Maybe you've seen the promotion for the MSN Ranking Loophole?  It's pretty intriguing to me.  I see a lot of products that promise search engine rankings… but most are a bunch of crap or only show you have to get a ranking for a 5-word long tail keyword with 350 searches a month and 100 competing pages.

But the MSN Ranking Loophole is a little different.  First of all, it focuses in entirely on MSN.  I like that.  I don't know if it works, or not… but I like that they're not claiming it's an SEO panacea that does everything for everybody, everywhere.

I got an advance copy several days ago (the launch is today) and went through everything.  Here's what I like:

• *Highly* conducive to automation!  If you know me you know I'm always on the prowl for effective methods that can be automated.  I'm very interested in testing the automation possibilities for the method.
• Reasonably simple.  I'm highly suspicious of overly complex methods.  For one thing, they rarely work.  For another, they become very difficult to prove to or disprove because of the complexity.  MSN Ranking Loophole presents a simple process (it's about 20 pages in a pdf).  It's straightforward and to the point.  It seems like something I can test and prove/disprove fairly quickly.
• I already have quite a few candidate pages for promotion.  I try a lot of different things looking for either effective promotion strategies or profitable products to sell.  That means I have a pretty good number of "failed" promotions under my belt.  There are a lot of different reasons why a promotion might fail… but I always have a stable of website that do a good job of converting the traffic that comes (ie. they can generate revenue if they have traffic), but paid traffic was either too expensive or not generating a high enough margin for me to continue feeding it.  Those sites make for great experiments with something like MSN Ranking Loophole.  I already have baseline conversion numbers for the sites based on thousands of targeted visitors from PPC advertising.  I can plug them into the backend for the ranking loophole process and compare the quality of the traffic and the effectiveness of the loophole.

Here's the bad news:

• There's a pretty high barrier to entry to get the process going.  It's not ridiculous… but it's there.  I would expect this for any legitimate strategy, though.  I like that it's not complex… but it is going to require some time, effort, and resources to get the infrastructure in place.  The good news is… not everyone who buys the product will be willing to actually lay the right groundwork.  I will.  And if the method works I'll have another weapon in my arsenal that most marketers are too lazy to implement.  As far as I can tell the core infrastructure only needs to be in place once and can be used over and over.

• Like any "loophole" it wouldn't surprise me if MSN closes the loophole shortly.  The author claims he's been using it for 2 years.  I tend to believe him.  I also know that when I give out my "real" secrets it usually because they are losing at least a little bit of effectiveness.  With all that said, I certainly know the value of riding a loophole hard for however long it lasts.  I have 1 ClickBank account where I used a little-known loophole to make $25,000 / month profit for about 3 months before the loophole was closed.  I made a total of just over $66,000.  I knew the loophole would go away eventually… but I exploited the heck out of it while it was around.  The funny thing was, I had a buddy who I encouraged to use the same loophole at the same time… but he didn't see the point since it would be going away soon and the setup to get involved was extensive.  By the time he finally decided he should play the game it was too late.  He made a few grand and the party was over.  It's not my typical M.O. but leveragin loopholes can often mean a quick and lucrative hit… that you can't count on for anything more than the next paycheck.
• It's "in the wild" now.  I've never known a loophole to survive in the wild.  Once it's released on ClickBank it has a tendency to dry up pretty fast.  We'll see.  Fortunately, the huge majority of buyers will never even take the first step to making it work.  Hopefully I'll gain an edge that will last for awhile.

So after all that, here's the verdict… I'm interested enough to check it out.  If it works this is the absolute *prime* time of the year to take advantage of it.  The holidays are when all the "traditional" affiliate stuff like Amazon.com, Toys-R-Us, JC Penney, etc. make a bunch of money.  And having high search rankings for a bunch of pages would be a major coup.

Interested in joining me?  I don't generally run promotions here… but I make exceptions

I've got to do some legwork to make this happen.  I'm going to have to build out an infrastructure and I'll end up creating some software to do a better job of what is taught in the course.  (Yes… I bought the OTO software and every tool they recommend in the course… but I think I can do it better)

If you want to piggy-back on what I'm doing now's your chance.  If this works I will *not* be releasing anything I develop to the general public.  And, of course, if it doesn't work there won't be any reason to release it to the public.  That makes this a private development experiment.  It could be gangbusters… it could be complete garbage.  Either way… I'm doing it.

