Based on a lot of forum posts I read and emails I receive, it seems clear to me that many people aren’t really clear on what cloaking is all about or why it’s important.  Is it “black hat” or not?  Will it get you banned, fined, or imprisoned for life?  What’s all the fuss anyway??

Here’s the deal.  Cloaking basically means to show one party one thing, and another party another thing.  In this case, it means showing a search engine (i.e. Google) one thing when they visit your page, and real visitors (i.e. visitors from a SERP result or PPC ad) something else.

The basic idea should be pretty obvious… you want Google to see non-commercial, highly informative, relevant content.  You want your human visitor to see a totally commercial, single-purpose page that gets them to take an action that you desire (optin, click through, buy, etc.)  But how do you know the difference between Google or a normal visitor?  That’s the tricky part!

Fortunately this basic problem has a variety of solutions and there are tons of tools to tackle them all.  Here’s a very basic non-exhaustive rundown on the methods I’ve had experience with:

IP Cloaking - If you know the IP addresses of Google’s bots, human reviewers, offices, etc. then you can detect the IP of the incoming visitor, and if it’s a Oogle IP show them one thing, or if it’s not a Google IP you show something else.  This is typically thought of as the most definite and reliable form of cloaking.  Unfortunately the truth is, Google isn’t stupid.  They have work-from-home reviewers who are not on “Google IPs” and will look just like normal internet traffic.  They also know that people do this and can go through proxies or other “non-Google IPs” in order to see through your cloak.  Still, IP Cloaking is a good method as long as you have a way to keep up on the IPs… as they change over time.  There are loads of services that will give you this data for a monthly fee.

User Agent Cloaking - Usually considered the weakest form of cloaking, this involves looking at the “User Agent” of the incoming visitor.  The User Agent (UA) is a particular identifier that is actually created by the browser the person is using.  Most “well behaved” bots on the internet will have a UA string that identifies them as a bot (Slurp, Googlebot, etc.) so that your logs are easy to understand.  However there are lots of reasons why a UA string might fail to show up due to browser issues (deliberate or accidental on the part of the surfer) and also UAs are extremely easy to fake.  Still, I see it as one additional check that’s worth considering… if something identifies itself as Google, I’d want to cloak it even if there’s a small chance that it’s not really Google.

Javascript Cloaking - This approach relies on one very critical assumption - that your real visitors all have javascript enabled.  Typically these days that’s going to be just about everyone as JS has become such an accepted part of the fabric of the web.  The idea is that bots can’t load javascript, so they’ll just see the source code of your page (which should be all nice informative content) but human visitors’ browsers will execute the javascript, which shows them a totally different web page - sortof like an iframe.  This would be your offer or affiliate page, and hopefully they do whatever you want them to do in order to get paid.  The real fact is that search engines absolutely CAN execute javascript (I’ve tested it) but they typically DON’T as long as there’s something else on the page for them to look at.  They go the path of least resistance.

Cloaking is pretty much universally against all search engines’ terms of service.  Does that stop most people from doing it?  Nope, not one bit.

Personally I don’t do a ton of cloaking anymore, mostly because I haven’t needed to.  Years ago I did lots of web spamming and was using an IP based cloaker.  The most recent cloaking solution I’ve used personally was a Javascript based solution that is actually a plugin for LPGen called Adwords Smackdown.  Aaron Young is an LPGen user and mastermind of the Smackdown cloaking solution.

Most recently he’s developed a much more sophisticated version of Smackdown for WordPress.  Looks like it would be great for anyone who has blog farms or otherwise uses blogs as feeders, etc.  Why let those just sit there and do nothing but funnel link juice… make them deliver offers to your human traffic too!  Otherwise it’s just wasted traffic…

Aaron has offered my readers & customers a deal on the WP Smackdown software.  It’s a pretty huge discount - $200 instead of $750 for the unlimited install version.  To get it, just use this coupon code - lpgen$mack200 - at checkout.

So if you build any quantity of WP blogs - ESPECIALLY if you have blog farms or other numbers of feeder blogs out there just sitting there with a bunch of WP Direct or Caffeinated Content content on them… you really should consider a good cloaking solution, and I suggest giving Smackdown for Wordpress a close look.

Happy cloaking!

