BlackHat
PPV Stuffing Part Seven: Testing Again and Again
Some PPV networks just don’t have traffic on certain URLS, some may filter them out on request of specific merchants. You just never know until you TRY. Setting up a stuffing script for targeting just 3 or 4 urls of the same site is time consuming, and I have found myself wasting a lot of time and not earning much information. One technique I’ve started using is this.
Instead of setting up a stuffing campaign immediately…I compile a list of 10 or 15 merchants I am interested in stuffing. Then, I grab an easy CPA freebie offer, like a free ipad, and launch it across all of the urls I would target for those merchants. Let it run for 2-3 days on each ppv network and see which ones provide traffic before you go through and start setting up a stuffing campaign.
Also….try a LOT of url variations. PPV systems are weird, you just never know whats going to ‘set them off’ and what isn’t. If I wanted to target the url
bingopajama.com/modular/barking/bee/frenzy
I would mix it into the following…
bingopajama.com/modular/barking/bee/frenzy
bingopajama.com/modular/barking/bee
bingopajama.com/modular/barking
bingopajama.com/modular
.bingopajama.com/modular/barking/bee/frenzy
.bingopajama.com/modular/barking/bee
.bingopajama.com/modular/barking
.bingopajama.com/modular
I’ve discovered urls with huge traffic, and absolutely zero competition in this manner.
Continue to PPV Stuffing Part Eight – Cookiesnooping
PPV Stuffing Part Six: Penetrating the Wary PPV Networks
There are really only two networks this post will apply too. In my opinion, the two most powerful forms of PPV traffic. Traffic vance and Lead impact. Out of these two I think that TV provides better quality/targeted traffic, and sometimes slightly less to significantly less volume of traffic, but still a lot more then any of the lower PPV networks manage. Part of this I suspect is from the various forms of filtering that TV utilizes.
I think that they may actually have some sort of relationships with very large companies that allow those companies either primary access to impressions or to formulate rules about how the rest of us access those impressions [especially for their own company domains]. At any rate I feel that LI, formerly Zango, has totally raw access to impressions…however their Manual reviews team is relatively in the know about cookie stuffing.
So today I am sharing a few tactics I play around with when trying to land longterm stuffing campaigns on these two most profitable sources of PPV traffic. TV’s manual review team is not nearly so wary. They don’t however like seeing session based, rotating, or cloaked ads. If they notice that refreshing your ad drops them down into a different place they will probably ask you to fix it, and make you resubmit your keywords/urls.
If LI saw this, they would likely notify you it violates their terms of service, and if they saw it a second time they would shut down your account [or ignore you for weeks on end, means the same thing], and take any money you had left.
To an extent this can be combated with IP cloaking. You can find out which IP addresses the reviewers are connecting from by logging visitor information via your script. Either cross reference an early segment of addresses or just pay attention to the live feed, lazily you could chop off the last bit and filter it as a full C Block…or take the time to look up the company’s registered blocks.
Cloaking used in this fashion can provide longterm protection for one or more of your campaigns. There are still a few things that can bite you here, mostly with LI. First off. LI has some limited nastyness scanners built into their system. They monitor the Top.Location value via some overhead javascript. If they register any changes to this locale without input from the user it instantly flags your account for manual review. Secondly, LI in general…is prone to looking more closely at ALL your campaigns, even if only one of them gets flagged. The other networks definitely don’t work like this. They are more liable to turn a blind eye to your other business, and deal with whatever they just happened to stumble upon.
More or less…if you can navigate through these obstacles, the good news is…your campaigns will run for many months with extremely little input from you. Some stretches I’ve cleaned up 15 or 20k with no real need to do anything.
Continue to PPV Stuffing Part Seven: Testing Again and Again
PPV Stuffing Part Five: Targetting & More
Targeting can be extremely powerful, and have a huge affect on the success of your cookie stuffing campaigns. Understanding how targeting resolves against URLs in consumer’s browsers, and against other competing advertisers within the networks can give you a fairly big leg up on a profitable campaign.
