The BookmarkMoney Blog

Jeffro2pt0’s post at WebLog Tools Collection tipped me off to Speckyboy’s list of Top 10 Security Plugins for WordPress. There’s a lot of good plugins listed, and I was happy to see WP-SpamFree made it on the list.

I’ve been using WP-SpamFree since about the second week of this blog, and it’s been amazing. I don’t know anyone blogs without it. I use quite a few security plugins myself, but I won’t say what, since that might decrease my security

From the same post, Jeffro2pt0 also points us to the WordPress Codex article on Hardening your WordPress.

In a separate post, at Weblog Tools Collection, Marc Ghosh linked to a post at Scripty Goddess entitled “Fun Tools That Will Eat Up the Spare Time You Don’t Have.” Her recommendations:

Stripe Generator, which is an AJAX background designer will give your website that oh-so-sexy Web 2.0 look. Looking at their blog, I came across a post announcing two companion generators - Reflection Maker, and Tab Generator. Three awesome tools to take some of the grunt work out of website design.

WordPress Theme Generator, which does exactly what it says, for those who are mystified by the intricacies of building WordPress Themes.

WordPress Pad has an article on turning your WordPress Install into a Directory with the WordPress Directory Plugin from Links Back.

Miscellaneous

I read an article on Live Science about why hot women marry ugly guys, and it’s not just about the money - which came as quite a shock to me.

For a laugh, read this comment on the story Why Linux Won’t Displace Windows. I can’t tell if it’s satire, or the guy is serious, but I laughed until I cried. It’s people like this that remind me why I got out of computer related customer service.

[Read more →]

Tags: Blogging, Plugins, Psychology, Themes, Tools, WordPress by Jotun
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First off, I’d like to extend congratulations to Ruck, at Cash Tactics. This week he announced that his first daughter was born. It sounds like everything is going well, so I’d like to welcome him to a new world of concern. As the old saying goes: If you have a son you only need to worry about one prick. If you have a daughter, you need to worry about every prick in town. My daughter is only 17 months old, and already the boys her age are giving her the eye. I fear that it will only get worse from here.

Now, on to the goodies.

Affiliate Marketing

For those just getting started in affiliate marketing, Sean at the Warrior Blog has a tutorial that takes you through all of the steps - researching, locating, and then finally cashing the checks. I wish I had known about this when I had first started out. Your First Clickbank Sale.

Build a Niche Store (BANS) is something I’ve been looking into for a while. When my wife goes back to work, I may just break down and purchase it, since I’ve heard noting but good things about it. Affiliate Confession has a 7 part series on setting up and using BANS. A very good place to start if you want an easier entry into affiliate marketing.

Build A Niche Store Tutorials Overview - Parts 1-7
Part 1 - What BANS Does And Does Not Do
Part 2 - Niche Brainstorming And Getting A Domain Name
Part 3 - Installing And Setting Up Your BANS Affiliate Store
Part 4 - Tweaking Your eBay Affiliate Store
Part 5 - Adding Some Content To Your eBay Store
Part 6 - Article Marketing And Getting Links
Part 7 - Using USFreeAds.com For Traffic And Getting More Links

Article Marketing

The Warrior Blog has a tutorial on Article Marketing for promotional purposes. I know that a lot of people recommend doing article marketing, but it seems like a lot of work, that I’d be better off channeling elsewhere.

Mashups

Although it’s over a year old, Paul O’Brien’s list of Mashups created with Yahoo! Pipes is still a pretty good read to help inspire ideas for your own mashup.

I’m not sure of the date on this one, but SEO Book had a nice roundup of specific Pipes.

If you’ve been dying to create a mashup, but can’t program and can’t afford a program, Open Kapow may be for you. Using their simple tools, literally anyone can create a mashup in minutes just by pointing and clicking. Extremely useful if you want to use data from sites that don’t provide an Application Programming Interface (API) or Ready Site Syndication (RSS) feed.

Black Hat

If you have a Wordpress Blog, then Jimmy at Seeds for Wealth has a technique for raping Digg’s traffic. At best this trick is grey hat, at worst it’s black hat, but getting links from Digg is never a bad thing.

