Black Hat Dream I’d like to take the time to say thank you for choosing Black Hat Dream, I’ve done everything I can to make sure I comprise this book with pure information, it may be a lot to take in at times, especially if your new to all of this. If you’re not new, you may just want to skip to the methods section, if you are new to CPA, my advice is to read this book from beginning to end to fully understand how and why everything is laid out the way it is. Table of Contents What is CPA Why CPA Affiliate Networks Getting Accepted Faster Approval Dealing With the networks tips. Hosting Faking the referrer preliminary Faking the Referrer Domain Redirects Wordpress CPA-R Double Meta Refresh *Word Press Installation *Methods 1.Blog 2.Twitter 3. Traffic Exchanges 4. Proxies 5. Adverbux 6. Torrents 7. E-whore (4 twists) 8. Tv/Movie 9. Offline 10. E-whore spin 11. E-whore spin 12. Forums 13. Groups. 14. Freebie Forums. 15. Peoples emotions 16. Job Offer 17. GPT 18. Contest 19. Free 20. Video Sites 21. Yahoo Answers Craigslist Info Proxies Traffic Sources Rotating Ads, and Rotating Posts What is CPA? CPA stands for Cost Per Action. This is where networks have advertisers (companies with lots of money) that pay publishers (you) to get the word out about their product or service by having users complete a specific action. The actions can include but aren't limited to: -Filling out forms or surveys -Buying Products -Taking a trial offer -Gaining registrations (a.k.a. generating leads for companies' newsletters, opt-in lists, or so they can sell their product or service to the lead you send to them) Why CPA? CPA is the holy grail of money making when combined with black hat methods. There are publishers earning an extra $100 a week with CPA, and there are publishers earning as much as 50,000 a day with CPA. CPA is easy to understand, you have the advertisers, the Affiliate Networks, and the Publishers. -The Advertisers (remember has the money) and wants to promote their product or service So they go to an Affiliate Network with money in hand. They got a great deal; they don't pay for advertising until after the action they want is taken. When they make a sale or are given a lead, that's when they pay. -The Affiliate Network is the middleman; they connect the advertisers with the publishers. -The Publisher, (that's you) is the person that gets the word out anyway he/she can. On a website, with PPC (pay-per-click) With E-mail Lists, or through Social Media. -The Affiliate Networks. These networks will be writing your checks, so it's very important to know how to be hired by these networks, and how to cover your ass so your not banned by these networks. First though before you can get banned, you have to be hired. First off, here's a list of Affiliate Networks. I'd recommend joining 3-5 that you like, then later on we'll get to joining more and spreading our earnings, but for now, just pick a good 3-5 to go with. Affiliate Networks My personal top 5 favorites Marketleverage.com Maxbounty.com Hydranetwork.com Neverblue.com CJ.com Here's some more adfish adreporting adteractive advaliant advantagecpa affiliate3 affiliate cop affiliateer affiliatewindow ampedmedia bulletads checkmystatus clickbooth clickxchange commissionsoup convert2media copeac cpaempire cpajunction cpalead cpastorm cxdigital/incentaclick darkblue directleads eadvertising epicenter network filinet fineclicks floppybank fluxads hydramedia leadclicks leadermarkets linkconnection linkmo linkshare markethealth mediaplanner milinicmedia modemclicks offerati offersquest paidonresults payloadz pepperjam network performics revenueallies revenuegateway revenuehill rocketprofit Roirocket searchcactus shareresults turn2offers We have some questions we have to tackle not only as we're signing up to these networks, but we're also going to be getting a phone call from these networks themselves. So let's look at what we need to know. Getting Accepted When signing up you may be asked if you have a website or a blog, Sign up with your blog or websites url. If you don't have a site or blog, simply go to Google, and find a website or blog that looks like the average person could have made it, and use that as your url. Use some common sense, don't post the url to a woman's blog if your a man, and vice versa. What method of Traffic your using. PPC or pay per click. Always say pay per click, even though we won’t be using it really, we want the networks to think that it’s our source of traffic. *General Information: your name, address, your phone number, E- mail, ETC. *Tax ID or your SSN *Do you use incentivize traffic? No After you’ve filled out the forms, you’ll have to check your email and confirm your email address Getting the Call Ok, so you've signed up to some networks, your going to receive a call within' 1-2 business days, here's what they're going to ask you. Q: How long have you been marketing? A: For a year to a year and a half Q: What offers "verticals" do you promote? A: Any offer that's