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INSERT IGNORE INTO rss_posts (post_author, post_date, post_date_gmt, post_content, post_content_filtered, post_title, post_excerpt, post_status, post_type, comment_status, ping_status, post_password, post_name, to_ping, pinged, post_modified, post_modified_gmt, post_parent, menu_order, post_mime_type) VALUES ('2', '2009-01-05 04:00:05', '2009-01-04 20:00:05', '<p>When you get to the level where you start needing VPS&#8217; (Virtual Private Servers) it&#8217;s important to understand how they work &amp; how you can get the most out of them. Poorly set up servers can cause you all sorts of problems like Downtime, Slow MYSQL or not withstanding the <a href=\"http://www.earnersblog.com/digproof-your-wordpress/\">force of something like Digg</a>.</p> <p>This article will cover everything you need to do to ensure that your VPS is performing as fast as possible, which mostly focuses on optimizing your memory usage. Please ensure you make backups of your existing my.cnf &#38; httpd.conf we will not be held responsible for any problems.</p> <p>What you will need to action this guide:</p> <ol> <li>Your server specs (most importantly Guaranteed RAM &amp; Burst RAM)</li> <li>Access to your Web Host Support for installation of</li> <li>Root access to your VPS via SSH</li> <li>FTP Access to your server</li> <li>A brief knowledge of an editior (i.e. VI) if not I&#8217;ll provide the commands you need to know</li> <li>How to restart mysql &amp; apache in your server operating environment</li> <li>Access to WHM</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your PHPinfo</strong></p> <p>Create a file called phpinfo.php &amp; include the follow in it:</p> <p>[coolcode]&lt;?php phpinfo();<br /> ?&gt;[/coolcode]</p> <p>Navigate to that file on your server i.e. http://www.yourserver.com/phpinfo.php, you should see something like this:</p> <p><img src=\"http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/phpinfo.png\" alt=\"PHPInfo\" width=\"420\" height=\"516\" /></p> <p>What you need to ask your host to do:</p> <ol> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title=\"PHP Version\" href=\"http://www.php.net/downloads.php\">latest PHP version</a> (currently 5.28)</li> <li>Make sure that PHP is compiled with the latest version of <a title=\"Zend Optimizer\" href=\"http://www.zend.com/en/downloads/\">Zend Optimizer</a>, <a title=\"Eaccelerator\" href=\"http://eaccelerator.net/\">Eaccelerator</a> &amp; <a title=\"ioncube Accelerator\" href=\"http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/\">Ioncube Accelerator</a>.</li> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title=\"Download Latest Apache Version\" href=\"http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi\">latest apache version</a> (currently 2.0.63)</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your current resource usage</strong></p> <p>Log in via SSH, I normally use the <a title=\"Putty Client\" href=\"http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/\">Putty client</a> for this.</p> <p>Commands:</p> <p><strong>top</strong>: your current server load &amp; resource usage.<br /> <strong>ps aux</strong>: all your processes &amp; which ones are using the most memory/cpu<br /> <strong>free -m</strong>: allocated memory, usage &amp; free memory</p> <p><img src=\"http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mytop.png\" alt=\"Top Command SSH\" width=\"420\" height=\"209\" /></p> <p>If you use the top command you can get an overview of the load on the server &amp; memory usage. You can see in the screenshot above my VPS has a load of 0.02 during the last 1minute, 5 minutes &amp; 10 minutes.</p> <p>No-one really knows what the ideal &#8220;load average&#8221; should be but my general rule is that anything over below 1 is good &amp; above 1 is average. Above 3 &amp; you may start to notice performance issues.</p> <p>With memory usage you should ideally have 100MB or so free (if not more), you really need that buffer for large traffic spikes. If you&#8217;re coming close to your allocated memory usage then any allocated burst ram will kick in. On my server I have no burst ram, just guaranteed which means I don&#8217;t have that buffer, but my system is more stable (as everyone on the VPS can make use of the burst ram).</p> <p><strong>Removing &amp; Tweaking Unnecessary Services</strong></p> <p>There&#8217;s a number of services that you can remove or tweak to increase performance. To remove any of these services log into WHM &amp; go to Service Configuration &gt; Service Manager or Cpanel &gt; Plugins in the left menu.</p> <p><strong>Clamd: </strong>This is a virus scanning service, it uses up a ton of memory do generally I&#8217;ll remove it.</p> <p><strong>Entropy Chat: </strong>Disable this.</p> <p><strong>Spamd: </strong>This uses a lot of processes &amp; memory. You shouldn&#8217;t remove this, instead we can tweak it. Go to Cpanel &gt; Plugins &amp; install spamdconf, once done go to the bottom of WHM &amp; click on Setup Spamd Startup Configuration. Change the maximum children to 1 or 2. This will stop spamd spawning too many child processes.</p> <p><strong>Cpanel Tweak Settings</strong></p> <p>In WHM under Server Configuration &gt; Tweak Settings:</p> <ol> <li>Make sure default catch-all mail address is set to FAIL, this will use the least CPU time.</li> <li>Untick Mailman, this is a resource hog.</li> <li>Change the number of minutes between mail server queues to 180</li> <li>Uncheck Analog Stats, I also usually uncheck Webalizer.</li> <li>Make sure you tick delete each domains access logs after run, otherwise you&#8217;ll start using heaps of Disk Space.</li> </ol> <p><strong>Mysql Optimisation</strong></p> <p>You can edit your mysql configuration (/etc/my.cnf) by typing vi /etc/my.cnf</p> <p>In order to add something in vi you need to hit insert, once completed hit esc then :wq to save &amp; quit. If you want to save without quitting type :q!</p> <p>There&#8217;s a few important variables that we&#8217;re going to tweak:</p> <ol> <li>max_connections</li> <li> wait_timeout</li> <li> thread_cache_size</li> <li> table_cache</li> <li>key_buffer_size</li> <li>query_cache_size</li> <li>tmp_table_size</li> </ol> <p>Via ssh you can type &#8216;mysqladmin variables&#8217; to see their current values &amp; you can also see a refreshed processlist by using the command &#8216;mysqladmin –i10 processlist extended-status&#8217;.</p> <p>The settings below should work well for a server with 512MB Guaranteed RAM (also leaving you enough free for traffic spikes), if you have burstable then you can probably look at increasing the number of max_connections to 400 &amp; possibly the key_buffer to 64M:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> [mysqld]<br /> max_connections = 300<br /> key_buffer = 32M<br /> myisam_sort_buffer_size = 32M<br /> join_buffer_size = 1M<br /> read_buffer_size = 1M<br /> sort_buffer_size = 2M<br /> table_cache = 4000<br /> thread_cache_size = 286<br /> interactive_timeout = 25<br /> wait_timeout = 7000<br /> connect_timeout = 10<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> max_connect_errors = 10<br /> query_cache_limit = 2M<br /> query_cache_size = 12M<br /> query_cache_type = 1<br /> tmp_table_size = 16M<br /> skip-innodb<br /> [mysqld_safe]<br /> open_files_limit = 8192<br /> [mysqldump]<br /> quick<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> [myisamchk]<br /> key_buffer = 64M<br /> sort_buffer = 64M<br /> read_buffer = 16M<br /> write_buffer = 16M<br /> [mysqlhotcopy]<br /> interactive-timeout[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Apache Optimisation</strong></p> <p>Apache settings are located in httpd.conf, you can use &#8216;locate httpd.conf&#8217; or &#8216;whereis httpd.conf&#8217; to find it.</p> <p>Optimal settings for apache should look something like this, I like to keep the min &amp; start servers slightly lower to stop too many child processes spawning &amp; using memory:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> KeepAlive On<br /> MaxKeepAliveRequests 100<br /> KeepAliveTimeout 1<br /> MinSpareServers 5<br /> MaxSpareServers 10<br /> StartServers 5<br /> MaxClients 150<br /> MaxRequestsPerChild 1000[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Restarting Mysql &amp; Apache</strong></p> <p>Once you&#8217;re done you&#8217;ll want to restart mysql &amp; apache. You can do this via the command line or via WHM.</p> <p>Restart Mysql: /etc/init.d/mysql restart (if mysql doesn&#8217;t restart consider commenting out skip-innodb in my.cnf)<br /> Restart Apache: /etc/init.d/httpd restart</p> <p>These commands may vary depending on what your server is running.</p> <p><strong>Monitoring Changes</strong></p> <p>Use the &#8216;top&#8217; command, &#8216;free - m&#8217; &amp; &#8216;ps aux&#8217; to get an idea of how the server is responding. Pay attention to how much RAM you have left &amp; also how much CPU Mysql &amp; Apache is using. You may need to leave Mysql running for 24-48 hours to get a true picture here.</p> <p>Thinking about upgrading to a VPS but not sure who to choose, let us help you with our <a href=\"http://www.earnersblog.com/hosts/list/vps-hosting/\">VPS Web Hosting Reviews</a>, tailored specifically for Affiliate Marketers.</p> <p>[coolcode]top - 19:56:30 up 27 days, 4:11, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.07, 0.09<br /> Mem: 524288k total, 386432k used, 137856k free, 0k buffers[/coolcode]</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href=\"http://www.earnersblog.com/seobook/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book\">Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.earnersblog.com/flickr/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr\">Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.earnersblog.com/yahoo-site-explorer/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo\">Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.earnersblog.com/advertising-special/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Advertising Update &#38; New Services Launching Soon\">Advertising Update &#38; New Services Launching Soon</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.earnersblog.com/ebay-ditches-commission-junction/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Ebay ditches Commission Junction\">Ebay ditches Commission Junction</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href=\"http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/a\"><img src=\"http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/i\" border=\"0\"></img></a></p><div> <a href=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=wUuFPKe0\"><img src=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=wUuFPKe0\" border=\"0\"></img></a> <a href=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=2UfoVg1a\"><img src=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266\" border=\"0\"></img></a> <a href=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=dcQgr7jA\"><img src=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50\" border=\"0\"></img></a> <a href=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6kT8wdiX\"><img src=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=6kT8wdiX\" border=\"0\"></img></a> <a href=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6yUlqsOk\"><img src=\"http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267\" border=\"0\"></img></a> </div>', '', 'VPS Optimization Guide', 'When you get to the level where you start needing VPS&#8217; (Virtual Private Servers) it&#8217;s important to understand how they work &#38; how you can get the most out of them...', 'publish', 'post', 'closed', 'closed', '', 'vps-optimization-guide', '', '', '2009-01-05 04:00:05', '2009-01-04 20:00:05', '0', '0', '')

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Triggered at line # 2152 FeedWordPress version: 0.991 WordPress version: 2.3.1 PHP version: 5.2.6 SyndicatedPost (_wp_id problem): object(SyndicatedPost)#88 (9) { ["item"]=> array(13) { ["title"]=> string(22) "VPS Optimization Guide" ["link"]=> string(58) "http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EarnersBlog/~3/5pfIAN1wvXo/" ["comments"]=> string(59) "http://www.earnersblog.com/vps-optimization-guide/#comments" ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:00:05 +0000" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(6) "Stuart" } ["category"]=> string(30) "GuidesWeb DevelopmentWordpress" ["guid"]=> string(33) "http://www.earnersblog.com/?p=599" ["description"]=> string(181) "When you get to the level where you start needing VPS&#8217; (Virtual Private Servers) it&#8217;s important to understand how they work &#38; how you can get the most out of them..." ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(11110) "<p>When you get to the level where you start needing VPS&#8217; (Virtual Private Servers) it&#8217;s important to understand how they work &amp; how you can get the most out of them. Poorly set up servers can cause you all sorts of problems like Downtime, Slow MYSQL or not withstanding the <a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/digproof-your-wordpress/">force of something like Digg</a>.</p> <p>This article will cover everything you need to do to ensure that your VPS is performing as fast as possible, which mostly focuses on optimizing your memory usage. Please ensure you make backups of your existing my.cnf &#038; httpd.conf we will not be held responsible for any problems.</p> <p>What you will need to action this guide:</p> <ol> <li>Your server specs (most importantly Guaranteed RAM &amp; Burst RAM)</li> <li>Access to your Web Host Support for installation of</li> <li>Root access to your VPS via SSH</li> <li>FTP Access to your server</li> <li>A brief knowledge of an editior (i.e. VI) if not I&#8217;ll provide the commands you need to know</li> <li>How to restart mysql &amp; apache in your server operating environment</li> <li>Access to WHM</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your PHPinfo</strong></p> <p>Create a file called phpinfo.php &amp; include the follow in it:</p> <p>[coolcode]<?php phpinfo();<br /> ?