The Simple Guide To Prosper 202 Campaign Setup (42)

Introduction

New to affiliate marketing and just set up this "Prosper 202" thing? Then you're probably feeling pretty lost right now.

Or are you a bit more experienced, but still occasionally have problems that you can't diagnose when you're setting up your campaigns?

Either way, here's a simple guide to how to use the best-known affiliate marketing tracking software, Prosper 202.


How It All Works

Before we start with the practical stuff, it's really helpful to know the basics of how Prosper 202 tracks your campaigns. A lot of the time, just this theory will help you debug what's going wrong in your setup.

We're using Prosper because we want to know how people who have clicked on our adverts (or just been shown our landers if we're running PPV) behave.

Do they quit before clicking through the lander? Do they click through and then not sign up or purchase? Or do they actually make us money?

And which landers and which adverts make us money, and which ones are just wasting it?

To track all this, Prosper assigns a unique number - called a "subid" - to every visitor who sees your landing page.

In order for Prosper to do that, we need to insert some code into our landing pages. That code allows Prosper to track visitors, via a cookie, whenever they click through to our offer or eventually convert.

But how do we know which ad our visitor came from? When we're putting links into our traffic source, we add a "keyword" for each banner or target. When they click through onto your landing page, Prosper records that keyword and associates it with their subid - so now we know what visitors from each banner or target do after they get to our landing page.

Finally, how do we know if they click through to our offer? We create a second page, using Prosper, which our landing page links to. That page records that they've clicked through to the offer, then invisibly redirects them to that offer.

Once they're on the offer, we can find out if they convert by using a Postback or Pixel.

By doing all this, we know what ad our visitors come from (via our unique link), whether they clicked through our landing page, and eventually whether they converted (using a Postback or Pixel). That means that after a few hundred or a few thousand people have clicked through, we know which ad is more likely to get visitors to sign up to our offer, which offers convert best, and how well our landing page is doing at converting them.

Here's a handy diagram of how it all works:




What You'll Need

• You'll need a working installation of Prosper 202. If you don't have one yet, Beyond Hosting can set up Prosper for you if you buy one of their Virtual Private Servers - here's a link to a 50% off deal for Stack That Money members.
• You'll need some web space with PHP support and a domain name for your landers (landing pages), if you are using landing pages.
• If you're using landing pages, you'll also need to know how to upload your landing pages to your server, and you'll need to have a landing page ready to go.
• You'll need an account with at least one affiliate network.
• You'll need to have selected your chosen traffic source and have an account there.

• Step 1: Assign Categories. You won't need to do this very often - this is where you tell Prosper what traffic source and what affiliate network or networks you are using.
• Step 2: Set Up Offer. You'll give Prosper the URLs it needs to redirect your visitors to, taken from your affiliate network.
• Step 3: Set Up Landing Page. You do two things here: firstly, tell Prosper where your landing page is (so that it can send people who click on your ads there), and secondly, add the code to your landing page to let Prosper track visitors.
• Step 4: Set Up Redirect Page. You'll create the redirect page that tells Prosper if a visitor clicks on your link in your landing page, upload it to your server, then link to it from your landing page.
• Step 5: Get Links. You'll generate a link from Prosper that you'll use in your traffic source, which will tell Prosper which ad a click comes from, as well as other useful information about any visitor clicking on your ad.
• Step 6: Set Up Postback or Pixel. You'll set Prosper up to track conversions on your affiliate network.

Step 1: Assign Categories

This is fairly simple - and once you have your affiliate networks set up, you won't have to do it again.

1) Click on "#1 Traffic Sources" at the top of the Prosper window.
2) Fill in the name of your traffic source and your account username.
3) Click on "#2 Categories" at the top of the Prosper window.
4) Fill in the name of your affiliate network in the box marked "Campaign Category"

You've now given Prosper a basic set of categories for your campaigns.

Tip: You don't have to use the actual name of your traffic source or your actual username - just use something that you can remember and identify as that traffic source and account. You also don't have to fill in "categories" with your affiliate network name - you could instead set up categories for, say, Dating, Diet and other verticals instead. However, for the rest of this tutorial we'll be assuming you're using Category to list affiliate networks.

