. Copy your templates files to templatesnew, and then make whatever changes you desire to the alternate template.

8. Prevent Google from “seeing” your affiliate links.

I have had websites with numerous page 1 rankings in Google, only to see the pages with eBay listings generated by phpBay get heavy penalties while the non-phpBay pages remain highly ranked. At the same time, I have seen previously penalized pages be resurrected simply by removing the links to eBay.

While removing the eBay links defeats the purpose of being an eBay affiliate, although this technique can still be used to generate Adsense income, the obvious conclusion is a penalty because Google is repeatedly clicking through links and ending up at eBay.

Solution: Since the GoogleBots always respect the robots.txt file instructions, fix your links so they go through a subdirectory and then ban the GoogleBot from accessing that subdirectory.

There are 3 changes to make:

In config.php change the SEO url from

$config['url_prefix'] = “item-”;

to

$config['url_prefix'] = “ban/keyword-”;

(changing the default item- to keyword- is previously discussed)

Your .htaccess file will be changed so it reflects:

RewriteRule ^ban/keyword-

Then add these lines to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /ban/

You can confirm in webmaster tools that Google will not follow a link to the /ban/ subdirectory – even though that subdirectory physically does not exist.

HOWEVER, my testing using a link to a page in a banned subdirectory is showing that Google ignores the robots.txt instruction even though Google says it will obey. That page in a banned subdirectory is showing in Google search results.

9. Remove common footprints phpBay uses for links

phpBay adds a country code to the end of every link. If you just have US links, each link will end “_US.html”. This is an unnecessary fingerprint of the phpBay script.

To change this (and only do this if you are only sending traffic to one eBay country site) around line 450 of the ebay.php file is this code:

$this->link_url = $this->site_url . $this->url_prefix . $this->urlText($item['title']) . “_” . $this->item_id . “_” . $this->country . $this->eb_custom_cid . “.html”;

change it to:

$this->link_url = $this->site_url . $this->url_prefix . $this->urlText($item['title']) . “_” . $this->item_id . “_CUSTOM” . $this->eb_custom_cid . “.html”;

“CUSTOM” is whatever you want to use. This makes the ending of all links custom to your desires and not the same as tens of thousands of other phpBay sites.

In your .htaccess file change the references to

&country=$3

to

&country=US

10. Customize the No Results Found Statement

In the file forms/form.no.results.php you can customize what statement is returned when no eBay results are found. Or you can create a blank file to display nothing. Or you can include an Adsense ad.

The default language is: “No items matching your keywords were found.” – An easy search term to find phpBay sites and niches others are using.

11. Block Google from Seeing Images as Belonging to eBay

All the Googlebot has to do is follow your image urls to discover the images are really hosted on eBay. Hmmm. Just like above for the links to eBay products, we can use robots.txt to block the Google bots from following the image urls. (Like above, be warned that testing is showing that Google does not obey robots.txt even though it says it does.)

Since it will not hurt to do this and maybe block some Google insight into your eBay connection, do this:

In ebay.php find this variable near the top of the file:

var $image_replace

and make the full command as follows:

var $image_replace = “ban/keyword”;

In your .htaccess file make your image seo rewrite look like this:

RewriteRule ^ban/keyword/(.*)$

As above, make sure the /ban subdirectory is banned in robots.txt

12. Remove Image URL Footprints

Each eBay image ends in “_0.jpg”. This is tricky to change but can be done.

In ebay.php under the setup the RSS class section is this code:

# if mod_rewrite for images is enabled, rewrite the url
if ($this->mod_rewrite == “1″) {
$this->image = str_replace($this->image_find, $this->image_replace, $this->image);
}

Immediately after that code add the following code to add a custom text to the end of each image url. This way Google cannot look for _0.jpg at the end of an image url to find a footprint:

$footprint = “.jpg”;
$footprintreplace = “-xxx.jpg”;
$this->image = str_replace($footprint, $footprintreplace, $this->image);

“xxx” can be any text you want, such as a keyword.

