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How to Stop Blog Comment Spam

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Sometime ago, I turned off blog comments on the NPT Blog for awhile, because I was sick and tired of scanning through all the comment spam.

Here is an example of a typical comment that was being posted to the NPT Blog.

Watts Murphy, Roisin Genocide Organ Dandy Warhols Blood Has Been Shed Stapp, Scott Fall Silent Siouxsie & the Banshees Eyes All That Remains Hendrix, Jimi Shock Skrape Tanita Tikaram New Metal Generation Hell Is For Heroes Strange Land Waits, Tom D…

Duh – as if that doesn't LOOK like spam.

But some blog comment spammers are smarter and more devious. They'll post word combinations that result in coherent sentences. On occasion you'll even find complete paragraphs that make sense. Smarter still, is that the comment spammers seem to acknowledge you, your blog and sometimes even a recent post.

Here's an example of just such a comment that I found on a fishing site – no really, a FISHING site, not a PHISHING site. 🙂 :

Jim said… Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a Bass Fishing site/blog. It pretty much covers Bass Fishing related stuff. Come and check it out if you get time 🙂

Don't be fooled. This is comment spam, pure and simple. When I searched Google for “Hey, you have a great blog here!” there were 183,000 results. Scan the results and you'll find entries where the comment spammer forgot to replace the keywords, as follows:

Michael said…
Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a ##KEYWORD## site/blog. It pretty much covers ##KEYWORD## related stuff. Come and check it out if you get time 🙂

Barring those who forget to replace their keywords, moderating these longer blog comments is slightly more challenging than the one-two click that wipes out a hundred or more 1, 2 and 3-word comment spams posted by pharmaceutical, gaming and porn affiliates.

However, if you want to stop comment spammers from wasting your time, you need to put a few more defenses in place. First of all… [Read more…]

How to Embed Video into Your Blog

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Here's an easy way to make the search engines love your site.

Adding video to your site or blog increases the amount of time that visitors spend on your site. The more time they spend, the ‘stickier' your site appears, and ‘sticky' sites enjoy higher search engine rankings.

The easiest way to put video on your site is to embed code from a video that you found on YouTube, Google Video or other video-sharing site. The video is served by YouTube, so you save bandwidth on your server. 🙂

Regardless of your niche, you should be able to find relevant content on any of the major video-sharing sites that will be of interest to your visitors that you can post to your affiliate sites.

For example, to entertain my visitors at 101Date.com, I posted a very cute animated proposal video that I found on YouTube to my online dating blog.

Find out how easy this is to do by watching my own short video “How to Post a YouTube Video to Your Blog“, which is served by YouTube. NOTE: YouTube has marked this as ‘adult-only' viewing material so you have to be signed in to YouTube to actually see it. 🙂

You'll see that embedding the video is as simple as finding the video that you want to post, then copying and pasting code from the video's page directly into your post or webpage. You will have to register with YouTube first.

For videos that you find on Google Video, you have to dig a little deeper for the code.

Click the blue ‘Email – Blog – Send to MySpace' button, then the ‘Embed HTML' link that comes up directly below it and lastly the code to copy appears in a box below that.

Easy as pie!

How to Build a Better Affiliate Program

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There are companies on the internet who do over $300 million in revenue a year and over $100 million of that comes from affiliate marketing.

In fact, MarketingSherpa estimates that affiliate marketers will make over 6.5 Billion in commissions in 2006!

That's a HUGE lot of dough.

Seriously, if you are an online merchant and don't have an affiliate program, what the heck are you waiting for?

MORE incentive? 🙂

OK, here's some incentive…

How about having thousands of affiliated sites constantly sending traffic to your site?

Better yet, you pay commissions only when a sale, lead or click (one or all – it's up to you) is generated.

Not only does having an affiliate program increase your site's traffic, having thousands of sites mentioning YOUR company's name builds your brand recognition.

Simply having a handful of Super Affiliates promoting your products can increase your revenues enormously.

Who doesn't want that?

ALL merchants do!

And consider this… without a program, you're missing out on the Internet's most valuable marketing channel.

OK, before you rush over to CJ or Linkshare to set up an advertiser's account, there are a few things you should know about creating a really successful affiliate program.

I'm serious – you can kill your reputation as a great online merchant if you don't have a likewise great affiliate program.

Fortunately, Affiliate Classroom has just launched “The Affiliate Manager – 1st Edition“, which is a complete course on “How to Build and Manage an Unstoppable Online Sales Force”.

