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  • Written by RichardRichard 9 Comments9 Comments Comments
    Last Updated: July 9th, 2009

    As you will know I have been using Prosper202 since the beginning of my affiliate marketing days and I have absolutely no issues with it what so ever (I’m not being hired by the 202 team to kiss their ass recently either :P ) but I have come across one major problem recently which is worth mentioning as it can be a real pain if not caught early.

    I got an email from my host saying:

    I was forced to suspend the script “/public_html/tracking202/static/record.php” as it was causing a high load on the server.

    This sort of thing is way over my head to be honest so I didn’t think much of it, around the time of the email I was browsing around my stats and it was running really slow so I thought that because I was clicking here, there and everything, it may have put too much load on the server or something causing it to be stopped.

    Anyway, when I got up this morning and checked my stats for yesterday my ROI was terrible compared to the past weeks which I thought was odd but come to terms with as it may have been a bad day in terms of conversions but what got me was when I checked today’s performance so far it was even worse.

    I checked my prosper202 to see what was happening, on the overview it stated nothing… I went to my domains and they loaded fine and checked back in prosper and my click was there which got me even more confused. After a couple of emails back and forth from my hosting company and speaking to a couple of people who know the technical side of things it was apparent that the script was enabled for my IP and my IP only (hence prosper202 not tracking anything bar my clicks), what this also meant is that the traffic I have been paying for have absolutely zero chance of converting because when they click on the link that redirects them to the offer – they get a message saying that they didn’t have permission to view that page.

    The day this came about happened to be a really good day in terms of traffic which was even more painful to see such a bad conversion rate but it seems that I put too much strain on my crappy server causing them to suspend the script taking me down without me even knowing. I was still paying for clicks and had been until I caught on which is a real kick in the balls and I could see my profit/day streak come to an end.

    I have replaced my prosper202 redirects with a simple php redirect which looks like this:

    < ?php
    header('Location: http://www.offerdomain.com');
    ?>

    ***REMOVE THE SPACING BETWEEN < ?PHP IF YOU USE IT***

    Basically I will still get the leads but have no way of tracking where they came from, that’s not such a big issue as the campaign has been on autopilot for about 2-3 weeks now without me checking that side of things.

    My main concern now is that I was about to launch another campaign today but without tracking I’ll be throwing money away so I will put that on hold.

    I have been recommended a dedicated server which I’d like to say looks good but I have no idea about the specs or anything but I put my faith in the person who told me to get that specific one :P

    So, why is the title of this post what it is? Basically you have to plan ahead at some point and if you are on shared or reseller hosting you could be faced with this problem sooner than you think. It pretty much shafted me overnight and if I was on holiday or away from a computer I wouldn’t have even known until I was back.

    I intend on keeping my current hosting for my blog and other smaller sites because mainly it’s about $25-30/month and I can’t be bothered to switch everything over but all of my affiliate marketing campaigns along with my prosper202 will be moved over to my new dedicated server ASAP.

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  1. #1 Florian
    July 9th, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    Good point to remember … not that I am making anything near your results (profit wise…), but it is true that this can be a major issue if you have a lot of traffic.

    I was using P202 also, even though my hosting company says I am not supposed to run tracking scripts on my shared hosting server…

    I have switched to statsjunky recently, which centralizes all affiliate program stats and ppc engine stats (and more) in one place. However, sofar their support has been soso as I am trying to put the keyword tracking in for a campaign where I have php redirects (originally on P202) to cloak my links… and they can’t figure out how to set it up properly on their tracking system.

    If you ever want to try it out, let me know (PM) and I will send you my affiliate link ;-)

    all the best
    Florian

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  2. #2 John
    July 9th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    You can use manager vps, i already have this problem 3 months ago. totally wast PPC money

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  3. #3 MLDina
    July 9th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    At least you noticed relatively soon and are working on a backup plan. If you had been on vacation as you mentioned, it could take several days or even weeks to get a profitable campaign going. Let us know how it goes if you decide to go with the dedicated server- that’s probably your best bet.

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  4. #4 Wes Mahler
    July 10th, 2009 at 1:37 am

    In some ways a good problem to have, but yeah thats not good. Whatever you server you get, make sure there is alot of RAM. MySQL loves ram, its the cheapest upgrade you can make everything go fast.

    We have an update that will speed up some of the tracking, and make it less load intensive, its done, but we’ve just been trying to finalize the release.

    If you want it even faster, I’d recommend a dedicated WEB server and a dedicated MYSQL server. It isn’t to hard to get setup, you can go with any dedicated service provider.

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  5. #5 Martin
    July 10th, 2009 at 7:23 am

    Not trying to be an asshole but clearly it’s your own damn fault. Yeah, shared is good in terms of price, but running 5 figures dollars traffic on shared is just… suicide.

    I could understand, if you’re not a tech savvy, go with WiredTree. It’s affordable and their support is really worth the price(they cost ~10% more than other cheap ones). I usually get email updates from their tech guy specifically for my traffic to make sure that everything’s running smoothly. $300 – $400 should be more than enough for a powerful dedicated server. I spent over $800 on my cloud(PPV traffic) last month.

    Email me if you need help with spec, etc…

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  6. #6 Ryan Eagle
    July 10th, 2009 at 8:25 am

    I’ve been using basic .php redirects since day one, never used any tracking. I relied on the networks tracking and used their subids with dynamic php appending.

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  7. #7 Niche Affiliate Marketing
    July 10th, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    Richard, I never used proper202. I code my websites in PHP and use subid tracking along with pixel tracking to track my keywords and ads. Tracking is very simple. See below.


    <a href=Click here

    In your ads, your will set your URL as http://your-domian.com?s=online-dating.

    I wouldn’t recommend setting the keyword in your URL like above but use short form that you understand. So for ‘online dating’, you could shorten it to ‘od’ and your url will be

    domian.com?s=od.

    -G

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  8. #8 Niche Affiliate Marketing
    July 10th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    ooops, the PHP didn’t show up in my comments above. I will make a post about tracking on my blog, if any one wants to use the code in their pages.

    -G

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  9. #9 Tipjar
    July 11th, 2009 at 1:44 am

    Good stuff, and definitely will look out for it.

    As far as servers go, try liquidweb.com, I’ve heard only good things about them.

    Were you using shared or a VPS server?

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