Now, instead of this in your .htaccess code:

RewriteRule ^ban/keyword/(.*)$ http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/pict/$1 [R,L]

You will want this:

RewriteRule ^ban/keyword/(.*)-xxx.(.*)$ http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/pict/$1.$2 [R,L]

13. Prevent Google From Following Links Through the phpBay Script

If Google decides not to obey the robots.txt ban, the fallback position is to identify the Google bots and block them within the auction.php file from ever reaching the eBay listings.

By default this should already occur since the Google bot is not on the approved list of bots. (Make sure you are using the updated auction.php file that does user agent, referrer, and IP checks to try and ban bad bots and clicks from undesirable countries.)

But just to make sure, add this code within the top section of auction.php where a user agent check is being made:

if (preg_match(”/google/”,$current_user_agent)) {
$ua_approved = false;
}

This checks if the user agent has Google in it. If so, set this to be a banned bot. You can test this using the User Agent Switcher plugin for Firefox, which lets you fake your user agent so your website thinks you are a Google bot.

You can also ad Google IP addresses within the ban list to ban by IP. While this can ‘mostly’ be effective, just give up on the idea that you will get a list of all of Google’s IP addresses.

My belief is that Google has a set IP list, but also adds some other / random IP every so often, with a masked user agent, to try and catch cloakers.

14. Replace the Graveyard for Undesirable Clicks

By default if a bad bot or IP address is clicking a link to eBay, auction.php will instead show them a blank html page.

You can better. You could send someone clicking from China to an affiliate offer, Adsense page, or anywhere else. Or your home page.

To do that replace the html with this php redirect to the home page:

header(’Location: /’);

Some will say it is better coding to have the url fully listed instead of a backslash, such as hxxp://yahoo.com, but using a backslash seems to work for me – and works better if your auction.php file is being shared by various domains.

15. Don’t Use the Same Customizations

When doing the above customizing be sure not use the same custom keyword. For instance, use keyword 1 to begin product urls and keyword 2 to begin image urls.

16. Avoid Repetitive Use of eBay Product IDs

Each eBay product phpBay lists will show it’s product ID in the image url and product url. And also possibly elsewhere, if you decide to use it as an alt image tag.

I’ve decided to remove my alt image tags since I am not trying to get the eBay images indexed.

To prevent the image url from having the same text as the product url, make these changes to the image url so it is different:

- Add text immediately before the product ID. For example, in ebay.php use this for your introductory image text:

var $image_replace = “ban/keyword/extratext”;

We are adding ‘extratext’ here to what is listed above. “extratext” can be another keyword or random text. It’s purpose is to differentiate the beginning of the image url.

- After removing the image footprint discussed previously, add this to your ebay.php file:

$this->image = preg_replace(’/0/’, ‘Z’, $this->image, 1);

What this will do is replace the first zero in the image product url to the letter Z. This will make the image urls different from the product urls, and randomly so since the first number zero in the product IDs occurs in different places. For now, it is always somewhere, though, in eBay’s product code.

- Now you need to fix your htaccess so that you can still retrieve the proper image even though the url has changed on your website. Use this, which combines the customizations in this section:

RewriteRule ^ban/keyword/extratext([^Z]*)Z(.*)-custom.(.*) http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/pict/$1\0$2 [N]

Test to make sure it works. This is really slick! Now you have completely unique image urls, and there is no repetitive use of eBay product IDs that match the link to the eBay product.

17. Eliminate eBay Product ID from Product Links

Just as we changed the product ID in the image url we can make a change to product url. Why? So every link does not have underscore 12 digit number underscore. Big surprise, the 12 digit ID is an eBay id.

