I created a site: www.gamedemosonline.com intended to drive traffic to an affiliate program.

The site is backed by WordPress, and uses a few SEO plugins to achieve its results:

• All in One SEO Pack
• Web Ninja Auto Tagging System
• Fuzzy SEO

By simply posting press releases and wikipedia excerpts along with game titles and cover images, the site is on page 1 in Google for the following key-phrases, with almost no links to it and zero advertising:

• jasf jane’s advanced strike fighters demo download
• ncis game demo
• ncis video game pc demo
• goldeneye reloaded demo download
• dawn of fantasy demo download
• other new key-phrases daily

It’s interesting to note that the video game industry is HUGE, and competition for search engine rankings on video game related keywords is also huge. This is only the first week, and I’m posting new games every day, so I imagine a number of other search terms are going to start popping up in my site stats dashboard. I’m not going to tell you how much traffic this translates to, but suffice it to say I’m gratified and my work hasn’t been in vain.

I can’t help but think that this simple set of plugins would work equally well, if not better, for any number of industries. They’re all available in the “Plugins -> Add New -> Search” interface in the WordPress Dashboard

Some useful links:

Sitepoint’s SEO Business Guide
The SEO Manager Responsible For Sitepoint, 99designs And Flippa Spills The Beans In This Tell-all Guide.

SEO Business Startup Kit
SEO Business Startup Kit Provides Freelancers With A Complete Turnkey Business In A Box Solution. It Includes A Comprehensive 217 Page Ebook Along With Over 80 Ready To Use Contracts & Document Templates. The SEO Industry Is Absolutely Booming.

SEOPressor
Shockingly Effective, Tested and Proven WordPress SEO Plugin That Will Skyrocket Your Website’s Search Engine Ranking Straight To The Stratosphere. Guaranteed.

AffiliateReporting.com
Aggregates Conversion, Sales and Commission Data from Multiple Affiliate Networks

I know this might seem to be a violation of the principles I espoused in SEO: Finding The Delicate Balance, but it’s really not. Why? Because I believe in the product. The site I show here may be somewhat misleading in that it draws traffic with the promise of free downloads, but if the user actually signs up for the free trial of the affiliate deal it promotes they get more than what they were offered. Free downloads of full version games rather than just a demo, so I don’t feel bad about it.

In fact, I like the affiliate deal so much I signed up for it myself.

Download Games | Download Demos | Download Full Version Video Games

This is barely an article, just a link to something so cool I HAD to tell people about it. The free trial of this service lasts for 5 days, and you can do a lot of downloading in that much time.

That will be all. Click the image at right and go get your games.

After all, if your content is rich, relevant, and organically laced with keywords then post tags are just garnish, right? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on your content and audience.

BUT

Now you can skip the thankless task of coming up with relevant keywords to use as tags for each post and outsource it to Yahoo. Yep.

The Web Ninja Auto Tagging System is a plugin that will automatically add tags to posts using tagthe.net and Yahoo yql services when you save or update a post. I stumbled across it while creating a cynical little exploitation site to drive traffic to a video-game download site’s affiliate program.

I know I said earlier that “I can build a personal website that will draw search engine traffic like flies to a hot carcass,” but I realized after the fact that I don’t really have any proof. In the course of creating my little experiment (http://www.gamedemosonline.com/)I found the Web Ninja Auto Tagging System for WordPress and took it for a test drive.

It performed beautifully. Not all of the keywords are completely on-target, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to hit the little “x” and get rid of bad tags than it is coming up with a list of tags in the first place.

Before Web Ninja Auto Tagging System, I used to go to Google AdWords and make use of their keyword tool. I still think that’s a more effective method, since you can target long tail keywords that exactly match your niche, but when you don’t have time for that, Web Ninja Auto Tagging System is a quick-and-dirty way to put your tagging on autopilot.

Best of all, it’s free! Just go to the plugin installer in your wp-admin and search for it.

That’s all for now! Enjoy!

Professional services are infrequent, technical, or unique functions performed by independent contractors or by consultants whose occupation is the rendering of such services.

Examples of professional services contracts include those of: accountants, actuaries, appraisers, architects, attorneys, brokerage firms, business consultants, business development managers, copywriters, dentists, distributors, engineers, funeral directors, law firms, physicians, public relations professionals, recruiters, researchers, real estate brokers, translators, software engineers, audio engineers, structural engineers, value-added resellers and Web designers. While not limited to licentiates (individuals holding professional licenses), the services are considered “professional” and the contract may run to partnerships, firms, or corporations as well as to individuals.
– Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_services

Managing the Professional Service Firm by David H. Maister is a great book. I can’t recommend it highly enough to contractors of any kind.

