Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner
Do you want to make money from your writing? Did you know that writers are making tens of thousands of dollars using their writing skills online… and those figures are verifiable on certain sites? Hmmm… THAT got your interest, didn't it?
Every business needs writers, and finding writing jobs online became easier when job boards created exclusively for writers were created, BUT… [Read more…]
What I wouldn't have given to have a blogging partner (or two) of late.
I just moved out of a house that I've lived in for 11 years. The 6 weeks preceding the move consumed more mental and physical energy than to which I'm accustomed… much more.
Because we hadn't yet hired a contractor to build a house on our lot, each and every item needed to be evaluated for its destination. Should it be sold, given away or packed? If it was to be packed, would it go into long-term storage, storage at the new building site or into the RV… for who knew how long? We had a garage sale, sold stuff online (eBay and Kijiji) and ran about a hundred trips to Value Village. By moving day, (poorly labelled) packed boxes lined the walls of almost every room.
And despite thinking that everything had been well organized, each day in the RV has involved a litany of ‘where is ____?' and ‘I can't find ____'. Add to that the “Hot as Hades” factor (42.5C/108.5F), an RV air conditioning unit that barely keeps up AND not one but TWO spotty Internet connections (satellite and MiFi).
Worst of all, I neglected my blogs for a month during the moving fray. I had wanted to queue up a bunch of articles that would be posted while I was busy. Turns out that ‘wanting' doesn't necessarily amount to ‘doing'.
I began to feel somewhat envious of my friend, Todd Farmer, who with his partners Tricia Meyer and Eric Nagel operate the Wine Club Group blog.
Think of the advantages of having a blogging partner or two.
Granted, blogging partnerships won't work in every case.
All things considered, a blogging partnership might work for you, especially if you are just starting out and have concerns about your motivation, technical knowledge or writing.
Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
Ros
P.S. The ‘dogs' picture is of Kuper (on the left) and my dog, Jasper the Chocolate Labrador who would excel at partnerships because he shares so freely with his ball and other toys. I think he knows that sharing is good karma and at the end of the day he'll STILL have all the food and toys he could ever hope for. 🙂
So, I was booking a trip to my hometown of Toronto to surprise my 100-year-old mother with a visit on Mother's Day. (If you've followed me on Facebook for any amount of time, you'll know that this effort goes beyond the beyond.)
I'd chosen a hotel that I've stayed at often over the years. As the best pricing is most often available by contacting them directly, that's what I did, BUT while I was on the phone with the hotel I'd, I was checking Hotels.com for their pricing and discovered that their price was $9 a night cheaper which amounts to more than $10 per night when you factor in taxes.
After going back and forth with the hotel manager – who refused to honor the Hotels.com pricing – I booked online through Hotels.com.
After the runaround, I thought I'd let my Facebook friends know about the tack I'd taken to save over $100.
Being a good affiliate marketer, I grabbed my Hotels.com affiliate link from CJ, then went to Bit.ly to have it shortened.
Right after posting, I returned to the CJ site noticed the following Hotels.com affiliate marketing restrictions posted very clearly just below the ‘Get Code' area:
Restrictions:
YIKES!!!
You can bet that I deleted that Facebook post immediately and fervently hoped no one was the wiser. 🙂
I know the rules and restrictions imposed by those advertisers that I promote most frequently, and most allow me to post direct links on my Facebook account.
But because I don't promote Hotels.com very often, I just assumed the same was true for their program.
As always… ASSUME… Makes an ‘ass' out of ‘u' and ‘me'… mostly me.
Don't shoot yourself in the foot.
ALWAYS check your affiliate program restrictions so as NOT to restrict your affiliations.
Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
Since registering his domain in mid-February, James Reinhold has put a lot of effort into building and marketing his new blog.
He has already signed up 1390 subscribers to his newsletter by offering a copy of his new e-book.
In the last week alone, James has created a new header graphic, replaced the theme's standard favicon and added links to his social media sites. He also installed the MaxBlogPress Subscriber magnet plugin and placed new banner advertising in his sidebar and below the author's box on his posts. What is MOST impressive however, is that he posted 19 full length articles and book reviews over just two days!