converting. Health, Dating, Games, zip submits, E-mail submits. Q: What are your methods of promotion/advertising? A: I build blogs and use PPC to target keywords and advertise Q: How much do you spend on advertising? A: $50-100 a day Q: How many visitors do you get in a given month? A: Anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 a month. Q: What other networks are you with? A: Just tell them a few from the list above. Q: How did you hear about us? A: I was searching for different cpa networks on google and found your company, went to the site, you guys looked good, so I wanted to join Faster Acceptance Right After you apply, call the network up (there's always a phone number somewhere on the site, or in your confirmation E- mail). Say hi, tell them your name, and that you just signed up with them, and that you'd like to request approval while you’re on the phone with them. They'll be happy you took the step to calling them and go into asking you the questions right then and there. (This really shows the company your interest in them, making money for yourself and them, and that you take action, they'll respect you for it). If it's past 5:00pm, you want to get in, but it's too late to call, and you haven't heard from them, or maybe you just don't want to talk to them, and you'd feel more comfortable IMing them, head on over to http://www.affaimlist.com It's a huge list of more Networks and the Affiliate Managers Aim (aol instant messenger) screen names for each network. (If you don't have aim, go download it to keep in contact with your Affiliate Managers) Tips For Dealing with the networks Memorize the questions and answers from the phone sign up process so you sound like you know what you’re talking about. Don’t be nervous when dealing with these companies, there’s no need to, know what your going to say as each question is asked, and answer it. If you find yourself nervous, go for a jog, or some a cigarette, however you calm yourself. Then make the call. *Signup to the sites on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. For starters you’re not going to have to wait for the start of the week to come back around. Always be friendly with your AM (Affiliate Manager) whether on the phone or messaging them on AIM. They'll help you out, and they'll have your back if your leads are ever in question. I'm going to say right now that it's important and crucial to have a relationship with your AM, talk with them, and ask them how they're doing. Tell them you want to run an ad but you’re not positive which one to go with, and they'll help you find one. They'll also cover your ass if the advertisers ever get on you. They'll find it harder to drop you or ban from their network if they like you. Congratulations, you’re in!! Once your in a network, look around within’ and familiarize yourself with the sites navigation, and then with it’s ads. Read a few ads, and pick one you like with a method you like. Most of the methods your going to learn are going to require you to build a blog, or put up landing pages with domain names and hosting. You can pick up a .com or .net for $10 a year .Info for .99 cents a year You can pick up hosting at www.hostgator.com or www.bluehost.com The advantage of a .com or .net is it will rank higher in search engines for a keyword you want to target, for example, you want the landing page www.AutoInsuranceIsYourFriend.com you an rank higher for any of the words within’ the URL. A .com also is also easier to remember for your visitors. For a Free Domain name with Free Hosting Visit www.000webhost.com This gives you a longer domain name .co.cc at the end. The hosting is almost just as good as actual hosting, but it limits your bandwidth, emails you can send, and # of sites you can host. When getting a domain name be sure of what kind of offer you wish to promote first so you can name it accordingly. Faking The Referrer preliminary We're going to cover 3 different ways of faking a referrer, all work, and I'll explain my favorite method and why, but first let's cover what faking the referrer is and why we need to. By now you know we're going to be generating leads, but here’s the thing, we're not always going to be finding legit leads, but we're still going to get paid all the same. (This is where it gets juicy and where we start bending the rules) Why aren't we going to send legit leads? It’s simply easier to bribe or offer an incentive to someone than to really try and find someone actually interested in what your ad is. These Affiliate Networks know it’s easier, so they track where your traffic comes from to make sure your playing by the rules. The networks track it by what’s known as a browser referrer. If we can fake the referrer, and make it appear as if our traffic is coming from our landing pages or blogs. Then we’re in business. We’re going to use an example dish satellite lead to explain faking a referrer in the next chapter. Ad - $8.00 lead for every lead you can find and have them put