We’re getting the IP from users who are behind a proxy AND we are getting the IP of that user from behind OUR HAProxy load balanced layer – BOOYA!

Props to Chris at OpenX. I owe you a beer!

Here is the email I sent to Commission Junction:

Customer (MY NAME WAS HERE .) 04/01/2008 02:25 PM

I just received an email from you recently entitled “Save your account from deactivation”.
I would very much like to keep my CJ account because our website is just starting to get really big and CJ has some great advertisers that we would love to leverage.

Can you please NOT deactivate my account because it is a big part of our business model for monetizing our site?

Thanks.

I think this was a perfectly reasonable response because I had made some sales from my site but since I was trying to develop the site for content and get contributors I didn’t have much time to spend on enhancing it for earning from the traffic, hence, I requested that CJ do not nerf me. I was surprised to get a response so soon but check out their response, I found it a little shady:

Subject: “Saving your account from deactivation”

Response (CJ REP NAME WAS HERE) 04/02/2008 09:41 AM

Dear MY NAME WAS HERE,

Thank you for your inquiry. If an account does not generate a commission within a six month period, it will be deactivated. This is Commission Junction’s policy. However, if you are deactivated due to dormancy, you will be prompted to reactivate yourself upon logging into your account manager.

To avoid deactivation, you may want to generate a sale or lead after clicking through one of your links. We do not usually encourage making purchases or generating leads through your own links; however, in this case it will be alright.

If you do not want to make a purchase through one of your own links, and you are deactivated due to dormancy, you will be able to reactivate yourself. Once you reactivate your account, you will have another six months to generate a commission before being deactivated again. Your links and banners will still be intact and your relationships should not be affected if you reactivate quickly. Please note that if you remain deactivated for too long, advertisers may choose to expire you from their programs.

A Dormant Account Fee (DAF) of $10.00 USD is charged to publishers that do not generate commissions for a six month period. If you continue to not generate commissions, the DAF charges your account each month until your account balance drops below the DAF amount. At this point, Commission Junction deactivates your account for dormancy.

We hope this answers your question and we apologize any inconvenience this may have caused. If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,
Commission Junction Client Support

Interesting reply where the rep from Commission Junction encourages me to click a Commission Junction generated/supplied link on my site and buy a product from the store thereby sending a payment and earning a commission and ultimately avoiding account deactivation and this $10 “DAF” fee. More like a DAFt business model to be following here from Commission Junction if you ask me.

Here are some questions on this topic:

• Do you use Commmission Junction?
• Have you had this experience?
• Do you agree with their policy on deactivation?
• What do you think of their idea to click a link and buy a product?

I tagged this “bullshit” amongst others because I think it is retarded.

• Ad Server development – running locally, serving file from localhost, developing plugins and skins.
• WordPress development – again, running locally and being served from localhost, making/changing/hacking plugins and themes.
• We site development – you guessed it, it’s running locally using PHP and screwing with/tweaking Apacge.

I’m about to tell you the secret – I’m using MAMP. It’s a little like a LAMP except it’s a Mac which in itself is part of the UNIX operating system family with a hybrid kernel type. So Mac + Apache + MySQL + PHP = MAMP. It’s pretty awesome. It has configurable ports, PHP version 4 or 5 availability, Zend Optimizer availability and two choices of PHP accelerator (XCache or eAccellerator).

I don’t usually drop shameless links (except for that time when I thought it would be cool to monetize this site with stupi text links and sponsored posts, bad idea I know).

If you tinker with Macs have a peek at MAMP.

There are definitely groups that are not catered for and they are the everyday John Doe who owns a site and doesn’t have nearly enough page impressions or a “suitable site” to warrant an ad server picking them up as a publisher. Frankly, I don’t think it’s good practice to turn away business based on the size of the client. You know what some people say, “Size matters”, well I disagree.

I have a connection for free ad serving and I would like to extend the offer to anyone who has been rejected by larger networks because of size. I am not into working with porn or sketchy setups but if you have a legitimate interest site and would like to monetize your traffic then get in touch. I can certainly hook you up with 100% free ad serving and the worry free aspect of not having to look after the technology and hardware.

Sidenote, I am still having issues with referring to it as “OpenX” as opposed to “Openads”. Heck, I only just got used to “Openads” over “phpAdsNew”!

If you need help with setting up a distributed statistic installation of OpenAds well, join the club! I will be posting about developments with this.