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Why We Use Affiliate Organizer: An Affiliate Organizer Review

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 12:54 am

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Affiliate Organizer Review One thing you will find after you have been in the Affiliate Marketing business for a while is that you will accumulate lots of email addresses, passwords, user names and a variety of other information.

And believe me it doesn’t take too long for all this information to become hard to manage, unless you are a very organized person.

Last year we had a piece of software recommended to us that would simplify our affiliate business and get us completely organized.

Now I have to say at the time that I was a bit skeptical and didn’t really expect it to be anything special. In fact I didn’t even buy the software right away because I thought that I was pretty organized what with my notebooks and spreadsheets and the rest.

It was after we received a second recommendation that we took that as a sign and went and purchased a copy of Affiliate Organizer and I have to say that I am so glad we did. This little piece of software is just brilliant and it definitely keeps us organized.

The main feature of the Affiliate Organizer is that it allows you to store all your user names and passwords in the one place.

How many times have you joined something on the net and had to register with a user name and password?I have literally hundreds of passwords for different things – forums, affiliate networks, blogs, websites and so on. The Affiliate Organizer allows me to store them in the one place and access them easily.

It’s other features include:

A calendar function where you can set up upcoming events and tasks and be reminded of them with either a pop-up or an email.
A category to store websites including DNS, ftp settings, passwords, hosting company details and so on.
The ability to store the details of software packages you have purchased and enter the unlock codes and the registration details.
A section for affiliate merchants where you can add their website address, the commission amount, the contact name, join up date and so much more.
A section to store keyword lists and click on keywords that you have used so you can stay on track.
A category to store forums that you have signed up with and include the url, password and user name.
An area to keep track of tasks that you have outsourced including the freelancers name, email, the project description, date started and completed, keywords lists, the cost and much more.
A category where you can store any training or seminars you may be taking with fields to include the event, location, date, time, cost, contact name and so on.
A section where you can add any ideas or projects you have in mind.
And the list goes on…

The icing on the cake for this program is that if you can’t find a place to store a piece of information then you can simply create your own categories and fields so you can literally store almost anything.

The software is extremely simple to install and once installed sits in your system tray for easy access and it starts up when you computer starts up – although you can turn off this setting if you prefer.

What I really like is that you can password protect the whole program so that even if your computer is stolen no one can access your passwords.

These are just a few of the features of the Affiliate Organizer. We literally use it every day and couldn’t do without it.

What is dofollow and nofollow?

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 pm

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What is Nofollow This is a question that is not an easy one to answer without first providing you with a bit of background, so here is an explanation that will hopefully help you to understand these terms.

The goal of many internet marketers, especially those who focus on natural search, is to get good quality backlinks to their site.

So what is a backlink?:

Firstly, backlinks are also known by different names and inlinks or inbound links are other common terms.

It really doesn’t matter if this doesn’t make sense just yet, all you really need to know is that a backlink is any link from another website to your website.

Why are backlinks important?

Having good quality backlinks coming into your website can make a great deal of difference in how well your site is ranked in Google. This is the reason why many internet marketers put a lot of work into getting plenty of good quality, relevant backlinks because they know what a difference this will make in how well their website ranks in Google.

Unfortunately this process is open to abuse as webmasters go out of their way to grab as many backlinks as they can get, including ones that aren’t relevant to their site and could even be considered as just spam. Google became aware of this problem and in 2005 introduced the nofollow tag. What this did was effectively stop search engines from giving any credit to a link that had the nofollow attribute.

So how does the nofollow tag work?

Say for instance you were creating a link to my blog from your website. This is the code you would use:

<a href=”http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/”> Affiliate Blog Online</a>

And it would create the following link: Affiliate Blog Online

With the nofollow tag the code would look like this:

<a href=”http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Affiliate Blog Online</a>

Notice the addition of rel=”nofollow”. Although it has the bit of extra code the link would still look the same, like this: Affiliate Blog Online. So although you can’t tell the difference by looking at the link itself, the code behind it is telling the search engines that they shouldn’t give any juice to that link.

You will find the nofollow tag is standard on most of the major blogging platforms like Blogger, WordPress and Typepad. This helps to prevent comment spam although we personally still get a huge amount of spam so I’m not sure it has done the job it was originally intended to do.

So how does the dofollow tag work?

In effect, dofollow is the opposite of nofollow – in other words, the search engines do give credit to the link.