Jonathan

So I’ve had a lot of people ask me about my experience with PPV Optimizer.  If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a desktop Windows application that promises to save you money on your TrafficVance campaigns, by maintaining your bid position for as little cost as possible.

Sounds pretty good right?  Well I sure thought so and I bought it immediately upon hearing about it, despite there being no trial version at all and no reviews or information about it anywhere.

First, it was a couple days before I got my software.  They have you send the money to a paypal address, and then MANUALLY send you your license information & download link whenever they get around to you.  This should’ve been sign enough that there would be issues ahead.

Once I got the software and installed it, I discovered that there is no documentation on how to use it at all.  Literally NONE.  No manual, no online help, no videos, nothing.  Granted it’s a pretty spartan program that isn’t terribly hard to figure out, but still… software should include instructions folks.  That’s just basic as hell.  It includes a brief readme file that tells you to set up a couple of specific things in your TrafficVance account, but that’s all.

Overlooking that, I got into their user forum… it was a pretty quiet place with only a few posts to be found, many of which had to do with issues getting the software to work as advertised.  Another sign of bumps ahead.

Finally I began running the software to see what it would do… problem was, it didn’t do anything.  I could see it downloading all my campaign data, and it claimed it was optimizing things, but in reality nothing was happening.  No bids were changed, and the software literally didn’t do a damn thing beyond download my campaign information.

I posted in the forum, and spent days screwing around with it to make sure I hadn’t made some sort of weird error on my end.  I also sent emails to the creators and after a few days, finally got in touch with one of them.  He seemed to not believe me that it didn’t work, falling back on the old “well nobody else is having this problem” line.  I assured him I had done everything he asked me to do re setting up TV, etc.  He still insisted it was probably user error… and I even accepted that maybe it could be, but I asked for more technical help to determine it one way or the other.  I was told that they normally charge if it turns out to be user error, but that they would “waive considering the potential biz relationship we will have once this app is finally working on your end”.

Flash forward 4 days later… I finally get to talk to “the programmer”.  Normally I would think this is GREAT because I’m dealing with the source… the guy who actually coded the thing and there can’t be anyone more knowledgeable than that.  Right?

Well it turned out that he had never used TrafficVance and didn’t even know how they worked.  No joke.  This is the person who wrote the code to interface in some very intricate ways with TrafficVance… and he’s never seen their interface??  WTF?!

So we did some screen-sharing sessions and he looked at all sorts of things on my system and after several hours of this, determined that - surprise surprise! - there was actually a bug in the program and it was NOT user error.  He rolled a new build for me to fix the issue, and PPV Optimizer started working.

Sortof.

Almost.

Not exactly.

It got most but not all of my bids… it would just randomly fail to update certain ones.

Then it would spontaneously quit.  No errors.  No messages.  Just… gone.

Can you imagine the potential devastation to your campaigns if you were relying on this thing to manage them bidding for you and it suddenly quit??

I messed with it for the next 2 days and ultimately decided that it just wasn’t stable enough for real world use.  It worked sometimes… but that won’t cut it for a tool of this nature that requires 100% uptime and a zero failure rate.

Plus frankly, it’s just not that complicated of an application.  It doesn’t do anywhere near what I initially expected… it does NOT bid to CPA targets, it knows nothing of a conversion value, has no logic controls for settings up rules, etc.  It ONLY adjusts your bids as low as it can, to hit a desired ranking for a given target, without spending more than a given amount.  At least, it’s supposed to.  The fact that it is as relatively simple as it is and still so unstable, doesn’t give me the confidence I need to use it in my business.

Now pay attention because here’s where things start to get really lame.

After finally having 2 days with the application “working” (such as it did) and a total of almost 4 weeks after my purchase, I decided that I would request a refund.  I’m not a huge refunder, and if this had been a $79 product I probably wouldn’t have bothered in case it was improved upon in the future.  But this thing is $500, and that’s a nice chunk of change I could be doing a lot more productive things with.

So I requested a refund via Skype, and this is how it went:

[11/3/2009 6:56:39 PM] Jonathan van Clute: howdy
[11/3/2009 6:57:51 PM] Jonathan van Clute: Well, the developer did finally get PPVO to work, but it’s still somewhat unstable and not quite “there” yet in my opinion.
[11/3/2009 6:58:00 PM] Jonathan van Clute: Though it saddens me to do it, I’m going to have to request a refund at this time.  I’ll keep tabs on the development though and possibly give it a try down the road when it’s got a bit more maturity to it.