>[/coolcode]</p> <p>Navigate to that file on your server i.e. http://www.yourserver.com/phpinfo.php, you should see something like this:</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-606 aligncenter" title="PHPInfo" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/phpinfo.png" alt="PHPInfo" width="420" height="516" /></p> <p>What you need to ask your host to do:</p> <ol> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title="PHP Version" href="http://www.php.net/downloads.php" target="_blank">latest PHP version</a> (currently 5.28)</li> <li>Make sure that PHP is compiled with the latest version of <a title="Zend Optimizer" href="http://www.zend.com/en/downloads/" target="_blank">Zend Optimizer</a>, <a title="Eaccelerator" href="http://eaccelerator.net/" target="_blank">Eaccelerator</a> &amp; <a title="ioncube Accelerator" href="http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ioncube Accelerator</a>.</li> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title="Download Latest Apache Version" href="http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi" target="_blank">latest apache version</a> (currently 2.0.63)</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your current resource usage</strong></p> <p>Log in via SSH, I normally use the <a title="Putty Client" href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/">Putty client</a> for this.</p> <p>Commands:</p> <p><strong>top</strong>: your current server load &amp; resource usage.<br /> <strong>ps aux</strong>: all your processes &amp; which ones are using the most memory/cpu<br /> <strong>free -m</strong>: allocated memory, usage &amp; free memory</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-607 aligncenter" title="Top Command SSH" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mytop.png" alt="Top Command SSH" width="420" height="209" /></p> <p>If you use the top command you can get an overview of the load on the server &amp; memory usage. You can see in the screenshot above my VPS has a load of 0.02 during the last 1minute, 5 minutes &amp; 10 minutes.</p> <p>No-one really knows what the ideal &#8220;load average&#8221; should be but my general rule is that anything over below 1 is good &amp; above 1 is average. Above 3 &amp; you may start to notice performance issues.</p> <p>With memory usage you should ideally have 100MB or so free (if not more), you really need that buffer for large traffic spikes. If you&#8217;re coming close to your allocated memory usage then any allocated burst ram will kick in. On my server I have no burst ram, just guaranteed which means I don&#8217;t have that buffer, but my system is more stable (as everyone on the VPS can make use of the burst ram).</p> <p><strong>Removing &amp; Tweaking Unnecessary Services</strong></p> <p>There&#8217;s a number of services that you can remove or tweak to increase performance. To remove any of these services log into WHM &amp; go to Service Configuration &gt; Service Manager or Cpanel &gt; Plugins in the left menu.</p> <p><strong>Clamd: </strong>This is a virus scanning service, it uses up a ton of memory do generally I&#8217;ll remove it.</p> <p><strong>Entropy Chat: </strong>Disable this.</p> <p><strong>Spamd: </strong>This uses a lot of processes &amp; memory. You shouldn&#8217;t remove this, instead we can tweak it. Go to Cpanel &gt; Plugins &amp; install spamdconf, once done go to the bottom of WHM &amp; click on Setup Spamd Startup Configuration. Change the maximum children to 1 or 2. This will stop spamd spawning too many child processes.</p> <p><strong>Cpanel Tweak Settings</strong></p> <p>In WHM under Server Configuration &gt; Tweak Settings:</p> <ol> <li>Make sure default catch-all mail address is set to FAIL, this will use the least CPU time.</li> <li>Untick Mailman, this is a resource hog.</li> <li>Change the number of minutes between mail server queues to 180</li> <li>Uncheck Analog Stats, I also usually uncheck Webalizer.</li> <li>Make sure you tick delete each domains access logs after run, otherwise you&#8217;ll start using heaps of Disk Space.</li> </ol> <p><strong>Mysql Optimisation</strong></p> <p>You can edit your mysql configuration (/etc/my.cnf) by typing vi /etc/my.cnf</p> <p>In order to add something in vi you need to hit insert, once completed hit esc then :wq to save &amp; quit. If you want to save without quitting type :q!</p> <p>There&#8217;s a few important variables that we&#8217;re going to tweak:</p> <ol> <li>max_connections</li> <li> wait_timeout</li> <li> thread_cache_size</li> <li> table_cache</li> <li>key_buffer_size</li> <li>query_cache_size</li> <li>tmp_table_size</li> </ol> <p>Via ssh you can type &#8216;mysqladmin variables&#8217; to see their current values &amp; you can also see a refreshed processlist by using the command &#8216;mysqladmin –i10 processlist extended-status&#8217;.</p> <p>The settings below should work well for a server with 512MB Guaranteed RAM (also leaving you enough free for traffic spikes), if you have burstable then you can probably look at increasing the number of max_connections to 400 &amp; possibly the key_buffer to 64M:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> [mysqld]<br /> max_connections = 300<br /> key_buffer = 32M<br /> myisam_sort_buffer_size = 32M<br /> join_buffer_size = 1M<br /> read_buffer_size = 1M<br /> sort_buffer_size = 2M<br /> table_cache = 4000<br /> thread_cache_size = 286<br /> interactive_timeout = 25<br /> wait_timeout = 7000<br /> connect_timeout = 10<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> max_connect_errors = 10<br /> query_cache_limit = 2M<br /> query_cache_size = 12M<br /> query_cache_type = 1<br /> tmp_table_size = 16M<br /> skip-innodb<br /> [mysqld_safe]<br /> open_files_limit = 8192<br /> [mysqldump]<br /> quick<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> [myisamchk]<br /> key_buffer = 64M<br /> sort_buffer = 64M<br /> read_buffer = 16M<br /> write_buffer = 16M<br /> [mysqlhotcopy]<br /> interactive-timeout[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Apache Optimisation</strong></p> <p>Apache settings are located in httpd.conf, you can use &#8216;locate httpd.conf&#8217; or &#8216;whereis httpd.conf&#8217; to find it.</p> <p>Optimal settings for apache should look something like this, I like to keep the min &amp; start servers slightly lower to stop too many child processes spawning &amp; using memory:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> KeepAlive On<br /> MaxKeepAliveRequests 100<br /> KeepAliveTimeout 1<br /> MinSpareServers 5<br /> MaxSpareServers 10<br /> StartServers 5<br /> MaxClients 150<br /> MaxRequestsPerChild 1000[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Restarting Mysql &amp; Apache</strong></p> <p>Once you&#8217;re done you&#8217;ll want to restart mysql &amp; apache. You can do this via the command line or via WHM.</p> <p>Restart Mysql: /etc/init.d/mysql restart (if mysql doesn&#8217;t restart consider commenting out skip-innodb in my.cnf)<br /> Restart Apache: /etc/init.d/httpd restart</p> <p>These commands may vary depending on what your server is running.</p> <p><strong>Monitoring Changes</strong></p> <p>Use the &#8216;top&#8217; command, &#8216;free - m&#8217; &amp; &#8216;ps aux&#8217; to get an idea of how the server is responding. Pay attention to how much RAM you have left &amp; also how much CPU Mysql &amp; Apache is using. You may need to leave Mysql running for 24-48 hours to get a true picture here.</p> <p>Thinking about upgrading to a VPS but not sure who to choose, let us help you with our <a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/hosts/list/vps-hosting/">VPS Web Hosting Reviews</a>, tailored specifically for Affiliate Marketers.</p> <p>[coolcode]top - 19:56:30 up 27 days, 4:11, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.07, 0.09<br /> Mem: 524288k total, 386432k used, 137856k free, 0k buffers[/coolcode]</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/seobook/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book">Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/flickr/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr">Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/yahoo-site-explorer/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo">Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/advertising-special/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Advertising Update &#038; New Services Launching Soon">Advertising Update &#038; New Services Launching Soon</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/ebay-ditches-commission-junction/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Ebay ditches Commission Junction">Ebay ditches Commission Junction</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=wUuFPKe0"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=wUuFPKe0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=2UfoVg1a"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=dcQgr7jA"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6kT8wdiX"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=6kT8wdiX" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6yUlqsOk"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } ["wfw"]=> array(1) { ["commentrss"]=> string(55) "http://www.earnersblog.com/vps-optimization-guide/feed/" } ["feedburner"]=> array(1) { ["origlink"]=> string(50) "http://www.earnersblog.com/vps-optimization-guide/" } ["summary"]=> string(181) "When you get to the level where you start needing VPS&#8217; (Virtual Private Servers) it&#8217;s important to understand how they work &#38; how you can get the most out of them..." ["atom_content"]=> string(11110) "<p>When you get to the level where you start needing VPS&#8217; (Virtual Private Servers) it&#8217;s important to understand how they work &amp; how you can get the most out of them. Poorly set up servers can cause you all sorts of problems like Downtime, Slow MYSQL or not withstanding the <a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/digproof-your-wordpress/">force of something like Digg</a>.</p> <p>This article will cover everything you need to do to ensure that your VPS is performing as fast as possible, which mostly focuses on optimizing your memory usage. Please ensure you make backups of your existing my.cnf &#038; httpd.conf we will not be held responsible for any problems.</p> <p>What you will need to action this guide:</p> <ol> <li>Your server specs (most importantly Guaranteed RAM &amp; Burst RAM)</li> <li>Access to your Web Host Support for installation of</li> <li>Root access to your VPS via SSH</li> <li>FTP Access to your server</li> <li>A brief knowledge of an editior (i.e. VI) if not I&#8217;ll provide the commands you need to know</li> <li>How to restart mysql &amp; apache in your server operating environment</li> <li>Access to WHM</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your PHPinfo</strong></p> <p>Create a file called phpinfo.php &amp; include the follow in it:</p> <p>[coolcode]<?php phpinfo();<br /> ?>[/coolcode]</p> <p>Navigate to that file on your server i.e. http://www.yourserver.com/phpinfo.php, you should see something like this:</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-606 aligncenter" title="PHPInfo" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/phpinfo.png" alt="PHPInfo" width="420" height="516" /></p> <p>What you need to ask your host to do:</p> <ol> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title="PHP Version" href="http://www.php.net/downloads.php" target="_blank">latest PHP version</a> (currently 5.28)</li> <li>Make sure that PHP is compiled with the latest version of <a title="Zend Optimizer" href="http://www.zend.com/en/downloads/" target="_blank">Zend Optimizer</a>, <a title="Eaccelerator" href="http://eaccelerator.net/" target="_blank">Eaccelerator</a> &amp; <a title="ioncube Accelerator" href="http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ioncube Accelerator</a>.</li> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title="Download Latest Apache Version" href="http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi" target="_blank">latest apache version</a> (currently 2.0.63)</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your current resource usage</strong></p> <p>Log in via SSH, I normally use the <a title="Putty Client" href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/">Putty client</a> for this.</p> <p>Commands:</p> <p><strong>top</strong>: your current server load &amp; resource usage.<br /> <strong>ps aux</strong>: all your processes &amp; which ones are using the most memory/cpu<br /> <strong>free -m</strong>: allocated memory, usage &amp; free memory</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-607 aligncenter" title="Top Command SSH" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mytop.png" alt="Top Command SSH" width="420" height="209" /></p> <p>If you use the top command you can get an overview of the load on the server &amp; memory usage. You can see in the screenshot above my VPS has a load of 0.02 during the last 1minute, 5 minutes &amp; 10 minutes.</p> <p>No-one really knows what the ideal &#8220;load average&#8221; should be but my general rule is that anything over below 1 is good &amp; above 1 is average. Above 3 &amp; you may start to notice performance issues.</p> <p>With memory usage you should ideally have 100MB or so free (if not more), you really need that buffer for large traffic spikes. If you&#8217;re coming close to your allocated memory usage then any allocated burst ram will kick in. On my server I have no burst ram, just guaranteed which means I don&#8217;t have that buffer, but my system is more stable (as everyone on the VPS can make use of the burst ram).</p> <p><strong>Removing &amp; Tweaking Unnecessary Services</strong></p> <p>There&#8217;s a number of services that you can remove or tweak to increase performance. To remove any of these services log into WHM &amp; go to Service Configuration &gt; Service Manager or Cpanel &gt; Plugins in the left menu.</p> <p><strong>Clamd: </strong>This is a virus scanning service, it uses up a ton of memory do generally I&#8217;ll remove it.</p> <p><strong>Entropy Chat: </strong>Disable this.</p> <p><strong>Spamd: </strong>This uses a lot of processes &amp; memory. You shouldn&#8217;t remove this, instead we can tweak it. Go to Cpanel &gt; Plugins &amp; install spamdconf, once done go to the bottom of WHM &amp; click on Setup Spamd Startup Configuration. Change the maximum children to 1 or 2. This will stop spamd spawning too many child processes.