Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

Looking back on 2011 i’ve decided that 3 services that you may or may not have ever heard of deserve recognition. I consider all 3 of these solid companies who’s service & offerings I am impressed by.

#3 WYSIWYG Web Builder

WYSIWYG Web Builder is the SICKEST website editor/designer you will ever use. DreamWeaver is nice but it’s nowhere near as easy and quick to use as WYSIWYG Web Builder. WYSIWYG Web Builder is the fist website builder i’ve ever seen where when you place something somewhere, everything correctly lines up in the browser without using an ounce of code. I know how to code HTML/CSS but for landing pages and things that need a lot of changes/testing done to them, I can’t imagine a quicker or more efficient way then using WYSIWYG Web Builder. They have a free trial and once you try this you will buy it. I can almost guarantee it.

#2 SolarVPS

SolarVPS is just what it sounds like, a hosting company. After I had some issues with StormOnDemand, I decided to consult a friend of mine about where would be best to host some SEO sites I had that were sucking up a decent amount of bandwidth. I was introduced to SolarVPS by this friend and I now personally know the owners of the company at this point and believe that they are SERIOUS about hosting. No, SolarVPS is not cloud hosting but what they are is a serious VPS provider who’s VPS’s perform better then cloud offerings (in my opinion at least).

I initially purchased a VPS for 1 set of my sites. I’ve been very happy with that VPS and it’s performance. Since then SolarVPS has given me a couple of other free VPS’s to try out their other datacenters and every datacenter has been solid as a rock. I’ve also been bringing clients over to SolarVPS for their hosting needs. They currently have datacenters in Clifton, NJ, Los Angeles, CA & Dallas, TX.

I know that pricing is everything and these guys have their act together on pricing. Check out what you get for $50/month

SolarVPS’s support has been really good. They have gone above & beyond to fix problems. Their VPS’s are FULLY MANAGED and that’s no joke. So far i’ve found these guys to be better then any other host i’ve been on and I plan to continue hosting with them. AdHustler.com is currently hosted with SolarVPS.

#1 Prosperent

Prosperent (<---affiliate link) is an affiliate network that you probably have never heard of. Prosperent is essentially an affiliate network who get's datafeeds from all of the major CPS affiliate networks and organizes them in a useable way. If you've ever dealt with merchant's datafeeds you know they are hard to work with, formatted like crap and inconsistent across different merchants. Creating sites using this data is difficult when the data sucks. Prosperent cleans this data up into 1 usable database and then provides tools/APIs to access the data. They have several products including an adsense like offering for showing products related to your content and and API that can be used in a multitude of ways.

Prosperent has recently built a really nice reporting system so that you can see what products sold and where the sales came from and they are working on making that even better. You're probably asking "how do these guys make money?" The answer is that they share the revenue you generate taking a percentage for themselves and giving you a percentage. Yes you lose some of your money, but they also make the process of handling datafeeds and creating apps using those datafeeds a whole lot easier.

Have you used any of these? What are YOUR thoughts?

Disclosure: This is NOT a paid post. Everything written here is the true and uninfluenced opinion of Ad Hustler. WYSIWYG Web Builder has given me zero compensation ever. SolarVPS has given me a couple of comp VPS’s but only after I already had a VPS with them that I paid for and still do pay for. Prosperent has given me zero compensation but there is an affiliate/referral link embedded in the post.

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler

I’ve been considering putting together a skype group of people who do local online marketing so that we can talk and share ideas.  No cost obviously.  Anyone interested?  Leave your skype id in the comments and i’ll add you.

11/18/2011 Quick Update: The group is on fire.  Lots of interest and lots of members and some good discussions too.

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler

No not me…  My buddy Darren is looking for Sponsors for his kick ass marketing parties.  The reason I promote these parties like Affiliate Ball, Marketers Ball etc is because the parties are actually GOOD & FUN!  There’s no sales crap, everyone is invited and you get to see big name acts perform.  Affiliate Ball and some of Darren’s other parties are looking for sponsors.  I’ve seen how he treats his sponsors and the kind of exposure they get so jumping on board could be a good thing for your company.

So here’s the official scoop

CPAWAY Presents Xposure 2011 during Ad Tech

Sponsors include: CPAWAY, AdscendMedia, Rushcard and Payvment

RSVP here http://www.xposure2011.com

Looking for a last second great deal on a sponsorship or a reserved table in the VIP with a great view of the stage? VIP’s are included with all packages, hit up darren@xposure2011.com

The Las Vegas Affiliate Summit 2012 Affiliate Ball is also in the works. CPAWAY already locked in the title sponsorship but they are looking for other sponsors as well. A HUGE artist is in negotiations with Affiliate Ball. As soon as I can drop who that is, I will do so here on AdHustler.com

This is NOT a paid post.

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler

Yesterday Google posted a bombshell on their blog.  The post was called “Making Search More Secure.”  The jist of the post is that Google will start forcing logged in users to “secure search” which is esentially https://www.google.com – The consequence of this is that users that click a search engine result through a “secure search” will not pass the referring keyword along with them.  This means that your analytics software will be able detect that a user came from Google but not WHICH TERM they used to get there.  This is quite a step back from what’s happened in recent years where we can actually get more and more information about our users, not less.  You will still be able to see the referrers of non logged in users, so you don’t lose all keyword referrer data but you do lose some.

This is going to be wide reaching.  Lot’s of different internet marketing niches rely heavily on analytics and keyword referrer data.  Blackhat SEO’s are going to probably be hit super hard, especially ones who adjust the content of their site to reflect the keywords referred.  Even the most white hat of sites like ecommerce sites are going to be effected because they won’t be able to accurately judge how people are arriving at their sites.

There’s nothing we can do about it.  Google loves making the jobs of internet marketers harder so we just have to adjust.

One thing i’m really surprised about is that Google didn’t execute this new move differently.  Hear me out here:

Google likes people to use Google Analytics because it allows them to accumulate more and more data about the web.  Google also loves to dominate industries.  Although i’m not for it, Google has a huge opportunity here to make every other Analytics software completely worthless and FORCE people to use Google Analytics.  Since Google owns both the search and the analytics they could easily securely transfer the referrer data from the search to Google Analytics using some kind of encryption.  That would make Google Analytics the ONLY analytics software able to give you complete keyword referrer analytical data and give Google Analytics control over the entire analytics industry.

But I digress….

What are your thoughts on this move?

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler

When building out a campaign for Google Adwords there’s often a lot to do.  Not many other online ad platforms have a Quality Score in which the page that traffic is sent to is judged as harshly as Google Adwords.  Between worrying about site structure, relevant content, click through rate and more it’s easy to overlook the simple things.

If you are collecting lead information on your landing page DO NOT FORGET the privacy policy.  I have noticed a trend of Google marking all ads as “Site Suspended” if the site is collecting user information and does not have a clear privacy policy.  Once the site get’s suspended it’s impossible to run any ads.  You can get a “Site Suspended” account reversed but why go through the trouble and time?  Don’t Forget The Privacy Policy!  If you need a free place to create a privacy policy visit FreePrivacyPolicy.com.

Anyone else seeing this trend more and more?

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler