Web site promotion and marketing info, Helpful Tips, Latest Gadgets, News and Webdesign Services
by Tricia
Wow it’s been a while since I’ve written anything.
Sorry about that. Life got busy and I haven’t been testing out WordPress plugins or other cool web related items or sites in the last few weeks. I’m sure I’ll get back to finding interesting things for you to try soon!
I hope that all of my visitors are off to a good start in 2008 and that the year brings you health, happiness and with some luck perhaps prosperity.
Happy New Year everyone!
by Tricia
Can you believe this?
Yesterday evening I was using my laptop and my email program, Eudora, was acting up. For some reason it freezes up when I visit websites that have flash on them. So I rebooted my computer in order to get my email to work properly again.
So I’m working on my computer, checking my mail and I try to moderate some of the comments that have come in on the blogs that I maintain. I can’t do it.
I got an error message stating that my IP has been marked as spam and blacklisted. I was given a Key that I can use to solve the problem myself, but of course that only resulted in an error message. The other option I was given was to write to the moderator of the site. In other words write to myself?
I didn’t clue in right away as to what the problem was. I tried going into my WordPress admin section to see if I had added the particular IP address that I seemed to have been assigned by Rogers to the WP ADMIN Options Discussion section. Nope. It wasn’t there. I’d only blocked a few IP addresses on my home and garden blog and no others.
Naturally by this time I’d been trying to solve the problem for at least half an hour and I was starting to freak out a little bit as I had at least 7 sites that I could no longer moderate comments on! I also assumed that I wouldn’t be able to write a new post either.
I eventually logged into my web hosting account and opened up the file manager in C-Panel. I checked to see if any new files had been added that I hadn’t placed on the server. I also opened up PHP MyAdmin to check my sites databases to see if I could remove the blocked IP. I did find the blacklist and determined that it was from my Bad Behavior plugin. I tried to remove the blocked IP address from my MySQL database and then I rebooted my computer again.
Uh … now I couldn’t even log into any of the blogs that I maintain on my feverishthoughts.com domain. I didn’t bother to try any of my other domains as I assumed they would also be affected.
By this time I’d probably wasted an hour and a half and comments were piling up and I had posts I needed to write. I was getting frustrated.
The best solution I came up with was to go into my hosting account and change the name of the bad-behavior plugin folder in order to deactivate the plugin on the sites in question.
It worked. I could now log into my sites and moderate comments, create posts and so on.
However I no longer have the wonderful spam protection that I got from the Bad Behavior plugin.
I’ve been using Bad Behavior for about a year and it’s been wonderful. Just turn it on and it automatically blocks spam before it even gets into your comment moderation list. Prior to using Bad Behavior I was sometimes getting 400 to 500 comments spam messages each day on some of my busier sites!
There is a way to edit the whitelist file and I suppose I’ll have to do that sometime today as I’m still assigned the same IP address that caused all these problems yesterday evening.
The only other spam protection that I use on my blogs is the built in Akismet plugin that comes with WordPress. Up until now that combination has been sufficient. I may look into also using Spam Karma.
Have you ever had your own IP address blocked by your spam protection software?
UPDATE:
If you are using Bad Behavior it was updated today. Yesterday the creator of the Bad Behavior plugin moved servers and accidentally decommissioned an old blacklist that he thought wasn’t being used by Bad Behavior anymore. Unfortunately it was and many users of the Bad Behavior plugin found themselves locked out of their own sites as a result.
The plugin has now been updated to version 2.0.11 and it should resolve the problem. I’m about to update this plugin on all my sites now.
I’m thankful that the plugin creator was so quick to resolve the problem that he inadvertently created. I’d be lost without my Bad Behavior plugin protection. Yes, that’s just how good Bad Behavior really is – try it for yourself.
by Tricia
Widgetbucks has again updated their program policy in regard to sites with a good mix of international visitors. In an email sent out earlier today to all of their members they stated:
International CPM Ads
Here’s an upcoming feature. In early December, we will start serving CPM ads to the non-U.S./Canada traffic. This will give you revenue, per impression, for your site visitors who come from other countries. This is designed to help publishers who have a blend of traffic from a variety of countries.