Although it’s written by a lawyer, the advice it contains can apply to any business engaged in providing professional services. It’s a book I wish I had in 1993 when I first started doing contract programming and web development work, but as it wasn’t published until 1997 I was out of luck and had to learn the hard way.

The book covers everything from setting up in the early days to how to manage explosive growth and multi-site operations. It goes into detail about leveraging systems, setting standards, managing employees and partners, marketing to both new and existing clients, and a host of other topics.

Mr. Maister has distilled the lessons of his experience into easy-to-understand, actionable items that you can adopt wholesale or pick and choose which to apply. He’s created a handbook of best practices whose broad strokes are relevant to every contract worker’s situation, and whose specifics are simple to adapt.

The book is divided into 7 sections:
(click to see sub-sections)

Each section goes into greater detail about topics appropriate to the section, and most contain plans you can just lift straight out of the book and put into action.

One good example is the section entitled “A Service Quality Program” in section 2. “Client Matters”. Maister lays out an end-to-end approach to Service and managing Service Quality that includes a questionnaire asking key questions about the client contractor relationship. Not all of the questions are obvious, and the philosophy behind them can lead to breakthrough conversations with clients and a significant increase in client satisfaction.

Another is the chart outlining marketing techniques in descending order of effectiveness, in the chapter headed “Attracting New Clients”, with headings like “The First Team”, “The Second String” and “Clutching at straws tactics”.

In a nutshell, Mr. Maister places the highest value on interpersonal interactions and activities that position the contractor as an expert in his or her field. “The First Team” can include giving small scale Seminars and Speeches, writing Articles, and Proprietary Research. “The Second String” consists of Community activities, networking with potential referral sources, and newsletters.

Unsurprisingly, most of what people think of first and consider to be traditional Marketing falls under “Clutching at straws tactics”: Publicity, Brochures, large scale Seminars, direct mail, cold calls, sponsoring events, and advertising. This is a way to spend vast amounts of money casting a wide net that may attract a small percentage of customers, but is more likely to attract a disproportionate amount of time-wasters. Remember, this isn’t a packaged Product we’re talking about, but a Service, and a Service can’t be effectively marketed in the same way you would a product that ships in units.

Overall, I’d say he hits the nail on the head more often than not. The biggest flaw in the book is also its biggest selling feature – the fact that it’s not tightly targeted to a single industry. David Maister talks in principles, and speaks broadly about factors that are inherent in any service-based business. It’s not quite as abstract as Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” – you won’t need an interpreter and commentator – but he can’t go into intimate detail about the ins-and-outs of your specific industry.

This is not to say that there aren’t specific, actionable ideas in every single chapter; there are, but it will be up to the reader to figure out how to apply the principles communicated to their own situation.

The other potential flaw is that the approach is relatively old media and old-school, but the author’s a lawyer and author, not a web designer or veejay, so I’d say it’s understandable and not too big an issue, since the principles can be applied even more effectively utilizing technology.

All-in-all, this one’s a “Buy”. It’s one of the books that I keep coming back to when I feel things are off-course in my own business, although those times become fewer and fewer as I become more versed in its principles.

This one’s my favorite, but if you’d like to check out David Maister’s other books, I highly recommend the following:

• Practice What You Preach
• Strategy and the Fat Smoker
• The Trusted Advisor

Unfortunately, many free WordPress image gallery plugins aren’t up to snuff, and can be difficult to use.

That’s where Premium WordPress Image Gallery Plugins can help. For a relatively small fee, you can have professionally designed, robust and configurable gallery plugins that really add pizzazz.

I’ve done a brief roundup of Premium Image Gallery Plugins here:

It’s easy to miss out on gems because of the sheer volume of plugins available though, so when I do find a plugin that stands out, I try to mention it.

Simple:Press, from Andy Staines and Steve Klasen, is just such a stand-out product. I use the term “product” loosely, of course, since this tool is Open Source, but it’s so slick and professional you’ll find that hard to believe.

For as long as I’ve used WordPress, a decent “bulletin board system”, “message board” or “forums” package has been tough to come by. There are a lot of packages and plugins out there that claim to integrate message boards seamlessly with WordPress, but this is the first time I’ve come across one that actually lives up to the hype.

simple press installation is a breeze!

Not that there’s actually hype. The WordPress bunch discuss this plugin with typical understated copy, but for WordPress users, this is revolutionary.

No more parsing through spaghetti code and inadequate documentation and hacking your way to a workable message board. Simple:Press works fine straight out of the “box”. Just download the zip file, go to your plugins “Add New” page, choose “Upload” and you’re almost done.

After that you have to click an installation link in the “Forum” Admin Menu in your WordPress back-end, configure some options, and presto – live forums! It also has SEO tools built-in, and other advanced features you generally only see executed this well in bulletin board systems that charge for licensing.

Bottom line: so far I love it!

