Market Leverage is another affiliate network. I signed up with them yesterday. Within a couple of hours Erick called me and we had a little talk. I was approved.

I first heard of Market leverage in John Chow’s indirect marketing post. Then Zac Johnson noted Market Leverage as having the largest affiliate rewards program. That was enough to convince me to join.

Last year Azoogle ended their rewards program.  More recently they have ended their referral program.  It’s not time to leave Azoogle, but it is time to diversify.

First impressions are good.  The interface is clean and colorful.

After a just a little bit of looking however, Market Leverage uses the same software that CPA Empire uses.  So I am already pretty familiar with it.

Unlike CPA Empire the interface is fast.  CPA Empire is always sluggish at best.

Market Leverage also has a 5% referral program for life.  This means that if somebody signs up under you, you get 5% of their earnings for LIFE.  Right now, that is the biggest program for people.

The only real issue that I have with Market Leverage is that they do not easily enable tracking ID’s (SUB ID’s).  This is due to their software.  SUB ID’s are essential to tracking conversions.

For now I recommend Market Leverage.  I will play around with a couple of their offers and see what happens.

All in all 2 thumbs up.

If you ever change a website that has some search engine rank or visitors you should do a “301 Redirect”.  There are a couple different types of redirects.  A 302 redirect is called a temporary redirect.  A 301 Redirect is a permanent redirect.

Search engines don’t usually follow 302 redirects.  However, they “should” follow 301 redirects.

Normally in C#/.Net you will say “Response.Redirect(”http://www.google.com“);”  However that is a 302 redirect.  To do a 301 you will want to do the following….

Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(”Location”, “http://www.google.com“);

This is your best attempt at keeping all the search engine work that you’ve done.

Now normally you would have to go to each ASPX file and add this in each’s page load/init section.  I however have used master pages so I just need to add it to one spot.  However I have to figure out which page is actually getting requested.  Here’s how to do that.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        string Redirect = Request.Url.AbsoluteUri.ToLower().Replace(”jaygeiger.com/rent-games”, “tempgames.com”);

        Response.Clear();
        Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
        Response.AddHeader(”Location”, Redirect);
    }

This way we replace the old url with the new one then do a 301 redirect.

If you don’t have a master page, you can still do something similar with your Global.asax file as seen HERE.

Now that we’ve got the redirect done, we can wait until Google catches on and then redirect our AdWords campaign.

Sometimes I love C#/Visual Studio/ASP.NET.  Then other times, not so much.

I wanted to create a simple RSS feed for my C#/ASP.NET site and there really wasn’t anything out there.  I really don’t want to download anybody else’s binary files and I wanted something simple.

It was almost super easy.  Then I got hung up on UTF-16 vs UTF-8.

So I made my own RSS class.  Here it is. RSS CLASS

It’s only about 100 lines.

If you want to have an RSS Feed on a .Net web page, here’s the code for that.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    RSS rss = new RSS(”Geiger”, “http://www.jaygeiger.com”, “Geiger”, DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString());
    rss.Add(”Geiger 1″, “http://www.jaygeiger.com/1″, “Geiger Description 1″, “1″);
    rss.Add(”Geiger 2″, “http://www.jaygeiger.com/2″, “Geiger Description 2″, “2″);

    Response.Clear();
    Response.ContentType = “text/xml”;
    Response.Write(rss.Write(););
    Response.End();
}

Google LOVES blogs.  So if you have a .net site, add RSS to it!

The Conspiracy Theory that Follows is just that, a conspiracy theory.  They are usually BS.  However, this one is technically quite possible.

DESTROY YOUR COMPETITION BEFORE THEY BECOME COMPETITION

That is the underlying statement. For this we will take the world of Video Games as we have been doing a video game affiliate test for several months now.

Now lets say there is a person or persons out there that dominates the major PPC markets for “video game rentals”.  This could range from several hundreds of dollars a day to several thousands.  Now, he realizes that with all things, there are smarter people out there than he is that try to startup video game offers.  If they don’t make money in the first month or two (sometimes first week or two), they declare it a loser and move on.

Lets’ say this guy, we’ll call him Vidster, has 100+ unique IP addresses as well.

Vidster wants you to get discouraged and not compete with him.  What could he do?