Our system will do the geo-location for you, determining where the visitor is coming from. Then we’ll either show the regular pay-per-click widget (to visitors from the U.S. and Canada) or show an ad that pays per impression (to visitors from other countries). You’ll see a new column, called “CPM Revenue” in your earnings reports.
So it appears that they listened to the concerns or more likely complaints of those who have a good portion of their traffic from non US or Canadian visitors and implemented this new CPM ad system.
Now hopefully they’ll do something about their widget slowing the loading of a site. I had, had Widgetbucks on my main blog Tricia’s Musings, but I only had it up for a few days before I removed it. It didn’t severely slow my page loads but I found that it didn’t load until you reached the portion of the page that the widget was located on and if you were trying to scroll past that point you had to wait until it finished loading. I didn’t like that.
On that site I had the widget code in the middle of my sidebar. I have ads near the top of my sidebars that I can’t move due to my TOS agreement with those companies. I do believe that Widgetbucks probably does best when it’s near the top of a sidebar and loads when the page is first visited. At least it wouldn’t impede a visitors ability to scroll a page if it was near the top and already loaded.
I’ve decided to try Widgetbucks on this site and a few of my other sites again to see what happens.
by Tricia
I’m very behind in posting on this site about all the wonderful things that I came across at Blogworld and P0stiecon. I’ve been very sick – actually even before I left for Vegas my Crohn’s flared up and it got worse while I was there. Bummer! I missed a lot, but what I did manage to take in was great. I’ve actually just written about a new application called Triggit on my other site WebStyle. You might be interested in signing up for Triggit as you can add Amazon and CJ links on the fly as well as Flicker and Youtube to your posts.
What I wanted to talk about today is Widgetbucks. I’ve just finally gotten around to signing up and from what I hear that’s a good thing because sometime over the next week they won’t be as open about letting just anyone sign up.
I decided to try Widgetbucks on my main blog Tricia’s Musings in the middle right sidebar. It’s very easy to sign up (right now) and create a widget to place on your site. All you need to do is select which category your site falls into, and pick whatever keywords you’d like to have Widgetbucks use to display products from Mpire on your site and tada … you have widget code to place in your blogs sidebar.
I didn’t realize this, but right now they have a signup bonus that puts $25 into your account when you register. Since the payout minimum is $50 this means that just by signing up for Widgetbucks you’re already closer to getting your first payment.
Unfortunately Widgetbucks is changing it’s algorithm and I believe as of this week they will only be counting clicks from US and Canadian visitors. For bloggers who’s majority of site visitors are Canadian or American this won’t make a huge difference in income, however those who have a high percentage of site visitors from other countries the clicks won’t count.
As a result I probably won’t add Widgetbucks to this site. I just looked at my recent stats and only 54% of my visitors are from the US and Canada. Actually all my blogs have quite an international audience. The stats for my main blog which I thought had mainly North American visitors shows that of my recent visitors only 68% are from the US and Canada. Now if Widgetbucks would include visitors from the UK I’d have closer to 80% of my visitors clicks count.
So the moral of this story is that Widgetbucks can certainly help you monetize your blog quickly and easily but those with mainly US and Canadian audiences will do best. Still, if you want that initial $25 sign up now!
by Tricia
So who’s going to Las Vegas later this week for Blogworld and or P0stiecon?
I plan to attend both events and hope to meet up with some of the bloggers that I’ve gotten to know over the last couple of years. I also hope to get something out of the discussions that I plan to attend so that I can learn how to make my blogs more successful, but mainly I’m looking at this as a chance to travel to a city that I’ve never been to before and as a way to meet up with friends and network a little bit.