Continuing along the path to the Dark Side, Jimmy has tips on getting big trafic from BlogCatalog, and another one for using your avatar as visitor bait.

If you’ve been wondering how certain sellers always rank so high on eBay’s Pulse page, someone placed them under the magnifying glass, and found out that there’s a lot of cheating going on behind the scenes. estreet at Watched Item watched some top sellers on eBay Pulse, and gathered some compelling evidence that there is rampant cheating going on.

Datafeeds

5 Star Affiliate Programs has a pretty extensive list of affiliate datafeeds ready for integration into your website. Affiliate Datafeeds are great, because they help generate a lot of content for search engines to spider, as well as helping to monetize your website.

Extensive Squidoo Lens on Datafeeds

Tools

Marc Ghosh at Weblog Tools Collection posted this week introducing us to Zemanta. Zemanta is a contextual content suggestion engine that works with Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, Typepad.com, and self-hosted WordPress installations.Zemanta is a simple FireFox extension that creates a little AJAX box on the side of your write panel in WordPress, and makes real-time suggestions for related news stories, Wikipedia articles, and Flickr photos. I’m very excited to start using this. You can also keep up to date with the latest happenings at Zemanta’s Blog.

WordPress Plugins

Jeffro2pt0 at Weblog Tools Collection rounded up 10 WP plugins that fight comment spam. I personally use WP Spam Free from Hybrid 6, and have no complaints with it. I do disable it every so often to see how much it actually stops, and It’s amazing how much of a difference it makes.

Freebies

Since I like free stuff, here’s my link to Robbing Craigslist. If you want a free copy, just link to it from your blog too.

Emarket Scout tipped me off the the following: Freebies for Writers, Authors, and Screenwriters., Self Growth Freebies, and Free stuff for Windows Power Users.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Datafeeds, Gurus, Internet Marketing, Link Building, Mashups, Plugins, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools, Traffic, Viral Marketing, WordPress by Jotun
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Tools

Icon Interactive has Four Free Tools for your use: Link Popularity, Search Engine Submitter, Keyword Suggestion, and Word Cloud. Of them, I found the Link Popularity to be the most informative, whereas the Search Engine Submitter and Keyword Suggestion tools kept breaking on me. I guess you get what you pay for.

Wordpress

Via Weblog Tools Collection: Blueprint Design Studio graces us with a list of their Top 10 Essential Plugins for Wordpress. I’ve used a lot of the plugins on this list, but TinyMCE always was a pain in the arse to get working properly. Subscribe2 is what all of the big boys use on their sites, but for some reason PlugInstaller breaks it, so I’m out of the loop on that one too. Finally, CFormsII seems to be powerful in the right hands, which are obviously not mine - I’ve never had any joy in getting it to work.

Performancing has a great article on using WordPress to build a web directory which is centered around two plugins; Alex Tang’s Link Directory plugin, and Links Back’s plugin WP Directory. I’m interested in trying this out, but according to Mr. Dash they’re both broken in WordPress 2.3.2, which means they’re probably just going to frustrate me. Still, something I’m going to keep on the back burner.

Search Engine Optimization / Link Building

Blogging Mix has a two part tutorial on how to get Google to crawl your website. They’re full of great ideas, and you’re probably already doing them, but a refresher course never hurts. The one tip that I always do that isn’t on this list, is adding your website feed to iGoogle. I remember reading somewhere that if you add your RSS to iGoogle it helps bump up your place in the queue. If your feed is provided by FeedBurner (a division of Google) then you should be doubly covered, right? Part 1 | Part 2

Build a Blog asks the question “To promote using blog directories, or not?”

Thanks to the post above, I was introduced to Skelliwag’s tutorial on Hansel and Gretel Link Building which is a straight forward guide to getting quality incoming sites.

Do Follow Directory is a directory of sites that have “do follow” enabled.

Info Doorway has a large list of “do follow” sites and forums arranged by Page Rank.

Eric Mitz tells us how he uses forums for backlinks.

Courtney Tuttle has a list of 102 ways to make your site a backlink superstar.