</p> <p><strong>Cpanel Tweak Settings</strong></p> <p>In WHM under Server Configuration &gt; Tweak Settings:</p> <ol> <li>Make sure default catch-all mail address is set to FAIL, this will use the least CPU time.</li> <li>Untick Mailman, this is a resource hog.</li> <li>Change the number of minutes between mail server queues to 180</li> <li>Uncheck Analog Stats, I also usually uncheck Webalizer.</li> <li>Make sure you tick delete each domains access logs after run, otherwise you&#8217;ll start using heaps of Disk Space.</li> </ol> <p><strong>Mysql Optimisation</strong></p> <p>You can edit your mysql configuration (/etc/my.cnf) by typing vi /etc/my.cnf</p> <p>In order to add something in vi you need to hit insert, once completed hit esc then :wq to save &amp; quit. If you want to save without quitting type :q!</p> <p>There&#8217;s a few important variables that we&#8217;re going to tweak:</p> <ol> <li>max_connections</li> <li> wait_timeout</li> <li> thread_cache_size</li> <li> table_cache</li> <li>key_buffer_size</li> <li>query_cache_size</li> <li>tmp_table_size</li> </ol> <p>Via ssh you can type &#8216;mysqladmin variables&#8217; to see their current values &amp; you can also see a refreshed processlist by using the command &#8216;mysqladmin –i10 processlist extended-status&#8217;.</p> <p>The settings below should work well for a server with 512MB Guaranteed RAM (also leaving you enough free for traffic spikes), if you have burstable then you can probably look at increasing the number of max_connections to 400 &amp; possibly the key_buffer to 64M:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> [mysqld]<br /> max_connections = 300<br /> key_buffer = 32M<br /> myisam_sort_buffer_size = 32M<br /> join_buffer_size = 1M<br /> read_buffer_size = 1M<br /> sort_buffer_size = 2M<br /> table_cache = 4000<br /> thread_cache_size = 286<br /> interactive_timeout = 25<br /> wait_timeout = 7000<br /> connect_timeout = 10<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> max_connect_errors = 10<br /> query_cache_limit = 2M<br /> query_cache_size = 12M<br /> query_cache_type = 1<br /> tmp_table_size = 16M<br /> skip-innodb<br /> [mysqld_safe]<br /> open_files_limit = 8192<br /> [mysqldump]<br /> quick<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> [myisamchk]<br /> key_buffer = 64M<br /> sort_buffer = 64M<br /> read_buffer = 16M<br /> write_buffer = 16M<br /> [mysqlhotcopy]<br /> interactive-timeout[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Apache Optimisation</strong></p> <p>Apache settings are located in httpd.conf, you can use &#8216;locate httpd.conf&#8217; or &#8216;whereis httpd.conf&#8217; to find it.</p> <p>Optimal settings for apache should look something like this, I like to keep the min &amp; start servers slightly lower to stop too many child processes spawning &amp; using memory:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> KeepAlive On<br /> MaxKeepAliveRequests 100<br /> KeepAliveTimeout 1<br /> MinSpareServers 5<br /> MaxSpareServers 10<br /> StartServers 5<br /> MaxClients 150<br /> MaxRequestsPerChild 1000[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Restarting Mysql &amp; Apache</strong></p> <p>Once you&#8217;re done you&#8217;ll want to restart mysql &amp; apache. You can do this via the command line or via WHM.</p> <p>Restart Mysql: /etc/init.d/mysql restart (if mysql doesn&#8217;t restart consider commenting out skip-innodb in my.cnf)<br /> Restart Apache: /etc/init.d/httpd restart</p> <p>These commands may vary depending on what your server is running.</p> <p><strong>Monitoring Changes</strong></p> <p>Use the &#8216;top&#8217; command, &#8216;free - m&#8217; &amp; &#8216;ps aux&#8217; to get an idea of how the server is responding. Pay attention to how much RAM you have left &amp; also how much CPU Mysql &amp; Apache is using. You may need to leave Mysql running for 24-48 hours to get a true picture here.</p> <p>Thinking about upgrading to a VPS but not sure who to choose, let us help you with our <a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/hosts/list/vps-hosting/">VPS Web Hosting Reviews</a>, tailored specifically for Affiliate Marketers.</p> <p>[coolcode]top - 19:56:30 up 27 days, 4:11, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.07, 0.09<br /> Mem: 524288k total, 386432k used, 137856k free, 0k buffers[/coolcode]</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/seobook/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book">Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/flickr/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr">Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/yahoo-site-explorer/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo">Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/advertising-special/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Advertising Update &#038; New Services Launching Soon">Advertising Update &#038; New Services Launching Soon</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/ebay-ditches-commission-junction/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Ebay ditches Commission Junction">Ebay ditches Commission Junction</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=wUuFPKe0"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=wUuFPKe0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=2UfoVg1a"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=dcQgr7jA"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6kT8wdiX"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=6kT8wdiX" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6yUlqsOk"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } ["link"]=> object(SyndicatedLink)#156 (4) { ["id"]=> string(2) "30" ["link"]=> object(stdClass)#73 (22) { ["link_id"]=> string(2) "30" ["link_url"]=> string(26) "http://www.earnersblog.com" ["link_name"]=> string(29) "Earners Blog: Get in the Know" ["link_image"]=> string(0) "" ["link_target"]=> string(0) "" ["link_category"]=> string(1) "0" ["link_description"]=> string(104) "Online guide to Smart Affiliate Marketing & SEO. 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["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(11110) "<p>When you get to the level where you start needing VPS&#8217; (Virtual Private Servers) it&#8217;s important to understand how they work &amp; how you can get the most out of them. Poorly set up servers can cause you all sorts of problems like Downtime, Slow MYSQL or not withstanding the <a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/digproof-your-wordpress/">force of something like Digg</a>.</p> <p>This article will cover everything you need to do to ensure that your VPS is performing as fast as possible, which mostly focuses on optimizing your memory usage. Please ensure you make backups of your existing my.cnf &#038; httpd.conf we will not be held responsible for any problems.</p> <p>What you will need to action this guide:</p> <ol> <li>Your server specs (most importantly Guaranteed RAM &amp; Burst RAM)</li> <li>Access to your Web Host Support for installation of</li> <li>Root access to your VPS via SSH</li> <li>FTP Access to your server</li> <li>A brief knowledge of an editior (i.e. VI) if not I&#8217;ll provide the commands you need to know</li> <li>How to restart mysql &amp; apache in your server operating environment</li> <li>Access to WHM</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your PHPinfo</strong></p> <p>Create a file called phpinfo.php &amp; include the follow in it:</p> <p>[coolcode]<?php phpinfo();<br /> ?>[/coolcode]</p> <p>Navigate to that file on your server i.e. http://www.yourserver.com/phpinfo.php, you should see something like this:</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-606 aligncenter" title="PHPInfo" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/phpinfo.png" alt="PHPInfo" width="420" height="516" /></p> <p>What you need to ask your host to do:</p> <ol> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title="PHP Version" href="http://www.php.net/downloads.php" target="_blank">latest PHP version</a> (currently 5.28)</li> <li>Make sure that PHP is compiled with the latest version of <a title="Zend Optimizer" href="http://www.zend.com/en/downloads/" target="_blank">Zend Optimizer</a>, <a title="Eaccelerator" href="http://eaccelerator.net/" target="_blank">Eaccelerator</a> &amp; <a title="ioncube Accelerator" href="http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ioncube Accelerator</a>.</li> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title="Download Latest Apache Version" href="http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi" target="_blank">latest apache version</a> (currently 2.0.63)</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your current resource usage</strong></p> <p>Log in via SSH, I normally use the <a title="Putty Client" href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/">Putty client</a> for this.</p> <p>Commands:</p> <p><strong>top</strong>: your current server load &amp; resource usage.<br /> <strong>ps aux</strong>: all your processes &amp; which ones are using the most memory/cpu<br /> <strong>free -m</strong>: allocated memory, usage &amp; free memory</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-607 aligncenter" title="Top Command SSH" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mytop.png" alt="Top Command SSH" width="420" height="209" /></p> <p>If you use the top command you can get an overview of the load on the server &amp; memory usage. You can see in the screenshot above my VPS has a load of 0.02 during the last 1minute, 5 minutes &amp; 10 minutes.</p> <p>No-one really knows what the ideal &#8220;load average&#8221; should be but my general rule is that anything over below 1 is good &amp; above 1 is average. Above 3 &amp; you may start to notice performance issues.</p> <p>With memory usage you should ideally have 100MB or so free (if not more), you really need that buffer for large traffic spikes. If you&#8217;re coming close to your allocated memory usage then any allocated burst ram will kick in. On my server I have no burst ram, just guaranteed which means I don&#8217;t have that buffer, but my system is more stable (as everyone on the VPS can make use of the burst ram).</p> <p><strong>Removing &amp; Tweaking Unnecessary Services</strong></p> <p>There&#8217;s a number of services that you can remove or tweak to increase performance. To remove any of these services log into WHM &amp; go to Service Configuration &gt; Service Manager or Cpanel &gt; Plugins in the left menu.</p> <p><strong>Clamd: </strong>This is a virus scanning service, it uses up a ton of memory do generally I&#8217;ll remove it.</p> <p><strong>Entropy Chat: </strong>Disable this.</p> <p><strong>Spamd: </strong>This uses a lot of processes &amp; memory. You shouldn&#8217;t remove this, instead we can tweak it. Go to Cpanel &gt; Plugins &amp; install spamdconf, once done go to the bottom of WHM &amp; click on Setup Spamd Startup Configuration. Change the maximum children to 1 or 2. This will stop spamd spawning too many child processes.</p> <p><strong>Cpanel Tweak Settings</strong></p> <p>In WHM under Server Configuration &gt; Tweak Settings:</p> <ol> <li>Make sure default catch-all mail address is set to FAIL, this will use the least CPU time.</li> <li>Untick Mailman, this is a resource hog.</li> <li>Change the number of minutes between mail server queues to 180</li> <li>Uncheck Analog Stats, I also usually uncheck Webalizer.</li> <li>Make sure you tick delete each domains access logs after run, otherwise you&#8217;ll start using heaps of Disk Space.</li> </ol> <p><strong>Mysql Optimisation</strong></p> <p>You can edit your mysql configuration (/etc/my.cnf) by typing vi /etc/my.cnf</p> <p>In order to add something in vi you need to hit insert, once completed hit esc then :wq to save &amp; quit. If you want to save without quitting type :q!</p> <p>There&#8217;s a few important variables that we&#8217;re going to tweak:</p> <ol> <li>max_connections</li> <li> wait_timeout</li> <li> thread_cache_size</li> <li> table_cache</li> <li>key_buffer_size</li> <li>query_cache_size</li> <li>tmp_table_size</li> </ol> <p>Via ssh you can type &#8216;mysqladmin variables&#8217; to see their current values &amp; you can also see a refreshed processlist by using the command &#8216;mysqladmin –i10 processlist extended-status&#8217;.</p> <p>The settings below should work well for a server with 512MB Guaranteed RAM (also leaving you enough free for traffic spikes), if you have burstable then you can probably look at increasing the number of max_connections to 400 &amp; possibly the key_buffer to 64M:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> [mysqld]<br /> max_connections = 300<br /> key_buffer = 32M<br /> myisam_sort_buffer_size = 32M<br /> join_buffer_size = 1M<br /> read_buffer_size = 1M<br /> sort_buffer_size = 2M<br /> table_cache = 4000<br /> thread_cache_size = 286<br /> interactive_timeout = 25<br /> wait_timeout = 7000<br /> connect_timeout = 10<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> max_connect_errors = 10<br /> query_cache_limit = 2M<br /> query_cache_size = 12M<br /> query_cache_type = 1<br /> tmp_table_size = 16M<br /> skip-innodb<br /> [mysqld_safe]<br /> open_files_limit = 8192<br /> [mysqldump]<br /> quick<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> [myisamchk]<br /> key_buffer = 64M<br /> sort_buffer = 64M<br /> read_buffer = 16M<br /> write_buffer = 16M<br /> [mysqlhotcopy]<br /> interactive-timeout[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Apache Optimisation</strong></p> <p>Apache settings are located in httpd.conf, you can use &#8216;locate httpd.conf&#8217; or &#8216;whereis httpd.conf&#8217; to find it.</p> <p>Optimal settings for apache should look something like this, I like to keep the min &amp; start servers slightly lower to stop too many child processes spawning &amp; using memory:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> KeepAlive On<br /> MaxKeepAliveRequests 100<br /> KeepAliveTimeout 1<br /> MinSpareServers 5<br /> MaxSpareServers 10<br /> StartServers 5<br /> MaxClients 150<br /> MaxRequestsPerChild 1000[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Restarting Mysql &amp; Apache</strong></p> <p>Once you&#8217;re done you&#8217;ll want to restart mysql &amp; apache. You can do this via the command line or via WHM.