I'm working in online advertising since 1998 and finally decided to start my own blog.

April 2017

BOT traffic – How to detect fake hits and what to do about it!

One of the biggest annoyances for every paid-traffic affiliate marketer is dealing with the bot traffic, which results from the high amount of various BOT’s, that are surfing the internet. According to some estimates, more than half of all internet traffic is actually caused by BOTs in one form or another – crawlers, spiders, rippers … some are legit tools, some not so much.

There is not much we can do about the google crawler, for example, SE crawlers are an acceptable part of the internet ecosystem. There are many legit reasons for running automatic systems that mimic user behavior, so I’m not gonna complain about such tools at all.

But what really SUCKS, is BOTs that are deployed by fraudsters, in order to defraud advertisers and media buyers. There is a whole lot of cheaters, who create ton’s of sites with fake traffic and sell these BOT traffic impressions to various traffic networks.

To get an idea about how HUGE this problem actually is, read this Forbes article : https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/12/20/methbot-biggest-ad-fraud-busted/

Some traffic networks do their best to detect this fake traffic, but many of them just turn a blind eye to the problem – every impression they can sell brings them profit, whether it’s real or fake … so some networks simply don’t care and act like the problem is not theirs to solve.

One way or another, BOTs don’t buy, so we don’t want them in our campaigns, or at least as low amount as possible. Since these clicks totally screw up the optimization process, is in the interest of every affiliate, to detect them and block placements/sources with too high % of fraudulent traffic.

When optimizing a new campaign, you need to make sure that you are working with human traffic, it’s completely pointless to attempt any optimization with fake BOT traffic

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Why I don’t offer coaching and what training program I would recommend?

Ever since I accepted the moderator position on STM Forum, plenty of people approached me with one question : “Do you offer any course or coaching?” And as you could guess, when I launched my blog, the interested has risen even more. I’m not saying it’s hundreds of people asking for my services, but I do get these requests every week 🙂

But I’m turning all these requests down, I don’t do coaching or run a course, and don’t plan to do that anytime soon. Wondering why I’m turning these “easy money” offers down? Well, read below :

The most important thing I would ever want from a coach, would be his full attention and help WHEN I NEED IT – so some sort of frequent if not live support. I would also want help with several aspects of the business, including design, copywriting, campaign setup, optimization … and what not. This means, I wouldn’t actually want the help of a single coach, but rather a TEAM OF COACHES.

And since there is just the one of me and not a team of Matuloo’s … I don’t coach 🙂 Simple as that, I wouldn’t feel comfortable charging for service that I wouldn’t be happy with myself. If I ever attempted to handle the tasks of a team on my own, the first thing I’d have to do, would be to stop running affiliate campaigns myself. And who would be interested into an affiliate marketing coach that doesn’t run his own campaigns? I certainly WOULD NOT! 🙂

That’s why I’m not doing coaching and never will do that ON MY OWN. I’m offering help to anyone who is interested – on the STM Forum – where I can keep my own schedule, and choose when to reply to what… that’s what my schedule allows for now. So if you want my help, be my guest and join us at STM Forum 🙂

BUT WHAT IF YOU WANT A COACH OR TAKE SOME TRAINING?

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What is DATING and how to promote dating offers – with expert advice from Cpamatica.com

There are verticals that come and go, some are seasonal and only popular during certain periods of the year, some become saturated and impossible to make profits with after a while … and then there are some, that are always working to some extent, no matter what – Let’s call them the evergreens 🙂

Dating is one of such evergreen verticals, it has it’s ups and downs, but it keeps on converting year after year. I’m not gonna lie to you, even this vertical is harder to make money with than it was couple years ago … but it’s not because people are not interesting into dating anymore, it’s because of the competition.

Since Dating is actually one of my favorite verticals, I decided to write a full article about it. I will tell you what kind of dating offers there are, how it all works, what are the payout options you can work with, how dating sites make money, how to promote these offers …

To make it more interesting, I invited an affiliate network that specializes in dating, “Cpamatica.com”, to provide us with some insights from a networks side too. I sent them quite a few questions, so we get a better understanding of the vertical, how much big affiliates are making, what type of offers makes the most $$$ for them, what GEOs are hot at the moment … all the information I like to get from affiliate networks.

I always love to get info directly from the “horses mouth” so to speak,

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