James Reinhold (most likely NOT his real name) is a copyright infringer, i.e. a low-life thieving cheat and all 'round scumbag.
I first discovered “Award winning Blogger, Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing Coach and Author” James Reinhold when I saw several pings from his blogĂ‚Â show up in the comment moderation section of this blog.
Hmm… “Must-Read Articles for Beginners” is the exactĂ‚Â title of one on my posts, so I paid his site a visit and sure enough, not only was he copying my articles, he had stolen the graphic that I bought at iStock as well and Getty Images doesn't take kindly to thieves.
Here's a screenshot of what I found on his site…
When I first saw this post a few days ago, each of the articles was linked back to my site. Now the linked articles have been copied and posted to his blog and I suppose he has plans to copy and paste the rest of those from the links were removed.
Smart kid! Like I always say — Ă‚Â don't place unpaid links onĂ‚Â your site! 🙂
So, after finding my articles, I did a little more snooping around his blog and discovered that his new e-book “How to Brand Yourself in An Insanely Competitive Marketplace” being offered to newsletter subscribers was in fact written by Andrew Spence.
Learning that he'd also stolen that content was easy. I just entered the book's title into Google and found Andrew on Twitter, which then lead me to Andrew's site right away.
When I visited Andrew's site, it was obvious from where James had pulled his WordPress theme. Andrew uses the premium Get Noticed theme for WordPress by Michael Hyatt, which costs between $197 and $397 US to purchase.
I'm guessing that someone who steals content, probably didn't spend the big bucks to buy a premium theme.
Then, for good measure, James also stole Andrew's newsletter sign-up copy.
This is Andrew's email subscriber form…
And this is the copyright thief's email signup form …
Gee, I'm surprised that James didn't bother to change Andrew's name to his own on the book graphic — if he had, he might have more than 1390 subscribers by now. (No, I don't really believe he has that many subscribers.)
Just for fun, I visited the thief's social media sites and found links to other sites, some of which were dead, including ELITEIMHUB.COM and ELITEINCOME.NET.
Perhaps it's just my imagination running wild, but with domain names like that, maybe the content on those sites was similar to what he is posting now? And maybe, just maybe, those sites were taken down for copyright infringement issues and the thief didn't learn his lesson?
Well, let's hope he learns the lesson better this time.
My first step was to file a ticket with his web hosting service provider, Webcedi, which I found by doing a Whois search on his URL. Note, you want to look at the the Nameservers to determine the hosting provider, not the Registrar.
Domain Name: JREINHOLD.COM
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 48
Whois Server: whois.enom.com
Referral URL: http://www.enom.com
Name Server: NS1.WEBCEDI.COM
Name Server: NS2.WEBCEDI.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 12-feb-2015
Creation Date: 12-feb-2015
Expiration Date: 12-feb-2016
In the ticket I included a list of links that match my articles with the content that he stole and placed on his site.
Next, I filed a “DMCA COMPLAINT – TAKEDOWN NOTICE” with Clickbank to let them know that they have an affiliate who is promoting theirĂ‚Â vendors' products (including my own Affiliate Blogger PRO) by using stolen content to market those products.
To find his Clickbank ID, I clicked the affiliate link on his site to Affiliate Blogger PRO, hit the ‘Order' button and at the very bottom of the payment page, the affiliate is revealed.
I sent a notice through Amazon Associates support (basically a DMCA complaint notice).
I would have filed a DMCA notice with HostGator but unlike almost all the other companies, they require that notices be filed by postal mail or fax. (I'll get back to that).
I will also notify each of the folks from whom he has stolen content, i.e. Andrew Spence, Michael Hyatt and others with the hope that they too will file DMCA notices.
In reviewing Mr. Reinhold's social media sites, I've discovered that he has links to various associations and people that may be interested in his nefarious ways.
I just might have to send those associations and people some proof of his nefarious ways if he who calls himself (poses as) James Reinhold and pretends to live in Renton, Washington, USA  (aka MrJRSnr on Twitter and De Governor on Facebook) doesn't own up to his misdeeds.