</p> <p>Restart Mysql: /etc/init.d/mysql restart (if mysql doesn&#8217;t restart consider commenting out skip-innodb in my.cnf)<br /> Restart Apache: /etc/init.d/httpd restart</p> <p>These commands may vary depending on what your server is running.</p> <p><strong>Monitoring Changes</strong></p> <p>Use the &#8216;top&#8217; command, &#8216;free - m&#8217; &amp; &#8216;ps aux&#8217; to get an idea of how the server is responding. Pay attention to how much RAM you have left &amp; also how much CPU Mysql &amp; Apache is using. You may need to leave Mysql running for 24-48 hours to get a true picture here.</p> <p>Thinking about upgrading to a VPS but not sure who to choose, let us help you with our <a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/hosts/list/vps-hosting/">VPS Web Hosting Reviews</a>, tailored specifically for Affiliate Marketers.</p> <p>[coolcode]top - 19:56:30 up 27 days, 4:11, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.07, 0.09<br /> Mem: 524288k total, 386432k used, 137856k free, 0k buffers[/coolcode]</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/seobook/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book">Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/flickr/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr">Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/yahoo-site-explorer/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo">Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/advertising-special/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Advertising Update &#038; New Services Launching Soon">Advertising Update &#038; New Services Launching Soon</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/ebay-ditches-commission-junction/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Ebay ditches Commission Junction">Ebay ditches Commission Junction</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=wUuFPKe0"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=wUuFPKe0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=2UfoVg1a"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=dcQgr7jA"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6kT8wdiX"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=6kT8wdiX" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6yUlqsOk"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } ["wfw"]=> array(1) { ["commentrss"]=> string(55) "http://www.earnersblog.com/vps-optimization-guide/feed/" } ["feedburner"]=> array(1) { ["origlink"]=> string(50) "http://www.earnersblog.com/vps-optimization-guide/" } ["summary"]=> string(181) "When you get to the level where you start needing VPS&#8217; (Virtual Private Servers) it&#8217;s important to understand how they work &#38; how you can get the most out of them..." ["atom_content"]=> string(11110) "<p>When you get to the level where you start needing VPS&#8217; (Virtual Private Servers) it&#8217;s important to understand how they work &amp; how you can get the most out of them. Poorly set up servers can cause you all sorts of problems like Downtime, Slow MYSQL or not withstanding the <a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/digproof-your-wordpress/">force of something like Digg</a>.</p> <p>This article will cover everything you need to do to ensure that your VPS is performing as fast as possible, which mostly focuses on optimizing your memory usage. Please ensure you make backups of your existing my.cnf &#038; httpd.conf we will not be held responsible for any problems.</p> <p>What you will need to action this guide:</p> <ol> <li>Your server specs (most importantly Guaranteed RAM &amp; Burst RAM)</li> <li>Access to your Web Host Support for installation of</li> <li>Root access to your VPS via SSH</li> <li>FTP Access to your server</li> <li>A brief knowledge of an editior (i.e. VI) if not I&#8217;ll provide the commands you need to know</li> <li>How to restart mysql &amp; apache in your server operating environment</li> <li>Access to WHM</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your PHPinfo</strong></p> <p>Create a file called phpinfo.php &amp; include the follow in it:</p> <p>[coolcode]<?php phpinfo();<br /> ?>[/coolcode]</p> <p>Navigate to that file on your server i.e. http://www.yourserver.com/phpinfo.php, you should see something like this:</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-606 aligncenter" title="PHPInfo" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/phpinfo.png" alt="PHPInfo" width="420" height="516" /></p> <p>What you need to ask your host to do:</p> <ol> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title="PHP Version" href="http://www.php.net/downloads.php" target="_blank">latest PHP version</a> (currently 5.28)</li> <li>Make sure that PHP is compiled with the latest version of <a title="Zend Optimizer" href="http://www.zend.com/en/downloads/" target="_blank">Zend Optimizer</a>, <a title="Eaccelerator" href="http://eaccelerator.net/" target="_blank">Eaccelerator</a> &amp; <a title="ioncube Accelerator" href="http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ioncube Accelerator</a>.</li> <li>Ensure that you have the <a title="Download Latest Apache Version" href="http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi" target="_blank">latest apache version</a> (currently 2.0.63)</li> </ol> <p><strong>Viewing your current resource usage</strong></p> <p>Log in via SSH, I normally use the <a title="Putty Client" href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/">Putty client</a> for this.</p> <p>Commands:</p> <p><strong>top</strong>: your current server load &amp; resource usage.<br /> <strong>ps aux</strong>: all your processes &amp; which ones are using the most memory/cpu<br /> <strong>free -m</strong>: allocated memory, usage &amp; free memory</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-607 aligncenter" title="Top Command SSH" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mytop.png" alt="Top Command SSH" width="420" height="209" /></p> <p>If you use the top command you can get an overview of the load on the server &amp; memory usage. You can see in the screenshot above my VPS has a load of 0.02 during the last 1minute, 5 minutes &amp; 10 minutes.</p> <p>No-one really knows what the ideal &#8220;load average&#8221; should be but my general rule is that anything over below 1 is good &amp; above 1 is average. Above 3 &amp; you may start to notice performance issues.</p> <p>With memory usage you should ideally have 100MB or so free (if not more), you really need that buffer for large traffic spikes. If you&#8217;re coming close to your allocated memory usage then any allocated burst ram will kick in. On my server I have no burst ram, just guaranteed which means I don&#8217;t have that buffer, but my system is more stable (as everyone on the VPS can make use of the burst ram).</p> <p><strong>Removing &amp; Tweaking Unnecessary Services</strong></p> <p>There&#8217;s a number of services that you can remove or tweak to increase performance. To remove any of these services log into WHM &amp; go to Service Configuration &gt; Service Manager or Cpanel &gt; Plugins in the left menu.</p> <p><strong>Clamd: </strong>This is a virus scanning service, it uses up a ton of memory do generally I&#8217;ll remove it.</p> <p><strong>Entropy Chat: </strong>Disable this.</p> <p><strong>Spamd: </strong>This uses a lot of processes &amp; memory. You shouldn&#8217;t remove this, instead we can tweak it. Go to Cpanel &gt; Plugins &amp; install spamdconf, once done go to the bottom of WHM &amp; click on Setup Spamd Startup Configuration. Change the maximum children to 1 or 2. This will stop spamd spawning too many child processes.</p> <p><strong>Cpanel Tweak Settings</strong></p> <p>In WHM under Server Configuration &gt; Tweak Settings:</p> <ol> <li>Make sure default catch-all mail address is set to FAIL, this will use the least CPU time.</li> <li>Untick Mailman, this is a resource hog.</li> <li>Change the number of minutes between mail server queues to 180</li> <li>Uncheck Analog Stats, I also usually uncheck Webalizer.</li> <li>Make sure you tick delete each domains access logs after run, otherwise you&#8217;ll start using heaps of Disk Space.</li> </ol> <p><strong>Mysql Optimisation</strong></p> <p>You can edit your mysql configuration (/etc/my.cnf) by typing vi /etc/my.cnf</p> <p>In order to add something in vi you need to hit insert, once completed hit esc then :wq to save &amp; quit. If you want to save without quitting type :q!</p> <p>There&#8217;s a few important variables that we&#8217;re going to tweak:</p> <ol> <li>max_connections</li> <li> wait_timeout</li> <li> thread_cache_size</li> <li> table_cache</li> <li>key_buffer_size</li> <li>query_cache_size</li> <li>tmp_table_size</li> </ol> <p>Via ssh you can type &#8216;mysqladmin variables&#8217; to see their current values &amp; you can also see a refreshed processlist by using the command &#8216;mysqladmin –i10 processlist extended-status&#8217;.</p> <p>The settings below should work well for a server with 512MB Guaranteed RAM (also leaving you enough free for traffic spikes), if you have burstable then you can probably look at increasing the number of max_connections to 400 &amp; possibly the key_buffer to 64M:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> [mysqld]<br /> max_connections = 300<br /> key_buffer = 32M<br /> myisam_sort_buffer_size = 32M<br /> join_buffer_size = 1M<br /> read_buffer_size = 1M<br /> sort_buffer_size = 2M<br /> table_cache = 4000<br /> thread_cache_size = 286<br /> interactive_timeout = 25<br /> wait_timeout = 7000<br /> connect_timeout = 10<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> max_connect_errors = 10<br /> query_cache_limit = 2M<br /> query_cache_size = 12M<br /> query_cache_type = 1<br /> tmp_table_size = 16M<br /> skip-innodb<br /> [mysqld_safe]<br /> open_files_limit = 8192<br /> [mysqldump]<br /> quick<br /> max_allowed_packet = 16M<br /> [myisamchk]<br /> key_buffer = 64M<br /> sort_buffer = 64M<br /> read_buffer = 16M<br /> write_buffer = 16M<br /> [mysqlhotcopy]<br /> interactive-timeout[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Apache Optimisation</strong></p> <p>Apache settings are located in httpd.conf, you can use &#8216;locate httpd.conf&#8217; or &#8216;whereis httpd.conf&#8217; to find it.</p> <p>Optimal settings for apache should look something like this, I like to keep the min &amp; start servers slightly lower to stop too many child processes spawning &amp; using memory:</p> <p>[coolcode]<br /> KeepAlive On<br /> MaxKeepAliveRequests 100<br /> KeepAliveTimeout 1<br /> MinSpareServers 5<br /> MaxSpareServers 10<br /> StartServers 5<br /> MaxClients 150<br /> MaxRequestsPerChild 1000[/coolcode]</p> <p><strong>Restarting Mysql &amp; Apache</strong></p> <p>Once you&#8217;re done you&#8217;ll want to restart mysql &amp; apache. You can do this via the command line or via WHM.</p> <p>Restart Mysql: /etc/init.d/mysql restart (if mysql doesn&#8217;t restart consider commenting out skip-innodb in my.cnf)<br /> Restart Apache: /etc/init.d/httpd restart</p> <p>These commands may vary depending on what your server is running.</p> <p><strong>Monitoring Changes</strong></p> <p>Use the &#8216;top&#8217; command, &#8216;free - m&#8217; &amp; &#8216;ps aux&#8217; to get an idea of how the server is responding. Pay attention to how much RAM you have left &amp; also how much CPU Mysql &amp; Apache is using. You may need to leave Mysql running for 24-48 hours to get a true picture here.</p> <p>Thinking about upgrading to a VPS but not sure who to choose, let us help you with our <a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/hosts/list/vps-hosting/">VPS Web Hosting Reviews</a>, tailored specifically for Affiliate Marketers.</p> <p>[coolcode]top - 19:56:30 up 27 days, 4:11, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.07, 0.09<br /> Mem: 524288k total, 386432k used, 137856k free, 0k buffers[/coolcode]</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/seobook/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book">Seo Book Review, Search Engine Optimization Book</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/flickr/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr">Link Building Guide Part 6 - Flickr</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/yahoo-site-explorer/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo">Link Building Guide Part 1 - Thank You Mr Yahoo</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/advertising-special/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Advertising Update &#038; New Services Launching Soon">Advertising Update &#038; New Services Launching Soon</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/ebay-ditches-commission-junction/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Ebay ditches Commission Junction">Ebay ditches Commission Junction</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nunmASWAlZ1_XvJPT405XK8P4do/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=wUuFPKe0"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=wUuFPKe0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=2UfoVg1a"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=dcQgr7jA"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6kT8wdiX"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=6kT8wdiX" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=6yUlqsOk"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } [1]=> array(13) { ["title"]=> string(38) "13 Smokin Tips to Increase Adwords CTR" ["link"]=> string(58) "http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EarnersBlog/~3/6s_Sb10e10s/" ["comments"]=> string(75) "http://www.earnersblog.com/13-smokin-tips-to-increase-adwords-ctr/#comments" ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Sat, 27 Dec 2008 10:49:24 +0000" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(6) "Stuart" } ["category"]=> string(17) "Earners Blog News" ["guid"]=> string(33) "http://www.earnersblog.com/?p=632" ["description"]=> string(157) "I&#8217;m slightly obsessed when it comes to CTR with my campaigns, I&#8217;ll always try to push things as hard as I can to get the best bang for my buck..." ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(11205) "<p>I&#8217;m slightly obsessed when it comes to CTR with my campaigns, I&#8217;ll always try to push things as hard as I can to get the best bang for my buck. These strategies can be used for established campaigns or new campaigns to get some quick results.</p> <p>As you know, CTR is linked to your ad quality &amp; also the price you end up paying.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>AdRank = CTR x Maximum Bid</strong></p> <p style="text-align: left;">From my observations quality score merely dictates your minimum entry into the bidding. If you have a high quality score you can eventually bring you bids down to sub 5c, however if you have a low quality score then you might have to bid $5 just to show.</p> <h3>Two Examples of how CTR can Reduce Cost</h3> <p style="text-align: left;">Stuart is bidding on the same keyword &amp; match type as Jenny. Jenny is bidding $10 with a CTR of 3.3%, Stuart&#8217;s maximum bid on the otherhand is $5 &amp; his CTR is 10%. Who&#8217;s ad is showing the highest?</p> <ol> <li>Jenny: $10 x 3.3 = AdRank of 33</li> <li>Stuart: $5 x 10 = AdRank of 50</li> </ol> <p>In this situation Stuart is bidding half of what Jenny is but his ad is much more relevant therefore he&#8217;ll end up appearing higher. This is the power of really tuning &amp; testing to increase your CTR.</p> <h3>Tip 1 - Increase your Maximum Bid</h3> <p>Since we&#8217;ve already established that your maximum bid can have a huge effect on your positioning you can use this to you advantage. Simply increase your bid to position 1, watch your CTR build then slowly bring the bid back after a few days until your position starts to slide again. I&#8217;ve successfully used this method to stay in position 1 &amp; ultimately pay much less than the person below me.</p> <h3>Tip 2 - Split test religiously</h3> <p>I always split test two ads at once, the reason behind this is if you test any more &amp; 1 performs shockingly then it drags your overall performance down. There&#8217;s plenty of variations you can try, but simply start with 2 ads, then remove the underperforming one after a few days &amp; rewrite it with your learnings from the previous test.</p> <h3>Tip 3 - Target your Headline</h3> <p>The headline is one of the most important parts of your ad, it&#8217;s probably what the user will see first. So try to make this as targeted as possible. i.e. if the user is searching for Health Affiliate Program then ideally that&#8217;s what you want as your title.</p> <p>You can test with variations &amp; also try adding calls to action in there like &#8220;Top Health Aff Program&#8221; (remember you can&#8217;t have more than 25 characters) etc. Quite often you can get away with abbreviations so don&#8217;t be afraid to try some.</p> <p>Using official site in the headline also works well for increasing CTR:</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><strong>Dell</strong> AU - Official Site</span><br /> Latest Deals on <strong>Dell</strong> Computers<br /> &amp; Laptops. Buy Online Today!<br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>www.<strong>dell</strong>.com/au</cite></span></p> <h3>Tip 4 - Use Description to highlight your USP&#8217;s</h3> <p>Once your headline has grabbed their attention you really need to sell them with the description. Try to include the things that separate you from your competitors. This may be price, free shipping, money back guarantee or certain product features. Here&#8217;s an example of an ad that makes good use of the body text:</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;">1/2 Price Broadband Sale</span><br /> 6GB for $19.50 for 1st 6 Months on<br /> 3&#8217;s $39 Mobile Broadband Plan!<br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>www.Three.com.au/MobileBroadband</cite></span></p> <h3>Tip 5 - The pyramid/arrow theory</h3> <p>You&#8217;ll notice that when you search for a keyword if it&#8217;s in your ad Google will highlight it. With the right positioning of keywords in your Headline, Description &amp; Display URL it is possible to take advantage of this highlighting to create an arrow or pyramid that helps with drawing the users attention to it.</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;">Instant <strong>Ringtones</strong></span><br /> Get Instant <strong>Ringtones</strong><br /> &amp; Latest Rad <strong>Ringtones</strong> Online<br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>www.Rebcell.com/<strong>Ringtones</strong></cite></span></p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><span style="color: #000000;">When a user searches for Ringtones the ad above contains the keyword 4 times. Notice how when bolded the ad looks like a series of steps (or a pyramid), this is a proven method that subliminally attracts users towards your ad over all the others on the page.</span><strong><br /> </strong></span></p> <h3>Tip 6 - Test with the Search Network on &amp; Off</h3> <p>The search network can have a positive or negative effect on your CTR, there&#8217;s really no way to tell how it will impact your overall campaign CTR. Make sure you test it on &amp; off.</p> <h3>Tip 7 - Split out Broad, Phrase &amp; Exact into their own Adgroups</h3> <p>I generally won&#8217;t do this for every single keyword in a campaign but for the high traffic / top converting words this really allows you to tweak your ads to best suit the match type. For example the ad that works for an exact match on the word &#8220;free ringtones&#8221; might not be as effective when you start broad or phrase matching because you&#8217;ll be triggering on keywords like &#8220;free ringtone downloads&#8221; which you&#8217;re not targeting in the Headline or Description.</p> <h3>Tip 8 - Test Keyword Insertion</h3> <p>I try to stay away from keyword insertion on the most part but it&#8217;s useful when you&#8217;re trying to get a campaign up &amp; running quickly. It&#8217;s great for CTR since it&#8217;ll substitute the keyword into your ad.</p> <p>Be careful though because keyword insertion can backfire (check out this search for &#8220;buy kids online&#8221; for example):</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><strong>Online Kids Buy</strong></span><br /> Find Over 10,000 Offers From Major<br /> Retailers <strong>Online</strong> Today With Lasoo!<cite></cite><br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>www.Lasoo.com.au</cite></span></p> <h3>Tip 9 - Run content campaigns separately</h3> <p>Whilst the content network doesn&#8217;t affect your overall search CTR it can confuse you when trying to evaluate your overall CTR for a campaign. I usually split them into two campaigns just so it&#8217;s easy to get an overview. I also find it easier to view &amp; evaluate conversion data better by doing this.</p> <h3>Tip 10 - Curiosity killed the cat</h3> <p>People are curious creatures &amp; you can play to this when writing your ad. This works incredibly well for product based searches. For this example lets use the term &#8220;arbitrage conspiracy&#8221;. Chances are that if you&#8217;re searching on this term you&#8217;re looking to buy the book.</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><strong>Arbitrage Conspiracy</strong> Lie</span><br /> Check Out This Shocking Truth About<br /> The Flaw of <strong>Arbitrage Conspiracy</strong>!<cite></cite><br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>ShockingReview.com/<strong>Arbitrage</strong>Conspir</cite></span></p> <h3>Tip 11 - Tweak your Display URL</h3> <p>There&#8217;s a few ways of tweaking the Display URL, this can have a moderate to large effect on CTR:</p> <ol> <li>earnersblog.com</li> <li>www.earnersblog.com</li> <li>EarnersBlog.com</li> <li>www.EarnersBlog.com</li> <li>Keyword.EarnersBlog.com</li> <li>EarnersBlog.com/Keyword</li> <li>www.EarnersBlog.com/Keyword</li> </ol> <p>I usually tend to go with option 6, but in some cases I&#8217;ve seen option 1 blow it out of the water. It pays to test the variations to get an idea of which display URL&#8217;s work best with your demographic.</p> <h3>Tip 12 - Play with Scheduling</h3> <p>I&#8217;ve seen scheduling used in some quite ingenious ways to build up history. For example initially only having your ads active for 1 hour during the day (around 8pm at night) to ease your way into a new market without your competitors spotting you &amp; adjusting their bids up too quickly.</p> <p>Scheduling for your industry may reveal that people are more click happy &amp; night when at home or it may be the opposite, they may click less at home but more at work. You can use this to your advantage if you split test it.</p> <h3>Tip 13 - <a title="Adwords Trademark Symbol" href="http://www.earnersblog.com/trademark-symbol-increases-ctr/">Use Trademark Symbols</a></h3> <p>Using trademark symbols for products can increase CTR by insane amounts, (something to do with people thinking that ad is the official site).</p> <h3>Conversions always rule over CTR</h3> <p>Just because an ad has a better CTR doesn&#8217;t mean it will convert better. I will <strong>always</strong> choose an ad that converts better or has a better ROI over one that has a better CTR.</p> <p>So now you have 13 things that you can test, find the winning combination &amp; take you Adwords Campaigns to the next level.</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/earnosphere-nov-24/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Earnosphere: Week Ending 24/11/07">Earnosphere: Week Ending 24/11/07</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/happy-birthday/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Happy Birthday Earners Blog! ;)">Happy Birthday Earners Blog! ;)</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/increase-adwords-conversions-lower-cost/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Five Tips to Increase Adwords Conversions &#038; Lower Costs">Five Tips to Increase Adwords Conversions &#038; Lower Costs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/trademark-symbol-increases-ctr/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Increase Adwords CTR with the Trademark Symbol">Increase Adwords CTR with the Trademark Symbol</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/quick-adwords-tip-1/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Quick Adwords Tip #1">Quick Adwords Tip #1</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/fo27BT6AGXNM-k6PoUaajDuOpA8/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/fo27BT6AGXNM-k6PoUaajDuOpA8/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=2dxZyeef"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=2dxZyeef" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=StcvKd1f"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=sPPM1kUL"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=H7hoOIh4"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=H7hoOIh4" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=Es8d2Wc2"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } ["wfw"]=> array(1) { ["commentrss"]=> string(71) "http://www.earnersblog.com/13-smokin-tips-to-increase-adwords-ctr/feed/" } ["feedburner"]=> array(1) { ["origlink"]=> string(66) "http://www.earnersblog.com/13-smokin-tips-to-increase-adwords-ctr/" } ["summary"]=> string(157) "I&#8217;m slightly obsessed when it comes to CTR with my campaigns, I&#8217;ll always try to push things as hard as I can to get the best bang for my buck..." ["atom_content"]=> string(11205) "<p>I&#8217;m slightly obsessed when it comes to CTR with my campaigns, I&#8217;ll always try to push things as hard as I can to get the best bang for my buck. These strategies can be used for established campaigns or new campaigns to get some quick results.</p> <p>As you know, CTR is linked to your ad quality &amp; also the price you end up paying.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>AdRank = CTR x Maximum Bid</strong></p> <p style="text-align: left;">From my observations quality score merely dictates your minimum entry into the bidding. If you have a high quality score you can eventually bring you bids down to sub 5c, however if you have a low quality score then you might have to bid $5 just to show.</p> <h3>Two Examples of how CTR can Reduce Cost</h3> <p style="text-align: left;">Stuart is bidding on the same keyword &amp; match type as Jenny. Jenny is bidding $10 with a CTR of 3.3%, Stuart&#8217;s maximum bid on the otherhand is $5 &amp; his CTR is 10%. Who&#8217;s ad is showing the highest?</p> <ol> <li>Jenny: $10 x 3.3 = AdRank of 33</li> <li>Stuart: $5 x 10 = AdRank of 50</li> </ol> <p>In this situation Stuart is bidding half of what Jenny is but his ad is much more relevant therefore he&#8217;ll end up appearing higher. This is the power of really tuning &amp; testing to increase your CTR.</p> <h3>Tip 1 - Increase your Maximum Bid</h3> <p>Since we&#8217;ve already established that your maximum bid can have a huge effect on your positioning you can use this to you advantage. Simply increase your bid to position 1, watch your CTR build then slowly bring the bid back after a few days until your position starts to slide again. I&#8217;ve successfully used this method to stay in position 1 &amp; ultimately pay much less than the person below me.</p> <h3>Tip 2 - Split test religiously</h3> <p>I always split test two ads at once, the reason behind this is if you test any more &amp; 1 performs shockingly then it drags your overall performance down. There&#8217;s plenty of variations you can try, but simply start with 2 ads, then remove the underperforming one after a few days &amp; rewrite it with your learnings from the previous test.</p> <h3>Tip 3 - Target your Headline</h3> <p>The headline is one of the most important parts of your ad, it&#8217;s probably what the user will see first. So try to make this as targeted as possible. i.e. if the user is searching for Health Affiliate Program then ideally that&#8217;s what you want as your title.</p> <p>You can test with variations &amp; also try adding calls to action in there like &#8220;Top Health Aff Program&#8221; (remember you can&#8217;t have more than 25 characters) etc. Quite often you can get away with abbreviations so don&#8217;t be afraid to try some.</p> <p>Using official site in the headline also works well for increasing CTR:</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><strong>Dell</strong> AU - Official Site</span><br /> Latest Deals on <strong>Dell</strong> Computers<br /> &amp; Laptops. Buy Online Today!