Just Added the Simple Recent Comments Plugin
Look right… I just added the Simple Recent Comments plugin by George Notaras to the sidebar of the NPT blog.
The plugin is available for download through the link above and is easily configurable. For example, the default arguments call for 7 comments limited to 50 characters and I changed that to 5 comments limited to 70 characters.
To install it on your blog, download the plugin’s zip file, unzip it, upload to your wp-content/plugins folder and activate the plugin in Wordpress. Then place the following code - < ?php src_simple_recent_comments(7, 50, '', '') ?> in your sidebar. The 7 and 50 indicate the number of comments and number of characters respectively.
Thanks George!
Popularity: 4% [?]
NPT Digest: Freaked, Focused and Cheesed
Yes, this week I’m freaked, focused and cheesed.
First, I’m freaked out about the fact that my old diabetic cat, Vic, is going in for surgery on Friday. Nothing brings Ros to her knees like thinking something might happen to one of her pets.
So rather than freak, better that I put my focus elsewhere …
Most readers’ comments on the “Poll: What is Your Biggest Internet Marketing Challenge?” indicate that lack of focus is their biggest stumbling block.
So, while thinking about that this week, I posted 2 articles by Brian Tracy (super motivator mentor whom I’ve been following since I was about 18), Taking Action and Preparing for the Future that could give those of you (me too) some incentive to focus on the task at hand.
At the bottom of both articles is a link to a FREE CD offer. You can choose from more than 24 titles including Unlock Your Potential, Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life, Goals and Simplify Your Life. Good deal.
And what am I cheesed about?
Well, it looks like Derek Gehl has beaten me to the punch. My next book was supposed to be about creating your own infoproduct, but on January 24th Derek is launching an all-in-one information publishing “business in a box“ that walks people step by step through the whole business-building process and gives them ALL the tools they need to create and market their own info product.
If building your own infoproduct in 2008 is one of your goals — then you’ll definitely want to be on their ‘First Movers’ list. IMC’s products are always comprehensive and excellent value for money.
On the blog and in the articles section, this week I also posted:
- Can I Use Auctions to Sell as An Affiliate?
- How to Make Money as an eBay Affiliate
- Akismet: Catching 1500 Spam Comments per Day
- Niche Marketing: The Case Against Mall Sites
You’ll also notice that all the blog categories are now listed at the bottom of each page… all 48 of them!
Last but NOT least, if getting traffic from social marketing is your primary focus in 2008, then sign up for the SMARTS coaching program before they shut their doors in a couple of days.
OK, now I’m going to focus on playing with the cat. 
Cheers,
Ros
Popularity: 4% [?]
Can I Use Auctions to Sell as An Affiliate?
Here’s a question from Tony P. about selling ebooks on eBay as an affiliate…
Hi Rosalind, I am interested in becoming an affiliate for several online companies. A number of them offer an e-book and I intend to sell these e-books via online auctions. As with any auction sale, selling prices will vary. Knowing that I have an average 50% margin, I may begin the bidding at a 20% mark up. Read more
Popularity: 5% [?]
Akismet: Catching 1500 Spam Comments per Day
This hat is the best blog comment spam filter ever… not.
Actually, the best blog comment spam filter is the one that comes with Wordpress. It was developed by Matt Mullenweg and is called Akismet.
Akismet checks comments posted to your blog against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam and you can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” Read more
Popularity: 2% [?]
SMARTS Coaching Program Opens Today
Many of you are really excited about using social marketing in your businesses after seeing the excellent video that I posted here. The associated Strategy Guide is jam-packed with good tips on how to use social networks to strategically drive traffic to your sites. Read more
Popularity: 10% [?]
10 Things to Do During a 504 Gateway Timeout
A 504 error usually means that a server upstream from yours that is acting as a gateway to handle the HTTP request is either down or too slow to fulfil the request.
Unfortunately, there is nothing that you can do to solve a 504 gateway timeout problem. It has to be dealt with by the techies at the ISP that hosts the errant web server.
The following is a list of my recommended responses to such a problem.
- Assess the HTTP error. There’s a good list of HTTP status codes, some with explanations.
- Shut down applicable PPC campaigns. Every click that goes to a site that isn’t online is a waste of money. Refrain from wondering how long your site has been down or thinking about how much money you’ve probably just flushed.
- Contact your webmaster or ISP. Explain the problem CONCISELY. There’s no need to tell them that you were in the middle of enjoying a delicious breakfast of ham and eggs when ESP told you that things with your site were awry.
- Know that ’stuff’ happens and remain calm. The outage may last only a minute or two, so there’s no need to get stressed out. Do your best to avoid visions of bankruptcy court and bag ladies.
- Twiddle your thumbs. Now think of something else to do.
- Post to social networking sites. Release whatever angst you feel by posting about your situation to your Twitter, Facebook and MySpace accounts. Someone may respond with such concern that you feel better for a short while. If not, send out a bunch of friend requests to find better friends.
- Write a few blog entries (using a text editor) to post when your site is again available. If you’re short on ideas or too stressed about the situation to think clearly, see the next list item.
- Buy a PLR package.. I bought Anik Singal’s Valentine / Spring package, dating site was still online, queued up the blog posts for delivery during the month of January.
- Take a break away from your office. If the outage becomes prolonged, use the time to do something really different like refill your shampoo dispenser. Better yet, go outside, get some exercise and see what your town looks like in daylight hours.
- When you return and/or the problem is rectified, check your stats. You might find that you’ve made enough money with free search engine traffic to want to modify that PPC campaign before you turn it back on.