He could fake click your ads.  Now he wouldn’t do this himself, he would design a bot to do so.  He would use part of his keyword list and with a bot, that goes out on each IP address slowly over time, click on the competition’s ads.  He could double or triple your costs.

Vidster is smart, he knows to change the type of browser on his bot as well and to reuse cookies sometimes.  100+ IP addresses means at least a couple different pretend users apiece.

The moral of the story is to let your campaigns go for months before ending them.  Just bump the budget down to $1-$5 a day and let it go.  It’s like putting out a fish hook and trolling around until you get a bite.  You might find some good affiliate fishing holes this way.

Something is weird at Azoogle.  I had a campaign end that was bringing in $4,000-$5,000 in revenue monthly.  My AM did not contact me about this at all.

In the hayday of this campaign, it was solely responsible for her winning a contest as well.

Add to that that…

Azoogle Fires a Dozen Employees
Azoogle Cut Referall Commissions
Azoogle Rename Itself Epic Advertising

Something weird this way comes at Azoogle.

There hasn’t been much to write about on the video game affiliate offer lately.

Here’s one of the last Video Game Affiliate posts.

We’ve lost about $5 this month.  Made $40, paid $45.

So is this a loser?  Answer: Maybe

However we just paid $20 and registered TempGames.com for 2 years.

We haven’t moved any of the ad programs over to it.  We are going to wait about a week before we do so.  Why?  AdWords doesn’t let you advertise domains that are less than a couple days old.  Some people where registering a whole bunch, advertising, then canceling the domain for free within a few days.  So we will wait, then we will show you the correct way to redirect traffic so that you don’t lose any links/google pagerank.

I have been playing around with Clickbank for supplemental offers to the main offers I promote.  I was EXTREMELY baffled by the payment until just now.

Click bank says payment is calculate by the following formula.

Check = [(previous balance) + sales - returns + bonus + allowance release] - return allowance - $2.50.

“Allowance Release” and “Return Allowance” was where most people get confused.

In the grid “Release” = “Allowance Release” and “Allowance” = “Return Allowance”.

So the check for 3/16 (sent on 3/31)

Check = $371.35 - $106.52 + $0.00 - $26.73 = $238.10
(There is also supposed to be a $2.50 charge that doesn’t show)

Now that $26.73 is kept by Click bank for 90 days (6 pay periods).  This is to handle returns and cancellations.  Unused portions get returned after that 90 days.  This is so that you can’t sign up under your own credit card, then cancel and pocket the sales.

The return allowance is calculated with this formula.

Return Allowance = 10% x [(previous balance) + sales - returns + bonus + allowance release]

So in my example it equals.

.1 x ($0.00 + $371.35 - $106.52 + $0.00 + $0.00) = $26.83.

Note that $26.83 is not the same as $26.73.  Where did my dime go?  I have no idea.  Perhaps I got a 10 cent bonus.

CERN, counseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, the physics research center has created a new form of super fast information transfer.

Once completed, these data networks will be capable of transferring data at 10,000 times (yes that’s 1,000,000%) faster than existing broadband connections.

Oddly enough, this grid will be “Switched On” in the middle of the year (2008) at the exact same time that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (world’s largest particle accelerator) comes online.

This “Grid” sounds strangely familiar to SKYNET from The Terminator movies and TV series.  Even more weird is that some scientist think the Large Hadron Collider could create “strangelets” that could destroy our planet.

However doubtful, my mind is filled with ideas of THE GRID holding us hostage with the Large Hadron Collider.  Let’s not only create SKYNET but give it huge physics bomb as well.

Story at Times Online

Video from CERN

I always rave about EarnersBlog.com.  This is one of the FEW blogs that has nearly ALL worthy posts.  Most blogs about PPC/Adwords/Google are almost ALL fluff.  Earners blog posts only once or twice a week, but they are awesome posts.

Check out this one on how to explode your ppc campaigns.

If you’re lazy, the best parts of the post that I liked are to “only go after phrases with 3 keywords or more”.  Less than 3 and you’ll get a lock of lookers, but very few converters.  Also “don’t use broad terms” unless you are doing keyword research.  Only use Phrase and Exact.  For example “RINGTONES” converts less than “DOWNLOAD RINGTONES” which converts less than “HOW TO DOWNLOAD RINGTONES”.

I just started this thanks to ShoeMoney.  WOW BUDDY THANKS SO MUCH