To eliminate this footprint, in ebay.php file add custom text immediately before the product ID. Building off the example above where we eliminated the ending ‘_US’ footprint, we now have:

$this->link_url = $this->site_url . $this->url_prefix . $this->urlText($item['title']) . “_CUSTOM1″ . $this->item_id . “_CUSTOM2″ . $this->eb_custom_cid . “.html”;

and our .htaccess link code is now:

RewriteRule ^ban/keyword-(.*)_CUSTOM1(.*)_(.*)_(.*).html$ auction.php?title=$1&item=$2&country=US&ccid=$4
RewriteRule ^ban/keyword-(.*)_CUSTOM1(.*)_(.*).html$ auction.php?title=$1&item=$2&country=US
RewriteRule ^ban/keyword-(.*)_CUSTOM1(.*).html$ auction.php?title=$1&item=$2

So if our custom text is FF, instead of seeing _123456789012_ Google will now see a unique code of _FF123456789012_.

Since you can have your own unique custom text, with its own length, another footprint is eliminated.

18. Eliminate the Product Title from Product ID Link

In my sites I am not linking the product title to eBay. Just the product image and letting the product title simply be text.

I was looking at the auction.php file and saw that the product title does not appear to be passed to eBay.

(I also don’t see where it is being used by QCT, although the variable is passed to the script.)

Removing the item title from the link url in ebay.php, and associated change in .htaccess does not seem to have any negative impact.

I believe the item title in the link url is only there for the “SEO Urls” option.

But there are really two SEO issues here:

1. Showing a naked link to eBay versus a link that appears to be on my site. In other words, obfuscating that this is an affiliate site.

2. Using keywords in link urls. But there is no purpose in creating an SEO link to eBay because we do not want to promote eBay listings ahead of our listings of eBay listings. And since the link is to a nonexistent page on our site there is no page for Google to index. So there may be no SEO benefit except from having the keywords listed on the page twice, in addition to the listing for the product title.

Removing the item title from the link url does not affect SEO issue #1.

For issue #2 it depends on your SEO beliefs. Is there a benefit from having the product title mentioned twice (once in the link and one for the product title)? Or avoid repetition and a footprint by only having it once as the product title?

Here is how do to it:

New line in ebay.php, incorporating the above customizations:

$this->link_url = $this->site_url . $this->url_prefix . “_CUSTOM1″ . $this->item_id . “_CUSTOM2″ . $this->eb_custom_cid . “.html”;

Change the htaccess, so with all of the above it is this for the product links:

RewriteRule ^ban/keyword-(.*)_CUSTOM1(.*)_(.*)_(.*).html$ auction.php?item=$1&country=US&ccid=$3
RewriteRule ^ban/keyword-(.*)_CUSTOM1(.*)_(.*).html$ auction.php?item=$1&country=US
RewriteRule ^ban/keyword-(.*)_CUSTOM1(.*).html$ auction.php?item=$1

Conclusion: Wrapping up all of the above here are the phpbay script changes

(note: if copying from this page remember to fix your quotes and single quotes to normal keyboard characters)

config.php

$config['url_prefix'] = “ban/keyword1-”;

# MAXIMUM ITEMS PER PAGE
$randomnum = mt_rand (5,15);
$config['paging_num'] = $randomnum;

ebay.php

var $image_replace = “ban/keyword2/extratext”;

$this->link_url = $this->site_url . $this->url_prefix . “_CUSTOM1″ . $this->item_id . “_CUSTOM2″ . $this->eb_custom_cid . “.html”;

under the setup the RSS class section is this code:

# if mod_rewrite for images is enabled, rewrite the url
if ($this->mod_rewrite == “1″) {
$this->image = str_replace($this->image_find, $this->image_replace, $this->image);
}

Immediately after that code add the following code

$footprint = “.jpg”;
$footprintreplace = “-xxx.jpg”;
$this->image = str_replace($footprint, $footprintreplace, $this->image);
$this->image = preg_replace(’/0/’, ‘Z’, $this->image, 1);