The most important thing to remember - don’t stress! You can still get good work done and/or have fun. Enjoy the break while it lasts.
Popularity: 7% [?]
PLR Package for Valentine’s Day
Anik Singal’s Affiliate Classroom released their latest private label rights (PLR) package yesterday, especially for webmasters who will promote Valentine’s Day and Springtime, or ‘post-holiday’ products.
The Valentine’s / Springtime PLR package includes 300 product reviews (200 in Valentine’s niches and 100 in Springtime niches) and 15 pre-written blog posts.
In addition to the standard Valentine’s Day gifts of candy, flowers and jewely, product reviews in the Valentine’s section include gift ideas for everyone - him, her, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, teachers and teens. You’ll also find product suggestions for romantic vacations, weddings, engagements and new love.
The ‘post holiday’ or Springtime section reviews 100 products such as gardening, spring vacations, pools & spas, St. Patrick’s day, barbecues and more.
The reviews include:
- Merchant / Company URL
- Affiliate Network
- Sign-up URL
- Price
- Type of Consumer
- Product purpose, pros and cons.
- Guarantee
- Value for money
- Where to buy
- Link to product
I bought the package primarily to use on my dating site and have already started queueing up the blog posts and reviews for delivery throughout the month of January. I’ll use the spring vacations ideas on my travel blog.
So, don’t let the Valentine’s Day theme throw you off if you don’t run a dating or romance site.
Valentine’s is a day for almost everyone — and last year consumers spent almost 1 billion dollars on gifts to celebrate.
Surely, with some good PLR, you too could convince the readers of your golf, baby or fashion blog to buy a gift for someone they love on Valentine’s Day and grab a piece of that action
Check out the Valentine’s / Springtime PLR package here.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Fixing Wordpress Database Errors
Have you ever seen an error like this show up on your Wordpress blog?
“WordPress database error: [Can’t open file: ‘wp_comments.MYI’. (errno: 145)]
SELECT COUNT FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = ‘0’”
Well Steve Hetrick, the wizard from DataWordPro who manages my servers has the perfect solution…
Full Moon & candles,
magic times three
we summon the power
set database error free.
He says that the incantation works or that you can “just run the repair utility in Cpanel MySQL”.
Popularity: 8% [?]
IMC to Release Turnkey Solution for 2008
Anyone and everyone who participated in the “What’s Your Biggest Marketing Challenge?” poll and indicated that they either haven’t yet started a website / blog yet or that they are not making money online should read this.
On January 24th at 10am, Derek Gehl and the folks at The Internet Marketing Center will be unveiling a turnkey online business solution that will finally level the playing field for regular people who want to make money online.
That solution will include ALL the components that you need to build an Internet business including a website, products, free traffic and more.
As a big fan of IMC’s products for their exceptional quality and value for money, you can be assured that this package will be up to their usual excellent standards.
The only downside is that only 250 people will be able to participate.
I can’t tell you more than that right now, but do watch this short video and be one of the first to get a sneak peak.
Popularity: 9% [?]
How NOT to Ask an Affiliate to Participate in Your Program
Every couple of months, I receive the following email from a program manager in the dating niche with the subject line “Affiliated with ProgramName.com”.
I’ve changed the real name to ProgramName.com in each case so as not to give unwarranted publicity to this affiliate program.
“To Whom It May Concern,
We have visited your web site and have found it to be of a very high standard. I would like to enquire as to whether you would like to buid a partnership with us?
Is it possible to place our banner or text link on your site? We will pay you $30 commission on each sale you drive to us and link back to you.
For more details, please email me at ProgramName[at]gmail.com or go to the below information link:
ProgramName.com
Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely,
First Name
Affiliate Manager
ProgramName.com”
OK, let’s look at this request point-by-point.
- What the heck kind of grammar is ‘Affiliated with ProgramName.com’? Reading this subject line gives a really good indication of the author’s lack of professionalism, and a really bad first impression.
- My name is not ‘To Whom it May Concern’, it’s Rosalind - a fact that is easily discovered if indeed this affiliate program manager had ‘visited your (my) web site’ and gone to the ‘About Us’ page which is linked from every page on the site.
- Speaking of having ‘visited your (my) web site’ — which site exactly did you visit? She should have the courtesy to include the appropriate domain name just in case I am one of those affiliates with hundreds of sites (which I’m not, but they don’t know that).
- “We will pay you $30 commission on each sale you drive to us and link back to you“. Huh? Some more weird English… but I got the jist that in addition to paying a set fee per sale, she was also offering to link back to my site. That set off the affiliate alarm bells, so I looked at the site and sure enough, she has a links page. Ugh. (More about that later).
- She includes only her first name in the message which is only a step above signing off with ‘Affiliate Manager” but still appears unprofessional.
What I’ve found particularly frustrating is that I wrote back to the affiliate manager the first time I received one of her emails, and explained that I would consider their dating service a valuable option for my site visitors, except for the fact that they were linking to other affiliate sites as well as their own merchants directly from the homepage.
I explained why such linking was a deal killer for any super affiliate and mentioned my affiliate marketing credentials (author, speaker and consultant) and offered to help her (at no charge) to make her affiliate program more attractive to all affiliates — and therefore more lucrative.
Not only did she not extend the courtesy of a reply, but despite several requests she has failed to remove my email address from her mailing list which makes her a spammer, which of course is the biggest deal breaker of them all.
Popularity: 14% [?]