Micro Persuasion opines that we’re like a million monkeys on treadmills. Odd title aside, it’s a thought provoking discussion on channels and internet trends of the past few years.

Affiliate Marketing

Squidoo Lens on using Squidoo for Affiliate Marketing

My Web 2.0 has 5 tips for creating powerful text ads.

AffiliateSeeking.com is a directory of the various programs by which you can become an affiliate marketer.

Paul updated his Affiliate Marketing Guide. Awesome advice from somebody who is making 6 figures a month.

This post has been a week in the making, so I hope it’s not a total deluge. I plan on adding a lot of these links to the main site as time permits this week.

Tuesday I go see a specialist for my hernia and see when they want to perform surgery. I’m praying that it won’t be until after my wife returns to work. I’ve been dealing with this for several months now, another one shouldn’t hurt as long as I take it easy. A little Alieve generally keeps me on my feet, and that’s all I need. If I do have to go in fo surgery, expect posting to pick up dramatically.

I’m currently hatching several mini e-books, and when I finally hatch them, you’ll be the first to know.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Linkdump, Plugins, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools, WordPress by Jotun
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More EntreCard powerdropping fun.

Wow. Fine grained paranoia taken to extremes.

andLinux is a Linux install that runs inside your Windows NT based Operating System through the wonders of virtualization. Very nifty for people like me that are interested in making The Switch(tm) but can’t go cold turkey.

WordPress Pad has a great tutorial on customizing your WordPress login page.

Free Rice: Learn Vocabulary, Combat Hunger. Good way to kill some free time, learn some new words, and help out those less fortunate than you. I’m a big supporter of voluntary charity, but have paying my own bills, so I don’t give as much as I’d like to.

Skelliwag posts his thoughts and tips on surviving in underserverd niches.

Chairman Ling details her offline marketing campaign. This lady eats and sleeps ‘viral advertising.’

Using WordPress to manage a mostly static website.

How to convert any web template into a WordPress Theme.

More CNC Fun:

3 axis CNC Router

Tags: Blogging, Entrecard, Plugins, WordPress by Jotun
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What Sells Online: SEO With Long Tail Keywords.

Download “The Long Tail” ebook for free courtesy of Change This.

LongTail.com is the homepage of Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail” and is filled to the gills with lots of good ideas and observations on ‘free.’

Lawrence Lessig’s novel The Future of Ideas has been released under a Creative Commons license.

SeoQuake is a Firefox extention that will show you Google PageRank, the amount of pages indexed by Google/Yahoo/MSN, the age of the page, and many, many more amazing features. It’s an amazing free plugin that will help you spy on the competition.

Media Viper’s list of negative ppc keywords.

WHDB.com has a very thorough list of free alternatives to commercial software.

If you’re doing any kind of video marketing, DeskPing has a list of 5 royalty free music sites.

If you’re looking to finance your next business venture, Mind of a Hustler suggest you try the stone soup method.

Dustin Brewer shares his thoughts about creating interesting content for social networks.

Saturday Morning Sweeties - NSFW!

This last bit is just for the guys. Egotastic was kind enough to bless us with Olivia Munn’s Complex Magazine photo shoot. If you have basic cable, and have ever stumbled across G4 (formerly TechTV), you’ll recognize her as the hostess of Attack of the Show. Honestly, she’s the primary reason I tune into the show, although Layla Kayleigh and Kristen Holt don’t hurt the eyes either.

Anyway, enjoy the eye candy, and I have a couple of big announcements coming down the pike this weekend. Stay Tuned!

Tags: Linkdump, Plugins, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Site News, Tools, WordPress by Jotun
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Affiliate Avalanche: Network Your Way to Success

Hack WordPress: The Ultimate Guide to Pwning Your Software

Daily Moolah: 6 Social Media Optimization Plugins for Wordpress

The Dead One: Turn Your WordPress Into a Fully Functioning Forum via ReviewOn

From Zen Cart Optimization: 200 Words That Make Money, and 14 Words That Lose Money

Affiliate District: Lay Out a Good Affiliate Marketing Plan

Viral King’s Viral Marketing Tips

7 Steps to Creating Your Own Product

Moms Prosperity Network: Law of Attraction, Good Things Happen to Bad People

Comment Sniper Software Guarantees you first post bragging rights!

