Money-Code

February 4, 2011
by admin
0 comments

Chatting with eBay Partner Network â€“ Episode 14 – Network Quality Team

Here is a interesting video with Chad Wehrmaker discussing the Network Quality Team at EPN. Personally, I’ve been weary of my EPN account, and work extremely hard to send ‘quality’ traffic to EPN. Work on improving sites and my EPC. He provided some great insight on the ‘quality’, and mentions it’s not about EPC only. I thought this information was quite interesting. He mentions some additional factors – Transparency and Brand Association are also factors for quality. The way I transparency could be related to registered domains at EPN, tracking pixel and clear understanding of the flow of traffic to and from the site. If you have other suggestions of what transparency means, please comment below.

Now Brand Association is interesting. Clearly using registered trademarks or brand names in the title is a violation of the TOS so this should be a no-brainer, unless brand association is related to something else. Is this related to certain products on the site? Not sure what this fully means.

[iframe_loader width=”425″ height=”344″ frameborder=”0″ longdesc=”” marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ name=” click_words=”” click_url=”” scrolling=”auto” src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/19505143″]

Chad mentions that there is also an appeal process if your account is terminated or suspended and to write to ebaypartnernetworkquality@ebay.com. Threatening or harsh emails will not be responded to. Reading a blogs that have successfully appealed their account termination all mentioned that they would calmly AND continually write to the quality team. Persistence and patience seems to be the way.

January 23, 2011
by admin
0 comments

Rackspace Cloud Servers

I’ve been managing various dedicated web servers for a few years now. I do this for web development clients as well as some of my affiliate marketing efforts. One company that I’ve been with for a while is Rackspace and I’ve been nothing but pleased with their services.Â When I initially signed on with them about 6 years ago, their linux dedicated (unmanaged) servers were quite affordable, but since then, their prices have increased, so for new dedicated servers I’ve used other hosts. I’m not happy with those hosts, and always wished I could have additional servers at Rackspace.

Recently, my Rackspace server had a failing drive and a friend of mine told me that Rackspace offers cloud servers – and with the linux distro I prefer. I figured this would be a great opportunity to check out a new hosting solution, but something new that I have confidence in since it’s Rackspace. Additionally, looking at their price matrix, their pricing is great! They’ve changed the hosting payment paradigm by going with a hourly rate. I was a little hesitant of this, but after calculating their hourly rates.. it’s cheap. To calculate hosting, you determine how much RAM your server requires (includes disk space) and how much incoming/outgoing bandwidth is used.Â The other great thing, is that you can scale down or ramp up if needed. Since it’s in a virtual environment you can do this.

I think I would be hesitant to go with anyone except Rackspace for this, since their network is unbelievably good, and their support is second to none. I’ve never been on hold. And a *real* person answers the phone EVERY time.

I’m going to be migrating the failing physical server to the cloud server and seriously consider moving my other servers to the cloud as well. For those that are not familiar with cloud servers, here is a video explaining it:

If this sounds interesting to you, check out their pricing. I’m personally.. super psyched so far. If you’re looking for a web host and after you Buy domain names, please consider Rackspace cloud for your hosting solution!

January 22, 2011
by admin
0 comments

Chatting with eBay Partner Network â€“ Episode 11

I don’t hit the EPN blog that often.. and I should try harder. I saw that on January 13th, the posted Episode 11. I thought this was a good interview, since they addressed some of my ongoing issues with EPN. I appreciate that they acknowledged that they still need to improve in the customer service sector, and also that they’re aware of their issues with rolling out new code. Nothing like ‘new changes’ followed up by reporting issues, etc. A little unnerving, so I’m glad they they’re aware and plan to do better in 2011.

January 21, 2011
by admin
1 Comment

Start from inside Out

I’m a guy that likes a process. I enjoy procedures to maximize my time. I love sayings or mantras to help remind me how to maximize my efforts and stay on a path.

I’ve been in the technology sector for a long long time working in various areas – development, networking, server administration, etc. One of the first sayings I adopted was “start from inside out”. Simple saying, but I definitely see it applied in other areas, etc. Basically, the idea is this – you start from the closest point to the furthest point while debugging problems. For instance, your internet is down. I would first see if *all* applications can’t see the internet (browser, email, etc). Then I would see if the network cable was plugged in and link light is there. I would then check the switch.. then the modem.. then ping different areas of the net.. then eventually call the ISP. What happens a lot, is people will just call the ISP and get pissed while on hold to find out their anti-virus is blocking their Firefox application. It’s about eliminating the controllable variables first.

This leads me to the second saying. “Start with what you know”. This is a slight twist on “Start from inside out”. A good programming buddy of mine would lay that on me all the time. It’s so much easier tackling a programming challenge with areas of what you know to gradually get you to where you need to be. Versus saying.. shit, I don’t know how to do that. Break it down and isolate section you do know how to do. Start building a base and eventually the hard stuff.. is the small stuff, and the majority is done. This is a attitude for swallowing a challenge and keeps the thinking clear.. and the fingers typing.

Now, the reason I wrote this post, is the Josh Whitford’s blog posted this great TED speech by Simon Sinek. This talk was awesome and inspiring, but it touched on the same philosophy. The golden circle.. why->how->what which emanates from the inner circle to the outer.. [cough]inside out[/cough].

So why am I bringing this up on my programming affiliate marketing blog? I watch/hear things all the time, and I’m always thinking on how to leverage things for affiliate marketing. This is thinking outside of the box.. I guess, but why -> how -> what might be the outline for my future squeeze pages. Could be the new direction for PPC ads? Could be the direction for blog posts or general web content? Who knows, but the bottom line.. it’s food for thought.

January 19, 2011
by admin
0 comments

Automatic Backlink Creator

Here is a interesting plugin I stumbled upon. The Automatic Backlink Creator is a wordpress plugin that will automatically create backlinks for you when you create a post. There are currently 1,876 sites in their network (as of 1/7/2011). You can also use this plugin for articles as well. Basically you can write spun articles and submit them to the network form the admin panel.

For me, a few questions came to mind. Is this available for unlimited domains? Any conditions when using the plugin?

– You can install it on all of your domains. There is a activation code.
– There are terms related to the network (can’t use them on adult sites, gambling, mediation, etc.).

You purchase the plugin AND the network, so there is a monthly charge.

I found this testimonial video on the Automatic Backlink Creator

This video was submitted by BruteForceWealth.

If this sounds good to you, then check out Automatic Backlink Creator today! If you have any personal experience with this plugin, please comment below. Love to hear the good and bad!