Moreover, “The Affiliate Manager – 1st Edition” is the only course of its kind just for affiliate program managers.

I've gone through the course, and as a Super Affiliate, I especially appreciate the advice Anik and his team give on training affiliates to gain competitive advantage as well as how to recruit and retain super affiliates.

The advice is bang on, and it's really unfortunate that all affiliate program managers and merchants don't employ their tactics.

In addition to affiliate recruitment and training, the “The Affiliate Manager – 1st Edition” also teaches how to promote and advertise your program and what to write in your affiliate newsletter to make it a powerful motivational tool. (I can't believe how many affiliate managers NEVER write a newsletter to make regular contact with their affiliates.)

The course includes a training manual binder, CD's, DVD's and checklists of everything you need to know.

Actually, what is shown below doesn't even include the package bonuses.

The course launches tomorrow, June 27th, and besides the course itself, Affiliate Classroom is offering some amazing bonuses, which are unfortunately time or quantity limited to early purchasers.

I say that “The Affiliate Manager – 1st Edition” is an absolute “must-have” if you plan to start an affiliate program OR if you already have an affiliate program that you want to improve.

Speaking of improving your affiliate program, Affiliate Classroom says “You can increase your sales by 50 – 120% in less than 5 days – even if you just us one of our strategies!”

They're right.

So get your hot-off-the-presses copy of “The Affiliate Manager – 1st Edition” and start building your business with the best salesforce online… affiliate marketers!

Cheers,
Ros

P.S. If you visit the site before their launch, be sure to sign up for the FREE report, check out the video and the nice folks at Affiliate Classroom will let you know as soon as the course is available for purchase. FABULOUS!

Clickbank Merchants: How to Protect Your Affiliates’ Links

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In response to one of my posts, David Lovelace sent me the following note:

Dear Rosalind, Do you have 2 minutes to confirm something for me? I just looked over your post and saw something that I had never heard or thought about before. I use (a specific product) to make sure my affiliates' links are cloaked throughout the process. But I've been thinking of opening a CB account without the script. So when you said:

1. He should do the quick fix to prevent his affiliates' ID's from showing in the address bar which consists of creating a page that redirects to ‘http://www.wahumorway.com/index.html'. 2. That redirect page gets listed as his sales page in the Clickbank interface.

… a light came on. Great tip for those not using a 3rd party affiliate script. I would never thought to do it that way. Let me run this by you to make sure I understand this. Could you confirm if this is correct? I use re-directs all the time when promoting affiliate products, so I understand that (and the code used). I have used both .php and .html code to do this.

In your experience, does one cloak better than the other? Which do you use? If I'm translating your tip correctly..

  • I'll create a re-direct page (ie, www.myproduct.com/sales.html) making sure that it directs to www.myproduct.com
  • Then put www.myproduct.com/sales.html as the home page inside the CB admin.
  • Then when anyone clicks on a CB generated link, the re-direct process will cloak the affiliate ID so that only www.myproduct.com only appears in the browser?

    • I appreciate your time in confirming this.
    Dave Lovelace

    Hey Dave!

    You got it exactly right, and thanks for spelling it out! 🙂

    I created a redirect to the home page from the URL superaffiliatehandbook.com/cb/and placed it in my .htaccess file.

    Then that URL is listed as the “Hoplink target URL” in my Clickbank account.

    The same thing happens when someone clicks on one of my affiliate's CB links for the Super Affiliate Handbook. The visitor doesn't see the affiliate ID, but the cookie is preserved… which makes everyone happy! See how easy that is?

    As a Clickbank affiliate, I thank all CB merchants who take the time to hide our affiliate links.

    Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

    Cheers,

    Ros

    How to Use Press Releases to Market Your Affiliate Sites

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    You may think that press releases are only issued by ‘big' or ‘real world' companies, and aren't for smaller online or affiliate marketing sites and businesses.

    If so, you'll be surprised to learn that most successful businesses, online and off, use press releases to promote and market themselves.

    I was surprised myself to learn that my friend and colleague Lee Romanov, the President of InsuranceHotline.com, uses press releases extensively to promote her online business.

    Lee is essentially an affiliate marketer who provides comparitive insurance rate quotes to residents of Canada and the States, for fire, home, life, travel, health, commercial, motorcycle, pet, mortgage and car insurance.

    80% of people who visit InsuranceHotline.com instantly find savings of $600 to $1,200 off their insurance cost and save hundreds and in many cases thousands of dollars per year.

    To access a free quote, visitors fill out a step-by-step questionnaire that assesses their insurance needs. For example, to get a quote on car insurance you must provide information about your location, age, gender, cars you will be driving, etc.