Granted, I know the ins-and-outs of WordPress pretty well, but the only things I found mildly confusing were:

simple press installation step 2

The fact that you can just install the plugin and be off to the races is HUGE.

Check it out. I installed a forum here while I was testing it. You can get to it using the “Forum” link up top.

It’s live, it’s working, and I’ve defined a bunch of forums areas. I’ll try to answer any questions put there if nobody else jumps in. Spammers beware! Simple:Press also makes it easy to prune spam and other lame-assery.

As for the rest of you, more soon!

While many of those themes are great, the best of them are probably over-used, which can make it difficult to find themes that make your website pop and really stand out from the crowd.

Here are some links to quality sites that you can use to find Premium Themes and Free Themes that aren’t as common. Some sites even let you purchase exclusive rights.

Final Note:

Whether you buy your theme or download it for free, use Theme Authenticity Checker to eliminate static links and malicious code. Some themes out there spread viruses or enable scams, so Theme Authenticity Checker is a must-have – and it’s free!

HOWEVER …

I do believe there is a place for automated content, for site sections like product showcases, RSS aggregate sites, and the like.

For these purposes, WP Robot fits the bill perfectly. It’s simple to set up, easy to use, and after a quick orientation can produce a tightly focused “Keyword Campaign” or “RSS Campaign” that will snag content and/or products from a variety of sources.

Click to expand

Rather than talk about it endlessly though, check out the posts in the “Shop” menu up top – it’s not really all that impressive until you realize that it’s a completely automated category that I created in about an hour to learn how to use WP Robot. If I find some more time for it I’ll add more keywords/categories, and the existing keywords could use some tweaking, but I haven’t bothered yet since the point was just to test it out.

If you check back tomorrow there will be more products just because WP Robot will keep adding them until I stop it. Not sure if I’m going to keep the “Shop” section yet, but for now I’m going to leave it up as part of my WP Robot experiment.

Using WP Robot, it’s easy to create tightly focused post categories that maintain themselves automatically, with new posts appearing on a schedule you determine. The implications are staggering – with a little work refining keywords and playing with layout, anybody can create a completely automated blog site that keeps itself current and aggregates information from a variety of sources.

Anyhow, so far so good. I definitely recommend this product to anyone with a network of sites to maintain, or who wants to monetize their blog with affiliate links and products.

This situation has changed. Over time, private label products have saturated the marketplace and are often as good as the “name” brands. There’s no shame in them anymore (if there ever really was) and many people actually swear by them.

This is good for both buyers and retailers. Private labels are in direct competition with the bigger brands instead of holding a “bargain buyers” niche, which allows retailers to raise prices while still remaining relatively inexpensive because of reduced costs in areas like packaging and advertising. Private label products are promoted by implication every time the parent company is promoted, whether or not they’re specifically named in flyers or on television, and nobody expects fancy packaging from them.

“Taking a broader view of the last year’s performance, in all U.S. retail outlets, including discounters and Wal-Mart Stores, store brands increased by nearly 2% while dollar share advanced by almost half a point. Overall sales were $88.5 billion, another new record. Store brands now account for almost one out of every four items sold in the country’s supermarkets, drug chains and discount stores, according to The Nielsen Company.

While those results are compelling enough, an even more accurate sales figure for all private label food and non-food grocery sales in the U.S. would be far higher. There was an estimated $15 to $20 billion in private label sales in channels that are not traditionally counted, such as warehouse clubs, limited assortment/box stores, convenience stores and dollar stores, producing a grand total that exceeded $100 billion during 2010.”
– Private Label Manufacture Association (PLMA)

It’s not just giant retailers who can make use of private label brands. Through the use of things like call centers and virtual assistants, businesses in the service sector can also extend their capabilities and offer new services by outsourcing, while maintaining their own brand identity and enhancing the reach of their businesses.

This must be done with care, however; it may take some time and experimentation to find an outsourcing firm, virtual assistant, or call center that meets your standards. It also takes careful planning to figure out how to integrate any new service offering with your existing business model.

The outsourcing angle is still considered risky by most, and some view it as morally wrong or unpatriotic to outsource overseas. If you can handle the risk and uncertainty, and you’re sure the outsourced service is an enhancement and not a distraction, it can pay off.

The risks are somewhat reduced when dealing with physical products. In the recent past, a private label might not have enhanced your brand, but with effective research and forethought, private labels today offer a credible means of extending your business scope. There are also credible sources of information on private labels, and trusted directories you can turn to for information.

The name of your brand plays a huge part in distinguishing your products from competitors. Creating private label items that complement your core offerings can increase the perceived value of your product by lending “weight” to your brand and giving you more contexts in which to promote it.

Celebrities have also been getting in on the act in increasing numbers, Ivanka Trump (surprise surprise) has her own private label brand, so does Justin Bieber, Jessica Simpson, Fergie, Gwen Stefani, Paris Hilton; the list goes on.