Those associations might include a rural school in Accra, Ghana (where he really lives), the Study Access Consult (of which he is supposedly Director) as well as his Facebook friends and Twitter followers.
James wasted a LOT of my time as I've followed his tracks… and will continue to do so until his site is taken down for good.
What's really sad is that he (or the person he has working for him) has obvious skills with WordPress design and social media marketing. Instead of putting those skills to good use to earn a living, he's chosen to be a criminal — which almost always ends badly.
I'll post changes here as they are made.
He also removed the title of Andrew Spence's book from his email signup form, but still claims to have a book to offer. I signed up for his list and got confirmation, but never received a link to a download… which is a good thing!
If you find your content being used without your permission you should notify the infringer as well as the hosting Internet search provider (ISP), who may remove offending content from a site or sites. Most big companies, have easy complaint mechanisms for copyright infringement“take-downs.”
You can also set up Google Alerts with keyword phrases specific to your content that will notify you anytime that exact phrase matching your work is placed online.
Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
In February, Google announced that it would start favoring mobile-friendly sites starting on April 21st.
Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.
Contrary to some bloggers' interpretation of Google's latest algorithm change, your site will NOT be de-listed if it is not mobile friendly. (Oh yes, all sorts of doom and gloom was unleashed, including coining of the fanciful term “Mobilegeddon“, which I quite liked — enough to use on this post's main graphic. 🙂
Google's John Mueller posted the following on Google+ to allay those fears:
It's great to get people motivated to make their website mobile-friendly, but we're not going to be removing sites from search just because they're not mobile-friendly.
It is easy enough to check. Just run your blog's URL through the Mobile-Friendly Test.
Here's what I found when I ran the Super Affiliate Handbook site.
Below that disconcerting message was a graphic of how the site appeared to mobile users.
Mobile unfriendly, indeed!
It was immediately apparent to me that all the design tweaks I'd made were the culprit, so I quickly downloaded and then installed a new theme (Focus Pro by StudioPress).
After running a second site test, this nice message appeared:
And this is how the homepage looked on a mobile device:
I wasn't keen on the fact that the whole title didn't appear in the vertical orientation, so I quickly created and uploaded a header graphic of 370 X 100, per directions included with the theme and this was the result…
MUCH better!
If your blog turns out not to be mobile-friendly, the fix could be as simple as changing the WordPress theme.
If not, there is plenty of help to be found on the Mobile-Friendly Test site, which detects which platform you are using and will direct you to the appropriate technical guide.
Anyway, here's hoping that all of your sites are friendly and that you won't have to do any tweaking this weekend!
Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
While checking my Gmail today, I was surprised to see how many marketers' messages – to which I subscribed – were in the spam folder.
A quick scan down the list and it was easy to see why Gmail deemed those messages to be junk… they were rife with spam trigger words and phrases.
Here's a partial screenshot of what I found. I've circled and blurred the names of marketers (and affiliate networks) and placed rectangles around the spammy words and phrases.
I particularly like ‘buy parajumpers online', don't you? 🙂
You'll notice that exclamation points, ALL-CAPS, and mentions of money (income, sales, millionaire) and medicine are all big no-no's.
Here's a list trigger words and phrases that get caught in spam filters and that you should try to avoid using in your email marketing campaigns.
Yes, that is a very long list of spam words, but you don't have to remember them all.
You can use SpamAssassinâ„¢, the spam filtering tool provided by Aweber. It automatically checks your message and displays key areas that appear to be spam and are caught by the filter.
Aweber advises that any message with a score below 5 is OK to send.
Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
Starting today – Monday, March 16th, 2015 at 12am CST, HostGator is running a St. Patrick's Day Sale, featuring 55% off all new hosting packages, plus $8 domains!
The St. Patrick's Day Sale will run for a full 72 hours and end on Wednesday, March 18th at 11:59pm CST.
Your Coupon Code is: GOLD
NOTE: The offer is only valid on new hosting packages, not applicable on renewals or existing hosting plans.