RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Rosalind Gardner

Super affiliate, blogger, and speaker, Rosalind is best known for her affiliate marketing training in the Super Affiliate Handbook: How I made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other Peoples' Stuff Online. You can connect with her on Facebook.

113,659 Free Visitors from Google to a New Blog

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How would you like to get 113,659 free visitors from Google with just 100 blog posts?

My friend Neil Shearing did just that and he has proof. He made a report with 10 Proof Points showing data from his Google Analytics account and elsewhere. You can get a free copy of the “Proof Report” right now.

He also just  released a video from inside his Google analytics account showing how his blog got thousands
of visits from FREE sources!

I thought both were very cool…

BTW, if you don't know Neil Shearing – he's been making money online for as long as I have (14 years+) and is completely above board – or I wouldn't even be talking about him. 🙂

His “Proof Report” is definitely worth a look.

The Death of Bum Marketing

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I think it is very likely that what has become known as Bum Marketing is doomed to die a dismal death in the near future.

What is Bum Marketing?

Bum Marketing is a strategy used to generate affiliate commissions through distribution of articles written specifically to rank highly for low-competition keywords.

The method was promoted as an easy way for beginners to make money online without having to invest much money, time or effort.

SO easy in fact that a ‘homeless bum' could do it from the local library! (Ya right).

How does Bum Marketing work?

  1. Do extensive keyword research to find low competition niche markets and products with moderate to high demand.
  2. Find a product or service that can be promoted to that niche through an affiliate program.
  3. Write scads of articles following a keyword density formula designed to get top search engine rankings quickly.
  4. Submit those articles to popular article directories.

The objective being to get readers of those articles to visit your site for more information about the product or to have them opt-in to a list through a squeeze page.

Why is Bum Marketing Dead?

Google's latest algorithm change, Farmer, spells death for Bum Marketing sites in the same way as crappy, useless Adsense sites were targeted in past algorithm changes.

Chris Knight of the uber-popular EzineArticles article directory made the following comments in his Search Engine Algorithm Changes post about the site's traffic on February 26, 2011:

Last month, we served 57 million unique visitors. Next month, that number may be in half.

and..

Traffic was down 11.5% on Thursday and over 35% on Friday. In our life-to-date, this is the single most significant reduction in market trust we’ve experienced from Google.

By result, Chris is having to implement a number of changes to his article directory to ward off potential spammers, i.e. bum marketers. Some of those changes include:

  • No more submissions through a WordPress plugin,
  • raising the bar on articles written for keyword density,
  • removing articles in ‘spammy' categories such as reverse cell phone lookup and acai berry
  • and requiring exclusivity.

Hmmm.. those changes will make it much more difficult to be a bum marketer, don't you think?

I'm not opposed to article marketing, but as a solo marketing method, it is NOT (and never has been) a sustainable way to do business online.

Rather than posting all your content to article directories and risk having it disappear from the search engine results through an algorithm change or removal by an editor, control your destiny by starting a blog and driving traffic to exclusive high-quality articles.

In other words, don't be (or become) a bum.

Join Affiliate Blogger PRO. 🙂

Content Farms Hammered by Google

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Webmasters who spent their time gaming search engine results with low-quality content farms and scraper sites have been hit hard since Google's latest algorithm change last week.

In a February 24th, 2011 post on the official Google blog, Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts stated:

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Although a CNN Money report cited a number comments made on the WebmasterWorld forum about the traffic and business-killing nature of this latest change, I've personally noticed that are just as many statements to the contrary by webmasters who don't rely on content farms to drive traffic to their sites.

I too have seen traffic increases to my sites in the past few days, ranging anywhere from 15.2% to 82.36% and 125.5%.

So, no complaints here.

As always, follow Google's guidelines regarding quality content and your sites will do fine. Try to game the results and you could find yourself looking for a job offline.

So… did your traffic increase or decrease since the latest Google Update?

[poll id=”10″]

Upgrade to WordPress 3.1 Now

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WordPress Version 3.1 was released to the public on February 23, 2011.