[11/4/2009 11:41:07 AM] PPV Optimizer: i’m sorry but we don’t refund
[11/4/2009 11:41:16 AM] PPV Optimizer: espeially after 1on1 sessions have fixed the app
[11/4/2009 11:41:32 AM] PPV Optimizer: we can do what we can to get the app working 100% for you
[11/4/2009 11:42:05 AM] Jonathan van Clute: what?  It’s not stable… the product doesn’t work as promised, even after your coder identified a genuine issue with the app (you’re welcome for my expertise btw… maybe I should send in a bill for the help!)
[11/4/2009 11:42:16 AM] Jonathan van Clute: I was not able to properly evaluate the program until it worked
[11/4/2009 11:42:20 AM] Jonathan van Clute: which took weeks
[11/4/2009 11:42:22 AM] Jonathan van Clute: not my fault at all
[11/4/2009 11:42:40 AM] Jonathan van Clute: now that I’ve been able to actually evaluate it, I can see that it’s not stable enough for me to rely on in my business
[11/4/2009 11:43:15 AM] Jonathan van Clute: How is that anything other than a standard customer evaluating your product.  Since there’s no trial version, there is no other way for anyone to know if it works at all or is pure vaporware
[11/4/2009 11:43:31 AM] Jonathan van Clute: I’ve got a ton of people asking me about “does this work” and so far I’ve just said “hold on… I’ll tell you soon”
[11/4/2009 11:43:45 AM] Jonathan van Clute: What would you like me to tell them?
[11/4/2009 11:43:54 AM] PPV Optimizer: the application works, i have several people using it including myself that has it working no porblems
[11/4/2009 11:44:18 AM] Jonathan van Clute: welcome to software development.  Just because it works for you and a few others, doesn’t mean “it works” period.
[11/4/2009 11:44:30 AM] Jonathan van Clute: Your own developer acknowledged that there WAS a problem with the app
[11/4/2009 11:44:33 AM] Jonathan van Clute: it was nothing on my end
[11/4/2009 11:44:38 AM] PPV Optimizer: we don’t give trials because of how exclusive we are making this application
[11/4/2009 11:44:39 AM] Jonathan van Clute: it required him to roll me a custom build
[11/4/2009 11:44:49 AM] PPV Optimizer: the program is only supposed to be handed out to a few people
[11/4/2009 11:44:51 AM] Jonathan van Clute: then you should honor a reasonable refund period
[11/4/2009 11:44:55 AM] Jonathan van Clute: like anyone else
[11/4/2009 11:46:17 AM] PPV Optimizer: well like you said when we you first bought the app that was weeks ago
[11/4/2009 11:46:21 AM] Jonathan van Clute: look I’m not going to argue with you.  Either honor my very reasonable refund request, or don’t/
[11/4/2009 11:46:25 AM] Jonathan van Clute: right
[11/4/2009 11:46:27 AM] Jonathan van Clute: and it NEVER WORKED
[11/4/2009 11:46:28 AM] Jonathan van Clute: not at all
[11/4/2009 11:46:33 AM] Jonathan van Clute: until the other night
[11/4/2009 11:46:39 AM] Jonathan van Clute: and I kept asking for help
[11/4/2009 11:46:40 AM] PPV Optimizer: and I had my programmer step in and fix the issue for you
[11/4/2009 11:46:40 AM] Jonathan van Clute: repeatedly
[11/4/2009 11:46:47 AM] Jonathan van Clute: yes and now I’ve seen other issues
[11/4/2009 11:46:49 AM] Jonathan van Clute: the app is not stable
[11/4/2009 11:46:52 AM] PPV Optimizer: what else is wrong with the program?
[11/4/2009 11:46:53 AM] Jonathan van Clute: he even acknowledged that he knows that
[11/4/2009 11:47:01 AM] Jonathan van Clute: xIt randomly shuts down
[11/4/2009 11:47:04 AM] Jonathan van Clute: no reason
[11/4/2009 11:47:06 AM] Jonathan van Clute: no error
[11/4/2009 11:47:08 AM] Jonathan van Clute: just disappears
[11/4/2009 11:47:12 AM] Jonathan van Clute: it also misses bids
[11/4/2009 11:47:19 AM] Jonathan van Clute: the dev knows these are issues
[11/4/2009 11:47:27 AM] Jonathan van Clute: but for now they are issues I’m not willing to put up with
[11/4/2009 11:47:38 AM] Jonathan van Clute: if I’m relying on this thing to run my campaigns, it can’t just quit
[11/4/2009 11:47:39 AM] Jonathan van Clute: ever
[11/4/2009 11:48:19 AM] PPV Optimizer: well if thats the case I ill issue a refund then
[11/4/2009 11:48:26 AM] Jonathan van Clute: yes that’s what I was saying originally
[11/4/2009 11:48:27 AM] Jonathan van Clute: thank you
[11/4/2009 11:48:42 AM] Jonathan van Clute: it’s not stable enough to use in production right now in my opinion
[11/4/2009 11:48:42 AM] PPV Optimizer: but if spots fill up and you ask for the application again theres nothing i can do, you understand ?
[11/4/2009 11:48:44 AM] Jonathan van Clute: maybe later it will be
[11/4/2009 11:48:46 AM] Jonathan van Clute: but not yet
[11/4/2009 11:48:50 AM] Jonathan van Clute: I’d call it a working beta
[11/4/2009 11:48:54 AM] Jonathan van Clute: yes I understand