If celebrities and the biggest retailers in North America routinely add private label products to their marketing toolbox, there’s something to it (or they wouldn’t do it). Imitating the giants can put your brand, at least in people’s perceptions, in the same ballpark. That’s not the only reason to use private labels, but it’s a persuasive example, one of many potential benefits.

Many manufacturers have entire catalogs of products specifically produced for the private label market. If you’re running a product-focused web site or traditional retailer, it’s well worth your while to investigate the possibilities of private labels as a way to expand your business and maybe get some free marketing in the bargain.

Small local press, like newspapers, local magazines, or even television will often run feel-good stories about the entrepreneurs in the area. Launching a new product line is a great way to get some attention.

Also, if your site’s main product is a big-ticket item or something available elsewhere for less, selling complementary products like accessories can sometimes save you the sale. People prefer the convenience of “one stop shopping” even online, and will often purchase a higher-priced item from a store that provides all the accessories in one place, even though the individual items can be purchased elsewhere for less.

This tactic doesn’t require you to slap your own label onto everything, but it’s such a great branding opportunity that if you can, you should.

Click on the links and pictures to find more information about Private Labeling. I have no affiliation with any of these sources.

1. create a blog rich in high-traffic keywords,
2. sprinkle it liberally with Affiliate Marketing Ads and Google AdSense links,
3. sit back and watch the money flow in.

This is all fine and dandy, but assume I create a site like that: what value have I added to anything?

Copy that’s written for search engines isn’t actually readable by humans. It’s buzzword rich and information poor, insulting to readers and demeaning to those who produce it, because it requires one to create within a rigid framework that produces inanities. It turns potential poets into hacks.

I hate those assholes
Sure, I can build a personal website that will draw search engine traffic like flies to a hot carcass, but a reeking corpse actually provides more value. Do I really want to associate my good name with vermin no matter what the payoff is? No.

the other problem with writing for search engine optimization
I’m not against deriving an income from one’s skill at writing – that’s exactly what I’ve set out to do – but there’s a reason people don’t respect hacks. Writing for money sucks the soul out of a person, and it’s even worse when writing for money means writing for search engines.

On the other hand, if I pay no attention to site traffic and SEO, how am I going to generate any interest? Who’s going to visit my site or click on the ads? What’s the point if I can’t get some kind of reimbursement for the investment of time and effort that creating and maintaining a website represents? Sure it can sometimes be fun, but I can’t afford to do it well or often if there’s not some financial reward.

So… I’ve established that I want to get paid for writing, but I don’t want to sell out in order to make money. Now what?

how to keep your soul
What else draws traffic besides slavish devotion to seeding web sites with keywords?

Value. Any successful site has to provide something that people want or need. It needs to entertain or educate in some way, preferably both.

No news there. If you were drawn to this site or article, it’s because you have an interest in one of the subjects published here. You already understand that to become “sticky” a site has to provide real value and not just a cloud of keywords disguised as articles.

You were probably hoping I was going to explain how to do it. Well, yes and no.

You see, just like anything else in life, one person’s treasure is another’s trash. A website that tries to be all things to everyone ends up being nothing to anyone. If you write to please your imaginary audience, you’re likely bound for failure.

BUT

we’re all a bunch of freaks
It’s pretty much guaranteed that if you’re interested in something, so are a significant portion of the population. When we’re talking about the internet, “significant portion” means a percent of a percent of a percent. If .001% of people out there find your content compelling, you’ve got a hit. The market is so deep and broad that you really don’t need to worry too much about pleasing others, just concentrate on creating something you’re proud of, and somebody is going to like it too.

Your Customers

So start with yourself, what are your interests? What makes you laugh or pisses you off or gets you horny? What do you think is incredibly neat or cool or what-have-you?

(Within limits – if you’re a freak you’re a freak, and your site has to be usable, try reading some of the books I recommend here and using a professional designer if you really get stuck.)

and that’s a good thing
Now what are the characteristics of people with the same likes and dislikes, or with a particular interest of your own that you decide to focus on? That’s your demographic. Those are your customers.

Then you need to just start pumping out articles. Let Google AdSense figure out how to appeal to your readers. Use AdWords or applications like “Traffic Travis” to figure out what keywords you should be using. Don’t go for the high-traffic keywords that everybody and their sister is trying to target, go for the “long tail”, most specific, least popular keywords that accurately pinpoint what you’re all about. Sure, it’s less traffic, but those are the people most likely to want what you’ve got, to buy your products or click your ads or sign up for your newsletter and keep coming back to your site.

specificity both saves and makes you money
You’ll also get higher rankings on those keywords, and be able to buy cheaper advertising.