Highlights include:

  • Internal Linking – click a button for an internal link and it allows you to search for a post or browse a list of existing content and select it for inclusion.
  • Streamlined Writing Interface – new users of WordPress will find the write screen much less cluttered than before, as more of the options are hidden by default. You can click on Screen Options in the top right to bring them back.
  • Post Formats – meta information that can be used by themes to customize presentation of a post. Read more in the article Post Formats.
  • Network Admin – move Super Admin menus and related pages out of the regular admin and into a new Network Admin screen.
  • List-type Admin Screens – sortable columns for list-type screens and better pagination.
  • Exporter/Importer Overhaul – many under the hood changes including adding author information, better handling for taxonomies and terms, and proper support for navigation menus.
  • Custom Content Type Improvements – allows developers to generate archive pages, and have better menu and capability controls. Read more in the article Post Types.
  • Advanced Queries – allows developers to query multiple taxonomies and custom fields.
  • Refreshed Blue Admin Color Scheme – puts the focus more squarely on your content.

My personal favorite change is the new Admin bar which contains various links to useful admin screens. By default, the admin bar is displayed when a user is logged in and visiting the site and is not displayed in admin screens for single blog installs.

Here's a screenshot of how the Admin bar displays for this site when I'm logged into the site and viewing any of the posts or pages.

For more information on this enhancement and bug release, read the WordPress Blog.

Server Outages: Plan for the Worst

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Rarely a day goes by that I don't learn some new lesson about doing business online.

Some of those lessons are more important than others – and the lesson I learned last week was a doozy.

I'd just spent the better part of a day reconfiguring this site with a new framework and theme, uploading a bunch of new articles to be scheduled for later delivery.

Sometime late in the evening the site went down, so I filed a support ticket and headed off to bed, fully expecting the site to be back online by morning – as had been the case for the years since I started working with my hosting service provider, Steve Hetrick.

I was very surprised when not only was the site not back online in the morning, but the support ticket hadn't yet been answered. I repeated the request and added “is everything OK?”

Everything was definitely NOT OK.

I started checking my other sites on the same server and they were all down. The only site still online was Affiliate Blogger PRO, which resides on a separate server. I hastily did a backup of that site and then started digging deeper.

Not only were my sites down, but Steve's business site, DataWordPro was also down.

Now I suspected that something was really, really wrong.

It didn't take long to confirm my suspicions.

Numerous folks had posted to the Warrior Forum citing similar problems with sites that were hosted with Steve. As I read through the threads I came to a post that shocked me to my core – that Steve had passed away suddenly on January 25th, 2011.

I was grief-stricken.

Steve and I had conversed many many times over the years and I considered him a friend. Too, his customer service was second-to-none and I relied on him heavily to maintain my sites and servers. I could make a real mess of something, i.e. creating conflicts with plugins, and he always found and fixed the problem in record time. His services went way above and beyond what a ‘normal' hosting service provider might offer.

That was to be no more – so I had to figure out what had happened to the sites and how I would recover them — without Steve's help.

I learned that Coast Inc. was the company from which Steve leased our servers, so I contacted them. If their responses seemed a little slow, it was because Steve had over 1500 customers in the same boat and some of their sites had been affected much earlier than mine.

Here's where I got to feeling a little brain-fried having failed to heed the tried-and-true “plan for the worst and hope for the best” philosophy.

I hadn't really planned for the worst having only 2 full and current backups having always counted on Steve's weekly backups which had never failed before.

Unfortunately, only RosalindGardner.com and Affiliate Blogger PRO were backed up. A personal hobby blog, RosalindGardner.com was my lowest priority. And because we have a lot of members who count on the ABP site which runs Wishlist Member software, I was unsure if all the members' functionality would be in place if I went the D.I.Y. route to restore the site.

It felt like I was a little between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to turn.

What I did have however was an Aweber autoresponder account – which is something that I always sress as being a MUST-HAVE service if you do business online. Using Aweber, I could contact all my sites' subscribers and let them know what had happened – which is exactly what I did within hours of learning about the outages.

Because my ‘job' is to educate, I directed those with questions to my Facebook Page – another must-have for online businesses these days.

The best part about being able to get in touch with subscribers and members was not so much being able to continue doing business online – but to connect with them and receive their caring and concerned feedback. I can't fathom what the vacuum must have felt like for others who don't use those essential services.

After that, I contacted Coast Inc. daily for updates. I must say that although the responses were brief, John and Ethan and their staff were great – doing the best they could with a very difficult situation… even more difficult than I originally suspected.