Best Free Autoresponder Roundup

Super Blogging Tips: 75 Ways to Increase Your Site’s Traffic

And to cap it all off, 15 Reflexology Healing Techniques. Skip the Kinoki pads and use your hands!

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Internet Marketing, Linkdump, List Building, Plugins, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools, WordPress by Jotun
3 Comments »

Welcome everybody who is visiting here from my intervew at blogsweluv. Stick around and enjoy the scenery today, because the repo men are taking it back on Thurday.

CopyBlogger: Keyword Research For Bloggers
Online Money Tip: Adsense - Get More Bucks For Your Clicks
Ad Moolah: Adsense Revenue Sharing Sites
The Medici Effect E-Book (.pdf)
Low Cost Techniques to Drive Tsunami Traffic to Your Site
Sephyroth: Securing Firefox
Joseph Ratliff: The Product Launch Secret Weapon
Ultimate Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress
DotCoMoney: Benefits of Joint Ventures
Rachael Ray and the 30 Minute Myth

That’s all for now. I may have enough for another post later.

Tags: Linkdump, Pay Per Click (PPC), Plugins, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Site News, WordPress by Jotun
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It’s a LinkStorm(tm)

WordPress SEO Whitepaper
Free Listing at a PR5 Directory
Team Schuman: 6 Reasons TrafficJam.com is a Must-Visit
Dosh Dosh: How to Become an Authority in Your Niche
Ankit Arora: How to Write an Interesting Blog Post
Prospecting vs. Lead Generation
BlogsRating.com - Like Hot or Not for Bloggers
DotCom Mogul: These WP Plugins are the Shizzle
Josh Spaulding: Duplicate Content - It May Not Be So Bad
NoFollow Free WP Plugin Updated - About two days after I installed it.
5 Unconventional Ways to Ignite Creativity
Life Optimizer: Free Passive Income Resources

Debating whether I’m going to the day job tomorrow. Had freezing rain all day, and a couple of inches of snow. By tomorrow we’re supposed to have 3-5 inches more of the crap, with high winds anticipated. I’d rather stay home and read ‘Red Dragon.’

I turned in my request for vacation next month. Soilwork is coming through Iowa, and less than 30 miles away from me. I’m totally in. Plus, they’re playing in a 150-200 person club. I’ll be lucky if they don’t literally rock my face off. Next on my wishlist, please come back Rammstein! They came through with Slipknot and System of a Down back in 2001, but I had to miss it for a college class that had 100% mandatory attendance for the semester. To this day the fact that I missed Rammstein makes me sad inside

Speaking of Rammstein, I spent Saturday morning listening to the new album by Emigrate, a side project by one of Rammstein’s guitarists. It’s a pretty good effort, but some riffs seem almost directly transferred from existing Rammstein songs. I didn’t care much for their politics either, but I usually don’t if I’m not listening to Hardcore bands. Overall, I give it a plus, and I do plan on doing an in-depth review at some point.

I went and saw the doctor today. Bronchitis and sinus infection. Just my usual monthly infections. Working with burning metal and aerosolicized petroleum producs takes its toll on my asthma.

It sounds like next weekend I’m going to go read for a part in an indie movie they’re filming close to here. I’m probably just throwing away part of my Saturday, but I’ll be hanging out with good friends, so it’ll definitely be a laugh.

Finally, here’s a recipe for your enjoyment: Buffalo Chicken Salad.

Take 6-8 boneless/skinless chicken tenders and place in crock pot with 16oz Hot Sauce and 1 stick margarine. Cook on high for three hours.
Crush 1 handfull of original Doritos or taco chips in the bottom of a bowl.
Add Lettuce.
Shred chicken and place on salad.
Shred pepper jack cheese over everything.
Enjoy!

