Are you an affiliate that has scaled out his campaigns to countries that speak a language other than the one you speak? If so, you’ve probably had to find a translator to get your ad copy and landing page translated.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably used Google Translate which, in my opinion, is utterly worthless now. I’ve used it a number of times and it provided me a great translation. However it has burned me to the tune of four figures once.  Awhile back, I was running one of the Be2 offers with Neverblue and used Google Translate to translate my ad copy. When I agreed to the terms and conditions of the offer, I didn’t really read them, I just skimmed them like most affiliates would. The advertiser happened to come across one of my ads, traced it back to me and refused to pay me.  They refused payment because the translation of the ad copy was grammatically incorrect and didn’t portray Be2 as they wanted to be portrayed.  Nevertheless, it wasn’t anything demeaning, just horrible grammar.  The terms of the offer are below.  So, I really had no ground to stand on.

Localization – Any translation of English text used in the promotion of Be2 and any Be2 services must be approved in advance by Neverblue. The use of any profanity or sexually suggestive or explicit wording is strictly prohibited. Neverblue reserves the right to immediately remove your account from the applicable campaign and reverse of any commissions you may have earned without giving prior notice to you if you violate any of these additional terms and conditions. All translations must be grammatically correct. If you are uncertain if your creative assets or promotional text and materials are within the brand guidelines, please contact your Neverblue Affiliate Manager. Govern yourself accordingly.

Ever since this day, I knew I had to obtain a better translation service.  I kept hearing Ryan Eagle and other affiliates talk about how good OneHourTranslation.com was, so I decided to give them a shot.  From the beginning, it has always been a pleasure dealing with OneHourTranslation and their layout is really intuitive.   You can either input text to a text box on their site or you can upload a .txt file or MS Word document for translation.  They also are pretty good at returning the translation back to you in the same format you supplied them with.  When you need something translated you can also choose to have it translated by an expert and I typically go this route.  I choose an expert in Marketing/Consumer/Media for translation.  This doubles the price from 7c per word to 14c per word, which I don’t mind paying for.  I’d rather have it done right the first time.  They have cheaper translation services, if you purchase credits in volume and they even accept PayPal.  As their name implies, they usually return your translated text within an hour.  They have a policy that if they can’t provide you with a translation in under 6 hours, it’s free or you get a credit, or something along those lines.  I wouldn’t know the deal exactly, because it hasn’t happened.

If you read the terms above for Be2, you’ll see that you should should clear your ad copy and any other translated text with your affiliate manager.  I reached out to my affiliate manager numerous times to clear ad copy that was done by OneHourTranslation and it always came back as approved.

So if you’re looking for a good translation service, look no further than OneHourTranslation.com!

Wes Mahler came forward June 5, 2010 and made a huge announcement, Tracking202 Has Been Re-Acquired by Original Founders.  His post is below.

We have an important announcement to make today. I’m not entirely sure how to bring about this news so I am going to do my best and just come out with it. As many of you may know, Tracking202 was acquired by another company in our space known as Bloosky Interactive last November. However since then, many things have changed. A lot of things happened and as some of you may or may not know, I was no longer part of this company for the past few months. This has all changed now.

Today, I’m pleased to announced that the original founders of Tracking202 have undone the acquisition and Tracking202 is no longer a Bloosky Interactive company! As of earlier this week, we completed a deal with Bloosky to get Tracking202 back.  I and a few members of the original Tracking202 team will be heading up the direction of the company moving forward.

We hope to continue innovating in our industry which is in need of great change more than ever. A lot has happened recently both with Tracking202, the affiliate industry and performance marketing space as a whole. We hope to change all of that for the better. We’re bringing back the original Tracking202 culture that many of you have grown to know and fallen in love with.  We are going to do our best to make Tracking202 even better starting by redoing everything that Tracking202 is currently.

We are going to be making some fairly large changes to Tracking202, some of which we’ve already began doing. One of the first things we will be doing is discontinuing Tracking202 Pro soon because we feel there are better opportunities for our company to tackle. We will be posting more and more updates on what’s to come so please feel free to stop by our blog for further future updates.

We know we have a lot of work to do ahead of us and we look forward to making things happen for the community and the industry as a whole with these new changes. We do appreciate all of the support you guys have given us throughout the years and we look forward to working with you guys again.

Hello again,
Wes

I had been hearing rumors about this for the past month or so and wasn’t sure how I felt about the move.  My opinion was that he should re-acquire the company and continue to support it.  I felt it would be in his best interest to start a new product or service for our industry from the ground up to reestablish the support of his target market.

Once it was posted publicly, I originally came forward on WickedFire, with this post, saying that, “The 202 brand will never be what it once was.”  I wanted to come out and say that my post seemed kind of harsh and I didn’t support Wes Mahler in his decision.  I would like to publicly announce that I fully support Wes in whatever he chooses to do.  I just don’t think that the auro that surrounded the 202 Platform before he sold the company to Bloosky will be able to be achieved again.  I’m not saying it can’t be done, I’m just saying he has his work cut out for him if that’s what he wants to do.

I do hope that he continues to build the 202 Platform and expand its services to be everything it has the potential to be.  The consensus is that he tarnished his and 202′s reputation once he sold it.  I never blamed Wes’ decision, ever.  I’m sure his payday was nice and for that reason alone I don’t blame him.  I personally was hoping he would turn himself into a serial entrepreneur and build a new service for this industry or another and all us affiliates could once say we were there when he first hit the big time.

But, those are just my feelings about this move.  I’m excited for Wes and the rest of the 202 team.  They’re all stand up guys and it has always been a pleasure to interact with them from support to partying.

P.S. I’ll be upgrading my 202 install once they release their new version.

If any you affiliates have been using the Facebook Ad Uploader you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to let this thing split test 5 different ad copies and 20 different images.  I’ve heard the speed has improved, but when I was using it, it would take a good hour to upload this.

Mr. Green was generous enough to let me beta test his Plenty of Fish Ad Uploader to help him work out the kinks.  I must say, when I first received it, I was impressed.  There was very little he needed to change from the beginning. I really don’t know what else to say to review this product.  I’m going to let the features and the video below speak for itself.

1. Works for the small image/text ads
2. Works with the IAB image formats
3. Can split test and track by each unique ad
4. Ability to export/import campaign settings
5. FAST!

I’ve included a video below of how long it took me to setup a dating campaign from scratch until the ads have been posted on Plenty of Fish.  I split tested 5 different sets of ad copy and 20 different images, which equates to a total of 100 different ads.  I’m going to let the video below speak to the wonders of this little tool.

Are you impressed?  Buy your copy now! It’s only $100 and includes free updates for life!

P.S. Sorry for the shitty video quality, but you can peep the better quality video here.

The real post is here.

After crashing my VPS from Liquid Web a few times where I sent 20,000+ clicks daily, I decided to finally bite the bullet and invest in a dedicated server.  After talking to the Sales and Technical Support Team over at Liquid Web we decided it would be best to go with their Professional Series.  The exact specs of my server are below.  I don’t think it’s a bad deal for  $299/month.

Processor: Dual Xeon E5504 Quad Core (Gainstown) (2.0GHz/core)
Memory: 2GB DDR RAM
Hd1: 250GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache
Hd2: 250GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache
OS: Linux – CentOS 5 (+64 Bit)
Bandwidth: 8000GB Monthly Transfer (4000 in + 4000 out)

The only thing that worries me is the 2 gigabytes of memory.  If I ever have problems with this server I will definitely double that at the least.

I wonder how many clicks it will take to crash this server?  Once I find out, I’ll let you all know!