Imagine this: competitors copy what you do and destroy all your work! It’s a serious threat! Simple searches for common links, domain ownership, IP addresses and online properties alone can show ways to make money online. Adult online business is becoming more and more transparent. Most revealing are searches for Google’s Analytics and Adsense codes. Those may dismantle ownership of domains across various different hosting companies and more. Other sophisticated tools compare affiliate codes and account numbers. All these numbers and codes can reveal secrets of your success, but there are ways to stop transparency from hurting your income.
Learn about Blackhats
It’s prudent to do our homework and observe competitors like market leaders and black sheep in our niches. There is nothing wrong about it and it helps all of us to stay competitive. However, there is a growing number of predatory webmasters who are intellectually unable to transfer knowledge from one niche to another or to understand simple market mechanics. I call those guys ‘web-monkeys‘ because all they do is copy your work and damage others recklessly to gain success at any price. Copying designs and registering identical domains with .net, .org or .co endings are some of their shady SEO tactics. Seedy web monkeys will even go as far as implementing blackhat techniques to damage your fine reputation in an attempt to put themselves ahead. Strong privacy can protect from preying eyes of shady competition. Prevention is always the best method of protection from threats. Here are some privacy tools and methods I use to stay under the radar:
Google Analytics:
I do always use separate Google Analytics accounts for different projects. If I do have powerful server-based stats such as Urchin on my box, I don’t even use Google as own stats are way more reliable, anyhow. So if some monkey conducts a background check on a particular analytics code of an successful site there is just one result to be found.
Domain Privacy:
Using different domain registrars with privacy providers for domains hosted on different servers is another must. Not does it reduce amount of spam, but it effectively shields from preying eyes. Using a registrars name servers and redirecting to a unique IP in host entry with cname is another must. This way it looks like there is only this one domain on your server. However, you will need to use tricks to justify IP usage with your host.
Offshore Companies:
When promoting same sponsors on multiple networks, I open different affiliate accounts since using the same accounts would reveal connections within your networks. As I was growing in the past I added various shell companies onshore and offshore. Different entities and billing addresses keep my strategies and identity under the radar of monkey webbies. On a sideline additional income from self referrals are adding 5 to 10 percent to revenue.
Don’t trust Sponsors:
When talking about sponsors: many of them are also affiliates. Some will observe your successful sales tactics to work against you in direct competition. Therefore it is better to have 4 or 5 different affiliate accounts with different strategies than just one that reveals it all. On the bottom line my most important reason to use privacy tools is protection from competition – not anonymity itself.