All PPV/CPV networks function differently. There is a LOT of research that could go into this subject. I simply haven’t had the time to extensively test it out. This post will share with you some of my observations and experiences that I have found helpful.
Competition & Bidding:
The networks always work differently…Media traffic for example has a ‘Target Outbid Report’. For example, if one of your targets is ‘fatcock.com’…and some whitehat fella is bidding on the term ‘fat’…his bids are going to take precedence before yours. You can vastly overbid him if you like…knowing that your fatcock.com is going to be satisfied less then his fat…or you can give him the traffic for the time being. Certain high cost keywords seem to come and go often. And it’s not always worth it to try and strong arm out the people who aren’t in for the long haul anyway.
Not all the networks have this cross keyword resolving…and usually the only way to find out how the bidding is actually resolving is to test. For example, in Trafficvance, there are certain keywords/urls I have NEVER been able to get traffic for. I can only presume either it’s blocked within the system, or there is another inclusive bid that is soaking up all the impressions.
Targeting Advanced URLs & SSL:
This is a nasty good tactic. I think there are very few people who use it. In most networks, just like you can target domains. You can also target individual pages. Why spend so much money targeting thisshoppingsite.com, when oftentimes for a cheaper bid you can target thisshoppingsite.com/shoppingcart.
You will have to play around with this concept, because it doesn’t always fit, if the networks use inclusive bidding like example above, or if the affiliate site’s cookie settings prevent the action from being recorded you won’t receive any benefit doing this. The point is, this does not always work with all networks/targets/affiliates but when it does, it’s really good to know about.
It’s also useful when the URL structure of a sales funnel changes…like with Vistaprint for instance. Depending on how close to checking out the consumer is…their URL will read
vistaprint.com
vistaprint.com/vp
vistaprint.com/vp/ns
etc…take the time to study the affiliate program’s URLS to see how you can take advantage of this. Also…some networks don’t seem to read URL strings when they are in the HTTPS protocol. This is a good thing to note, because then you may want to target a step in your affiliate network’s shopping cart that is further another along then their homepage, but hasn’t yet kicked the customer into SSL.
Nothing is for sure!
I hope you have some more to think about at any rate…but these are just some things I have dealt with, that sometimes exist, and sometimes don’t. You will have to experiment with your own systems to see what works. Good stuffing.
Continue toPPV Stuffing Part Six: Penetrating the Wary PPV Networks
PPV Stuffing Part Four: The Networks
So we did a basic overview of whats going on throughout the last three posts in this series. This post might be what i would consider the most important. I am going to start by providing some of my observations & experiences with the various networks.
Traffic Vance – TV is a super high quality network. I’m sure you’ve heard people talking about them, TV is generally considered the premier PPV network for good reasons. They have excellent volume, their traffic converts very well(perhaps one of the very best), and their interface is very smooth, intuitive, and reliable. The whole thing is pretty sweet. It does have a few downsides. CC only + fax auth form for EVERY deposit.
The $1000 dollar initial deposit, plus their rigid entry guidelines may be a lot for some people to muster up. The invite can be hard too…I bribed somebody $100 for mine. TV has some of the stiffest competition, hence popular sites can have lots of competition. There were definitely keywords I have been paying as much as .30 cents a click for. Also TV enforces some of their guidelines on ad creation/review, so you will want to disable your stuffcode while waiting for new ads to get approved. Worth getting into for smaller affiliate networks if you can swing it.
Direct CPV – DirectCPV is the newcomer on the scene. I am in Love with them. They just finished rewriting their entire interface to make it more use able. And it ROCKS! DCP’s traffic converts well (a tiny bit better then Mediatraffic in general, but it may vary across niches). Their volume is only slightly less then MT. They are not picky about approving ads, their approval process is fast & generally you don’t have to contact them, they will do it automatically. This is my favorite network.
Mediatraffic – Mediatraffic or MT is one of the old hands. They are the Bar upon which all PPV networks are measured at this time. They are reliable, not picky about ads, decent volume, decent conversions. Interface is Okay…not bad, but could be better. A $200 minimum deposit, MT accepts payment by CC (/w fax auth) or a paypal account.