.htaccess

RewriteRule ^ban/keyword2/extratext([^Z]*)Z(.*)-xxx.(.*) http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/pict/$1\0$2 [N]
RewriteRule ^ban/keyword1-(.*)_CUSTOM1(.*)_(.*)_(.*).html$ auction.php?item=$1&country=US&ccid=$3
RewriteRule ^ban/keyword1-(.*)_CUSTOM1(.*)_(.*).html$ auction.php?item=$1&country=US
RewriteRule ^ban/keyword1-(.*)_CUSTOM1(.*).html$ auction.php?item=$1

template

- customize statement under forms when no results are found
- customize look of results that displayed

auction.php

Within the top section where a user agent check is being made:

if (preg_match(”/google/”,$current_user_agent)) {
$ua_approved = false;
}

replace the html with this php redirect to the home page:

header(’Location: /’);

robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: /ban/

There you have it, easy ways to change your PHPBay footprint so you don’t automatically scream to Google – hey, eBay affiliate site here. There are already enough stories of how Google hates eBay affiliate sites without adding yours to the collection.

Related Post:

How to Hide your eBay affiliate links from Google

Update: This comes from the phpBay forum, but I wanted to include it because it is so useful (just in case something ever happened to that forum post). This is how to use Skimlinks with phpBay:

You can use SkimLinks with the current PhpBay version with just a little modification to your auction.php file.

1. Go to https://accounts.skimlinks.com/sites to get the Publisher ID of your website.
2. You need to use the SEO Urls feature for this to work.
3. Add the following code after the long line that starts with $url = “http://rover.ebay.com/rover/….” in auction.php (near line 279 at the end):
Code:

//SkimLinks Mod Start
$SkimPubID = “12345×123456″;
$url = “http://go.redirectingat.com?id=”.$SkimPubID.”&xs=1&url=http%3A%2F%2F”.$rover['url'].”%2F”.$ktv['item'].”%2F”;
$ktv["pid"] = 1;
//SkimLinks Mod End

4. Replace the 12345×123456 with your Publisher ID that you got in step 1
5. The $ktv["pid"] is optional, it’s the eBay CampaignID so you can track all SkimLinks clicks in QCT under campaign 1

Affiliate Reporting:

Pros:
- Hands-off, everything is automated for you. This is a biggie.
- You can get lots of data about your campaigns

Cons:
- Expensive
- Reporting should be better graphically. One would think profit green losses red, or some contrasting color combo. Nope. Nothing. You have to see parenthesis in hard to read green bands to determine what is a winner and a loser.
- Reporting should be better overall. It’s not easy to see the results for each keyword. The actual searched keyword is not available. Not have a simple list of keywords and their results for each campaign – which should be basic.
- subid addition to keywords means you can be tracked from your Adwords ads, without needing to click on them, as your subid can be matched to the merchant records

Prosper 202 / Track 202:

Pros:
- Free
- Can track anything

Cons:
Have to manually enter a cost per click for each ad group, which is ridiculous – unless you only have one keyword per group. Without real CPC data per keyword this is really worthless.

Track 202 Pro:

Pros:
- Reasonably priced for smaller ppc marketers
- All automated

Cons:
- If you already have Adwords ads the software will automatically overwrite them to create a new url. This can be terrible because not only do ads have to be re-approved, but you lose all your prior stats for ads – which may have given you a high CTR and low CPC.
- Only tracks PPC through 3 major PPC networks.
- Not as strong as Affiliate Reporting in handling Google API costs, so these fees can ratchet quickly

Extreme Conversions

Pro:
- Cheap
- Shows actual searched keyword and match-type for bidded keyword
- Extremely fast, internally creates campaigns on the fly, and not need to modify existing PPC campaigns

Cons:
- No automation
- Unless commission set in stone (clickbank) and CPC set in stone (never), will never get accurate stats worth anything

Stats Junky

This has some nice looking features, but the depth is just not there. Without having access to your actual PPC accounts, it doesn’t seem like you’re going to get the most accurate numbers.

OK, if you’re on a budget, but at this time not a professional level ROI service.

I just tested the service, found a couple domains ready to be deleted, and purchased them. They were both ultimately sold through the GoDaddy site.