their email address in. Help your audience sit back and enjoy Dish TV! Just a first page lead form for them to get started with Dish Network HD and you get an $8 CPA! Faking The Referrer Methods - Domain Redirects We can fake a referrer by using a Domain redirect, but I don’t think it’s the safest method. Here it is however. This first way is a domain redirect For example our domain name is www.dishtv.co.cc so when people go to it, it redirects to the offer, showing the networks the visitor came from your website. Another safer way is to get 2 domain names. - One domain name that has your landing page with your affiliate ad banner, or has your blog with posts and your ad banner. www.dishtv.co.cc - 2nd domain name that will redirect to the first domain name EX. www.getfreedishtv.co.cc redirects to > www.dishtv.co.cc > redirects to your CPA offer. Or better yet, just have them click on a dish satellite picture and have that link to the offer. If you’d also like, you can use tinyurl.com as a redirect method, but you can’t name your link what you want to. I think the 2-domain name redirects are safer then the one. The faking a referrer method you just learned deals mostly with landing pages, this next method of faking is going to deal solely with wordpress blogs, if your not familiar with word press, please visit that section now. 2nd Method for Faking The Referrer - CPA-R For this next method your going to need a word press plug-in known as the CPA Redirector, for typing purposes I'll be referring to it as the CPA-R The CPA-R is awesome, it's my favorite method for faking the referrer, I'm an avid wordpress user, I think it's by far the best way to blog since it ranks high in the search engines, especially Google, It's customizable with tons of templates, it looks very clean, and I don't have to know a lot about building a landing page. Also another advantage of this plug-in is it’s 100% reliable for faking the referrer, and building landing pages, instead your building 5-10 post blogs, which I think is a hell of a lot easier. You can download the CPA-R over at http://www.contentgeneration.org/how-to-fake-a-browser-referrer- for-blackhat-cpa/ Or by clicking here to download it directly here>>> http://www.contentgeneration.org/cparedirector.zip Download it, and upload the .php script to the Word Press plug-in Folder. Activate the plug-in in Word Press. You’re going to need a .php writer, so you can alter some code. I’d recommend using cute.pdf Which can be found here www.cutepdf.com or Download directly by clicking here>>> http://www.cutepdf.com/download/CuteWriter.exe I’m not going to explain in detail how to install the CPA-R to Word Press, and how to activate and use the plug-in; all this is explained on www.contentgeneration.com Be sure to read here. http://www.contentgeneration.org/how-to-fake-a-browser-referrer- for-blackhat-cpa/ Instead, I’m going to go over some main points that I feel are important. In the .php header you need to add a line of code, the code is as follows <?php if (prc_red()) exit(); ?> This needs to be the first line of code Make sure you change your permalinks in wordpress control panel. Your permalinks is your link structure of how your pages get categorized. Change it to custom and put in /%postname%/ Note, if your permalinks won't change to /%postname%/ then try using the numerical permalink setting. When dealing with the CPA-R MN (magic number) Always be sure the number you choose is the number used in the link, they have to match. And that you’ve added /?mn=1234 to your links So your link should look something like dishtv.co.cc/dishpost/?mn=xxxx When someone puts in that link with the mn code, it’ll redirect to your offer without sending along the /?mn string query, so the networks can’t follow where the visitor comes from, as it looks like it comes from a blog post of yours. Another point is to make sure your Affiliate Link column has the http:// extension in front of your affiliate link, or it won't work. Once you’re sure everything is set, test the link and have it redirect first to Google or Yahoo, if it does then go ahead and put in your affiliate link. Give it another test, if it redirects to your offer now. Then now you’re in business, it not, be sure to double-check everything. This can be tricky at first. Make some posts on your new wordpress blog about the ad your going to promote. Write 5-10 posts, or just find 5-10 posts somewhere on the net pertaining to the subject, and somewhere on the blog put your disk network banner, and that’s pretty much it, your ready to rock and roll and start earning big. Cover your /?mn=xxxx redirecting link by either using a domain redirect, or tinyurl will do the same Another site like tinyurl is budurl. It shortens the name of your url for you, but it also tracks traffic for you. Blanking the Referrer I wasn’t going to include this last method as I don’t use it, but some of you may like it. It’s a .php script that’s known as a DMR, or Double Meta Refresh, and it