Tags: Cooking, Gurus, Linkdump, Music, Plugins, Reviews, Site News, WordPress by Jotun
1 Comment »

Between tending to my sick daughter, and drooling over the thought of Bruce Campbell doing a guest post (*sigh* he’s dreamy), I’ve found a second or two to work on the site backend.

Most importantly, I’ve installed NoFollow Free which strips out all of those pesky nofollow tags that are used to discourage comment spammers. I check and approve all comments, and if I don’t want them here, they won’t live very long. I realize I’m nobody, but dammit, this is my soapbox, and if people who visit here want to comment in good faith, a tiny trickle of linkjuice from yours truly is the very least I can do.

If you look at my posts, I am a prolific linker. Depending on the day, I read several dozen to several hundred different sites. I’m an information addict with strong exhibitionistic tendencies. That’s my nature - I gather lists of items that interest me, and present them to the world at large. Sometimes they are similar, sometimes they’re WTF?, but I always present them to help share the knowledge. Not for trackbacks. Not for shameless self promotion.

If somebody is interested enough in what I say to mention me, I’m more than happy to pass a link on to them. The internet is built on links after all. I’m not all that concerned by the two scraper sites that are currently broadcasting my thoughts around the internet. Why?

Firstly, RSS Footer makes sure I’m being credited.

Secondly, if you believe the Open Source evangelists, knowledge wants to be free. hax0rs want free knowledge. Either way, I’m really not saying anything profound, and they are helping get the word out. I ran a scraper site once upon a time. The purpose wasn’t to make money, it was to keep up on news from dozens of sources on a topic I was passionate about. It eventually evolved into a Syndic8 style site, which I relaunched this year as an article directory site. I understand that not all scrapers are in it for the money.

In addition to every comment, I check every trackback. I think I’ve notched up about four or so, but that’s not the point. If somebody is watching the watchman (upcoming post alert re: The Watchmen Movie) it makes me curious. If they like what I have to say, then they probably share similar interests as I do, and I’ll spend a few minutes noodling around their sites. Often times I find amazing gems that I never would have had I not visited.

So anyway, feel free to comment knowing that your effort may be rewarded by a search engine that has yet to be developed. Free link love forever!

Tags: Blogging, Plugins, Site News, WordPress by Jotun
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Saturday Morning Funnies: Only in Russia

3 Tips to Optimize Your Email Landing Pages. Pretty common sense stuff, but it’s amazing how rare ‘common’ sense is.

6 Easy Ways to Improve Your Affiliate Offer. How to make your squeeze pages sing like the big boys’.

50 Directories to Submit Your Site To. Another Directory List. All have high pagerank and don’t require reciprocal links.

Free Backlinks on Squidoo. Free is free, and backlinks are backlinks.

Backlink Creation Guide lens located on Squidoo.

Increase Technorati Authority with this link exchange program.

Top 100 Social Video Sites. There’s also a sister post Top 100 Social Networking Sites

34 Sites that Pay You to Blog.

Making Money With Youtube. Similar to this post on Cash Tactics from a few weeks ago. Great minds think alike I guess.

20 Ways to Get Massive Traffic.

DotCom Mogul has a pretty exhaustive list on CPA Networks.

Two thoughts on affiliate marketing:

Amit at Super Affiliate Mindset posts his tips on how to get started as an affiliate

Paul disagrees quite strongly.

Right now I’m doing Amit’s system, although I’ve been pressed for time and haven’t setup the backend tracking, which I realize is a mistake that I plan to rectify shortly. I definitely see Paul’s point, and understand where he’s coming from. I’ve always been happy to spend money to make money. I’m not making big bucks, but I am making sales every couple of days, and that helps me feel that I’m not wasting my time.

I’m lucky enough that I have the HTML/web design background so I’m not starting from scratch, but my copywriting skills are sorely needing to be developed.

In site news, I’ve added CommentLuv which will append the last post you make on your website underneath your comments here. So comment away!

This post has been about three hours in the making, so I’m drawing the line now. Off to enjoy some kid-free Saturday action!

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Gurus, Internet Marketing, List Building, Pay Per Click (PPC), Plugins, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), WordPress by Jotun
4 Comments »