RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Technorati Tagging Made Simple

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I've noticed that a lot of WordPress bloggers code each of their tags (keywords) for Technorati individually using the [tag][/tag] code – which takes more time than is necessary.

If you use the free Broobles » SimpleTags WordPress Plugin, you can save time by placing your comma-separated keywords and keyword phrases in one line at the bottom of your post in between the following code (without the quotes) – “[tags][/tags]“. Notice that you'll use the word ‘tags' instead of the singular ‘tag'.

Alternatively, if you're code-confident, you can modify the quicktags.js file to tag selected words using your QuickTags. The tutorial is located here.

[tags]Technorati, tagging, blogging, WordPress, simpletags, plugin[/tags]

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…]

Don’t Get Held Hostage by a Webmaster!

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Many folks are surprised when they find out that I do most of the design work on my web sites and have been doing so since I started my business in 1998.

You may think that doing your own design is a waste of time and that it is better to outsource it all. And sure, I have outsourced some of my design work, particularly the ebook covers. But I personally find it frustrating to wait for site and logo designers.

Sometimes you fork out $199 for a logo or header graphic which ends up looking like a 2 year-old could have done a better job; or, you hire the same designer that everyone and his brother in the niche uses, and your design ends up looking like the ‘same old, same old' with only color and text variations.

So, I don't wait for designers… especially when I can do a good job myself in 10 minutes to an hour. Not to mention that it's fun! For me, it's a break from the ‘work' of writing. 🙂

What's ‘fun' for me however, is a a DAUNTING prospect for others. For newbies especially, designing or building their own website may seem absolutely impossible..

Quite frankly, however, I think it is a far worse prospect for your business when you let someone else have control over every aspect of your site. Too often the webmasters I talk to have been ‘working on their sites' for six months to a year and more, and they still don't have a clue how to FTP a page to the server, let alone insert a table into an HTML page.

As far as I'm concerned, that's like making your auto mechanic responsible for making sure that there is gas in your car and air in your tires.

For example, one webmaster, with whom I spoke recently, spent a THOUSAND Aussie dollars, (about $780 US) to a company for initial hosting and design work. All she got was … [Read more…]

Change Your Permalinks Without Losing Traffic

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Would you like to change your permalink structure from /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ to /%postname%/? Are you worried that you will lose traffic when those pages are no longer indexed by the search engines?

Fear not!

Dean Lee has created a “301 redirect” plugin that tells the search engines that a page has moved permanently. When you use his plugin the SE's update their indexes quickly, you retain PageRank and you still get your traffic through the engines.

Safely change your permalink structure using Dean's plugin which is available at http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/permalinks-migration-plugin/.

Rosalind’s Birthday Suit

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Rosalind's Birthday SuitLooking for cheap thrills, were you?

Well, you should be VERY glad this post isn't what you thought it might be! 🙂

Actually, this picture was taken specifically for use on a blog post at Roamsters.com, our new travel blog, to promote winter clothing essentials.

Note how I've personalized the promotion, relating what I wear in the picture to items of clothing that I suggest and link to.

Note too the Technorati tags that I use to increase traffic back to the site.

Lastly, notice how not every bullet point includes a link or promotional material. Instead I try to get the reader to smile… which keeps them reading.

Think of ways you can show your visitors how they will benefit from products you sell and you'll sell more!

So, how can you personalize your affiliate promotions?

Whattya Mean You’re Not Blogging Yet?

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You call yourself an affiliate marketer but you're not a blogger?

Please tell me it's not true!

You don't even need your own domain if you use a service like Blogger.com.

A free Blogger.com blog is a good option if the thought of having your own domain and building your own web site is an obstacle to getting you started in your own online business.

Of course, I still stick by my recommendation that every affiliate SHOULD have their own domain for the sake of creating a businesslike and professional appearance.

Honestly, nothing is easier to set up than a blog, especially if you decide to install WordPress on a Bluehost account.

One click, a couple of text blank entries and you're ready to blog!

Best of all, blogs are the fastest way to get free traffic known to Internet-Marketing-kind.

So, have I got your attention yet?

If you read the NPT Blog, you've probably noticed that I post more frequently now than when I started my blog.

There are a number of reasons for that.

First, blog posts are generally more informal and conversational than a newsletter which tends to be more structured.

That makes a blog easier to write, and easy is good.

Secondly, a blog is super simple to manage.

You don't have to create individual HTML pages or uploading files to your server. Just write your message, click ‘Publish' and your message is posted and available for all the world to read.