If you are interested in knowing the strategy and gaining access to whatever I develop for this simply buy the MSN Ranking Loophole through this link.  I do *not* have any of this ready to go yet… I just the course a few days ago and I'm aready up to my eyeballs on 2 other projects.  But it will be in the next 2 weeks that I am ready to go.  As I mentioned, I have some built-out sites I want to test on *and* I want to capture some cheap / free holiday traffic when searches go way up for certain terms.  For my own use I need to have the system in place within 3 weeks (hopefully sooner) to make a big hit for the holidays.  Join me.  You won't have the opportunity to later.

Okay… it's 2:30 in the morning and I've had less than 3 hours of sleep in the past 3 days. I'm dead tired and NEED to go to bed soon.

But not until I share a secret with you… I ROCK! Seriously.

I've been busting my *** for awhile now on some new products. And out of the blue (it actually started as a time killer to get me away from one of my other projects) I stumbled across a stream of really killer ideas. It's strange how that happens every now and again

Anyway, it all started with me helping out my friend Chris Menser (creator of AdGrenade) with a technical challenge he was having. I solved that quick enough and started playing around with my solution to see how far I could push the technology…

And I pushed it far!

So now here's what I've got… and I'm pretty sure I am the only person on earth right now who's got this (which is why I'm writing this post… to stake my claim)…

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Edit: As soon as my head the pillow in bed I instantly regretted spilling the beans about my new software. I've left most of the post in place, but I've removed the details. I'll still do the video this week to let you in on what I'm playing with.
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Okay… I'm probably a little delirious at this point… but you'll see.

Since this whole thing was triggered by writing 8 lines of javascript for Chris, I promised him I'd let him be there when I make my first "show off" video (you know… to get you jealous of my new ClickBank killer). If you want to see what it can do I should have the video up by Wednesday. I haven't decided yet how much of the technology I'll make available publicly. I think I want to play with it by myself for awhile first and get a good feel for just how much of an advantage it gives me.

More to come later. For now… good night.

I do a *lot* of web scraping and automation with my marketing tools.  Some of it is very advanced.  For example, I get into some pretty deep stuff with Site Sniper Pro to be able to determine the ad region location on the page.

Every once in awhile I stumble across a tool so good that I just have to share it.  Well… I've stumbled

I usually use a program on my mac called Scoop to intercept http requests so I can see what's happening behind the scenes of web requests.  If you're not using something similar and you do a lot of web scraping or web automation then you're wasting a *ton* of time.

WARNING: Geek Alert!  Ok… before I go any further I should warn you… this is not a beginner's post.  If you don't know what web scraping is or don't do home-grown automation then you might want to skip this post.  It's more technical than most of my posts.  I'm assuming you have at least a basic knowledge of what I'm talking about in the post or it won't make sense.  You've been warned.  If you have questions feel free to post in the comments.

Back to the story… The 1 HUGE problem with Scoop is that it couldn't handle secure http (https) requests very well.  This is a common problem with port scanner type software.  It gets the request too late in the game and all I can see is the encrypted stream.  Typically this is good news.  It makes it difficult for unwanted guests to eavesdrop on my browsing session.  But when I'm trying to deconstruct a complex web request it just blows.

I've been able to get around it in the past using an overly complex system that required entirely too much work on my part.

But recently I started a project where I wanted to create my own front-end for Google's keyword research tool.  Their entire session is secure.  And it uses nothing but AJAX and javascript to do its work.  I was really struggling with my traditional methods to deconstruct the browser conversatio and duplicate it with my software.

After a bit of googling and trying lots of different solutions I finally found a tool that just ROCKS for what I'm trying to do.  It's called IE Inspector (available from ieinspector.com - not an affiliate link).  It works in Windows and intercepts all major browser requests (IE, FireFox, even Chrome).  It gives me a window into the browser conversation like I've never had before.

Here's short video of how I use it and what it does for me.  Enjoy.

Several month's ago I got pretty deep into affiliate link cloaking in it's many forms. I intended to post a whole a series on the various methods and tricks to link cloaking and other white/gray/black-hat linking methods… from basic cloaking to cookie-stuffing.

Well, I never did get around to finishing the posts… but I learned a *bunch* of cool (and sometimes slightly devious) things you can do with a little bit of knowledge and some creativity. Especially if you're an affiliate marketer.