Don’t take the “pleasing yourself to please others” thing too far. Just like you (probably) brush your teeth, bathe, and comb your hair before going out in public, and wear decent clothes that project the image you’d like to convey, so should your site. I know this is a bit of a joke coming from Mr. “Savage Lullabye”, but try to think of me as the mechanic whose car is always neglected.

Anyhow, key things you’ll want to pay attention to:

site flow and navigation

1. can people get to all of your content easily?
2. can they bypass your navigation scheme and use a site search instead?
3. does it take more than 3 clicks to get anywhere?

You want the answer to be yes to 1 and 2 and no to 3.

appearance

1. are navigation elements consistent and prominent?
2. are “calls to action” (like “buy now”) expressed appropriately? (Depends on your audience and the page they’re on. Try not to scare, offend or annoy people.)
3. is the site credible? (Look like what you are. Be distinctive, but appropriate for your audience or industry. Use SSL where expected.)
4. does the site address different styles of information intake? (Text is okay, but some people do better with visuals, and some like sound and motion. Going multi-media can expand your audience.)

1, 2, and 3 should be “yes”, and 4 should be considered carefully.

That’s about it! Keep plugging away at it and experimenting, and assuming you’re not some statistical anomaly who’s completely alone on the planet in terms of the memes that inhabit your private noosphere, sooner or later you’ll do fine.

It covers everything from what type of content to include, to how to arrange and organize it, to how to use analytics to increase conversions, to how to track the Return On Investment to make a hard-numbers business case for your website activities. It’s even got some good quotes you can use in arguments.

“…trust your gut, but verify. By all means, take chances, fly like an eagle and swim with the sharks. All we ask is that when you climb out of that shark cage, allow metrics to tell you which instincts are worth further investment and which just aren’t panning out. Without some sort of testing and validation cycle, the home page is vulnerable to design driven by ego and politics, rather than accountable – if visionary – strategy and verifiable goals.”

Been there, lived that.

Useful to heads of departments and anyone involved in creating online marketing campaigns or content for their company’s website, this book is even more valuable if the web site is the business – which is the case for most Online Entrepreneurs.

The Little Black Book of Online Business is so chock full of linky goodness I wish I’d had it a decade ago. Not only does it have lots of juicy links to spice up your online activities and help make you money, it has explanations of commonly used terms and whole sub-industries related to online and new media. The best part is that if you buy the book, there’s a secret that will let you use it to gain access to the author’s site for the book, where all the links are nicely organized and ready for bookmarking.

Some sample chapter headings should give you the idea:

• Advertising
• Affilliate Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Autoresponder Services/Software
• E-Commerce Integrated Systems
• Payment Gateways and Payment Solutions

Enough said. If that doesn’t motivate you to at least check it out, I don’t know what else will.

With Section titles like “Outsource Your Life” and “Income Autopilot”, and detailed how-to information in each section, this book is a wealth of useful information. Not only does the author tell you how he’s doing it, but he explains step-by-step how anyone can take his approach. He’s basically invented a “Lifestyle Design Pattern” that includes business plans that can be applied by anyone in a fill-in-the blanks kind of way.

The first part of the book is a little airy-fairy self-help sounding, so if you don’t have any patience for that crap, skip to “Step II: E is for Elimination” to start cutting the clutter from your day-to-day. Or if you think you’re a whiz at time management, skip ahead to “Step III: A is for Automation”.

The nitty-gritty sections where he talks about how to pick a niche and a product, how to market, how to structure your approach to it all, and how to set it up so everything’s automated are pure gold.

In fact, once it sinks in (which in my case took over a year) and you start to see the results of taking this advice, you’ll probably rave about it yourself.

That’s all for now. I’ll give you all a tweet when I stumble across more treasure. @DaboEbensen

Was talking to my brother about The 4-Hour Work Week book, and as brothers will he tried to poke holes in it. His argument was “and who says he did all of this?” to which my answer can only be “him”. It’s not like I went out and researched each and every one of his assertions about his own history, but that’s irrelevant.

What I should have said was that after over 17 years in the industry, I know when somebody’s blowing smoke about technical details like web server setups and SEO. I know those details are true because I’ve independently researched them or created similar setups myself.

I also know that the numbers Timothy Ferriss quotes are plausible given my own knowledge of the industry i.e.: the numbers on sites I’ve personally worked on.

Since I know from my own experience how it’s done, why question the rest?

In your face, bro! I’m just kicking myself for not seeing it sooner.

The client is a research specialist in the Recruitment Industry with 12 years of experience and an internal database of over 150,000 Canadian company locations, including ones that are hard to find like distribution centers and internal departments that aren’t usually listed elsewhere.

What we’re doing with the resumes is matching them up with locations so we can use the database to search not only for Companies, but also for Candidates for positions. There are already over 1 million Candidates in our database, but the linkage between Candidates and Locations is spotty, so we’re developing a methodology to improve the correlations.