<br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>www.<strong>dell</strong>.com/au</cite></span></p> <h3>Tip 4 - Use Description to highlight your USP&#8217;s</h3> <p>Once your headline has grabbed their attention you really need to sell them with the description. Try to include the things that separate you from your competitors. This may be price, free shipping, money back guarantee or certain product features. Here&#8217;s an example of an ad that makes good use of the body text:</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;">1/2 Price Broadband Sale</span><br /> 6GB for $19.50 for 1st 6 Months on<br /> 3&#8217;s $39 Mobile Broadband Plan!<br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>www.Three.com.au/MobileBroadband</cite></span></p> <h3>Tip 5 - The pyramid/arrow theory</h3> <p>You&#8217;ll notice that when you search for a keyword if it&#8217;s in your ad Google will highlight it. With the right positioning of keywords in your Headline, Description &amp; Display URL it is possible to take advantage of this highlighting to create an arrow or pyramid that helps with drawing the users attention to it.</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;">Instant <strong>Ringtones</strong></span><br /> Get Instant <strong>Ringtones</strong><br /> &amp; Latest Rad <strong>Ringtones</strong> Online<br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>www.Rebcell.com/<strong>Ringtones</strong></cite></span></p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><span style="color: #000000;">When a user searches for Ringtones the ad above contains the keyword 4 times. Notice how when bolded the ad looks like a series of steps (or a pyramid), this is a proven method that subliminally attracts users towards your ad over all the others on the page.</span><strong><br /> </strong></span></p> <h3>Tip 6 - Test with the Search Network on &amp; Off</h3> <p>The search network can have a positive or negative effect on your CTR, there&#8217;s really no way to tell how it will impact your overall campaign CTR. Make sure you test it on &amp; off.</p> <h3>Tip 7 - Split out Broad, Phrase &amp; Exact into their own Adgroups</h3> <p>I generally won&#8217;t do this for every single keyword in a campaign but for the high traffic / top converting words this really allows you to tweak your ads to best suit the match type. For example the ad that works for an exact match on the word &#8220;free ringtones&#8221; might not be as effective when you start broad or phrase matching because you&#8217;ll be triggering on keywords like &#8220;free ringtone downloads&#8221; which you&#8217;re not targeting in the Headline or Description.</p> <h3>Tip 8 - Test Keyword Insertion</h3> <p>I try to stay away from keyword insertion on the most part but it&#8217;s useful when you&#8217;re trying to get a campaign up &amp; running quickly. It&#8217;s great for CTR since it&#8217;ll substitute the keyword into your ad.</p> <p>Be careful though because keyword insertion can backfire (check out this search for &#8220;buy kids online&#8221; for example):</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><strong>Online Kids Buy</strong></span><br /> Find Over 10,000 Offers From Major<br /> Retailers <strong>Online</strong> Today With Lasoo!<cite></cite><br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>www.Lasoo.com.au</cite></span></p> <h3>Tip 9 - Run content campaigns separately</h3> <p>Whilst the content network doesn&#8217;t affect your overall search CTR it can confuse you when trying to evaluate your overall CTR for a campaign. I usually split them into two campaigns just so it&#8217;s easy to get an overview. I also find it easier to view &amp; evaluate conversion data better by doing this.</p> <h3>Tip 10 - Curiosity killed the cat</h3> <p>People are curious creatures &amp; you can play to this when writing your ad. This works incredibly well for product based searches. For this example lets use the term &#8220;arbitrage conspiracy&#8221;. Chances are that if you&#8217;re searching on this term you&#8217;re looking to buy the book.</p> <p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><strong>Arbitrage Conspiracy</strong> Lie</span><br /> Check Out This Shocking Truth About<br /> The Flaw of <strong>Arbitrage Conspiracy</strong>!<cite></cite><br /> <span style="color: #0000ff;"><cite>ShockingReview.com/<strong>Arbitrage</strong>Conspir</cite></span></p> <h3>Tip 11 - Tweak your Display URL</h3> <p>There&#8217;s a few ways of tweaking the Display URL, this can have a moderate to large effect on CTR:</p> <ol> <li>earnersblog.com</li> <li>www.earnersblog.com</li> <li>EarnersBlog.com</li> <li>www.EarnersBlog.com</li> <li>Keyword.EarnersBlog.com</li> <li>EarnersBlog.com/Keyword</li> <li>www.EarnersBlog.com/Keyword</li> </ol> <p>I usually tend to go with option 6, but in some cases I&#8217;ve seen option 1 blow it out of the water. It pays to test the variations to get an idea of which display URL&#8217;s work best with your demographic.</p> <h3>Tip 12 - Play with Scheduling</h3> <p>I&#8217;ve seen scheduling used in some quite ingenious ways to build up history. For example initially only having your ads active for 1 hour during the day (around 8pm at night) to ease your way into a new market without your competitors spotting you &amp; adjusting their bids up too quickly.</p> <p>Scheduling for your industry may reveal that people are more click happy &amp; night when at home or it may be the opposite, they may click less at home but more at work. You can use this to your advantage if you split test it.</p> <h3>Tip 13 - <a title="Adwords Trademark Symbol" href="http://www.earnersblog.com/trademark-symbol-increases-ctr/">Use Trademark Symbols</a></h3> <p>Using trademark symbols for products can increase CTR by insane amounts, (something to do with people thinking that ad is the official site).</p> <h3>Conversions always rule over CTR</h3> <p>Just because an ad has a better CTR doesn&#8217;t mean it will convert better. I will <strong>always</strong> choose an ad that converts better or has a better ROI over one that has a better CTR.</p> <p>So now you have 13 things that you can test, find the winning combination &amp; take you Adwords Campaigns to the next level.</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/earnosphere-nov-24/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Earnosphere: Week Ending 24/11/07">Earnosphere: Week Ending 24/11/07</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/happy-birthday/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Happy Birthday Earners Blog! ;)">Happy Birthday Earners Blog! ;)</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/increase-adwords-conversions-lower-cost/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Five Tips to Increase Adwords Conversions &#038; Lower Costs">Five Tips to Increase Adwords Conversions &#038; Lower Costs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/trademark-symbol-increases-ctr/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Increase Adwords CTR with the Trademark Symbol">Increase Adwords CTR with the Trademark Symbol</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/quick-adwords-tip-1/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Quick Adwords Tip #1">Quick Adwords Tip #1</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/fo27BT6AGXNM-k6PoUaajDuOpA8/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/fo27BT6AGXNM-k6PoUaajDuOpA8/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=2dxZyeef"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=2dxZyeef" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=StcvKd1f"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=sPPM1kUL"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=H7hoOIh4"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=H7hoOIh4" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=Es8d2Wc2"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } [2]=> array(13) { ["title"]=> string(52) "Niche Domination - Solid Strategy or One Trick Pony?" ["link"]=> string(58) "http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EarnersBlog/~3/HbbFO1_229E/" ["comments"]=> string(53) "http://www.earnersblog.com/niche-domination/#comments" ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:22:27 +0000" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(6) "Stuart" } ["category"]=> string(17) "Earners Blog News" ["guid"]=> string(33) "http://www.earnersblog.com/?p=578" ["description"]=> string(149) "Quite a while ago I wrote a post on building a lasting affiliate network, something that can potentially take 2-3 years to really achieve properly..." ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(9813) "<p>Quite a while ago I wrote a post on building a lasting <a title="Affiliate Network" href="http://www.earnersblog.com/lasting-affiliate-websites/" target="_self">affiliate network</a>, something that can potentially take 2-3 years to really achieve properly.</p> <p>I was browsing through the serps recently for a new project that I&#8217;m about to launch here on Earners Blog which relates to the web hosting niche. This niche in particular <strong>really</strong> shits me, it&#8217;s as bad as the MMO (Make Money Online) niche - millions of idiots all promoting products because of their commissions rather than the value of the product to the client/shopper. But, everyone&#8217;s gotta make a buck&#8230;right?</p> <p>So I stumbled across a networks of sites recently that has started dominating this niche quite well, it just so happens that it&#8217;s for all the shitty hosts that pay good commissions but provide a terrible service (how ironic?).</p> <p>In this post I&#8217;m going to take apart his network &amp; show you the things he&#8217;s done it &amp; also the mistakes he&#8217;s made along the way (without directly linking to the sites).</p> <h3>The Network</h3> <p>Lets firstly look at one of his sites. It&#8217;s the #1 SERP for the term <a title="Bluehost Review" href="http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;hs=X0Y&amp;q=bluehost+review&amp;btnG=Search&amp;meta=" target="_blank">Bluehost Review</a>.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-579 aligncenter" title="Blue Host Review" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bluehost-review.png" alt="Blue Host Review" width="400" height="258" /></p> <p>Just by looking at it you can tell it&#8217;s Wordpress with the iTheme, lots of categories &amp; using the site: operator we can see there&#8217;s around 172 pages indexed.</p> <p>Now this particular affiliate is using three tactics that work incredibly well:</p> <ol> <li>Calling the domain the exact SERP he wants to rank for. In my testing I have noticed that if you&#8217;re getting backlinks with an anchor text that matches the name of the domain name it&#8217;s less likely to trigger anchor text penalties (because that&#8217;s what your domain is called).</li> <li>Hiring people to write content on every bluehost related search term there is. If you don&#8217;t use the <a title="Adwords Keyword Tool" href="https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal" target="_blank">Adwords Keyword Tool</a> then you&#8217;re crazy.</li> <li>Interlinking this bluehost review site with all the other sites in his network. Giving each site anywhere from 9k - 14k Yahoo! Backlinks.</li> </ol> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-580 aligncenter" title="Web Host Interlinking" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/webhost-interlinking.png" alt="Web Host Interlinking" width="223" height="531" /></p> <p>The Layout &amp; setup of Wordpress is pretty stock standard. Plenty of categories with optimised title tags &amp; listing them all in the sidebar. I&#8217;d personally normally list the posts in the sidebar but if you can include some unique content on each category page using wordpress conditionals (or excerpts) then this method works well too.</p> <p>Notice how the header of each single.php also has the same Bluehost offer right at the fold line. This is a great technique for grabbing the attention of the reader (after all with these types of sites the content is secondary, you want them to see the offer).</p> <p><center><img class="size-full wp-image-588 aligncenter" title="Blue Host Offer" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bluehostoffer.png" alt="Blue Host Offer" width="400" height="146" /></center></p> <h3>Mistakes</h3> <ol> <li>All of his sites are using the same template (iTheme for Wordpress), if anyone is manually reviewing these sites say goodbye.</li> <li>I can easily find out who this guy is using <a title="Bluehost Review" href="http://www.google.com.au/search?q=bluehostreview.org&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a" target="_self">this search</a> &amp; seeing that he calls himself charlesgan on forums. It appears he calls himself the <a title="Charles Gan" href="http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;hs=hcE&amp;q=charlesgan+forum&amp;btnG=Search&amp;meta=" target="_self">same on all forums</a>. It also appears that he spends a large amount of time <a title="Buying &amp; Selling Links on Digitalpoint" href="http://forums.digitalpoint.com/search.php?searchid=15267570" target="_blank">buying &amp; selling links on digitalpoint</a> (&amp; also hiring content writers for Web Hosting Articles). If I can find this sort of stuff out in about 2 minutes I&#8217;m sure Google can too.</li> <li>Interlinking each &amp; every site seems to be working in the SERPS but it&#8217;s also very <a title="Easily spotted backlink profile in Yahoo" href="http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain:bluehostreview.org%20-site:bluehostreview.org" target="_blank">easily spotted</a>. If someone decides they need to take the whole network down for manipulating the SERPS it leaves Charles in a very unfortunate position &amp; 2 years of hard work down the drain.</li> <li>No mailing list, whilst this isn&#8217;t a big thing Charles could potentially build a large mailing list of subscribers (after all someone doesn&#8217;t stay with the same host forever), this could turn into quite a nice recurring revenue stream.