I recently ran into a problem while running an affiliate marketing campaign. The problem was that since I was changing my ad copy so often, the same people would click my ads multiple times and land on the same landing page and would leave (because they had already been to it and left). This caused the amount of clicks from my landing page to the offer page to decline gradually because return visitors thought they were going to a new site when they actually weren’t (since my ad they clicked on was different).

A similar problem was people who did click through to the offer page and were back a second time. In this case they converted and won’t convert again, or did not convert because they didn’t like the offer. Either way I had to think of something else to do with these repeat visits.

Solution:

I thought about it and came up with a solution. I created a little cookie dropping script that tested two things: 1. did they already come to my landing page? 2. did they click through to the offer page? Here is the code:


<?php
if ( isset($_COOKIE['clicked'])) {

header(”Location: http://www.anothersimilaroffer.com”);
exit;
}

if ( isset($_COOKIE['landed']) && ($_COOKIE['landed'] <= time()-60*5) ) {
header("Location: http://www.adifferentlandingpage.com/");
exit;
}

$month = time()+60*60*24*30;
$value = time();
setcookie("landed",$value, $month);
?>


Put this code at the top of your landing page.

In addition, you will also have to set another cookie (shown below) called “clicked” when they click your outbound link to the offer page:


<?php
$month = time()+60*60*24*30;
$value = time();
setcookie("clicked",$value, $month);
?>


Basically, how it works is when a new user visits, it will set the “landed” cookie. If they leave after that nothing else happens. If they click the outbound link to the offer page, a cookie called “clicked” will be set.

When a repeat visitor comes back it will check to see if they went to the offer page first. If they did you can redirect them to another similar offer instead. If the repeat visitor landed but did not click through (left your site), you can redirect them to another landing page for the same offer, which may give a conversion. NOTE: it gives a user 5 minutes after leaving your site before the redirect will occur.

This will at least give you some control over people who click your ads multiple times and either don’t like your landing page or don’t like the offer you are selling.

A little while back I wrote a post about how I thought ePN was going to die and publishers needed to look elsewhere for their revenue. Since then, ePN has done a total 180 degree turn and has been doing better for me. Their backend is still solid so basically they fixed the only thing that I had a problem with: earnings.

My revenue continues to increase and I’m currently earning an average of $8 EPC (earnings per 100 clicks). This is pretty decent seeing how when I wrote the previous article my EPC was sitting at around $1.50. A ton of the biggest publishers are still banned from ePN for unknown reasons (eBay claims quality reasons but who knows) and I could be banned at any time. Because of this I am still trying to integrate ePN where I can but I’m not investing a large chunk of my time into it like I used to. I figure I’ll just spend any spare time I have into building more BANS sites and promoting them.

The reason I like ePN’s structure so much is because it takes minimal effort from me after setup. If I never put another minute of time into building and promoting sites, I would still get a nice chunk of change every month in my PayPal account without lifting a finger (assuming I don’t get banned). Has anyone else still had success with ePN? Post to the comments, I’d love to know. Unfortunately, ePN is not accepting US applications anymore, so accounts just became very valuable:).

I was just speaking with one of my readers and he mentioned that my comment relish plugin was emailing him every single time he left a comment.

Basically, the comment relish plugin emails people a “thank you” after they have left a comment. It is used to increase RSS readership because it includes links to my RSS feeds. Since it emails people every single time I can see how it would be annoying.

That being said, is it annoying enough for me to remove the plugin? Unfortunately there is no way to change the settings to make it email only new visitors, or only first comments, so it’s either on or off. What does everyone think? Leave it or kill it?

• Private Ad Sales - $250
• Reviews - $150
• Google Adsense - $149.49
• Kontera - $42.69
• TOTAL - $592.18

Although this was not one of my best months I still am very proud at where my blog has come. An extra $600 per month is nothing to laugh at, especially since I had virtually zero costs to run/advertise the blog. I didn’t do any advertising at all this month and server/maintenance costs are minimal.

I am hoping to get my blog’s revenue up to $1000/month within 6 months. I haven’t been good at posting consistently lately, which I need to change. One thing that is always true about websites is: content is king. The more content you have the more traffic you will receive.

Yesterday (Tuesday), I had nearly 1800 unique visitors to my site!!! Amazing. So far today I am already at about 1000 uniques (at 4pm). I started this blog about 2 years ago and it has come so far. From being impressed by 400 uniques in a day and averaging a few hundred, to 1800 in one day and averaging 1200 uniques. I will keep posting as long as everyone keeps reading:). I get comments on almost every post now, which is my favorite part of blogging.