The trick I'm sharing today is about "deep" linking. Deep linking is nothing more than linking to an interior page of a website instead of the home page. It's obviously very easy to do with a standard link… just point to the page you want to link to.

Things can get tricky for an affiliate, though.

For example, if you're promoting a Clickbank product you have exactly zero ability to specify your ultimate landing page. Cloaked or not, you send your visitor to Clickbank's hop link for the vendor and Clickbank drops your affiliate cookie then redirects them to the vendor's specified landing page.

But what if you want something different?

For example… I actively promote a particular Clickbank product that has been a profitable producer for me for more than a year. Recently I noticed my conversion rate plummeted almost overnight even though I hadn't changed a thing.

I let it go for a week or so and saw no improvement. So I investigated and realized the vendor had changed their landing page from a long-copy sales page to an email squeeze followed by the sales page.

Now I can't say what happened to the vendor's overall close ratio… but it wasn't working for my visitors. It's even possible the vendor was improving his bottom line through list-building and promoting other affiliate products at the expense of his own product (and my commission).

Anyway, the obvious solution for me was to direct my visitors straight to his actual sales page and bypass the squeeze. That would be great… except Clickbank doesn't give me an easy way to direct my visitors anywhere but the designated landing page while still dropping a cookie so I can get credited for the sale.

Enter sneaky deep affiliate links…

So here's what I did… I created a redirect with a combination of cloaked cookie-dropping (for credit in Clickbank's system) with a client-side redirect to the page I want my visitors on… the vendor's sales page.

Don't let your eyes roll back in your head just yet… it's really easy to do… Here is it step by step:

Step 1. Get the landing page you want to link to. In my case I just signed up on the vendor's squeeze page and copied the link of the sales page once I got there. That won't always work because some vendors will have gatekeeper programs that keep you from easily doing this… but it will work 99% of the time.

Step 2. Create a web page on your site with the following code:

<html>
<div style="display: none">
<embed src='http://xxxxx.vendor.hop.clickbank.net' width='1' height='1'></embed>
</div>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0;url=http://www.domain.com/real_landing_page.htm">
</html>

Now, to be totally honest, I have some other code in my actual page that hides what I'm doing to the average user… but that's the guts of it right there. I also realize that it's not totally property HTML and there are times when this type of redirect can be unreliable. But all things considered this is far and away my best solution. It works more than 99% of the time and solves my problem handily.

Step 3. Direct visitors to my cookie-dropping redirect.

I have now effectively bypassed the vendor squeeze page while keeping my commission intact.

If you know enough about HTML you may wonder about some of what I've done… here's the explanation for the obvious stuff…

Why do I use embed instead of an iframe or img tag? I only know part of the answer to this… for one thing, an iframe seems to require the page to actually load before redirecting. That can take too much time on graphically intensive pages and it shows in the status bar. Not ideal. The embed does not have the same requirement. Since all I really care about is the cookie getting dropped it seems to work the best.

The bigger reason, however, is that the results say embed is what works best. I split-tested with a random rotation of embed, iframe and img tags for 4 weeks. For no explicable reason (that I could see) the embed tag resulted in a higher overall conversion ratio than the other 2. That was good enough for me.

Why the hidden div? Firefox has an annoying banner that pops up when I do an embed vs. an iframe. Hiding the embed in the div seems to take care of that.

Could my script work better? Sure. Almost everything I know as a programmers is about desktop and database development. I am not a web programmer. I know more than most… but really just enough to do what I need to do. I'm sure others could point out lots of ways to improve my deep linking redirect. If you can improve upon it I'd welcome any suggestions or improvements.

I'm considering writing a program that will build cloaked links for you. Everything from very basic redirects to more advanced deep linking and "clean" redirects. I've already built something similar for my own use that also incorporates basic encoding and enough obfuscation to deter most prying eyes from seeing what you're doing behind the scenes. If you're interested in such a beast let me know.

Got other questions about affiliate linking and cloaking? Ask away… I'm so excited about comments on my blog that I'm really itching to get some use out of them

Aaargh!

I'm stupid.

I've been maintaining this blog on and off for awhile now. And one of the things that always confused me is why no one ever comments on what I write or the software I release. I mean… I think I do a pretty good job here (when I'm actually paying attention to it).

So the no comments thing has kind of ticked me off at times. I know I have readers. I know I give value. WTH?

…Now, for the idiot part…

Today I got an email from a new reader thanking me for the free stuff and sneaky tricks. She says she tried to post a comment… but couldn't see how to do it.

