Daily Proxy List – Affiliate Topsites Project

Daily Proxy Listis an example of what is known on the Internet as a ‘Top site’. These sites are very simple to setup and run, so this article looks at this type of site and how to earn from them using Daily Proxy List as an example.

In simple terms a top site is a site that lists sites, ranking them on a daily, weekly or monthly basis based on their popularity. The script can also check that the listed site is  still live, removing its listing if it is determined that it is not. The site allows users to register their own sites which are submitted to the webmaster for approval.

In order for a site to be listed on your topsite the webmaster of that site must put some code containing a reciprocal link and icon on the home page of their site. This carries the advantage for your site of immediately generating links to your topsite and therefore generating traffic.

Usually these sites are based on a theme, in the case of daily proxy list it is a list of Internet Proxy Servers.

Choosing your subject or niche

I would recommend that if you are going to create a Topsite that you find one that is in a niche, something where the market is not already saturated by topsites or other links sites, and last of all something that you are knowledgeable about as you will need to make sure that the sites that join your topsite are relevant to the subject. If they are not users will turn away from your site when they are looking for information or services.

Earning From A Top Site

On Daily Proxy List I have implemented many different types of advertising and changed things around several times in order to find the best solution.

It very much depends on the type of topsite you have created and the niche that you are aiming at.

Remember that the key when placing adverts is to make them relevant to the site. Users have come to your site because they are interested in the subject of that site, therefore you have a better chance of getting them to click if the adverts are relevant.

At daily proxy list I made the mistake of having very general adverts provided by Adbrite, these were not successful at all, generating a massive $3.64 in 3 months, not the sorts of income that I want to be looking at.

I have therefore changed the adverts aiming them at the people who are adding the sites, the webmasters, rather than the people who visit looking for sites. I am using text-link-ads referral adverts, when a webmaster signs up to the service I get $25. Using text-link-ads I have earned $75 so far since I changed the adverts over to them at the beginning of August (16 days ago)

Depending on your site you will need to take a different tack. Try using one of the following sites to find an advertising campaign that works for you, this may be a ppc (pay per click) campaign or it maybe advertising an affiliates product where you earn commission when you sell, for example if your topsite is Laptops top site, you might choose to have affiliate adverts for Dell, IBM or HP on your site.

Advertising Services

Adbrite
Affiliate Window
Affiliate Future
Text-Link-Ads (free $100 coupon that you can use to advertise your site)
TradeDoubler

Pay per listing

You might also decide that you want to charge webmasters to list their site on your topsite. This is probably something that you wont be able to do straight away, but if your site becomes popular you may be able to charge either for a listing or charge for the top (and therefore most sort after slots) on your site.

Generating traffic

Generating traffic, especially good quality traffic is the age old problem with all sites.  The key thing in all these cases is not just to generate any traffic, but concentrate on generating quality traffic.

The first step must always be to make sure that you get your site on search engines, see other articles on this site about Search engine optimisation (SEO) and how to submit your sites to the main search engines.

The second option open to you is to pay for advertising, Google AdWords offer a good service, however I currently recommend text-link-ads as they are currently offering $100 worth of free advertising which will get you along way down the road of advertising your site.

The third option is to contact webmasters with relevant sites, drop them a polite email with details about yours site and how they can register their site.

There are of course many ways to generate traffic, if you want to know more, your best bet is to read through the many articles on this site that cover the subject.

So What is needed?

Linux or Windows Server
Ardvark Topsites script
PHP
MySQL
Advertising or affiliate programme

Technical information on setup

Assuming that you have your web hosting and database setup and have all the connection details and passwords to hand, the setup of the topsite script is relatively easy.

Download the Ardvark Topsites script here, unzip the files and upload them to your web space.

If you are on command line SSH you can do the above using the following commands:

first go to the folder where your website is setup for example:

cd /var/www/htdocs/

Then we get the script from the Internet (you may wish to get the latest release from the Ardvark site:

wget http://www.aardvarktopsitesphp.com/atsphp-5.2.0.zip

You then need to unzip the archive:

unzip atsphp-5.2.0.zip

This will then extract all the files needed, you can confirm this by doing ls -lawhich will list the files in the folder.

It will probably extract the files to a folder called atsphp-5.20, you can leave it like this or what I do is move those files into the root of your webspace (htdocs folder)

cp atsphp-5.2.0

mv * /var/www/htdocs

or wherever your htdocs is located.

You must them change the privileges on settings_sql.php

CHMOD 666 settings_sql.php

then in your web browser go to

http://domainname.com/install.index.php

Here you have a web interface where you can follow the instructions.

Once installed it is critical that you delete or what I tend to do is rename the install directory, leaving this would be a big security hole!

Once set-up you are ready to go and get people to sign-up to your site, you can go to the administration interface (http://domainname.com/index.php?a=admin in this interface you can control many aspects of your site, approve new members, change email settings and many more features, it is best if you have a play around here and see what it can do.

In order to get adverts on the site you need to modify the ‘skin’ I normally use the classic skin although there are many others available. Lets assume that you are using the classic skin as most of the others are setup in a very similar way.

First of all you need to locate the wrapper.html file, this is located in htdocs/skins/classic/wrapper.html

if you want to edit this on command line you can use:

vim wrapper.html

In this file you will find the html layout for the topsite, I simply add a banner advert at the top of the page below the <body> tag.

The scripts now exist on your web hosting, but you now need to install the script and configure it to work with your database.

Web Hosting

If you need some web hosting please Earning From Affiliates recommends Fasthosts who have hosting packages from £3.99 per month.