Garden Week 4-1/2
May 8, 2008 // No Comments
OK, so I haven’t posted about the garden in a while. Things haven’t been too exciting, but they’re now beginning to get interesting.
Some of the plants were just massive, so I moved them outside. Then I kept going. So the pumpkins, zucchini, spinach, tomatoes, green peppers, and some lettuce are now outside. The spinach actually looks tasty, and I may steal a few leaves soon.
Oh, and Becca’s sunflowers are now 13″ tall - well on their way to their 12′ expected height!
This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
iFrame a Link & Still Track Conversions
May 3, 2008 // No Comments
@IamJustinM asked the other day
Is it even possible to track visitors and conversions when you have the landing page in an iframe??? Can’t figure it out….
I gave a quick answer, “at top of iframe page, write tracking data to db, then get unique id and use that as your sid w/ the network” but wanted to show it a bit more in detail. So I took 5 minutes I whipped up this quick script:
<?php
// http://yourdomain.com/iframe.php?cSource=google&q=my+keyword
mysql_connect(’server’, ‘username’, ‘password’);
mysql_select_db(‘databasename’);
$cTable = ‘iframetrack’;
/*
CREATE TABLE `iframetrack` (
`nID` INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
`cSource` VARCHAR( 20 ) NOT NULL ,
`cKeyword` VARCHAR( 200 ) NOT NULL ,
`cBrowser` VARCHAR( 200 ) NOT NULL ,
`nIP` VARCHAR( 16 ) NOT NULL ,
`tsDatetime` DATETIME NOT NULL
) ENGINE = MYISAM ;
*/
if (empty($_GET['q'])) {
list(, $cRefererQS) = explode(‘?’, $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], 2);
parse_str($cRefererQS, $_RefererGET);
$_GET['q'] = $_RefererGET['q'];
} // ends if (empty($_GET['q']))
$cQuery = “insert into $cTable (cSource, cKeyword, cBrowser, nIP, tsDatetime) values (’” . mysql_real_escape_string(stripslashes($_GET['cSource'])) . “‘, ‘” . mysql_real_escape_string(stripslashes($_GET['q'])) . “‘, ‘” . mysql_real_escape_string(stripslashes($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) . “‘, ‘” . mysql_real_escape_string(stripslashes($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'])) . “‘, now())”;
mysql_query($cQuery);
$nID = mysql_insert_id();
$cAffLink = ‘http://www.cpaclicks.com/redirect.asp?a=2429&b=27673&d=0&l=0&o=’ . $nID . ‘&p=0′;
?><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN”>
<html lang=”UTF-8″>
<head>
<title>Title</title>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Language” content=”UTF-8″ />
</head>
<body style=”padding:0px; margin:0px;”>
<iframe name=”mainsp” id=”mainsp” src=”<?= $cAffLink ?>” width=”100%” height=”100%” scrolling=”auto” frameborder=”0″>
<p><a href=”<?= $cAffLink ?>“>Click to continue.</a></p>
</iframe>
</body>
</html>
Now it’s probably not perfect, but it gives you a way to track this info. When you link to this iframe, set cSource to the source of the visitor (can be just the source, or source & ad number combined - whatever) and (optionally) set “q” to the keyword. If you omit this, it’ll look at “q” from the HTTP_REFERER, which is what most search engines use for the keyword field.
I’m not going to go into detail on how to change things - if you need help, just ask.
PS - Sorry about the funky quotes - WordPress is being “smart”. Find / replace to fix it.
This entry was posted by Eric on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Installing Zend Optimizer with IonCube Loader and Plesk
April 30, 2008 // No Comments
I had to install the Zend Optimizer on my server the other day; I have a Plesk dedicated server with GoDaddy, which uses IonCube (I think for Plesk itself). Anyway, I came across some problems which I imagine are pretty common, so here are the solutions.
Getting the IonCube error?
The Loader must appear as the first entry in the php.ini file in Unknown on line 0
I created a “zend.ini” file with the Zend lines from php.ini in there and placed it in /etc/php.d.
zend_extension_manager.optimizer=/usr/local/Zend/lib/Optimizer-3.3.0
zend_extension_manager.optimizer_ts=/usr/local/Zend/lib/Optimizer_TS-3.3.0
zend_optimizer.version=3.3.0a
zend_extension=/usr/local/Zend/lib/ZendExtensionManager.so
zend_extension_ts=/usr/local/Zend/lib/ZendExtensionManager_TS.so
That fixed this error. Then I had a new error, “Fatal error: Unable to read X bytes in file.php on line 0″, which I found the answer to here.