That means when I learn something of interest to NPT visitors and newsletter subscribers, I don't have to wait until NPT Newsletter Tuesday to tell them about it. I just blog it immediately.

So, for example, if you get some promotional copy with your links embedded from your affiliate manager, you could simply login to your blog, cut and paste the material, and Voila! there it is!

You could do that… but I suggest you change the wording and create an original post in your own style.

Lastly, I've discovered that the free traffic coming to my blog is phenomenal. The more I post, the more traffic I get.

If you look at the ‘Archives' for the NPT Blog you'll see the first entry was made in November 2004.

Confession… I didn't really start bloggin until February 2005. I just posted some previous newsletters and changed the timestamp to reflect their original publishing date.

At the time I started my blog, RosalindGardner.com had an Alexa ranking of somewhere around 60,000 as shown in the graphic below.

And I've seen it go as high as 2,827 as shown in the image captured on Aug 16th, 2005.

Not bad, eh?

By allowing comments to be posted to your blog, you build community, which makes your site still more interesting for visitors.

And when the site is more interesting, people stick around longer.

Something that encourages even more traffic are the RSS-to-Email “Blog Alerts” that allow folks to subscribe to receive my blog posts via email, instead of using a feed or news reader.

Aweber offers this service, and has posted an article
“Convert RSS to Email Newsletters Automatically” to show you how easy it is to set up.

 

Actually, I've found response to the NPT Blog so successful that I recently started blogging at my online dating review site, 101Date.com as well.

Now all I have to do is either stop taking month-long vacations every 3 to 4 months, or find someone with success as an online dater to write about various aspects of that topic…

(Interested? Please let me know through our Support Desk).

To sum things up… Blogging is fun, it drives free traffic and it PAYS. What could be better than that?

Your Web Site Building Options

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You have 3 basic options for building your web site, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Site Building Option 1: Hire a Web Site Designer

Although I do believe in using designers to produce quality header graphics for your site, I am strongly against hiring a web site designer to build your whole site, and here's why.

You may spend $1000 or more to have a site designed, and there is no guarantee that you will be completely satisfied with the results.

You are also at the mercy of the designer's availability to revise or update your site. This poses a major drawback to content publishing affiliates who should regularly add new articles and products to their sites.

Imagine how disappointed you would be to miss an opportunity to promote a super deal because you couldn't get in touch with your webmaster?

For example, if a merchant contacted you with a REALLY good time-limited offer that you had to get out to your customers right away; you don't have time to wait until your web designer returns your phone call, or comes back from his 3-week vacation.

Then, when he does finally get in touch, you will have to EXPLAIN where to get the graphics, the page you want it posted on, and so on and so forth.

Blah, blah, BLAH!

Missed opportunities mean lost revenue, so let's look at a better option for building your site.

Site Building Option 2: Use a Web Site Builder

Web-based site builders give you more control over your site's design and maintenance than having a web designer build it for you, but without the need to build your site ‘from scratch'.

Some site builders are in fact total ecommerce packages that include credit card processing, built-in affiliate program management systems, free domain name registration, email accounts, autoresponders, market research tools and more.

As such, a web site builder such as SBI! may be an excellent option for many new webmasters and affiliate marketers. This is especially true for those who prefer to have all the services available to them in one package for a set monthly or yearly price.

One limitation to site builders is that they don't help you learn web site building basics like HTML link coding, which I believe is absolutely essential if you intend to build a business.

So, for those who want total control over their websites, there really is only ONE option, and that is to do it yourself.

Don't panic, I'm won't suggest that you do it ALL yourself — there are in fact many helpful tools available to make the DIY option very attractive…

Site Building Option 3: Build Your Own Website

Back in the days of yore when we walked 5 miles through 4 foot deep snow to and from… Oh, wait, that's another story!

Back in 1998, when I was starting out, there weren't many professional web designers around for hire, so I learned how to build my own HTML pages from scratch using Notepad.

In general, sites at that time looked awful and my 101Date.com site was certainly no exception, with spinning globes, blinking banners, yellow fonts on a black background and other such horrors.

But I kept learning and upgrading to new and better tools as they became available. Moreover, I have fun building my sites and best of all, I am able do what needs to be done WHEN it needs to be done.

Fortunately for you, the site building options and tools available now make building your own website pretty darned easy by comparison.

For example, RosalindGardner.com now uses just a WordPress blog which is basically a ‘content management system'.

To start your own website using either WordPress, you will need to first register a domain name and arrange for web hosting. I currently recommend BlueHost, as it offers cPanel hosting and your domain registration is included in the price.

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