Avoid.

I have tried running the script with a new set of StumbleUpon accounts but the curl get for “rate.php” returns a BAD_AUTH (line 106 in free_stumbler.php). The login was successful and I used a URL that has already been stumbled. Any ideas?

I have tried running the script with a new set of StumbleUpon accounts but the call to:

$curl->get(”http://www.stumbleupon.com/rate.php?username=$code&password=$pass&rating=1&url=$xurl”);

returns a BAD_AUTH. The login was successful and I used a URL that has already been stumbled. Any ideas?

I actually meant on your stumbletime.com site. I paid for the baby stumble and got errors. Is the site actually working for purchases?

I liked the “blog stores” better than full site scripts such as BANS myself. I ended up using bayrss which is basically the same idea as phpbay.

Here is one I did up with bayrss: http://allwiineeds.com/

Super easy to set up and since you use wordpress there are already thousands of free themes and mods you can add on in no time. I never went back and added any real content which would have helped with search traffic but made some decent cash with PPC during the xmas rush ;).

Here is my post about my initial test if you want to check it out…haven’t done the follow up posts yet though lol: http://dotdriven.com/index.php/12/affiliate-marketing-101-bootstrappin-myself/

The other issue that came up was that hostgator eventually didn’t like what was essentially an incentivized setup. Well, really they probably wouldn’t have much of a problem but only as long as those signing up stayed longterm customers. They just didn’t want to see new customers with super high expectations who would eventually get disillusioned and cancel their hosting…which, with how much they pay for commissions would be a huge loss in no time. There are a few ways to get around this though and regardless, would make you more in the long run anyway. The most important part is to make sure everyone that signs up is super happy and continues to get cool little freebies and more opportunities. You want them to keep their hosting accounts and so should give them reasons, beyond the free adsense sites of course. These opportunities don’t all have to be freebies…they have the hosting and unlimited domains on that hosting account so you can “upsell” them on all sorts of different site/script packages.

Most people that sign up tend to be noobs to web development so if you create new happy customers by giving them the adsense sites you can basically train yourself a happy little army of customers who need and want your products. Of course the downside is they are so new to the game they need a lot of help with pretty much everything such as promotion, ad campaigns and such. So the ideal setup is to have plenty of good training and info such as good plr and ebooks you can give them over time. The tradeoff of having to deal with the noobs is they are hungry for more and if you can show them how to make even a little money online they will be at your door wanting everything you pitch to them.

Rather than keep the site setup as what was basically considered incentivized, to avoid issues with hostgator complaining about incentized signups, I had planned to make it more of a strong suggestion. Most of the signups needed hosting anyway so rather than making them feel they had to sign up with hostgator I planned to send them to my “hosting suggestions” page that would have mini reviews of a handful of different host…all affiliate links of course. Not only would that get rid of the incentivized feeling it would probably help spread out the leads through a few various host making it a bit safer. Of course it may hurt some of the ones that have bonuses for lead performances (hostgator pays up to $125 PER LEAD after a set number of leads a month!). But you can move around the review page highlighting whichever host you want throughout the month as you meed the minimum leads for the higher payouts.

But I got lazy and distracted with my own bigger and more needy projects and kind of stopped before implementing those changes. I do plan to probably go back and start promoting it again as it was easy money as Less suggested.

BTW, I’d be willing to sell the original site/package and details I bought from Lee if someone else is interested in picking it up ;). I just don’t have the time right now.