Doh!

You have GOT to be kidding me! I've had comments disabled the entire time. Holy smokes… you'd think I was a noob, or something. I'm genuinely embarrassed.

Whatever. I think I've got it all figured out now. I'm doing this over an excruciatingly slow internet connection from a hotel lobby near my cabin in Payson, AZ, though, so I can't hang around long enough to verify it actually works. I've been out-of-touch for 4 days already and won't be back in Phoenix with a big, bad high-speed connection for a few days still. I'll make sure I've got it all set up right then.

In the meantime, you can finally leave comments! Woohoo! I know that's the news you've been dying to hear all year.

If you're reading this then LEAVE A COMMENT! Seriously. I've been missing the love for almost a year now… I've gotta make up for lost time! Don't make me beg…

Hi, my name is Matt… and I'm an Amazon junkie.

Seriously. I spend thousands of dollars each year with Amazon.com. Last Christmas I was getting packages every day… and only left my house twice to shop. So I guess I'm not only an Amazon junkie… but I'm also a geek.

So a few years ago I signed up for something called Amazon Prime. It's a pretty slick service. I get unlimited free 2-day shipping and overnight shipping for just $3.99. It costs something like $80 / year (if memory serves), but it's incredibly worth it for me.

So why am I writing this post? Because through October 31st Amazon is offering a free 30-day trial for Amazon Prime. If you buy a lot of books and other things through Amazon then Prime is a no-brainer (and you probably already have it). But right now you can try it out and get it free for 30 days. So if you're thinking of getting anything from Amazon in the next few weeks you should sign up and get 2-day shipping for free.

A Favor?

I give away a lot of very valuable free software on this site. I don't ask a lot in return. But if you use Amazon.com at all then I have a favor to ask…

Sign up for a free 30-day Prime trial. If you're anything like me you'll love it. If not, you'll at least get 30 days of free 2-day shipping. And I want you to use my link when you sign up. Whether you think you'll use it, or not, give it a try. It's free. And it will keep me in a generous mood when I have new software that I want to release

Here's The Link…

Amazon Prime 30-day Free Trial

So I'm looking through my analytics last night for my blog… and I notice something interesting. I've had quite a few referrals from rentacoder.com recently. I checked it out and turns out there are people who want to hire programmers to knock off my free software.

First of all… that's funny. What part of free do they not understand? I even have specific blurbs on most my software giving permission to re-distribute and everything.

But I can still understand why someone might want their own version. So I find it interesting that nobody just asked if they could have a private label version, or something. Oh well… their loss.

But I did get some good feedback on some of the changes they wanted made. And now I want to make sure they waste their $200 budget So I implemented the improvements in a new version of Link Hopper. They're small changes… but significantly improve the accuracy of the tool.

Here's the download link.

…This time using Google. I recently finished my first mass-market consumer software application. It's a YouTube downloader called jiffieTube. I was excited to see the market potential… until I found out something very important. Houston… We Have a Problem! I should have done a little more research before starting my project. Turns out I can't advertise for any YouTube on AdWords. Grrrr! I put some ads up on the other search engines… but they didn't amount to much traffic. Even with 7+% CTR I was getting less than 50 clicks / day. I tried CPV networks and even experimented with paid traffic. It all sucked (to put it mildly). In a fit of pure frustration I started messing around with some very experimental techniques. And… one of those little tests is working surprisingly well. Especially since it involved creating intentionally obscure ads. You know… since Google wouldn't allow any ads that actually describe what my software does. So What's the Sneaky Trick This Time? Watch the video to find out…

Remember… return the favor and let me know what works for you! Enjoy!

Here’s a very sneaky ClickBank trick that I’ve never seen anyone else use.  It’s not a get-rich-overnight type of trick… more like something useful to have in your toolbag for those times when it’s needed.

Here’s the Story…

On occasion I want / need to get an advance copy of a ClickBank product.  This came up to day when I started to get a flood of emails for Andrew Fox’s new Dominating ClickBank 2.  I may be able to get a preview copy from Andrew… but in this case I just didn’t have time.  It launches tomorrow and I want to preview the content to determine whether or not I can create a value-added offer for the launch.

I do this on occasion and it’s usually a quick way to make $4k – $10k.  In fact, I used this with a friend of mine recently and he made over $20,000 in the first week doing a launch product like this.