[Skip to links]

The tool already allows the Recruiter to develop target lists of Candidates or Locations to call in a fraction of the time it might normally take. Recruiters can easily burn a week looking for information that we can get in a few mouse clicks. Useful stuff!

Anyhow, we recently talked to some potential investors who wanted hard numbers that we don’t yet have, and which would be difficult to extract using our current model. So what I’ve done is create a sub-site using WordPress MU that has a bit of marketing information and requests resumes using a simple form. The form sends the user to a page advertising www.trainingcenter.com, which offers Online Training in a variety of career-related functions, as well as Industry Certification test preparation and other online computer training courses.

With the addition of a Google AdWords Campaign targeting job and career related keywords, I’m able to drive traffic to the sub-site and use Google Analytics to track Conversion Rates when anybody clicks on the ads. I think the Recruiting firm’s pitch is actually an easy sell, and so far the AdWords are getting a 20% Conversion Rate.

For the purposes of this test Conversion equals filling out the form giving us contact information and/or a resume. I started with a $200 budget, with a maximum bid of $2 on 71 low competition keywords, and set the maximum daily budget to $50. Even low competition keywords are fairly competitive on Google, so the ads have a fairly low profile and are not likely to even approach a $50 daily cost. The average cost per click so far is around $0.63.

Once the AdWords Campaign has run its course, I’ll not only be able to extract the data and answer investor’s questions about how we’re going to be able to entice people to add themselves to our database, how many new additions we can expect etc., but we’ll also have a lot of new data. Win-win, as they say – especially since so far the Conversion Rate is about 20%. If we extrapolate those numbers, we’re looking at a LOT of new data when we ramp up the advertising.

I’m also using www.trainingcenter.com as a Conversion test. If people click on the link and buy training, it’ll give me a sense of the potential of Affiliate Marketing as a secondary revenue stream for the site. Candidate information is the bread and butter product for a Recruiting firm, but if the website itself can generate revenue, we’re golden.

If you’d like to be able to do this yourself, just go to adwords.google.com to create your AdWords account and get started, or click the links at the bottom of this article.

All hail The Mighty Goog!

Now I’ve just got to re-vamp the look of the rest of the site so it matches the look of the promotional sub-site. Then back to work on the business plan. In a couple of weeks I’ll be helping present it to investors again. Joy.

If you want to go to Google’s useful (and free) help areas, click one of these links:
Google AdWords Online Classroom
Google AdWords Small Business Center

My previous mention of s2Member was brief and didn’t go into specifics. This time I’ll give a bit of a walk-through using screen captures.
 

This first image is pretty self-explanatory, and shows the menu of options for generating PayPal forms for the different levels of membership access. In fact, s2member is so simple to set up that you might just want to skip this explanation and browse through the images to get a sense of it.
 

You can set it up as a one time charge or a trial period followed by recurring billing. s2member also gives you the option of offering a basic membership with restricted access for free.
 

PayPal Account Setup Screen

s2Member also integrates easily with PayPal’s sandbox mode for testing purposes, and can log transactions locally for easy debugging. PayPal’s sandbox setup is more complicated than it needs to be and it annoys me, so personally I just use the log option, hide developing sites using .htaccess, and set prices to a penny for testing.
 

Signup Confirmation Email Setup

Click on the picture on the left to see what I mean. The variable placeholders are conveniently explained below the admin form, but have been obscured on purpose by the WordPress logo.
 

If you’re looking for ways to make money on the internet, and need to know how to create a site, try using WordPress and s2Memberto create a paid membership blog. Membership website software can be confusing, and these tools make it less complicated.

Of course, you’ll need to have a subject for your blog, but that’s a whole other article.

More soon. Check back in a bit.

It's a beautiful dream

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to put much effort into verifying the quality of their publishers. They do respond quickly to complaints and are quick to issue refunds, so it balances out and I don’t doubt the honesty and essentially law-abiding nature of Clickbank.com themselves.

What their easy approval process means, though, is that some of what is available through Clickbank.com is of questionable value, and occasionally warrants the label of “scam”. (See “The Dream of Internet Riches – or Welcome to Scam Central“)

The type of scam varies, but usually it’s either a subscription-based site that purports to aggregate information about a subject, or a variation on the old mail-order get-rich-quick manual scam: “do exactly what I’m doing and you’ll find more suckers like yourself”.

These products are actually somewhat useful to the beginning internet marketer, both in terms of information and guidance, and as pointers to what NOT to do, but they’re the kind of thing you’ll outgrow in a week and be embarrassed you paid for. Many of the information products simply re-package and paraphrase stuff that’s available free with a bit of search engine savvy.

The market for internet promotion tools and information is flooded with low-to-medium quality manuals and guides, and most of these tools seem focused on swamping the internet with mail-outs, advertising, spurious blog and message board comments, and tricks to garner high-ranked listings in internet search engines.