To create a dofollow link the following code would be used:

<a href=”http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/”> Affiliate Blog Online</a>

But hang on a minute, is this right? You are probably wondering where the dofollow attribute is in that piece of code. Well there is no actual dofollow tag. It is just a term used to describe the opposite of nofollow.

So when you see the term ‘dofollow blog’ it just means that the blog has removed the nofollow attribute. So if you posted a comment on that blog then the link to your website would be given credit by Google and the other search engines.

Dofollow Plugins

To turn your blog into a dofollow blog you can download a plugin that removes the nofollow attribute from automatically attaching itself to comments left on your blog.

Andy Beard has put together a comprehensive list of dofollow plugins on his site so check it out.

You can also join the No Nofollow community at Bumpzee if you really feel strongly about this issue.

The benefit of creating a dofollow blog is that it encourages people to leave commments but on the other hand it can also encourage even more spam. Just ensure that you have the Akismet Plugin installed to help combat spam.

Wealthy Affiliate University Review

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 10:49 pm

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Wealthy Affiliate University Review If you are trying to learn how to make money online you may be overwhelmed by the amount of information available. It can also be confusing trying to figure out who you can trust and what might be a scam.

With this in mind, we researched a number of affiliate training programs and eBooks, and after discounting the majority of them we found a few shining examples, one of which is the Wealthy Affiliate University.

This program is recommended by a large number of people, so after some research we decided to give it a go, and we liked what we saw and read.

WOW! What can we say, this is a program that delivers what it promises and in most cases it over delivers.

The site membership costs $39 a month, although if we had paid for a year in advance we would have received a discount, making the monthly cost only $29. However, we tend to be conservative types who like to see what we are getting into before committing to a years subscription.

After paying a months subscription through Paypal we received the login details and we were ready to go. Our expectations were high and first impressions upon logging in were very good. It is a very professional looking site with a wealth of information and tools.

The Dashboard page contains a menu at the top which links to the following options -Forum, Site Rubix, Hosting, Rapid Writer, Spaces, Jobs, My-Linker, Keyword Tool and Affiliates.

The menu on the right hand side links to the Dashboard, Learning Centre, My Wealthy Affiliate, 8 Week Action Plan, Research Center, Marketing Materials, Website Center, Affiliate Program, About Kyle and Carson and Help.

In the main content page of the Dashboard are links to useful info like Email Marketing, Squidoo Optimization, Google Adwords Tweaks…just to name a few. There are also photos of other members who have just joined the Wealthy Affiliate University community.

Further down the Dashboard page there are boxes of information that can be customized by dragging them around the screen to suit yourself – a bit like Facebook.

The boxes contain the following information:

• Forum Activity
• Wealthy Affiliate Program Stats
• Hot Clickbank Products
• Wealthy Affiliate Space Activity
• Latest WAPedia Definitions
• WA Jobs Activity
• Hot Trends

I had to laugh when I saw the large PANIC button on the page…and of course, I had to click it to see what it does and I am taken to a page which starts with the words:

“Take a deep breath. You have hit the panic button for a reason, and we are going to help you calm down…”

It then details all the reasons why you might be panicking and ways to help you through it. This is great stuff, particularly for someone new to making money online who may be feeling a little overwhelmed

THE 8 WEEK ACTION PLAN

There is so much to look at that it is difficult to know where to start but fortunately what is also on the dashboard is a green arrow pointing towards the 8 Week Action Plan.

After you click on the arrow you are taken to the main page of the Action Plan. When you first join, you will only have access to Week 1 which is basically all about getting started and how to use the Wealthy Affiliate University website. It starts at the very basic level by even explaining what affiliate marketing is and there is also some detail on how to use and navigate the site. At the end of this lesson is also an action plan of tasks to be undertaken for the week.

The Week One action plan instructs you to go into the forum and have a good read, add some posts, create a Space page in the site and also read some of the info that has been provided.

Also included is a section titled Learning Resources that are set up based on your affiliate marketing experience with Junior, Intermediate and Senior Learning Resources. This is excellent as it doesn’t matter what level you are at with your Affiliate Marketing …you will learn something here.

We started with the Junior Level in the Learning Centre. Even at this level we found a couple of things that we didn’t already know. So our advice is to go in and read all the levels, as there may well be something you weren’t aware of.