Step 2: Set Up Offer

1) Get your chosen Offer URL from your affiliate network. Follow the STM Guide To Offer URLS for this.
2) Click on "#3 Campaigns" at the top of the Prosper window.
3) Choose the affiliate network for your offer from the dropdown box marked "Affiliate Network".
4) Name your campaign in the "Campaign Name" box. I usually use the name of the offer, but you can call it whatever you like.
5) Paste your offer URL into the text box next to "Affiliate URL". Don't worry about the buttons below this text box.
6) Fill in the payout for your offer in the box next to "Payout $"

Your screen should now look roughly like this:



7) Click "Add" to add your offer.

You've now told Prosper where it should send visitors who click through your landing page or your direct link.

Tip: You can rotate multiple offers - or multiple versions of the same offer - by selecting "rotate URLs = yes" and adding additional offer URLs in the boxes that appear below. This is useful to see which offer will perform best! All offers listed will be rotated equally.

Step 3: Set Up Landing Page

You can skip this step if you're direct linking - in other words, not using a landing page.

1) Click on "#4 Landing Pages" at the top of the Prosper window.
2) Choose your Affiliate Network and the Campaign this Landing Page is for (probably the one you just set up in Step 2) from the dropdown boxes.
3) Give your landing page a nickname you can remember in the "LP Nickname" box. I usually refer to distinct elements of the page, like "Image 1 Headline 2".
4) Enter the URL that your landing page will be at once you've uploaded it.
5) Click on "#6 Get LP Code" at the top of the Prosper window, then click "Simple Landing Page".
7) Select the network and campaign for this landing page from the appropriate boxes, then select the nickname you just gave the landing page from the dropdown box by "Landing Page".
8) Click "Generate Tracking Link".

A bunch of text and a couple of text boxes will appear, like so:



9) Copy the code from the first code box, below "Inbound Javascript Landing Page Code:". The code should begin "<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> "
10) Open your landing page in a text editor.
11) Just above the "</body>" in your landing page's HTML, paste the code you just copied.

You've now told Prosper where to send visitors to your landing page, and added the code that will let Prosper track their actions. Note that you actually upload your landing page in the next step!

Step 4: Set Up Redirect Page.

1) Create a new text document.
2) Copy the code from below "Option 1: Landing Page: Outbound PHP Redirect Code: ". It should begin "<?php".
3) Paste that code into your new text document.
4) Save that text document into the same folder as your landing page HTML. Save it as the name of your landing page with _redir at the end and the .php extension: landingpagename_redir.php.

If your landing page is called "lander.html", for example, you should save this new document as "lander_redir.php". If your lander is called "mygreatlander.php", you should save this new document as "mygreatlander_redir.php".

TIP: You can actually name this redirect page anything you like! We're just choosing a name that's easy to remember.

We've now created the redirect page which visitors should go to after they click through your landing page. This redirect page will then record that they've clicked through, and forward them on to your offer.

So, now we need to alter our landing page so that all links from it point to this redirect page.

5) Open your landing page in a text editor.
6) In the HTML, locate all links that should go to your offer - "Click here", "Sign Up Now", etc. Change those links to point to the document you just created.

If your landing page is called "lander.html", for example, you should change your links to be

<a href="lander_redir.php">

http://www.blahblah.com/LP/Anast/CLaP1.php?t202id=6976&t202kw={keyword}

http://www.blahblah.com/LP/Anast/CLaP1.php?t202id=6976&t202kw=Banner1

http://www.blahblah.com/LP/Anast/CLaP1.php?t202id=6976&t202kw=Banner2

BTW, advanced/experienced affiliates - I know we're covering quite a lot of basic information at the moment.

Don't worry - I'm cooking up something for next week that delves right into one of the big tracking problems for experienced affiliates, right up to super-affiliate level!

Wohoo! Thank you so much Caurmen for setting this up, especially the upcoming CPVLab version, save me a bunch of headaches

That's some awesome stuff shared by "caurmen" once again ! But here comes my newbie question once again :

" What are the main differences between CPVLab and Prosper202 ? What are the pros and cons of both Services based on your Experience ? Also which Traffic Networks do they support - are they limited or ? "

I am asking this because soon I will start testing some Facebook Campaigns using Direct Linking at the beginning and just need to know which route to take ? What are the downsides if I go with Prosper202 ?