Here’s the Problem…

Affiliates are already promoting the heck out of the product.  Some of them have advance copies… most don’t.  I want a clear advantage on launch so I definitely want a copy of the product before-hand.  Waiting until launch before I see the product could cost me several thousand dollars.So how do I get an advance copy?  I could simply ask Andrew for a copy.  But that takes time and he’s probably up to his eyeballs with other launch stuff with just a day to go (even I admit I’m cutting this one close).

So I have the sneaky little ClickBank trick I use.  You see, even though his sales page isn’t even up yet his product is in the CickBank database.  And that means I can use a little bit of technical magic to go straight to the order page.

Solution, Please?

I created a nifty little software utility that finds all the possible shopping cart pages in ClickBank and lists them for me.  Then I can simply double-click on the product I want (there’s usually just 1 or 2) and order it.I’ve even had vendors sometimes email me wondering how I already bought their product.  It can be funny… one panicked because he thought he had a premature launch.  High comedy.

There’s a little risk that the vendor may not have downloads and content ready yet, but I haven’t had that problem yet.  Every time so far I’ve been able to get access to everything.  On occasion the content will be updated after I have it… but most people offer perpetual downloads these days.

Besides… worst case I just get a refund from ClickBank or I wait until the actual launch and get it then.

Anyway, this can be a very powerful (if infrequent) strategy to use to really take advantage of product launches.  You can have a gigantic edge over the poor schleps who don’t have access to the content pre-launch.

Click here to get my Sneaky ClickBank Cart Trick software.  It’s FREE.

Watch The Video…

I made a short video of the software in action so you can see what I’m talking about.  Click here to watch it.  Tricky, tricky, tricky.

Recently I’ve been playing around with the Commission Blueprint product that launched a couple weeks ago.  So far it appears to be working fairly well.  My first campaign is up and making about $120 / day.  Not bad… but I can make it better.

I feel like when they built the $6,000,000 Man (for those of you old enough to remember that series).  I can make it bigger, faster, stronger

Without giving away any of the details, the first part of the process involves creating a *lot* of AdWords ad groups.  In the videos they advocate using SpeedPPC… the obvious downside being that it costs almost 500 bones.

Not a big deal for me since I own SpeedPPC.  But even after using SpeedPPC to create my ads there was a fair amount of additional work I had to do to get my ads ready to go.  I *HATE* work!  If I can automate it, I will.

So I searched around on the web and found a pretty slick little utility called AdGrenade.  It does most of what I used SpeedPPC for plus it automates the part I had to do manually for the Commission Blueprint process.  I got it for free.  Your mileage may vary.  I think the author is giving it away as a bonus.  You may be able to contact him and buy it standalone.  I don’t know.  (website: www.adgrenade.com).

What’s funny is his interface is a very obvious ripoff of my Laser Keyword Generator.  And before you ask… no, I didn’t write them both.  I’m pretty open about my tools and software development stuff when people ask, so I assume he asked and I told him how I developed LKG.  Because I’m such a nice guy, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt

Anyway, his software still didn’t completely automate things because I needed to interface with some Excel files.  I created my first project without any Excel integration.  AdGrenade created 630 ad groups in about 5 seconds (I’m not even kidding).

For my second go ‘round I decided I’d add the Excel integration myself.  I created the AdGrenade XLS Reader to make it an *almost* totally automated process.  I’m very pleased with my results when I combine the 2 programs.  It does pretty much exactly what I want it to do.

The only thing that would better is if it were just one program.  I’ll probably send my program to Chris, the AdGrenade author and offer him the source to integrate it.  We’ll see.  He already made one change for me to his program so I could make my XLS reader.  He had it done later on the same day I emailed him.  Pretty good for a free program… it’s like he’s trying to steal my gig, or something

If you’re familiar with Commission Blueprint then this is totally and ridiculously cool (would I do anything else?).  If you don’t know about Commission Blueprint then this won’t really matter to you (unless you’re looking to replace half of SpeedPPC without spending $500).

Anyway, here’s a quick video I made.  The video is about 6 minutes.  In real life I can do everything in the video in about 30 seconds.  Cool beans!

You can download my add-on to AdGrenade here.  It’s free.  The interface isn’t nearly as refined as most of my other freebies… but I only spent about an hour writing it.  I don’t suppose there’s much of a market for this… free or otherwise.  Enjoy!

Here’s the link to the video.  I wanted to show it live in the post… but I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t know how.  Yet!