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This next post in the series of Affiliate Marketing Mistakes you don't want to make is going to be about name servers and dedicated hosting.
As some of you may know, I have three dedicated servers at my favorite web hosting company but this post really isn't about that.
When you get large enough in the affiliate realm to need a dedicated server, most dedicated server companies encourage you to host your own private name servers. Sounds professional and cool right?
For anyone who doesn't know, a name server is a server which basically points the domains to IP addresses on your server. In other words it makes your domain access the files on your server.
So what's so bad about having your own name servers?
In 99% of cases, having your own name servers is the best solution because you can ensure your websites are up more often. You control every aspect of your websites uptime essentially.
However, as an affiliate having your own private name servers is a bad thing. The main reason that this is a bad thing is because there are ways to look up every domain on a private name server.
Quick example:
Let's say you have grown enough to need two small dedicated servers. Let's say that you have set up private name servers. The sad part about this is that no matter what, people with a little know how can find every single site you own.
Clearly a bad thing for affiliate marketers.
The solution:
The main reason I like LiquidWeb so much is that they allow you to use their private name servers.
The reason this is so good is that while people will still be able to look up all the sites on their name servers they'll have to go through tens of thousands of domains. It's a lot less likely for someone to be able to find exactly which site is yours in this way.
If you sign up for liquid web under my referral link, you can contact me for more details on how exactly to set this up. 
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Shh… you are giving away the secrets that make me money…
hehe just kidding, but this is something that is pretty important. Silly issues like this are what really screw up some aff. campaigns.
J – what do you do about IP addresses? I mean unless you’re sharing an IP address with a whole bunch of other unconnected sites, couldn’t you just do a reverse IP lookup on one of your domains and find another load of others? Of course you could have a seperate IP address for each site, but a) that gets expensive, especially when you’re just testing stuff, and b) hosting companies just don’t seem to want to give them out… This is the issue I’m having at the minute…
Ben, I give all my “winning” domains their own dedicated IP address to prevent people from doing reverse IP lookup (I own several dedicated, but your hosting comp should provide you with this for a small monthly fee). I also use private name servers for every domain.
Thanks Ryan – do you test on an IP that someone could do a reverse lookup on and then move when you know it’s going to be a success? Also, who do you host with? My hosting company was reluctant to give me any extra IP addresses…
I hear you’re some sort of notorious hacker/spammer, huh?
(according to UberAffiliate’s site)
Hey, what you say is a kind of stupid. You always can prohibit anyone to look through the list of domains registered with particular name server.
Ben,
I actually set each domain up on a dedicated ip. If it is a dud I simply give the ip to another domain. I buy my servers from theplanet.com.
Hope this helps
Brilliant, thanks Ryan!
Hey Jon,
I haven’t gotten to that stage yet (of needing to get fancy w/ the IP’s)… but I have used this trick to peak on campaigns/sites from other affiliates who haven’t figured this out yet.
Thanks for the info… I’ll have to look ya up when I’m to the point where I need to to this.
Chat soon,
- Trevor
If your host does not want to give you extra ips then get a new host. Most will give you the ips (for a small fee) as long as you can give them a good reason.
This was an awesome post and something I have been thinking about more and more. When I got my dedicated box I was all for having my own name servers, now I totally regret it and even more so that I don’t have control over the godaddy/network solutions accounts for some of my (old) clients that I’m hosting on there.