So upload the files in binary. Now I have Plesk + ionCube + Zend Optimizer all installed together 
This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 11:20 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Too Busy to Blog
April 29, 2008 // No Comments
I’ve been really busy lately, especially on the weekends. This past weekend was Jason’s 1st Holy Communion followed by a party at our house, followed by the Blue & Gold dinner w/ the Cub Scouts. I was so happy when that day was over!
Then on Sunday I decided to take a day to myself and work in the garden. 5-1/2 hours later I was done for the day. In that time, I dug 2 new beds, moved some retaining bricks, turned over the herb garden, harvested my compost from last year, and cleaned up the front lawn. I didn’t take any week 3 garden photos ’cause I thought the camera was broken - it’s dying, but still works. Won’t be long before it’s dead, though. Anyway, after the seeds exploded out of the ground, they seem to be slowing down now. I plan on moving the plants into the garden on Mother’s Day.
I’m in my final week of wingate testing at UB and I can’t wait to be done! Hopefully the report will be written up soon after and I can see if my time was worthwhile. Monday was a VO2 Max study, Wednesday (tomorrow) is a single wingate, and Friday is an endurance test. Then, Jason & I go camping for the weekend!
Anyway, back to work…
This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Lost’s “The Shape of Things to Come” Easter Eggs
April 25, 2008 // No Comments
I was just reading some of the Easter Eggs from last night’s Lost and I noticed a couple others that didn’t make this list.
First, when Alex turns off the fence, the code is 16 23. As in 4 8 15 16 23 42.
Second, Jack is taking some antibiotics for a “stomach bug“, which is a viral infection. Antibiotics fight bacterial infections, not viral. So either Jack lied about the stomach bug, or he’s hiding the truth. Or he’s a REALLY bad doctor.
This entry was posted by Eric on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 2:07 pm and is filed under LOST. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Pros & Cons of Promoting “As Seen On TV” Products
April 25, 2008 // 1 Comment
I’ve been pretty successful pushing “As Seen On TV” products (available via the As Seen On TV Network), and have learned quite a bit. I’ve come up with a few pros and cons to consider before starting a new campaign for a TV product.
Pros
- Free advertising - I don’t know about you, but I’m not running commercials to sell affiliate products that I promote. As Seen on TV products sell the user over the TV, but consumers still buy online.
- Pre-sale already done - the user typically has already been sold after watching the infomercial. Reiterate the points, but get them to the buying page ASAP.
- Online video - these offers replicate the infomercial online, but you’re not allowed to use their video on your website. First free tip: make an image that looks like a video player and link it via your affiliate link.
Cons
- Single provider - if the provider pulls the offer, there goes your source. It’s happened to me before. And again. And it’ll probably happen again.
- Shady sales process - I wanted to test tracking and see the order process for myself, so I ordered a product I was promoting. My confirmation said I had enrolled in an auto-renew service, but I never had the chance to opt-out of that. I had to call to cancel it.
- Bad tracking - Of the products I’ve seen, the user orders, and is then asked if they want product A, B, C, D, E… M, N, O, and P. If they give up before they get to the end, your tracking pixel isn’t shown and you don’t get credit for the sale, but the user is still charged and the order is processed. So even though you gave a valid lead, you don’t get credit for it.
- Typically flat rate commission - even though the user goes through an up-sell process, you don’t get a percentage of that. So don’t bother selling the additional pieces.
So if you’re just starting out, look at the As Seen On TV Network for some infomercial products to start promoting.
Here’s a bonus hint: brand bidding on Looksmart and Ask.com give terrific ROIs, but horrible volume. I think it’s worth taking a few minutes and throwing the product name in a quick adgroup. 410% ROIs are great
SUPER-DUPER BONUS HINT: Get a .tv domain name. Yeah, they cost more than your typical .com, but the user just saw the ad in TV, so it’s a perfect fit!
Final hint of the week: Don’t mention PPC when signing up for the As Seen On TV Network. Get your account, then tell them you want to do PPC.
This entry was posted by Eric on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 8:50 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