will blank out the referrer. This means the networks won’t be able to tell where your traffic is coming from. Networks don’t like not knowing where your traffic is coming from, but if you choose this method, and they ask you about it, you could simply tell the network you don’t want your landing page stolen so you blank the referrer on purpose. The software will make 3 files in your selected folder: 1. index.php (I named this index.php so you only have to send traffic to the folder name) 2. links.txt (contains all your affiliate links. You can change this any time you want. Make sure you have no trailing "/" at the end of you affiliate URLs) 3. second.php (this checks to make sure that the referrer is blank. If not, it will send traffic to the site you specify. If the referrer is blank, it will go to your affiliate link. This script basically refreshes a visitor’s browser twice, and then sends them to the affiliate link, or if it’s not blanking the referrer, send them where you want them to go (google.com works) You can download the DMR here>>> http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jgmmwnrt1qx If you wanted, you could try sending un-blanked traffic back to where they were for the offer, or out to a domain redirect that redirects back to the index.php so it will keep trying to blank the referrer and go to the offer. Word Press Installation This section is for people that don’t know what Word Press is or how to install it. Wordpress ranks awesome in Google for your posts, Google just overall love blogs, it’s fresh content with ongoing conversations between users about topics they’re interested in. You can download wordpress from www.wordpress.org save it to your desktop. You’re going to need an FTP client, which stands for File Transfer Protocol. This is just a way of uploading your wordpress files to your hosting provider. I recommend using FileZilla. And can be downloaded here at www.filezilla-project.org You can learn about installing wordpress here http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress You can familiarize yourself with fantastico a little later on for faster installations. www.000webhost.com does offer fantastico installation for wordpress. Lowering Conversions When you've stared making money from these methods, you may notice your conversions are too high (depending on your method) this is a problem but trust me, it's a good problem to have and can be remedied. In your affiliate back office you'll notice when you run an offer that you'll have Impressions - Clicks - Leads - CTR (click thru ratio) - S/U% - Number of sales - EPC - Total -Impressions is how many times your ad banner is viewed -Clicks is how many Clicks were made on the banner -Leads is how many people have completed the desired action -Click thru ratio is how many people clicked on your ad vs. how many people have viewed it. (leads divided by clicks) -S/U% is your sign up percentage (leads divided by clicks) -Number of sales is how many people went on to buy something after completing the ad. -EPC is your earnings per click (total cash you've made divided by your clicks) We have to keep our EPC, S/U%, and our CTR low. We do this by raising our clicks and impressions. Imagine if we had 100 people sent to an offer, and 100 of them completed the offer. 100% of them will have converted. The Advertiser and the Network both are going to know your incentivizing the offer somehow, and this is immediate ground for getting banned from ANY network. (and that's no fun) Before we can fix this, we need to know what good numbers are. A good place to keep our CTR is at 1-20% A good place to keep our S/U% is 1-15% And our EPC should be good right around .30 In a perfect world we could hit these numbers, but you'll never be able to keep everything in check. Focus mostly on keeping your S/U% in check. To lower our CTR we need to raise our impressions. *Note* when using CPA-R the impression doesn't count because the pixel in the banner doesn't get a chance to fire since the redirect happens so fast) If your not already using Fire Fox, go to www.mozilla.com and download what is going to be your new browser (it's a lot better of a browser than IE, trust me) damn IE always freezes on me Anyway, your going to download a fire fox plug in, go to www.mozilla.com and search for the plug-in by typing in "reload every". You'll find it, install that plug-in for your browser. Then go to your page where your ad is, and set it to refresh every 2 seconds, and you'll be able to effectively raise your impressions in a matter of minutes. To lower our S/U% we'll need to get more clicks, to do this I've dedicated a section of this E-book to junk traffic. (Keep in mind this is only needed if your numbers are any higher than where they should be). Next chapter we’ll discuss where to get junk traffic to lower conversions. Please note this traffic can also be good for actual traffic, but it’s mostly untargeted traffic, and that’s why we can use it to lower conversions.