    At the bottom of each questionnaire, Lee includes a survey question, The question changes on a weekly basis.

    Because InsuranceHotline.com is a high-traffic site, the answers to those survey questions give her a sufficiently broad response to generate a regular press release that discusses the public's view on a particular topic, usually related to car insurance.

    Lee also spends alot of time interpolating the latest news and how that will affect rates in the insurance industry. She'll then put her own take on the developments and issue a release that ultimately points back to her site.

    Here's sample press release from Insurance Hotline:

    Fear Factor: Reporting An Accident To Your Insurance Company

    TORONTO, April 5 /CNW/ – The OPP reported 964 accidents this weekend.

    While $1,000 is the minimum for mandatory reporting to collision centres, insurance companies want to know about all accidents, regardless of the amount.

    Rates are based on risk, not “cost of repair.”

    Example: A driver with a clean record pays $1,855. After an accident, their rate could increase to $7,242. If they switched companies, they'd find one charging only $3,204.

    Drivers paralyzed with fear of their insurance rate skyrocketing should use www.InsuranceHotline.com to find the lowest rate available if reporting an accident.

    Rate example details; click below:

    http://www.insurancehotline.com/ratecomparison2.html

    For further information: Lee Romanov, president, InsuranceHotline.com

    So, can affiliate marketers use press releases to promote their sites?

    Sure, why not?

    For example, if I was really on the ball with my online dating service review site, I would poll the 150,000+ subscribers on my Singles eScene list with regularity.

    I could ask ‘What type of relationship are you looking for?' and give options such as ‘serious long-term', ‘just friends', ‘one night stand', etc. To narrow the results, I would also ask for age, country of residence and gender information.

    Extrapolating the results, I'd then write a press release along the lines of “A survey of more than 5000 single men aged 25 to 45 showed that 83 percent who use online dating services are looking for a serious, long-term relationship.”

    I'd also include statistics from Jupiter Research about the huge numbers of singles using online dating services, and perhaps contact one of the affiliate managers that I work with for a quote related to my story.

    Getting a quote from one of those polled about his experience with online dating services would be even better.

    Regardless of whether the story was picked up by offline journalists, the story would be posted to all the major online newswires, where it would remain, linking nicely back to my site.

    Using press releases to promote your site may take a little time; but free traffic, quality backlinks and increased PR would certainly make it worth the effort!

    How to Make Money as an eBay Affiliate

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    Given up as an eBay seller? Think eBay affiliate!
    I did some selling back on eBay way back when I was dabbling in ALL ways to make money online. Unfortunately, I found it tedious to write listing descriptions, and thought that packing and shipping the goods after a sale took too much of my time. Honestly, I was (and am) too lazy to sell hard goods on eBay.

    Despite my laziness, I appreciate why so many do so well trading on eBay. It can be exciting, addictive and highly profitable. That explains why it's such an extremely popular venture for SO many.

    How many, you wonder?

    Well, at the end of 2006, there were 222 million registered eBay users, and one source reports that of those, 79 million are ACTIVE eBay users.

    Understanding its popularity, I didn't want to leave the eBay scene behind entirely when I traded in my seller's hat. I decided to stay in the game by purchasing and reselling an infoproduct package of online auction tutorials.

    When I started selling that package, I signed up as an eBay affiliate and placed the link on the site to make a few bucks from people that visited the site but did not buy the ebooks. To my amazement, there were many months when commissions from the eBay registrations and bids through that affiliate link amounted to MORE than the value of the ebooks sold.

    Here's how that happened.

    As an eBay affiliate, you earn $25 to $35 for every new active user you send to eBay through a registration link. Plus, you get 50% to 75% of eBay revenue on successful transactions.

    eBay's compensation structure is depicted in the 2 graphics below.

    eBay Affiliate Success Stories

    Many eBay affiliates earn over 100 G's every month – well over a million bucks per year and eBay's top 100 affiliates average nearly 25 grand each month.

    There used to be snippets of 3 success stories featured on the eBay affiliate site. They included RollingStone.com which had incorporated over 7,000 Editor Kits throughout their Web site; Chris Bowler who was averaging over $7500 in eBay commissions per month and Ravenwood Marketing which had become a top-10 affiliate using paid search campaigns.

    Note: According to the eBay affiliate agreement, affiliates are no longer compensated “for paid search traffic purchased from Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, nor from any of their content networks, such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and MSN ContentAds, if it is linked directly to the eBay.com, eBay Express, or eBay Store domains (not “Commission Earning Activity”)“.