Unexpectedly, I did not own the domains immediately after buying them. Instead, the redemption period had to run, which it did, before they were transferred to my account. With the GoDaddy auction if the domain owner does redeem their domain then the purchase price is refunded.

I have now been able to confirm through whois that both domains have retained their age. It appears as if I bought them 7+ years ago, not last week.

Now we’ll see if this helps with SEO – it should. I’ve only used the free features available at Fresh Drop, but I was impressed – impressive enough to get me to go back and also to write this post.

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Update: FreshDrop is NO LONGER Recommended

What was a good service has turned into a huge, greedy rip-off – about $100 a month just to see the age of domains available from GoDaddy.

Fortunately, there are alternatives:

PremiumDrops.com – has a list of expiring GoDaddy domains, with their age. Here is a specific page: http://premiumdrops.com/list.php?l=Godaddy+Auctions&a=show – However, the service is $25 per month.

DropAce.com – Free – Easy to scroll through lists of expiring and deleting domains, but does not easy show age of the domain. Need to click on a domain name to see details, such as age.

GoDrops.com – Free – Nice of lists of daily dropped domains and their age. Unfortunately, to preserve PageRank one needs to get a domain before it has dropped into general availability. The service is thus good for getting a domain name, but not for getting an aged domain.

ExpiredDomains.org – Free – Great website with lists of domains and their age, including an ability for a keyword search.

JustDropped.com – Free – Good flexible search options, but not able to search or see age of domains.

Also – found http://EstiBot.com – very interesting domain naming tools

Includes the Webmaster’s Legal Guide, other legal resources, and over a dozen legal forms for Internet marketers.

As a reader of this blog you can get $25 off. Simply use this coupon on the order page: IPUBLOG

Here is the link: FTC Survival Guide

Michelle Obama Monkey Face Picture

This is a picture that is all over the news as being offensive (or funny) because it is the top search result in Google images.

All you need is a hot topic like this, create a blog page like that website has done, and monetize it in some manner.

In this example, the monetization on that page is a CPA offer at the bottom which is related to the Obama administration. A simple email submit.

And of course the additional traffic is likely to visit other web pages where there are additional monetization opportunities.

Could you do something like this? Sure. These hot topics pop up every day and many will have a shelf life for a long time.

- To control access to a membership site (as opposed to offering a downloadable ebook)
- Have an affiliate program
- Offer coupons

Amember
website
Amember will do all of the above with PayPal. It works great.
Downsides: Expensive at $180.
Has coupons by percent or dollar amount, and can limit how many times coupon is used.
Have to manually pay affiliates, and affiliate module has bare functionality and not always easy for affiliates to access.
Amember can work with ClickBank, which would offer a trusted 3rd party payment mechanism affiliates. However, there are the ClickBank fees, price restrictions, mandated return policy (which is incredible abuse for IM products), and the ClickBank TOS prohibit the use of coupons.

DL Guard
website
Very disappointed as cannot get this software to work for membership sites. It’s primary focus seems to be protecting digital downloads.
No affiliate system.
$147 for two website install.

Rapid Action Profits
website
Expensive at $197 and appears to only protect downloads – not membership sites.
Has an affiliate system and coupons.
Extras such as split testing and one-time-offers.

MemberWing
website
$100 WordPress membership plugin. Allows different membership levels and can drip content.
No affiliate system.
No coupons.

Simple Member Pro
website
$197, but license good for unlimited websites.
Has affiliate system.
Has coupons with dollar amounts, not percentage off.
Script not encrypted so you can must custom modifications.
CMS system.
One time offers and dime sales.
Only integrates with PayPal.
Drip content.
Free demo.

Instant Member
website
$147 for 1 site
Affiliate system
Coupons
Works with PayPal and ClickBank
Drip content.

Delavo
Purchased this when it had a different name – expensive, unbelievably complex and difficult to configure. Waste of money. Maybe it’s improved but not worth checking out again.

Easy Member Pro
website
$97 for unlimited sites.
Has affiliate system, but not much else.

Yep. Works like a charm.