Note: People have asked my why the sites went down just because Steve died. That confounded me as well, until the Coast Inc. guys explained that the folks on Steve's side became ‘unhelpful' after a short period. One can only guess that they had no interest in continuing his business, so they just couldn't be bothered with the hassle with which they were presented.

Anyway, deciding to ‘hang tight' and wait for the guys at Coast Inc. to gain control of and reinstate the servers turned out to be the best plan – even if we did have to wait 4 days. All the important sites are back online and working exactly as the did before the server outage occurred.

PHEW!

So, what have I done since?

  • Well, all the sites are now running the WP-Database-Backup plugin on a daily basis – with backups being sent to my email address.
  • I investigated the WP-Twin plugin wich allows you to clone, backup, duplicate and restore your site(s) within minutes. This looks like a really good alternative having just introduce an auto-backup feature.

What will I do in future?

  • Well, for one, I will never again host my sites with a company run by a solopreneur – as good as his or her service might be.
  • Too, I'll probably move one of my two servers to another hosting company, likely HostGator or BlueHost.
  • Smaller sites will be moved to the other hosting company.
  • I will keep each backup around for awhile, just in case more recent backups are corrupted.
  • Most importantly, I will also employ the services of a programmer OUTSIDE any of the above hosting companies to check on the health of my sites and servers on a regular basis. I want to find someone as adept and thorough as Steve, who sees and can resolve software and plugin conflicts in the blink of an eye. (If you're up for the job, get in touch with me through RosalindGardner.com. 🙂 )

Too many people rely on my services to risk having everything go down at at once ever again.

In other words, I've finally learned the important lesson — don't put all your eggs in one basket!!

Site Downtime: Thank You for Your Support!

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This weekend I sent out the following message to most of my readers via my Aweber account (because NONE of my sites was online):

I got some VERY sad news this morning.

My friend and hosting service provider for many years, Steve Hetrick, passed away suddenly last week.

By result, most of my sites are offline, including:

** Affiliate Blogger PRO
** NetProfitsToday
** RosalindGardner
** SuperAffiliateHandbook

I have been told that the outage should be relatively short in duration (a few days? a week?).

I appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter and assure you that I will continue to do whatever I can to resolve the situation asap.

In the meantime, if you have questions, please address them via my Facebook Page at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rosalind-Gardner-Online-Entrepreneur/153044274713504

BTW, to post to that Wall, you will have to click ‘Like' on the Welcome Page.

Sorry about that, but that's a quicker and simpler solution than my having to process a number of friend requests on my Facebook profile — especially considering I'm currently in a State Park in Arizona at the moment with limited connectivity. :-/

Last, but certainly not least, PLEASE extend your thoughts and prayers to Steve's family who have just experienced a huge loss. Steve was SUCH a good, caring man. I shall miss him terribly.

Thank you!
Rosalind

I went through the emotional gamut this weekend. From grief over the loss of my friend and business associate to feeling confused about what I needed to do and almost everything in between.

I honestly didn't know whether I could or would get my sites back online, or if so, how long it would take to get them back. My mind tumbled with thoughts about how I would handle the former situation – how the heck to start over completely?

Egads.

Talk about being a bit brain-fried.

Not that I was worried, per se.

I ALWAYS tell folks that worry is a completely wasted emotion. You're much better off to spend time preparing the Plans A, B and C's, rather than sit and worry. I definitely like to practice that one, 'cause worrying creates stress without benefit.

Fortunately, the sites are coming back slowly but surely with the help of Coast Inc., the folks who managed Steve's servers.

But I also have to Thank YOU…

I have no doubt that the condolences, kind consideration and good wishes that you all sent via my Facebook profile and page beefed up my karma. 🙂

Comments like the following from Jacqueline Hutchins' made me teary and happy at the same time..

I'm sorry to hear you lost a good friend. 🙁

I hope also that you are able to get your websites up as soon as possible. Don't worry too much Ros, you have devoted followers/readers like this one. Even if people don't know why they can't reac…h the sites, they will return.

So, thank you SO much!

And trust me, I'll be blogging about this situation more in the coming days with the I lessons learned that desperately need to be passed on before you find yourself in the same situation.

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