    Tools for eBay Affiliates

    eBay offers a number of different tools for use by its affiliates. I however really like “Build a Niche Store” which was developed by Kelvin and Adam Firminger, and have incorporated its functionality directly into my travel blog.

    The program allows users to post eBay listings from categories that they choose. For example, my site returns Airline, Cruises, Lodging, Luggage, Vacation Packages and Other Travel listings as you'll see listed in the right-hand naviation under the eBay logo and Store Categories.

    The categories expand once selected. For example, the Luggage link expands to include Backpacks, Business Cases, Carry-ons, Duffle Bags, Garment Bags, Sets, Suitcases, and Other Luggage.

    When a visitor either buys through one of those links or registers and becomes an active eBay user, I earn a commission.

    To learn more about this very reasonably priced software, please visit the “Build a Niche Store Website“.

    How to Keep Your Internet / Affiliate Marketing Business Organized

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    Looking for a merchant's affiliate interface login and password when you want to install one of their links on your site, is a waste of time.

    I'm fairly anal about keeping my business, and almost all aspects of my life, well-organized.

    For example, open my closet and you'll see my clothes sorted by garment type and color (according to the spectrum from white to black).

    Sick, eh?

    How about a food cupboard sorted into soups, veggies, snacks, sauce mixes, pasta and rice, etc? Oh ya, and the labels ARE turned out.

    Are you ready to have me committed yet?

    Wait just a moment, please.

    There's method in my madness… really and truly.

    Surely you know people who can't organize their way out of a paper bag. They come home and leave their keys in a different place each time. Then whenever they want to go out, they need to spend 5 minutes searching for their keys… and/or shoes, or jacket, or paperwork…

    What a huge a waste of life!

    I use the term ‘life' because life is comprised of, and measured by, time.

    Nothing is more precious than time and making each of your moments count. Spending time on trivial matters like looking for keys when you could be having fun with friends and family, helping others through your business, saving the planet, or even taking a nap – is a waste of time.

    Likewise, looking for a merchant's affiiliate interface login and password when you want to install one of their links on your site, is a waste of time.

    Scrap that… it's a waste of time to have to look for the link itself.

    All the details relating to your affiliate marketing business need to be at right at your fingertips.

    I stay organized by keeping everything in one big Excel file accessed from my desktop.

    The file has a number of worksheets, each with its own set of information.

    All the programs I'm affiliated with are listed on one worksheet, with headings for program name, username/login, password, network association (if any), primary links, my own redirect links, broker (2nd tier) links, link for the affiliate interface, manager's name and contact info, commission rate and other important info.

    Another sheet logs all monies owed and received, and tallies income by program and category, as well as by month and year.

    On another worksheet I've listed software information including purchase date, registration numbers and login details.

    Still another keeps track of information for subscriptions such as forums and membership sites.

    Everytime I come up with an article idea, it gets entered on the ‘Article Ideas' worksheet. There's yet another sheet with a list of article submission sites.

    I log interview, presentation, and teleconference dates and details in that file.

    Testimonials and success stories have their own separate sheets.

    The Net Profits Today newsletter is laid out in advance on another sheet, with suggestions for topics and articles.

    Last but not least, my project (to-do) list is on another worksheet, filed by domain name and sorted by date due.

    The ‘Big File' is always open.

    When I join a program, the details get entered right away. While reading my email, I cut and paste testimonials right into the file, and jot ideas for future NPT topics … as they pop up.

    My site files are organized by domain name – not generic terms like ‘dating site', or ‘book site', as I've seen some webmasters do.

    As soon as I join a program I enter all the details on the relevant sheet, and create a redirect link, which I know I'll use if I promote the product via email.

    I create email filters for every webmaster I do business with, and messages go straight into their personal folder. One quick filter – no more filing.

    Setting up – and keeping up with – such a system may seem like a lot of work.

    It's not.

    Do it often enough and it becomes second nature.

    Staying organized sure beats the heck out of wasting five minutes trying to find the email with that merchant's affiliate program login information just so you find your affiliate links.

    Affiliate OrganizerWant to Pass on the Spreadsheets?

    Then I recommend that you check out Jon Mills' Affiliate Organizer software.

    Affiliate Organizer lets you keep track of your websites, hosting details, affiliate accounts, and more all from one interface.

    Everything is simple to use. Just fill in the blanks and save.. it couldn't be much easier. I give it 2 thumbs up for being user-friendly.

    Visit the Site | Read my Review

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