It took some arm twisting, but they eventually agreed to give me the refund after all.  That was November 4.  It’s now November 18 and despite repeated reminders in Skype and Email, they are ignoring me and NOT issuing the refund as promised.

So the bottom line here is… PPV Optimizer doesn’t work reliably, has no documentation, was written by someone who has no idea how to actually use TV or what we do as traffic brokers, and they won’t give you a refund if you’re not satisfied with it.

I’d call that a huge mega thumbs down if ever there was one.

If you take a roll of the dice with PPV Optimizer, be prepared to lose.

Jonathan

Not exactly the sort of article I envisioned for my maiden appearance… not like I made the Forbes billionaire list or anything. 

 http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1019/l…

Funny…

Jonathan

So I decided to clean out my “blogs” bookmark folder, as it was absolutely LOADED with old junk from many years ago that doesn’t even exist anymore.  As well as many things which do exist but hold no appeal to me now, and still others that both exist AND are interesting reading.

One that I visited (having no recollection of what it was) had a latest post that I resonate with more than words can say.  If you know me, then you know where I’m coming from here.  Check it out for yourself and then let me know what you think.  Do you test before asking open ended questions?  Do you regularly invest in data?

Jonathan

I posted this in the PPVFormula forum but I think it’svaluable on its own and might help some people so…. here it is on my blog.

–
First - what does the word “query” mean?

It means “question”, right?

So literally, the query string is a “question string” and therefore must start with - you guessed it, a QUESTION mark!

So a query string MUST always start with ? like this:

www.domain.com/something.php?subid=whatever

Now, if you were asking someone two or more questions at the same time, how would you do so?

You might say something like…

“What’s black and blue and read all over?”

Which could also be phrased as:

“What’s black & blue & red all over?”

See the “and” symbols - aka “ampersands”? They LITERALLY mean “and”! So your “question string” must start with a question mark, and then use & symbols for the additional bits you want to ask about. Such as…

www.domain.com/something.php?subid=whatever&sub2=something-else&sub3=whatever3

You are literally saying:

“subid is whatever and sub2 is something-else and sub3 is whatever3″.

It’s pretty much plain english, slightly abbreviated.

Just remember that it always STARTS with the question mark… much like Spanish does for example (Spanish starts AND ends with a question mark however…) A query string can NOT start with an ampersand, as no “query” has happened yet. So this is NOT valid:

www.domain.com/something.php&subid=whatever

Now for the technical amongst us, the subid itself is actually called a “key” and what you put IN the subid is known as a “value”, so you may have seen these referred to as “key/value pairs”.

Also for the technical/coders in the group, all query string subids are always stored in the $_GET array in PHP, for you to do whatever you want with.

I don’t want to lose anyone so I’ll stop here. Hopefully the above helps you to remember how to format a URL query string easily any time you need to do so. 

Jonathan

If you haven’t seen this yet, just go listen to Matt talk now.

The guy not only just plain tells everything like it is, he gives out his cell phone number for people to call if they have questions.