If you are attending either convention what’s your goal?
by Tricia
As many of the regular readers of The Webfiles know I’ve had quite a bit of hosting troubles in the last few months. I’ve had to change hosts three times because my sites – 10 domains with 17 sites between them – have overused the CPU resources at which ever web hosting company I was using a the time.
As I tried to explain on one of my other blogs, even a huge surge of traffic such as one that might come from a very well stumbled or dugg post could push my current hosting account over it’s limit! This problem will become worse as my new domains start to gain traffic.
I’ve got to face it. I’m going to have to move my sites over to a hosting provider that can offer me VPS hosting. It’s a reality and it would be better if I make the move before I encounter problems with my current host.
One company that has just begun to offer VPS Hosting is Network Solutions.
As some of you might know a Virtual Private Server hosting account is the step between shared hosting which is what most people start out with when they decide to host a website on their own domain and a dedicated hosting account.
With a shared hosting account you share the servers resources with all the other account holders that use that service. Some web hosts oversell their accounts and an account holder like myself with websites that have fairly high traffic and that use databases and other software to run them can get into trouble quite easily by overusing the system resources allocated to them on that server.
With a VPS account the server is virtually partitioned so that each account holder has the ability to run their own operating system and applications (ie wordpress, databases, CMS, Forums and so on) and if something goes wrong they can reboot their portion of the server independently from the rest of the VPS account holders on the same system.
In other words as a VPS account user you’d have more control over your hosting account and the server that you are using.
Companies, like Network Solutions, that provide VPS hosting services often allocate more resources to their VPS accounts than they do for those with shared hosting. So there should be a higher percentage of CPU resources and RAM allocated to each account.
Network Solutions offers three VPS hosting packages – VPS Standard, VPS Advanced and VPS PRO. The basic features of each account are the amount of disk space offered – 10 GB to 50 GB, Monthly Data Transfer 500 GB up to 2000 GB, the maximum amount of domains that can be hosted in each VPS account ranges from 10 to 100, and each comes with the ability to create 50 to 200 POP E-Mail accounts.
The VPS Standard and Advanced hosting packages come with SWsoft light Pack software, and the VPS PRO package comes with SWsoft Deluxe. I believe that all of the packages include Virtuozzo and the Plesk Control Panels.
Their pricing for VPS hosting looks reasonable to me. The Standard package starts at $50 per month, where as their Advanced costs $75 per month and their PRO VPS hosting costs $100 per month.
There are a few things that I like about Network Solutions VPS Hosting service. The will assist you with the creation of your account and the creation of a domain. Certainly as a newbie to VPS I, for one, would need that service! They will also assist you with the installation of applications from their application vault as well as customizing the Plesk desktop and other server related service issues. They have a toll free number and they offer both online and live 24/7 support. Believe me, whatever type of hosting account you have, a company that offers both a toll free number as well as 24/7 support is something you’ll want to have when you run into issues with your hosting account!
I’m going to look further into Network Solutions VPS hosting because as I said I’m going to need to upgrade my hosting very soon. If you think you might need to switch to VPS hosting or that you might want to move your current VPS hosting account over to a new host do visit the Network Solutions site to see if their VPS hosting packages suit your needs.
by Tricia
I’m getting set to change the theme on a number of my blogs. Yes I have several – that could be why I don’t write in this blog anywhere near as often as I should!
Anyway, I’ve been driving myself nuts trying to find the perfect themes to convert for my sites. I always customize my themes. I’ve also been looking at a lot of different plugins as well. I can certainly see how some people can get hooked on trying out plugins! There are so many handy ones, as well as ones that do cool things. I don’t think I need them all though.
I managed to convert one of my current sites over to widgets, but I’m using the KonteraControl plugin on that site to keep Kontera out of some of my posts. Trouble is – once I widgetized the site I have Kontera in posts that it shouldn’t be in!