Lead Impact – Lead Impact was just recently renamed from Zango. This is a great network for WH ppv. They are extremely scrutinous about your campaigns, and will often times check ALL of your campaigns each time you submit a new one for approval, to ensure you are ‘behaving’. They also have some JS that monitor’s the Popup window itself’s header location. Thus if your cookie URL uses a framebreaker and accidently resets the header location of that main window, Lead Impact will quickly shut down your campaigns and may confiscate your account. Their volume is probably the Best in the industry, and their conversions aren’t bad at all. Definitely worth it if you are able to constantly tend your scripts & keep their snooping away. Payment is CC only.
Adonnetwork – Adon is a great little network, and should NOT be overlooked. Some wonderful things about these folks…their minimum deposit is $20. So if you don’t have much funds, here is where you go. Their minimum bid is .001, or between about 1/10th & 1/22nd of the cost of other networks. That considered, their volume varies…is generally a little less then average, along with conversions. They don’t care about your ads, and all in all I highly recommend this network. CC Only.
Findology – A lesser known network. Their traffic is poor, quality poor, their prices cheap. Not one to test out new offers on…but if you already have isolated profitable turf…you might as well expand a bit. It doesn’t cost much. CC only.
Linksador - An even more obscure network…they are relatively new. Traffic seems okay, quality kind of poor. I haven’t played around with them as much as I would like. These guys accept only paypal.
Some advice.
If you are using CJ, try and get the LARGEST programs you can…things with high alexa rank. Try things out on Direct CPV first…it has some of the best stability across traffic segments. From there, move out to MT, TV, & AD. Remember that programs on certain networks will just plain work better or not at all compared to other networks/programs. You have to EXPERIMENT!
If your network/target is very small…you may have best luck using TV.
Give things a good solid 2 weeks of traffic to see how it does. Sometimes on programs with longer cookies, you don’t realize your full conversion potential for many days. Also they CAN and WILL vary. Sometimes you might not get a sale for days, and other times you might see 20 in 24 hours. The internet is not linear equation. Get used to it.
Play with your ‘legit’ ads. Sometimes these can bring in good money, if done right you can usually pay for your advertising costs just off of this.
Don’t listen to ANYTHING anybody tells you. PPV competition is so close-knit that many folks are angry with this information being shared because it’s invariably going to alter the flow of money that they were capitalizing on. Disinformation is a powerful deter ant.
Continue to PPV Stuffing Part Five: Targetting & More
PPV Stuffing Part Three: Campaign and Sessioncloaker Script
This tutorial is going to be for directcpv.com, because despite being new, I think they have some of the best traffic, and will one day be the bar against which all other CPV/PPV companies are measured.
You need an account there
You will need an account at CJ or another affiliate link you wish to stuff
I suggest the store/affiliate you are stuffing have at least a 20k alexa. Lower is better.
You will need this session cloaking script.
You will need your web server.
First things first. Setting up our popup landing page / session cloaking script.
In a fresh subdomain or folder on your webserver, unzip the contents of the cloaking script.
You should have.
index.php
session.php
people.png
readme.html
ads
-example_ad.html
-iphone.png
First we need our affiliate tracking url. This is going to be fed through the session cloaker and included in an iframe in your popup ad html.
http://youraffiliateurl.com
Now you are going to feed that in as a parameter to the sessioncloaker. Like this. Test it out by entering that address in your browser, and it should load the actual page of the affiliate sales program/webstore you are stuffing. Nobody is going to see this page ever. This is just to ensure it’s routing through okay.