</li> </ol> <h3>Things done well</h3> <ol> <li>Whilst I don&#8217;t endorse doing this Charles has provided <a title="Blue Host Coupons" href="http://whois.domaintools.com/bluehostcoupons.org" target="_blank">fake whois info</a> for the domains. Which could possibly be helping him in resisting any automatic interlinking penalties with Google. He hasn&#8217;t gone as far as setting anonymous nameservers with someone like <a title="EasyDNS" href="http://www.easydns.com/" target="_blank">easydns</a> but that&#8217;d probably be the next step.</li> <li>The layout &amp; organisation of the content is done very well. Plenty of topics all covering all the questions someone might ask about Bluehost. Mysql, Wordpress, Server Speed all that stuff.</li> <li>He has over 50 domains dominating this niche, quite a bit of work for one person. So I&#8217;m guessing most of the <a title="Outsourced Content Writers" href="http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=954679" target="_blank">content is outsourced</a>.</li> <li>Charles also interlinks the sites well within the content of the posts. Using keyword rich anchor text. There&#8217;s a few plugins for Wordpress that you can set to do this automatically.</li> </ol> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-584 aligncenter" title="Interlinking" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/interlinking.png" alt="Interlinking" width="400" height="128" /></p> <h3>Conclusion</h3> <p>I&#8217;m guessing that this network is making some pretty decent money, if you consider some hosts pay up to $150 for a signup. This shows that sticking to your guns &amp; focusing on a particular niche can really pay off in the long run. However it does also have its consequences, in that if the network is detected you risk losing everything.</p> <p>My tip is to diversify, don&#8217;t rely on a single network to build your income, but at the same time don&#8217;t ignore the potential rewards for putting the hard work into building one. If you can outsource the creation &amp; content you can still work on your other projects.</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/lasting-affiliate-websites/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Building a lasting Affiliate Network - Part 1">Building a lasting Affiliate Network - Part 1</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/how-much-do-you-earn/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: How much do you earn?">How much do you earn?</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/earnosphere-nov-3/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Earnosphere: Week Ending 3/11/07">Earnosphere: Week Ending 3/11/07</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/ultimate-affiliate-link-guide/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: The Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Website Links">The Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Website Links</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/bumpzee-vs-mybloglog/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Bumpzee vs Mybloglog&#8230;.Fight!">Bumpzee vs Mybloglog&#8230;.Fight!</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/n1sZ1eNxH4EHa7mF4mRY3pjl3LQ/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/n1sZ1eNxH4EHa7mF4mRY3pjl3LQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=GeQBsqgp"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=GeQBsqgp" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=EuSB9u7C"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=vZwll3UY"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=wEH9jcXt"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=wEH9jcXt" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=uw5vle3G"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } ["wfw"]=> array(1) { ["commentrss"]=> string(49) "http://www.earnersblog.com/niche-domination/feed/" } ["feedburner"]=> array(1) { ["origlink"]=> string(44) "http://www.earnersblog.com/niche-domination/" } ["summary"]=> string(149) "Quite a while ago I wrote a post on building a lasting affiliate network, something that can potentially take 2-3 years to really achieve properly..." ["atom_content"]=> string(9813) "<p>Quite a while ago I wrote a post on building a lasting <a title="Affiliate Network" href="http://www.earnersblog.com/lasting-affiliate-websites/" target="_self">affiliate network</a>, something that can potentially take 2-3 years to really achieve properly.</p> <p>I was browsing through the serps recently for a new project that I&#8217;m about to launch here on Earners Blog which relates to the web hosting niche. This niche in particular <strong>really</strong> shits me, it&#8217;s as bad as the MMO (Make Money Online) niche - millions of idiots all promoting products because of their commissions rather than the value of the product to the client/shopper. But, everyone&#8217;s gotta make a buck&#8230;right?</p> <p>So I stumbled across a networks of sites recently that has started dominating this niche quite well, it just so happens that it&#8217;s for all the shitty hosts that pay good commissions but provide a terrible service (how ironic?).</p> <p>In this post I&#8217;m going to take apart his network &amp; show you the things he&#8217;s done it &amp; also the mistakes he&#8217;s made along the way (without directly linking to the sites).</p> <h3>The Network</h3> <p>Lets firstly look at one of his sites. It&#8217;s the #1 SERP for the term <a title="Bluehost Review" href="http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;hs=X0Y&amp;q=bluehost+review&amp;btnG=Search&amp;meta=" target="_blank">Bluehost Review</a>.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-579 aligncenter" title="Blue Host Review" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bluehost-review.png" alt="Blue Host Review" width="400" height="258" /></p> <p>Just by looking at it you can tell it&#8217;s Wordpress with the iTheme, lots of categories &amp; using the site: operator we can see there&#8217;s around 172 pages indexed.</p> <p>Now this particular affiliate is using three tactics that work incredibly well:</p> <ol> <li>Calling the domain the exact SERP he wants to rank for. In my testing I have noticed that if you&#8217;re getting backlinks with an anchor text that matches the name of the domain name it&#8217;s less likely to trigger anchor text penalties (because that&#8217;s what your domain is called).</li> <li>Hiring people to write content on every bluehost related search term there is. If you don&#8217;t use the <a title="Adwords Keyword Tool" href="https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal" target="_blank">Adwords Keyword Tool</a> then you&#8217;re crazy.</li> <li>Interlinking this bluehost review site with all the other sites in his network. Giving each site anywhere from 9k - 14k Yahoo! Backlinks.</li> </ol> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-580 aligncenter" title="Web Host Interlinking" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/webhost-interlinking.png" alt="Web Host Interlinking" width="223" height="531" /></p> <p>The Layout &amp; setup of Wordpress is pretty stock standard. Plenty of categories with optimised title tags &amp; listing them all in the sidebar. I&#8217;d personally normally list the posts in the sidebar but if you can include some unique content on each category page using wordpress conditionals (or excerpts) then this method works well too.</p> <p>Notice how the header of each single.php also has the same Bluehost offer right at the fold line. This is a great technique for grabbing the attention of the reader (after all with these types of sites the content is secondary, you want them to see the offer).</p> <p><center><img class="size-full wp-image-588 aligncenter" title="Blue Host Offer" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bluehostoffer.png" alt="Blue Host Offer" width="400" height="146" /></center></p> <h3>Mistakes</h3> <ol> <li>All of his sites are using the same template (iTheme for Wordpress), if anyone is manually reviewing these sites say goodbye.</li> <li>I can easily find out who this guy is using <a title="Bluehost Review" href="http://www.google.com.au/search?q=bluehostreview.org&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a" target="_self">this search</a> &amp; seeing that he calls himself charlesgan on forums. It appears he calls himself the <a title="Charles Gan" href="http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;hs=hcE&amp;q=charlesgan+forum&amp;btnG=Search&amp;meta=" target="_self">same on all forums</a>. It also appears that he spends a large amount of time <a title="Buying &amp; Selling Links on Digitalpoint" href="http://forums.digitalpoint.com/search.php?searchid=15267570" target="_blank">buying &amp; selling links on digitalpoint</a> (&amp; also hiring content writers for Web Hosting Articles). If I can find this sort of stuff out in about 2 minutes I&#8217;m sure Google can too.</li> <li>Interlinking each &amp; every site seems to be working in the SERPS but it&#8217;s also very <a title="Easily spotted backlink profile in Yahoo" href="http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain:bluehostreview.org%20-site:bluehostreview.org" target="_blank">easily spotted</a>. If someone decides they need to take the whole network down for manipulating the SERPS it leaves Charles in a very unfortunate position &amp; 2 years of hard work down the drain.</li> <li>No mailing list, whilst this isn&#8217;t a big thing Charles could potentially build a large mailing list of subscribers (after all someone doesn&#8217;t stay with the same host forever), this could turn into quite a nice recurring revenue stream.</li> </ol> <h3>Things done well</h3> <ol> <li>Whilst I don&#8217;t endorse doing this Charles has provided <a title="Blue Host Coupons" href="http://whois.domaintools.com/bluehostcoupons.org" target="_blank">fake whois info</a> for the domains. Which could possibly be helping him in resisting any automatic interlinking penalties with Google. He hasn&#8217;t gone as far as setting anonymous nameservers with someone like <a title="EasyDNS" href="http://www.easydns.com/" target="_blank">easydns</a> but that&#8217;d probably be the next step.</li> <li>The layout &amp; organisation of the content is done very well. Plenty of topics all covering all the questions someone might ask about Bluehost. Mysql, Wordpress, Server Speed all that stuff.</li> <li>He has over 50 domains dominating this niche, quite a bit of work for one person. So I&#8217;m guessing most of the <a title="Outsourced Content Writers" href="http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=954679" target="_blank">content is outsourced</a>.</li> <li>Charles also interlinks the sites well within the content of the posts. Using keyword rich anchor text. There&#8217;s a few plugins for Wordpress that you can set to do this automatically.</li> </ol> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-584 aligncenter" title="Interlinking" src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/interlinking.png" alt="Interlinking" width="400" height="128" /></p> <h3>Conclusion</h3> <p>I&#8217;m guessing that this network is making some pretty decent money, if you consider some hosts pay up to $150 for a signup. This shows that sticking to your guns &amp; focusing on a particular niche can really pay off in the long run. However it does also have its consequences, in that if the network is detected you risk losing everything.</p> <p>My tip is to diversify, don&#8217;t rely on a single network to build your income, but at the same time don&#8217;t ignore the potential rewards for putting the hard work into building one. If you can outsource the creation &amp; content you can still work on your other projects.</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/lasting-affiliate-websites/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Building a lasting Affiliate Network - Part 1">Building a lasting Affiliate Network - Part 1</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/how-much-do-you-earn/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: How much do you earn?">How much do you earn?</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/earnosphere-nov-3/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Earnosphere: Week Ending 3/11/07">Earnosphere: Week Ending 3/11/07</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/ultimate-affiliate-link-guide/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: The Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Website Links">The Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Website Links</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/bumpzee-vs-mybloglog/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Bumpzee vs Mybloglog&#8230;.Fight!">Bumpzee vs Mybloglog&#8230;.Fight!</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/n1sZ1eNxH4EHa7mF4mRY3pjl3LQ/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/n1sZ1eNxH4EHa7mF4mRY3pjl3LQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=GeQBsqgp"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=GeQBsqgp" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=EuSB9u7C"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=vZwll3UY"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=wEH9jcXt"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=wEH9jcXt" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=uw5vle3G"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } [3]=> array(13) { ["title"]=> string(48) "Hack Alert (remv.php) - Upgrade to Wordpress 2.7" ["link"]=> string(58) "http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EarnersBlog/~3/Fw5aqBwK9ik/" ["comments"]=> string(56) "http://www.earnersblog.com/wordpress-remv-hack/#comments" ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Sat, 13 Dec 2008 05:02:11 +0000" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(6) "Stuart" } ["category"]=> string(9) "Wordpress" ["guid"]=> string(33) "http://www.earnersblog.com/?p=574" ["description"]=> string(103) "If you haven&#8217;t upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 yet then I suggest you do it sooner rather than later..." ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(4142) "<p>If you haven&#8217;t <a title="Download Wordpress" href="http://wordpress.org/download/" target="_blank">upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 yet</a> then I suggest you do it sooner rather than later. There&#8217;s an exploit in earlier versions of Wordpress that are compromising installations &amp; turning them into mass zombie DDOS machines.