[Read more…]
by Tricia
Over the last year I’ve been experimenting with various ways to monetize my websites and blogs. Some affiliate programs have worked well and others have only netted me no more than a few cents! I’m sure you’ve had the same experiences and what works for one website owner might not work for another because it all depends upon our blog category and audience.
I’ve written about some of the programs I’ve tried on this site, WebStyle and of course my main blog Tricia’s Musings either as I’ve added them to one or many sites or after I’d been using them for a while.
I’ve been using Amazon on my main website for a number of years. I can’t remember exactly when Amazon started up it’s affiliate program but I’ve been using since the late 90’s I believe! In those early years I made quite a bit of money with Amazon and it was in fact the only way I monetized my website. These days I still make money with Amazon, but no where near as much as I used to due to changes in the program and I suppose a huge increase in the overall amount of affiliates!
I added the WP-Amazon WordPress plugin to my blogs a couple of months ago, but I’ve yet to really get going with using it. I think I’ve only created two affiliate links within my posts so far! Shame on me. Part of making money with affiliate programs is using them when appropriate. Of course I can still go over my old posts and add some Amazon links to them.
Text Link Ads has also been a very successful program for me. I joined a couple of years ago when I only had one HTML based website. I could never figure out how to get Text link ads to work on that site though! (if anyone can help me with this I’d really appreciate it! I know there’s a way to do it.) So I didn’t earn anything on my account until I got around to starting some blogs in 2006.
Google Adsense has worked out fairly well for me too. I don’t earn anywhere near as much as I think I could be making with the program, but I earn more than enough to get paid every month by Google. Again, I only had Google Adsense on my two websites for the longest time. Then sometime last year I put it on a couple of blogs but not my busiest ones. I’ve now rectified that mistake and I use Google Adsense and the utilize the Adsense Deluxe plugin on all of my blogs.
I only added Google Adsense to my busiest blogs about a month ago and I’ve already almost doubled my income. Hopefully once the Google Media bot fully indexes those sites I’ll really start to do well with Google Adsense. I’m still of course going over old posts and using the Adsense Deluxe plugin to add ad blocks to older posts. I don’t like to use them in my newest posts. Perhaps I’d earn more if I did, but I prefer not to irritate my regular readers with too many ads. Those coming in from search engines to the older posts will get the full extent of the advertising on my sites.
This actually brings up a good point.
When you monetize your sites do you consider how it might appear to your visitors? We’ve all seen sites with far too much advertising and for me it’s a total turn off. Links everywhere, advertising to the full extent, all kinds of different affiliate program banners and so on … I try not to do that. As I’ve just said I’ve been going back to older posts and adding in a bit more advertising, but I still try to keep it as tasteful as possible.
Everyone’s got to find their own balance between developing content, advertising and continuing to build traffic. Too much advertising can make people close your site and never return.
It’s fine to experiment with different affiliate programs. Even trying different badges and products to advertise on your site with each company. Just don’t try everything at once. If you overwhelm your visitors they won’t click on your ads. They’ll just click over to another persons website.
How do you monetize your sites? Do you think you’ve accomplished that fine balance that allows you to successfully monetize your site while keeping your visitors happy?
What programs do you use to monetize your site? I’ll discuss other programs that I’ve been using successfully in future posts.
by Tricia
Earlier today I got a message on Mybloglog account. Someone was contacting me through that social networking site requesting that I add them to one of the blogrolls that I run. I must say that’s not how people usually contact me when they want to be listed on one of the five blogrolls that I run. No, they usually either email me or leave a comment on the specific blogrolls information page.
I decided to visit this persons site and much to my surprise I not only saw posts that looked like they might have once been mine, but had been re-written to some degree, but also, the only photograph on the site was a photo that I’d taken of a car in the streets of Toronto that had been converted into a garden. It’s a very cool picture of a very cool car.