Thanks in advance once again !

Should I be hosting my landing pages on the same domain name as my Prosper202 install?

Main differences between the two are:

- Interface. CPVLab's interface is more streamlined and faster to set up campaigns.
- Features. CPVLab is a bit more fully-featured than Prosper, with a built-in landing page rotator, for example.
- Cost. Obviously

They both support pretty much any traffic source and network.

Originally Posted by caurmen

Main differences between the two are:

- Interface. CPVLab's interface is more streamlined and faster to set up campaigns.
- Features. CPVLab is a bit more fully-featured than Prosper, with a built-in landing page rotator, for example.
- Cost. Obviously

They both support pretty much any traffic source and network.

@tobicon - Not exactly.

If you're starting out, unless you have a large budget, get Prosper. It's perfectly good for starting out with, and saving money = good.

What you go for from there depends on what traffic source you settle into. If you're doing POF, I'd get POFpro, no question. If you're doing adult on the sources it supports, get into the beta of AdultAdsPro. If you're doing mobile, you'll want the STM tracker, MobAffTracker, or similar. It's basically only if you want to do a traffic source other than those that you'd want CPVLab.

@avidnetizen - You certainly can do that - shouldn't be a problem.

Originally Posted by caurmen

@tobicon - Not exactly.

If you're starting out, unless you have a large budget, get Prosper. It's perfectly good for starting out with, and saving money = good.

What you go for from there depends on what traffic source you settle into. If you're doing POF, I'd get POFpro, no question. If you're doing adult on the sources it supports, get into the beta of AdultAdsPro. If you're doing mobile, you'll want the STM tracker, MobAffTracker, or similar. It's basically only if you want to do a traffic source other than those that you'd want CPVLab.

@tobicon - If you can easily afford it, CPVLab. It won't make or break your campaigns, but it'll help.

Thanks a lot for very nice tutorial.

I have a little question. Where can I find this code?

--

...Step 4: Set Up Redirect Page.

1) Create a new text document.
2) Copy the code from below "Option 1: Landing Page: Outbound PHP Redirect Code: ". It should begin "<?php".

One more question:

Is it possible to track more types of conversions with Prosper? I have campain which I want to promote and there is 1. registration for free, 2. people buy product.
The offer to buy product is in email they get third day after registration. So it would be nice to track both actions.

Code: look on the Prosper page for "Option 1: Landing Page: Outbound PHP Redirect Code:". Directly below that there's a code box - copy that block of code.

Advanced conversions: You'd need to ask the offer or affiliate manager about that. You could do it using an Advanced Landing Page, I'm pretty sure, but it would depend on what information the offer passed on the second conversion - because it's email, it's likely that the specific subid won't be passed.

@archer9 - you're absolutely correct. It can be called (with all due credit to m'learned colleague Finch) sittingscratchingmyballs.php if you like, provided that is what's linked from your lander.

Hey caurmen, awesome post.
Its amazing its gotten a guy like me this far lol. But i'm a little lost on the redirect page part. i cant seem to figure where i went wrong.
i created the redir.php file and uploaded it to the same directory in my server as my landing page. i also went into the html and put the <a href="index.redir.php">
when i click on the link on my lander in browser, i get a "404 not found"

i think i might have gotten lost on this part, as i didnt quite understand what you were referring to in step 4
"8) Upload your landing page and the new document you created to the same directory on your web server (and the location you specified in Step 3)."
what did you mean the location specified in step 3?

weird..one of the links is working to the offer page now..other one i used for the company logo is still being weird..ill mess around with it and see if i can fig out..thnks anyways

@voan: you should be using <a href="redir.php"> not <a href="index.redir.php">. You've uploaded the file to the right place, but your link is named wrongly!

Let me know if you're still having trouble, or if that sorts things out!

Hey Caurmen,

This was one of the most helpful tutorials at STM. Very useful. More useful than Tracking202's own video library. Much appreciated.

No problem! Glad it was useful.

If there's anything else you'd like to see a tutorial for, do let me know.

Thanks @caurmen for another great tutorial!