Some of the topics included in the Junior Level are:

• Getting Started
• Internet Marketing Basics
• Penny Pincher Marketing Techniques
• Trading Services for Cash
• Article Marketing
• Squidoo Optimization – I love this one
• Using Clickbank
• Understanding Relevance
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising
• Top 10 Common Mistakes
• Adcopy Writing
• Common Keyword Technique
• Using Yahoo Search Marketing
• How to Setup a Website
• Components of a Landing Page

I spent the first couple of days just perusing the site. There is so much information to take in and so the 8 Week Plan is the best way of getting through it all.

What’s Included as Part of Your Membership

Site Rubix – this is an easy to use (and I mean easy) website builder.
Clickbank Research Tool – this is way better than using Clickbank itself with a lot more detailed info.
Free Hosting
Keyword Research Tool
Keyword Generator
Keyword Phrase Buider
Free landing page templates
Competition Spy Tool
Google Match Types – you’ll save a heap of time with your Adwords campaigns with this tool
Free keyword lists
Rapid Writer – easily create articles with this tool
Plus loads more…

As we have already stated this site is useful for any level from the beginner right through to the seasoned affiliate marketer. While in the forum, I found people in there who have been with the Wealthy Affiliate University for quite some time and they all believe that the program is of great value.

We give the program a big thumbs up. It’s a professional site with lots to offer. In just the first two days we learnt enough to easily make back our $39. In fact, just from using the tips found at Wealthy Affiliate and developing just one Squidoo lens we have easily made that money back and more so.

We will continue to write about the weekly lessons so stay tuned for more over the coming weeks…

For more info on the Wealth Affiliate University CLICK HERE

The Top 5 Best WordPress Plugins

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 5:46 am

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In the past few days, we moved from our old blogging platform to WordPress and have been busily uploading plugins that will benefit our blogging experience and help in terms of SEO.

Although we have used WordPress extensively in the past, we haven’t really used plugins to their full advantage. It has been pretty much trial and error and in fact, more often than not we would just upload a plugin because it looked pretty cool.

So prior to moving this blog over to WordPress, I did some extensive research to find out what are the ‘must have’ plugins for WordPress, and as a result of my research, here are the top 5 best WordPress plugins:

1. All-In-One-SEO Pack

This in my opinion is one of the best plugins to improve WordPress SEO. It ensures that your blog posts have better titles, better descriptions and it also helps to reduce problems associated with duplicate content.

Once activated you only need to change the main options once. Then for each individual post, you can change the title tag, description and keywords, although this is not required as the SEO Pack determines what needs to be included in these fields automatically by your original settings.

Download Here

2. What Would Seth Godin Do?

Believe it or not, ‘What Would Seth Godin Do? is the name of the plugin. Who is Seth Godin? - He is probably best known as the creator of Squidoo but is also the writer of a number of books and has probably one of the most popular blogs on the internet.

The reason the plugin got it’s name is because of something Seth Godin mentioned on his blog:

One opportunity that’s underused is the idea of using cookies to treat returning visitors differently than newbies. It’s more work at first, but it can offer two experiences to two different sorts of people.

This got Richard Millar working on a WordPress plugin that would do just that…hence the ‘What Would Seth Godin Do’ plugin.

What this plugin does is place a small box of text either at the top or the bottom of each post depending on the number of times a visitor comes to your blog. So for instance, the first three times a visitor comes to your blog they could see one message and then anytime after that they could see a different message.

You can change the message to say whatever you like and you can also add a url.

This is a very cool plug-in and a definite must have.

Download Here

3. Subscribe to Comments

If you’ve ever left a comment on a blog you might have seen a small tick box under the comment field that allows you to subscribe to the post. If you ticked this checkbox then you would receive an email notification when further comments are left by other visitors on that particular blog post.

This is a great way to get readers to return to your blog as they follow up on responses left in response to their comments.

To get this option on your blog you will need to download the Subscribe to Comments plugin.

Download Here

4. Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress

A sitemap is, in its most basic terms, a map of your site. It lets the search engine robots know how to find pages on your site and this means your pages are more likely to be indexed.

This plugin creates a sitemap for your blog and it also pings the major search engines when you have made changes to your blog.

Download Here

5. Share This

This handy plugin allows your visitors to share your posts with some of the top social bookmarking or networking sites.

Once activated, the plugin places a link at the end of each of your posts so that when it is clicked a pop-up is displayed that allows the reader to select the social networking or bookmarking site they want to submit your post to.

You do have to register to get this to work.

Download Here

So there you have it – the top 5 WordPress plugins. I have uploaded each to this blog and they are all working perfectly.

If you have any plugin suggestions then please leave a comment.