Appreciate that, and fully understand the basics. But if i were to send a good amount of traffic that converts, lets say 8% towards that niche (utilizing it something that is clearly what the advertisers say not to do (in this example, tv shows), dont' they see the "blank referrer" as an obvious workaround? I guess what I would like some clarity on is if I put a blank referrer in, wouldnt the affiliate company just laugh and say "denied" when it comes time to payout? Now I am sure that they could do this, but does it happen often? Otherwise, what would be the point of customizing the locker? I am sure there are a few other ideas to monetize such as "get this free item if you do this..." and then have either an item that you have or something that you have proprietary rights too... but in that case I dont see why I would need to blank the referrer.
I am definitely interested in something like this if it suits my needs, just not sure if I can get a way with blackhat stuff like that.
And also, if I understand correctly, I could put a blocker on another site, but really, it is not another site I am putting the blocker on, but rather a "copy" of what that page looks like. If I am right in that assumption, once the offer has been done, what page shows up when the locker disappears and where does the user go? Can I send them to any page I would like?
Or how about a double locker... for example, I put this code on my site.... once they complete this offer, what is underneath (and now appears), could I have say, leadbolt locker that says something like "oops, looks like it didnt go thru" and have leadbolts locker underneath to try to do a double survey conversion
P )
Lol, you guys are really making me put my thinking cap on tonight
Ok, bit by bit...
There are a multitude of legitimate, whitehat, reasons for blanking your referers, not least of which is what I mentioned earlier about networks and/or advertisers stealing campaigns or traffic sources. Picture this, you spend a couple of hundred dollars on a PPC Search campaign. Throughout, you work your nuts off to analyze, tweak, split-test, re-analyze, re-tweak, until you slowly haul your CTR from a paltry 0.0004% to an excellent 17%. In order to track and tweak, you pass keyword information through to your networks via the referers. All of a sudden, a couple of days later, the campaign you so lovingly nourished bombs - the CPC has risen from the 5cents you were paying, to around 60 cents, and the CTR has plummeted back down to 2.5%.
Picture another scenario: you have made some cash, and are ready to "go it the WH way", so you make a serious investment in some Media Buys, and it turns out you hit a website that is sending high quality traffic and conversions to your campaigns (of course, this is a good few thousand dollars into things, again, testing, tweaking, searching, working HARD), but, suddenly, thanks to this site, your ROI is 120%
Excellent! But, the next day, this site owner says he has no more available ad space, or raises the price massively, and your ROI plummets. But, you browse the site, and he's carrying the same banners you were displaying, lots of them, so "someone's" doing well out of your work. Now, bearing in mind you weren't blanking referers, so your network and/or advertiser knew exactly which site was producing this quality traffic, what do YOU think happened?
The "guru's" may not be in the habit of telling you this, but any publisher worth his salt is blanking his referers, the last thing he wants to do in the world is share all that precious, hard-earned data!
Now, how you, in particular, manage to get that across to your networks and AMs, is up to you, but let me tell you this - on 98% of CPA Networks, their top Publishers (those who, between them, earn 85% of the CPA Network's total earnings) are blanking their referers.
It's been said many, many times before on BHW - you have to treat IM as a business, present yourself as a serious business person, become a company or a corporation, if you can, make yourself a business website, nothing fancy, just something that "looks" professional, and gets across that you mean business, and you'll rock the world. Another interesting fact, well-known to Networks, over 80% of Affiliate fraud comes from individuals, so they treat business publishers accordingly.
It also helps to find out as much as you can about the networks you're thinking of working with, and the AMs you may be allocated. There are plenty of AMs who will accept some "bending" of the rules, as long as you're upfront about it with them. Let's face it, the money is in the traffic, and they "know" what we all know - a large majority of internet surfers are actively seeking all the WH no-no's (porn, free movies, tv shows or music, downloads, celebrity gossip, etc). It may not be what advertisers want, but it's the way it is. Do you really think they don't want the business and revenue? Be professional about it, and you'll almost get away with murder!
Locking other sites - what you are actually doing is iframing another site, like we did with CB in our demo. If a user completes an offer and the locker is removed for them, well, they're on CB. CLP does not currently redirect visitors to a different location on removal of the locker although, if requested by our users, it will be done pretty soon.
Double locking - hmmm, you are concerned about networks and advertisers, both of whom have been shafting publishers for years and yet, when it comes to the poor consumer (sorry, your treasured visitor, lol), you're quite happy to make him jump through hoops and then, when he lands, ask him to keep jumping some more??? Shame on you
It is, however, something that can be done, and quite easily at that. You don't even need Leadbolt's locker - just create two lockers with CLP, call them both, but set a tease-timer delay on the 2nd one, or use a setTimeout parameter in the call to the second one. But, by God, surfers are going to start to actively HATE IMers, lol
Anyway, forgive me, when it gets very late in my part of the world (or early, depends how you look at it), my sense of humor becomes a little bit devilish
One last thing, don't forget we have already "pre-sold" you as decent, high-flying pubs to a number of networks, and they're waiting for you to join them. They know you'll be content locking, and they WANT your business. Why do you think all the Gateway Networks have such a large publisher base?