I wonder what is the best way to solve the following: Let's say I've already setup everything in P202 and my campaign is waiting for approval from my traffic source. When they come to approve my URL they produce me a few clicks to my link (more ads, more clicks) and that screw up my stats in P202. Do you have a solution for this, or I should just not care? One way that could probably solve this is to add the P202 tracking code after approval.

Also you say:

@erikgyepes - I'll answer your questions in reverse order!

Tracking elsewhere: yep, it's Great Big Spreadsheet time, I'm afraid You can make this a lot easier by using some simple formulas to automatically parse your stats from your traffic source and your networks - makes it a case of just copying and pasting a few columns of numbers every day.

Approval clicks: IMO, don't worry about it. If you are concerned, then yep, adding the P202 code later is probably the best way to go.

Hope that helps!

Hey caurmen,

Thanks for such a comprehensive guide on what is quite a confusing and complicated process!

Just a question for you as far as clicks out from the landing page go. Assuming you have various portions of the landing page that link to the offer such as mock profile blocks that contain view profile links, various other text links throughout the copy as well as obviously the call to action button. Would you not want to track those individually with different ID's rather than using the same tracking link throughout the page?

Apologies if I've misunderstood something or am jumping ahead of something that is covered further down the line or, is it not a good idea to have multiple exit points from one page?

I know this is a newb question but how do you "Open your landing page in a text editor?" Do you access the landing page on your server once you've uploaded it and just edit it from there? I'm using Adobe Muse to create them. Is there a software that you use to edit html?

Also in the part where "6) In the HTML, locate all links that should go to your offer - "Click here", "Sign Up Now", etc. Change those links to point to the document you just created."

When I create the landing page, where should those links be pointing at to begin with since I don't have my redirect page setup yet? Can you just put any random link because you're changing it anyway to your redirect page?

Please help!

@fearless_shultz - that's a very good question. It's certainly not necessary to track which link is getting clicks - plenty of people don't - but if you can, it will give you more useful data. However, be aware that this is definitely a MUCH more advanced way to track.

The most flexible way to do this will probably be to use Google Analytics or a similar package, recording the clicks as events, and also recording the subid of the visitor who clicks each time. Then you can match the subids of the visitors who clicked through against a list of converting subids, and figure out which link is working better.

A simpler but less flexible way to do the same thing would be to set the landing page up as an "advanced landing page" in Prosper, and then create a number of "offers" with different names - "button link", "text link 1", etc - which you assign to the different links. The disadvantage of this approach is that you'll only be able to send visitors to a single offer, rather than rotating offers.

Does that make sense? Rather a complex answer, I know!

@pauldavid - if you're using Adobe Muse, the simplest thing to do is to use the "Export as HTML" option, save the landing page onto your disk, and then open them with any text editing program. If you're on Windows, Notepad will do fine. On a Mac, TextEdit is fine. Once you've edited it, you can then save it and upload it via and FTP program like Filezilla.

You're right - before you have your offer set up, you can just set your landing page links to anything you like. I tend to use <a href="LINKYLINK">... Just remember to change it once you have the offer set up, and ALWAYS test your links once your lander is live on your server.

That makes sense, thanks I am familiar with creating custom events in Google Analytics so shouldn't have a problem doing it that way just wasn't sure if there was a better way using something like Prosper rather than splicing data together although I beginning to see that there is probably going to be no one size fits all solution especially as it gets into more advanced tracking and a good old spreadsheet is always going to be needed at some point.

One other question on landing pages and in particular customising to the user using things such as POF tokens to get their age, status etc and also using geoip services such as maxmind to dynamically display a location in the copy, is there a point where you can customise the experience too much and potentially make the user cynical and detract from conversions or is it best to make the experience as tailor made as possible?

I've seen instances in the past when running PPC on Adwords for example where when we dropped below a certain price point, it actually had a negative impact on CTR (the whole reassuringly expensive / "too cheap" thing) for ads and just wondering if the same could be said in this scenario? As a total noob to dating, I am maybe over thinking a bit at such an early stage but just curious as to thoughts on this?

Couple of questions for you:

1) Is it possible to track conversions in Clickbank using Prosper202? If so, can you point me to a resource?
2) Does anyone have any resources for tracking conversions on an Unbounce landing page in Prosper? I know Unbounce has their own tracking, I'm looking for a way to integrate it into Prosper.

I have 3 offers on the same LP.