What they fail to emphasize is that relevance and quality are the only things that will maintain and improve your site’s position in the long-term. Sure, you have to be aware of all the tricks and tweaks, and use them judiciously, but if your site sucks, increasing traffic isn’t going to have nearly as much impact as creating a site that gives people something they’re looking for.

If you’re looking to create revenue streams, a useful, relevant site with targeted advertising and products related to the content is going to do more for you than all the traffic-getting tricks in all the books. Web site traffic is useless unless people actually want to be on your site and want what you’re promoting.

As far as subscription-based information aggregate or directory sites on Clickbank.com go, they vary in quality and some do provide a decent value, but the bad ones outnumber the good to such a degree that it’s easier just to avoid any you don’t actually use and approve of personally.

Each of these sites or products – of whatever quality – has value in its way, so it isn’t outright illegal, but many of these types of “products” skirt the line and imply a certain moral flexibility on the part of the purveyors.

Unless all you care about is the money and could care less about customer satisfaction or your own reputation, you’ll want to stay away from these kinds of things when deciding on which products to promote. Maintaining high standards is likely to pay off in higher click-through and purchase rates on your site, and will keep people coming back because they realize that you’re the real deal.

Other things to watch out for and avoid:

• subscription-based sites that offer “trial memberships” – many of these offer no way to cancel once the free or discounted trial period is over, and customers have to appeal to Clickbank to get their money refunded.
• products whose sites seem to unfold into an endless hard-sell for multiple other products, where users arrive looking for one thing, and end up being forced to wade through twenty.
• products that seem to consist of a series of videos, each of which is a hard sell
• sites where every sentence ends in an exclamation point! nothing is that exciting.
• products that promise to show you how to tap into untold riches through clickbank (you can, just run the same scam)
• products that seem to highlight some personal insecurity (like baldness or erectile dysfunction or “how to pick up women”) and claim to be able to fix it
• software (vapor ware) products that offer more than 75% commission

I don’t want to end this with the impression that all Clickbank.com products are scams that you shouldn’t promote if you have a conscience. Many are legitimate and worthwhile, so I’ll offer some examples of products that you might want to look out for and/or promote.

Products that are worthwhile promoting and won’t compromise your integrity:

• legitimate e-learning products that provide value for the money (i.e. trainingcenter.com)
• real-world products like books, cds and dvds, clothing, and other things you can actually touch
• e-books by genuine experts (Like this guy, who does exactly what I do, or these guys – creators of “99 designs” and Flippa)
• research tools for specific niches (but beware of “tools” that are actually less useful than Google, and products like credit checkers or background checks which may actually be illegal depending on your jurisdiction)
• recognizable brand name products through reputable dealers (more on this later)

You get the idea. Basically all I’m saying is that because Clickbank.com isn’t all that picky about who they allow to use their affiliate marketing setup, you’ve got to take care picking products, but that there are probably many that match your market that you can profit from with a clear conscience.

Also on the upside, if you’re at a loss as to how to enable credit-card processing on your site without using PayPal, Clickbank.com is a viable option for single-product promotions and can work with multiple products with a bit of tweaking.

If you’re a vendor with a product, Clickbank.com may make sense. Beware, though, because for the reasons I’ve mentioned above, people who’ve had a bad experience with them may be turned off of your product by association.

Conclusion: a mixed bag of products and a good low end solution for independent vendors. Affiliates beware to avoid promoting garbage.

Here are my conclusions on OpenX and some quick instructions. My previous articles were somewhat disjointed and people seem to want this information so this makes it easier to find.

Here are my final remarks (excerpted from the previous article):

The Installation Process
Pretty simple if you grab the correct installation package. The one you want is located at: http://www.openx.org/publisher/open-source-ad-server

Just

1. grab the file,
2. put it in your web server’s public_html folder,
3. unzip it,
4. rename the folder if desired,
5. then go to the installation folder in a web browser and follow the instructions.

You’ll need login details for your database server, but that’s about it.

For a large organization, I’d recommend purchasing the Enterprise version. See the OpenX site for details.

Notes:

• If money’s the issue, I’d recommend the “OpenX Source” version, which is what I tested but…
• OpenX support in the forums is spotty at best. They seem to reserve the bulk of their support efforts to paying customers who use the hosted or Enterprise versions. That’s pretty much to be expected so don’t go ranting about it on the forums, you’ll just make yourself look like an idiot. You get what you pay for – and in this case, far more.
• Expect occasional redirect errors when going to OpenX admin pages after being logged in to the admin and inactive for awhile. The way around this is to log out then log back in. In some cases you may need to delete your cookies and thenlog back in.
• Make sure you set up at the server/location you’re going to use for your production server, moving OpenX once it’s installed is a nightmare.
• There’s a comparison chart of the different versions at: http://www.openx.org/publisher/compare-ad-server-products#compareTable
• This article just scratches the surface, and is not intended to be a comprehensive how-to. You learn by doing, and the resources on the OpenX site and in the Help area are adequate.