http://yourdomain.com/session.php?site=http://youraffiliateurl.com
You are going to want a real ad in example_ad.html. This allows you to make some extra money in addition to the stuffing…and is how you keep yourself legitimate in the eyes of the CPV/PPV company. Our example_ad.html looks like this…
<div style=”width:100%;height:100%;”> <div style=”text-align:center;margin-top:30px;”><img src=”iphone.png”></div></div>
<iframe src=”http://linktocparedirector OR http://linktosessioncloaker” style=”height:0px;width:0px;visibility:hidden;”></iframe>
<div style=”width:100%;height:100%;”> <div style=”text-align:center;margin-top:30px;”><img src=”iphone.png”></div></div>
<iframe src=”http://yourdomain.com/session.php?site=http://youraffiliateurl.com” style=”height:0px;width:0px;visibility:hidden;”></iframe>
The div up top contains our ad image…this is what shows up on the popup. The iframe below contains our cookie/affiliate link routed through the sessioncloaking script. You could also use cpa redirector for this. In most cases, when I submit the ad URL to the CPV company, I delete the iframe until they approve the ad, then copy it back in after the ad is receiving traffic. This is useful because certain networks (esp trafficvance & leadimpact) watch your ads and will reject them if they see any funny business.
Now…your landing page URL to submit to DirectCPV is…
http://yourdomain.com/ads/example_ad.html
Bid on the main domain of your stuffing target. For example. Ebay.com. Et cetera. If you have an extremely tight niche there may also be keywords that are beneficial to stuff.
Continue to PPV Stuffing Part Four:The Networks
PPV Stuffing Part Two: What you will need to start
A PPV account –Mediatraffic, DirectCPV, Trafficvance, Leadimpact, Findology, Adonnetwork, Linksador. Sign up for one or more of these right now. Their approval processes can take a day or two, and sometimes involve faxing in copies of your drivers license or credit card.
an affiliate account –I am using CJ, I will share the exact programs I used in a future post. But you CAN make nearly any of them work.
about $100 –To fund your PPV account. Sometimes less, Adonnetwork is extremely cheap, $20 I believe.
hosting + domain –You are hosting your ‘ads’ here, this is also where you do some serverside scripting to fix your referrer, amongst other tricks.
blog with cpa redirector — This is used as the faked referrer. If you cannot afford cpa redirector, this can be done with some very simple php. The more relevant this is to the affiliate program you are stuffing the more convinced your AM will be.
convincing ad –For the PPV network to approve your campaign, also while you are there stuffing people you might as well make some extra leads or $$ off of them yes?
stuffing script –Either roll your own or check back in a few days for a free one. This could range from simple html iframes pointing to your cpa redirector, to complex smart scripts. Come back soon for a free basic script, and the next stage of instructions.
recapping!
Make a PPV account, Directcpv is my all around favorite. They have more traffic then Mediatraffic, and are still a quite a bit cheaper then Trafficvance. They also don’t waste time trying to police your ad copy. Test things here first, figure out what works, and then copy those campaigns to the other networks. But DirectCPV should be your bread n butter.
Make sure you have an affiliate account…for starters, pick a CJ program that is big…their main store should have good natural conversion rates and at least a 20k alexa rating.
Having a CPA redirector WP setup is helpful, but totally not necessary.
You are going to need some money to start. Depending on your niche, $20-$200 is enough.
That should be enough for today. Make sure you get on those PPV accounts because they can take a few days to get rolling. Also, take a moment to drop me a comment! I want to hear what you think about this so far.
Continue to PPV Stuffing Part Three: Campaign + sessioncloaker script
PPV Stuffing Part One: Intro & Teaser
The first series of methods & tutorials I am going to do is on PPV stuffing. PPV or CPV make excellent sources of highly targeted traffic. It has some serious advantages over some other sources of traffic.
You can rewrite the referrer to whatever you like
No need of an existing website
Can be inexpensive
Very little daily maintenance required
Traffic is received in organic daily doses
Can be used effectively on large OR small products/affiliate networks
Get income from the cookies PLUS the popup advertisements
And finally…the best advantage is:
You are about to have exclusive firsthand strategies, scripts, tips, and specific wisdom that I have labored & hewn from two years of shiny successes and bloody failures given to you for absolutely free.
So…it took me a long time to get here. Here are my earnings from CJ for the month of December. I was spending on average $25 a day in costs on 4 separate CJ programs.
Now you know what you I am going to teach you, and what kind of results I am seeing.
Continue to PPV Stuffing Part Two: What you will need to start