I couldn’t really prove that the person had copied and altered my posts, but I could prove that the blogger had taken my photograph so I decided to leave a message for the blogger on their garden car posts comment section telling them that the photo they were using was mine and that it’s normally considered proper etiquette to either ask a persons permission before using their photography or to at the very least link to the page that the photo was found on.
This person wrote back to me all indignant, stating that they’d found the photo on flicr – yes flicr, not “flickr”. LOL They also told me that if I had a problem I’d have to prove the photo was mine, asked for details about the photo and were it was posted and told me to contact their lawyers who’s email was “sales@” some affiliate related sales website that hasn’t even opened yet.
I wrote back to the person stating that well, yes, I store my photos on Flickr. I stated my account user name and gave them the links to three Flickr photo pages in my account where different angles of the car in question was published. I also gave them links to my website posts where I’d used the photos a year ago. All my photos on Flickr are listed with “All Rights Reserved” on them.
My whole point in contacting this blogger was just to inform them that it’s not nice to just take other peoples work. I know that some people don’t realize they are doing something wrong when they use things they’ve found on the internet. Others are fully aware that it’s wrong and do it anyway.
I realize that posting my photos on a public site of any kind puts them at risk of being stolen or used without permission. Still, I don’t agree with the practice.
Some people think that once somethings posted on a publically accessible site that it’s no longer covered under copyright laws. That’s not true. Anything you create – whether it’s a note on a piece of paper at home or a published article is your copyright as soon as it’s created. It’s your intellectual property.
Unfortunately, once a work is stolen or plagiarized the onus is on the person who originally created the work to prove that it’s there own.
The reason why I’m writing this post today is just to remind you that if you see a photo that you’d like to use on your site, you should make an attempt to contact the person who took the photo. If you can’t reach the person who’s photo you are using at least mention and or link to the site where you found the photo.
by Tricia
I’m having site problems yet again.
This is really starting to tick me off.
At about 9:30 pm last night the index.php file on my main blog domain Feverishthoughts.com was accessed repeatedly. I received a note from Hostgator shortly after this happened telling me about the problem and also saying that they’d shut down access to that directory.
At least this time round it’s a little better than when I was with Lunarpages. They’ve actually been able to tell me specifically what time the problem occurred and which domain was affected. They also only shut down that domain rather than my whole account. So at least I’ve got two blogs and two websites still functioning.
At this point – 3:30 a.m. I’ve been going back and forth with support. I think we’ve exchanged email three times now. The last one stated that they’d let me back into my directory to add the wp-cache plugin to my site and then monitor my directory after that.
The thing is that I’m already using wp-cache. So I just wrote back to them and told them that. I also told them that all my plugins and blogs are up to date.
Hopefully they’ll activate my directory again and monitor it as they said.
I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know if the domain was under some kind of attack or if I just had too many visitors all at once. I really don’t know. I suspect a bot attack of some kind as I’ve been getting hit with a lot more spam across all my blogs lately and bad behavior and akismet just aren’t cutting it.
I know that I certainly don’t need to be having site troubles this weekend! It’s a long weekend and I’ve got a family reunion going on with my brothers and sisters. I won’t be home much and when I am home I’ll probably have guests so if my main blog domain isn’t back up soon and or if it runs into trouble over the next four days I just won’t be able to deal with it. Which sucks.
I keep flirting with the issue of possibly having to move my sites to VPS. Hostgator doesn’t offer VPS. They have Semi-dedicated which is still part of their shared account service and then they have dedicated servers. Their semi-dedicated package offers just about everything I have with my current account but I believe it has much higher CPU resource limits. That’s something I have to check on. Semi-dedicated costs $74.95 per month. Big jump from what I’m paying now.
So again. If anyone has any advice for me or can suggest a hosting company that offers VPS, hopefully at a reasonable price I’d appreciate it. I want to deal with this issue before my sites end up being totally shut down like they were in July with that other webhost I was using.
BTW 4 a.m. my feverishthoughts.com domain is back up and running. Fingers crossed that it behaves now.