I get to #7 Get LP Code and it provides 2 options for each offer. A redirect code and a PHP code.

Can I just replace my affiliate link with the redirect code and not have to bother with making a php file for each offer?

Also on #8 Get links...these are the links for my ad. So my ad link is the prosper202 link that leads to my landing page..is this right?

Thanks!

Is this the latest version of Prosper (1.8)?

I don't know how the latest version has changed, but on earlier versions you would definitely have to use both the redirect for the URL AND the PHP redirect later.

You're correct about #8.

Yes it's the new version...when I use the redirect link it sends me to the offer I am promoting.

Just to be clear I have installed the php code on the landing page.

So not sure why I need the .php files for each offer..as far as I can see it's one or the other.

This is what it says above both codes:

Basically for each offer has their own php page, and you want to copy the code given below for each offer, onto each of their associated pages. If you have any more questions please contact the live support and we can walk you through the process.
You can use also built-in redirect link, if you dont want to host PHP code on your landing page.

It's been so long since I've used p202 that even I don't know what the setup is now.

So, you have a redirect link that sends people to your lander. Then you have multiple offers that the lander can send people to.

I imagine you have some code you post on the page that rotates between e.g. offer1.php, offer2.php, etc.?

Then, the click URL on the page rotates through these pages... which both have to contain the code printed out in the setup section.

I don't miss p202.

Hm, I haven't used the new one, I'm afraid, so not sure if it's changed. When I get back to my usual office I'll spin it up on a server and give it a try!

In the meantime, I know that the maintainer of Prosper lurks around here, and other people use the latest version of Prosper too - anyone able to illuminate us more?

Caurmen, i have hit a snag could you help me.

I’m stuck on the last part of step 4. I’m trying to upload my landing page to cpanel.

I want it to display my lander at

mydomain.com/lp1

So i created a folder called lp1 in the public html. i put my html, php and images into that folder. however if it then go to mydomain.com/lp1 its just a list of my files and if i click the html it takes me to my lander at.

mydomain.com/lp1/htmlfilename.html

Im not sure exactly how to sort this out. i know its a bit pedantic but i want to get it right, i haven’t used cPanel before so this is a bit of a learning curve.

Sparkie

Your lander will need to be called index.html or index.php if you want that to work.

You are presumably using Apache? You will want to edit the htaccess file in your domain to prevent indexes - you do this by putting "Options All -Indexes" on a line.

Thanks, Zeno. That fixed it. Will all my landers need to be put in separate folders and called index.html if hosted on the same domain? seems like that will be hard to keep tract of which is which.

Originally Posted by zeno

You are presumably using Apache? You will want to edit the htaccess file in your domain to prevent indexes - you do this by putting "Options All -Indexes" on a line.

Originally Posted by sparkie

Thanks, Zeno. That fixed it. Will all my landers need to be put in separate folders and called index.html if hosted on the same domain? seems like that will be hard to keep tract of which is which.

Zeno got there before I saw this one!

Just a minor note - it is possible to have your landers named lp1.html , lp2.html and so on, but to be shown at the Internet address www.yourdomain.com/lp1/ , www.yourdomain.com/lp2/ and so on.

You'd need to use a feature of Apache called "Rewrite rules" to do this.

However, using rewrite rules correctly is extremely tricky, and not something I'd recommend you spend time on unless it's of interest beyond your campaigns.

Hello folks,
I have - Set Up Redirect Page - now i'm at the - So, now we need to alter our landing page so that all links from it point to this redirect page.
problem is i've done the LP on wordpress and i can't seem to find the main page on the 'file manager' it is suppose to be on, i guess, the folder
of the them that i chose, i've look inside the so far two index.php and can't seem to detect the png image with the REGISTER NOW.
I even searched the main page in the php editor of the theme, inside wordpress... it does not make sense, it's like the stupid php code of the png is hiding from me.
Funny enough, if i go and do "View Page Source" in the browser... it's there, the png code, peerfly affiliate, everything.
I'm stuck.

Noobie coming at you. Thanks for your help in advance. When setting up tracking for testing images in a 80 x 110 campaign on Plenty of Fish, do you need to manually add different keywords for each ad/image like you do for each 310 x 110 banner? Or do you use the same link for each image?