</p> <h3>How to you check if you&#8217;ve been hacked</h3> <p>Via ftp go to the folder /wp-content/themes/ if there&#8217;s a file there named &#8220;remv.php&#8221; then you&#8217;re <a title="Unlucky" href="http://www.google.com.au/search?num=100&amp;hl=en&amp;safe=off&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;hs=Bc1&amp;q=%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Fremv.php&amp;btnG=Search&amp;meta=" target="_blank">one of the unlucky ones</a>.</p> <h3>What is remv.php?</h3> <p>It&#8217;s an application called PHPremoteView, it basically allows anyone to run any php commands on your server. This could result in a wide variety of damage (lost files, password, having your adsense code changed, affiliate url&#8217;s changed etc etc).</p> <p>Currently most of the compromised installs are being used for DDOS attacks. So if you notice also an unusually high load on your server this could be the cause.</p> <h3>What to do to fix it</h3> <ol> <li>Delete the remv.php file first.</li> <li>Look to see which files in the Wordpress folder have been altered lately, it&#8217;s possible that your theme headers or footer could have unsuspecting spam links to pharma affiliate sites.</li> <li>Export all your Wordpress posts via XML then reinstall Wordpress 2.7 &amp; import your posts.</li> <li>If you&#8217;re hosting multiple sites on your server you&#8217;ll want to check for all the files that have been modified within the time range since remv.php was created.</li> <li>Change all your passwords, user, root, wordpress, mysql databases&#8230;.everything.</li> <li>Upgrade all your plugins to the latest versions (some might not work in 2.7 also).</li> </ol> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/popular-seo-blogs-hacked/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Popular SEO Blogs Hacked: Wordpress 2.0.7 Upgrade Available">Popular SEO Blogs Hacked: Wordpress 2.0.7 Upgrade Available</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/sponsoring-wordpress-themes/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Sponsoring Wordpress Themes for Backlinks">Sponsoring Wordpress Themes for Backlinks</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/top-wordpress-adsense-plugins/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Top Wordpress Adsense Plugins">Top Wordpress Adsense Plugins</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/wordpress-translation-increase-traffic/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Make your Blog Multilingual &#038; Increase Traffic by 200%">Make your Blog Multilingual &#038; Increase Traffic by 200%</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/start-using-trackbacks-more/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Make Your Mark with Trackbacks">Make Your Mark with Trackbacks</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/TQcXnzqygbsMN127HvTx7GoJthg/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/TQcXnzqygbsMN127HvTx7GoJthg/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=41jOqx42"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=41jOqx42" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=YsaZ5HB1"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=LW0cCE58"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=d0bfGetN"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=d0bfGetN" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=tapaXDzc"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } ["wfw"]=> array(1) { ["commentrss"]=> string(52) "http://www.earnersblog.com/wordpress-remv-hack/feed/" } ["feedburner"]=> array(1) { ["origlink"]=> string(47) "http://www.earnersblog.com/wordpress-remv-hack/" } ["summary"]=> string(103) "If you haven&#8217;t upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 yet then I suggest you do it sooner rather than later..." ["atom_content"]=> string(4142) "<p>If you haven&#8217;t <a title="Download Wordpress" href="http://wordpress.org/download/" target="_blank">upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 yet</a> then I suggest you do it sooner rather than later. There&#8217;s an exploit in earlier versions of Wordpress that are compromising installations &amp; turning them into mass zombie DDOS machines.</p> <h3>How to you check if you&#8217;ve been hacked</h3> <p>Via ftp go to the folder /wp-content/themes/ if there&#8217;s a file there named &#8220;remv.php&#8221; then you&#8217;re <a title="Unlucky" href="http://www.google.com.au/search?num=100&amp;hl=en&amp;safe=off&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;hs=Bc1&amp;q=%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Fremv.php&amp;btnG=Search&amp;meta=" target="_blank">one of the unlucky ones</a>.</p> <h3>What is remv.php?</h3> <p>It&#8217;s an application called PHPremoteView, it basically allows anyone to run any php commands on your server. This could result in a wide variety of damage (lost files, password, having your adsense code changed, affiliate url&#8217;s changed etc etc).</p> <p>Currently most of the compromised installs are being used for DDOS attacks. So if you notice also an unusually high load on your server this could be the cause.</p> <h3>What to do to fix it</h3> <ol> <li>Delete the remv.php file first.</li> <li>Look to see which files in the Wordpress folder have been altered lately, it&#8217;s possible that your theme headers or footer could have unsuspecting spam links to pharma affiliate sites.</li> <li>Export all your Wordpress posts via XML then reinstall Wordpress 2.7 &amp; import your posts.</li> <li>If you&#8217;re hosting multiple sites on your server you&#8217;ll want to check for all the files that have been modified within the time range since remv.php was created.</li> <li>Change all your passwords, user, root, wordpress, mysql databases&#8230;.everything.</li> <li>Upgrade all your plugins to the latest versions (some might not work in 2.7 also).</li> </ol> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog | Making Money Online is Easy - Earners Blog:<ul><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/popular-seo-blogs-hacked/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Popular SEO Blogs Hacked: Wordpress 2.0.7 Upgrade Available">Popular SEO Blogs Hacked: Wordpress 2.0.7 Upgrade Available</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/sponsoring-wordpress-themes/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Sponsoring Wordpress Themes for Backlinks">Sponsoring Wordpress Themes for Backlinks</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/top-wordpress-adsense-plugins/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Top Wordpress Adsense Plugins">Top Wordpress Adsense Plugins</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/wordpress-translation-increase-traffic/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Make your Blog Multilingual &#038; Increase Traffic by 200%">Make your Blog Multilingual &#038; Increase Traffic by 200%</a></li><li><a href="http://www.earnersblog.com/start-using-trackbacks-more/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Make Your Mark with Trackbacks">Make Your Mark with Trackbacks</a></li></ul></p><br /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/TQcXnzqygbsMN127HvTx7GoJthg/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/TQcXnzqygbsMN127HvTx7GoJthg/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=41jOqx42"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=41jOqx42" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=YsaZ5HB1"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1266" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=LW0cCE58"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=50" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=d0bfGetN"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?i=d0bfGetN" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?a=tapaXDzc"><img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/EarnersBlog?d=1267" border="0"></img></a> </div>" } [4]=> array(13) { ["title"]=> string(39) "Coupon Affiliates are stealing from you" ["link"]=> string(58) "http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EarnersBlog/~3/-sXiomWJjqU/" ["comments"]=> string(76) "http://www.earnersblog.com/coupon-affiliates-are-stealing-from-you/#comments" ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:02:53 +0000" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(6) "Stuart" } ["category"]=> string(39) "Affiliate Marketing NewsGeneral Musings" ["guid"]=> string(67) "http://www.earnersblog.com/coupon-affiliates-are-stealing-from-you/" ["description"]=> string(119) "Apparently now in the UK 1 out of every 200 visits to an online retail site comes from a Voucher/Coupon Code website..." ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(7452) "<p>Apparently now in the UK <a title="Coupon Code Websites" href="http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2008/12/133_increase_in_voucher_searches.html" target="_blank">1 out of every 200</a> visits to an online retail site comes from a Voucher/Coupon Code website. As this type of traffic is increasing year on year, your hard earned affiliate commissions could be getting flushed down the drain when your cookie is overwritten by these rogue practices.</p> <h3>How it Works</h3> <p>Many of the big voucher websites have one incredibly sneaky way of overwriting your hard earned cookie (There are legit ones out there that do things by the book, but I&#8217;m not naming names here).</p> <p style="text-align: center"><img src="http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/showdiscountsave.png" alt="Show Discount &amp; Save" /></p> <p align="left">So in order to even view the discount codes you first need to click on the button to reveal them, this opens up a popunder which sets a new cookie, overwriting yours. Now this is where it starts to get very very sneaky.</p> <p align="left">When you have a large database driven site it&#8217;s very easy to start creating pages around every merchant / site known to man that has an affiliate program (regardless of whether they have voucher codes or not), some sites have to do this manually others can do it on the fly. They then start optimising the pages for &#8220;Merchant Name Vouchers, Discount Codes &amp; Coupons.&#8221;</p> <p align="left">So here&#8217;s now a typical scenario:</p> <ul> <li>You send a customer to the merchant via your affiliate redirect</li> <li>Customer sees a nice shiny laptop &amp; decide to buy</li> <li>They get to the checkout &amp; see the merchant has a &#8220;coupon code field&#8221;</li> <li>Their eyebrows raise ever so slightly &amp; they type &#8220;merchant coupon codes&#8221; into Google</li> <li>Up pops one of the Voucher Code sites with a nice shiny button similar to that above</li> <li>But&#8230;.low &amp; behold there&#8217;s no coupon codes.</li> <li><strong>The voucher website has STILL overwritten your cookie though.</strong></li> </ul> <p>This is what pisses me off the most, people are ready to buy, ready to commit. Yet you have you sale stolen from you at the last minute (seemingly without any effort).</p> <h3>Networks are turning a blind eye</h3> <p>One of the UK&#8217;s large voucher websites last year reported they sent over $250,000,000 worth of sales through to merchants. With this type of volume the networks are turning a blind eye &amp; letting these sites get away with stealing YOUR commissions.</p> <h3>What is the Role of an Affiliate?</h3> <p>It seems this varies considerably, but here&#8217;s a few thoughts (I&#8217;d like to know yours also):</p> <p align="center"> <div>n <div> <div class='democracy'> <strong class="poll-question">What do you think the role of an Affiliate is?</strong> <div class='dem-results'> <form action='http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/plugins/democracy/democracy.php' onsubmit='return dem_Vote(this)'> <ul> <li> <input type='radio' id='dem-choice-48' value='48' name='dem_poll_9' /> <label for='dem-choice-48'>To presell the product before sending to the merchant</label> </li> <li> <input type='radio' id='dem-choice-49' value='49' name='dem_poll_9' /> <label for='dem-choice-49'>To make as much money as possible</label> </li> <li> <input type='radio' id='dem-choice-50' value='50' name='dem_poll_9' /> <label for='dem-choice-50'>To grab the buyer in the final stages of the buying process &#038; send them to the merchant</label> </li> <li> <input type='radio' id='dem-choice-51' value='51' name='dem_poll_9' /> <label for='dem-choice-51'>To grab the buyer at the coupon stage &#038; steal commissions</label> </li> <li> <input type='radio' id='dem-choice-52' value='52' name='dem_poll_9' /> <label for='dem-choice-52'>To add value to the merchants marketing campaign</label> </li> <li> <input type='radio' id='dem-choice-53' value='53' name='dem_poll_9' /> <label for='dem-choice-53'>To send potential buyers to a merchants website</label> </li> <li> <a href='/feed/?dem_add_user_answer=true&#038;dem_poll_id=9' rel='nofollow' onclick='return dem_addAnswer(this)' class='dem-add-answer'>Add an Answer</a> </li> </ul> <input type='hidden' name='dem_poll_id' value='9' /> <input type='hidden' name='dem_action' value='vote' /> <input type='submit' class='dem-vote-button' value='Vote' /> <a href='/feed/?dem_action=view&amp;dem_poll_id=9' onclick='return dem_getVotes("http://www.earnersblog.com/wp-content/plugins/democracy/democracy.php?dem_action=view&amp;dem_poll_id=9", this)' rel='nofollow' class='dem-vote-link'>View Results</a> </form> </div> </div></div> </div> <h3>What can be done to combat this problem?</h3> <p align="left">There&#8217;s four solutions to this that I can think of:</p> <ol> <li>I look very carefully before promoting some merchants now, if they have a coupon discount field it&#8217;s a big RED FLAG for me.</li> <li>Ban the offending affiliates from Networks</li> <li>Disable the overwriting of Affiliate Cookies</li> <li>Credit the Affiliate that sends the consumer to the purchase page before the affiliate that provides the coupon.</li> </ol> <p>What solutions do you see to combat this rising problem?</p> <p>---<br />Related Articles at Affiliate Marketing Blog |