Maybe he got a special phone just for this that he can choose to ignore much of the time… I dunno how he isn’t just on the phone all day long now!!

Matt is so singing my tune… it frustrates me to no end to hear smart, creative, capable people get hung up on their internet marketing business because of a fear of or lack of knowledge about technology.

He is DEAD ON about most people having no idea what can actually be done.

People always tell me how “you can’t do xyz” or “abc doesn’t work” and most of the time it’s not based on them actually knowing what they’re talking about… they read in a forum or a book or heard from a friend or whatever.

Believe me… the general public in internet marketing has NO IDEA what the actual limits or boundaries are.

Matt is a guy who knows the limits, and also knows in most cases how to exceed them.

Damn I respect this dude.

Jonathan

Today is a special day!  I got a note from fellow marketer and all-around good guy Matt Harward that his 40th birthday is this week!

If you don’t know Matt, you can find out about him on his blog at www.MattHarward.com and if you DO know Matt, then odds are you already pay attention to him on those rare occasions when he pops his head up out of his “cave”. 

Matt is one of those serious “underground genius” marketers.  I don’t say that lightly either… the guy operates on a different plane of existence from anyone else I’ve ever known in the online marketing world.  No joke… he has an exceedingly rare combination of extreme business smarts (how many of us have built and sold a software company for millions of dollars?  Not me!), extraordinary communication skills (how many of us have had our own radio show?  And I’m not talking on UStream either!), and technical ability (when I need “the impossible” coded, Matt is the first guy I go to… and he usually solves whatever it is within 48 hours).

So in honor of his first and only 40th birthday, he’s giving US a present!  If you’ve followed him at all you know that Matt makes absolutely freaking amazing tools and tends to just GIVE them away (sometimes I think he’s nuts but hey…  )

This week is no exception, and he’s giving away a killer private PPC tool and the information on what to do with it.

Go check it out as I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.  Matt is one of the few people that I can automatically endorse no matter what he’s doing, because I know he’s got amazing integrity and only puts out the best tools possible.

Matt is someone you absolutely want to pay attention to… you won’t hear from him a whole lot, but just consider him the “E.F. Hutton” of internet marketing.  When he speaks, people listen!

 http://www.tooltrainer.com/imwarfare

Happy Birthday Matt!!!!!!

Jonathan

I’m so scattered that I almost forgot about this!

I’ll be on tonight’s training webinar with Gauher for PPVFormula2.  The signup link was sent out by Gauher just a couple hours ago so check your email, and I hope to see you there!

Jonathan

UPDATE!  Save $46 when you buy UBot by using the coupon code “tooltrainer” (without the quotes, of course!)

In case you haven’t already heard recently, UBot is the new kid on the block for creating your own “bots” aka automation scripts to do… just about anything you want.

Here’s a video of my first attempt at a bot.  Check it out and if it “clicks” for you, buy UBot and get to work immediately.

PPCF2 will in fact be closing its doors at midnight EST tonight, Tuesday November 3rd.

That means there’s about 9 hours left as of this writing if you are thinking that PPC and CPA marketing might be for you, and to get the bonuses I’m offering:

www.tooltrainer.com/kwbot-reveal/

And don’t forget that the upsell is the one-and-only PPVFormula2.

You’re going to start seeing a whole lot of PPV courses come out in the next few months, but I still say there’s nothing as thorough as PPVFormula, and certainly nothing with the community of the PPVF forum.

There’s also nothing like the bonus I’m offering for PPVF buyers either.  See for yourself:

http://tooltrainer.com/tools/blog/my-ppvformula-payperview-formula-bonus/

Gauher’s focus is on CPA marketing, which is not for everyone.  Of course the techniques he teaches can be adapted to just about anything, but his personal focus is on CPA because that’s what he does to earn his living (I know this for a fact as I’ve sat with him in his home while he works on his campaigns & does his stats.  He’s the real deal 100%).

But if you’re not sure if CPA marketing is appropriate for you, the best thing to do is try it and see.  You’ve got 30 days to check out all the material.  But if you already know you won’t have time to get to it, or you know you won’t follow through, or this is just the next “shiny object” for you, then please save yourself the time & hassle and don’t bother.

Gauher’s materials work for those who make the time to make them work.

To all new members, welcome aboard!

Jonathan