This whole push by Canadian Telecoms is an admitted attempt to “monetize” the increase in online video usage, and protect vested interests in the Phone and Cable industries. They want to make it so that only they can offer video online without exorbitant fees, and block others from even entering the marketplace.

Like YouTube? Say goodbye to it in Canada if these guys have their way. Enjoy downloading and watching video content on various websites? Say goodbye. You’re not going to do it if you have to pay through the nose for it. You’ll be trapped paying telecoms (twice) to get access to stuff that’s currently free, or to access cable television over IP networks, and what you get to see will be controlled by whoever owns the Telecoms.

It’s anti-competitive, anti-democratic and a big scam. Don’t let it happen.

WordPress MU is a built-in capability of WordPress that allows you to host multiple blogs on the same server using sub-directories or sub-domains, which means I could map “anyblog.savagelullabye.com/” or “www.savagelullabye.com/anyblog/” and have it show up instantly with a pre-chosen set of plugins, available themes, etc. It also allows you to share users and content across multiple blogs with the addition of a few extra plugins that take advantage of the MU functionality.

Setting up MU is simple if you’ve got some experience with Unix and are comfortable using WordPress.

WordPress MU Domain Mapping

This is where the rubber really hits the road. Using this plugin, you can map multiple domains to the same server, and have it serve up different sites based on what the browser asks for. The heading above links to a fairly decent tutorial by the plugin’s author. I’ll link to a few more by others at the end of this rant, just to ensure you find a voice that speaks your language.

There are a few gotchas you’ll need to watch out for. One is that the plugin seems to demand use of WordPress’ default permalink structure, which is known to be somewhat unfriendly to both humans and search engines. In terms of search engines though, this little issue isn’t nearly as important as other elements, and can be tolerated provided you make certain other SEO elements are in place.

Another potential hassle is the fact that most ISPs these days tend to host multiple clients on the same machine, using the same or multiple IP addresses, and they already have their own rules in place for handling requests. This can sometimes interfere with WordPress MU Domain Mapping functionality, depending on your ISPs setup.

The way around this issue is to make sure your server has its own fixed IP address, which can cost anywhere from $3 a month and up. Don’t let your ISP gouge you for this, try to get as close to the $3 mark as possible. Dreamhost, the ISP this blog is hosted on, is an excellent choice. Depending on your location though, you may find it better to host on an ISP closer to you. Just remember you CAN get a fixed IP for $3.95 a month, so don’t let anyone charge you a hundred.

Another gotcha – which is actually a feature but can lead to some confusion – is the fact that all plugins and themes have to be installed from the “Network Admin” and can’t be altered on a site-by-site basis. If you’re hosting multiple blogs for third parties this can be a boon, since it prevents your users from mucking up your server. If your blog network contains only your own sites, though, it can become a bit of a hassle – not to mention confusing – having to switch back and forth between regular and Network Admin views.

The themes thing is especially troublesome, since there’s no way for individual blog users to modify theme files directly. This means that even Child Themes have to be created by the Super Admin.

The final gotcha is a lack of an up-to-date repository of comprehensive documentation. You’ll have to scour the web for snippets of information on message boards and blogs if you encounter a problem that I haven’t covered here or in the links below.

All of that aside though, since anyone capable of setting it up is probably also capable of handling most of the potential issues, this is an INCREDIBLY useful combination of capabilities, for blog owners and network administrators alike.

I’m currently using the WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin to host a network of directory sites I’m building, as part of the “domain parking advertising” network plan I’ve outlined in other posts on this blog. So far so good.

Here are a few useful documentation links for those who are intrigued:

• WordPress 3.0.4, create network, and domain mapping plugin
• The Author’s Instructions
• The Plugin Page on WordPress.org
• Getting Started With Multisite

10 minutes work with the Goog will net you dozens of other useful links.

Enjoy!

TAC is a plugin that examines themes for malicious code and static links. It’s a must-have.

None of the themes I’ve used on this site seem affected by anything bad, but it’s useful even if you download themes that don’t have anything dodgy about them. Sometimes it’s a pain in the patootie tracking down static links in themes, and this plugin points you straight at them and lets you open up the files in the editor.

For that alone it’s worth having. Identifying malicious code is just gravy.

Many thanks to Siobhan Ambrose of WPMU.org for her excellent article, Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else.

I hope Siobhan is getting paid or laid for all her hard work. She certainly puts a lot of effort into her articles – unlike yours truly, who just rants about whatever comes to mind in the course of work and play.