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How to convert your keywords into higher affiliate sales…

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You already know that the affiliate with the most clicks gets higher sales, the question is how can you too get more clicks and higher sales.

The answer is simple: turn your blog keywords into affiliate links. With this cool tool you can actually not only do that, but also hide your links [protect yourself from thieves] and even display keyword-rich links at random through your blog post [this feature is truly powerful].

I’ve been using this amazing WordPress plugin on several of my blogs for months now – take a look through some of the posts on this site and you find several customized affiliate links. I’ve had an over 200% increase in my affiliate commissions since I began using this fantastic tool!

Check it out yourself at:

MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate

Oh and this plugin – Ninja Affiliate is on SALE! You can get $30 off the regular price if you buy before Midnight on Friday August 21st!




WP_Posts database crashed – HELP!

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If you see this post a few times it’s because I really need help and I’m posting it on three of my blogs – sorry for the repeat, but if you can help, please do!

I need some help fixing my husbands blog – Guitar Licks. Today when he visited the site (while I was still sleeping) the blog had error messages stating that the WP_posts database had crashed.

When you visit his site it loads with the WP theme and sidebars, but there’s error messages at the top and a “post cannot be found” message where current posts should be listed on the index page.

Some of the errors state:

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_title` ( `post_title`)

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_content` ( `post_content`)

So I’m assuming this error has something to do with the Yet another related post plugin that I’m using on most of my blogs. This blog is using the plugin version 2.16 and is using WP 2.62.

In the Yet another related posts plugin admin area there was a message that said:

YARPP’s “consider titles” and “consider bodies” relatedness criteria require your wp_posts table to use the MyISAM storage engine, but the table seems to be using the engine. These two options have been disabled.
To restore these features, please update your wp_posts table by executing the following SQL directive: ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ENGINE = MyISAM; . No data will be erased by altering the table’s engine, although there are performance implications.
If, despite this check, you are sure that wp_posts is using the MyISAM engine, press this magic button:

I clicked on the “magic button” as the plugin seems to be working just fine in all of my other blogs and I ended up with even more errors!

Help!

I’ve looked at the WP database for this blog and the WP_posts table says “in use” and I can’t browse it. I also can’t use the backup plugin in Guitar licks – it’s there and functioning but just hung when I tried to do a back up.

I’ve backed up the whole database using PHPmyAdmin so I have a copy in case something goes terribly wrong. Now I just need to know how to fix it.

Should I just place a check mark on WP_posts and then click the repair function at the bottom of the structure screen in PHPmyAdmin and see if that repairs the problem?

I’m nervous about attempting to fix this as I’ve never had to try to repair a database error before. Any help would be appreciated.

Strange wordpress problem

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On Sunday as I was looking some of my blogs that share the same domain I noticed that the “A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now.” message had disappeared. I didn’t think much of it, but a while later when I happened to scroll to the bottom of the page I noticed that it said my WP version was 2.5.

That was strange. You see, the blog I was working with had just been updated to version 2.3.3 using files stored on my computer. The same files that I’d used to update a few blogs on my other domains over the last couple of weeks.

I went and looked at each of the other blogs that I’d updated from 2.1 or 2.2 to version 2.3 and those that were on their own domain still said they were using WP version 2.3.3, but all of the blogs that are located on my Feverishthoughts.com domain – even the ones that are still using much older versions of WP say that they are using WordPress version 2.5 now.

I checked the files for each of the now 2.5 blogs using FTP and by looking at them using my hosting c-panel and there were no extra files that shouldn’t be there. I even checked my web hosts Fantastico version of WP and they are still only using the 2.3.3 upgrade so there’s no way that they did some kind of automatic WP upgrade on my behalf.

The fact of the matter is that the blogs that now say they are using WP version 2.5 are still really using whatever version of WP that they had been prior to my discovery. Nothings changed in the admin panel – you know the new look that 2.5 is supposed to have? Everything about the way the admin area of my blogs are set up are still the same.

So why do some of my blogs say they are using WP version 2.5? Is it some kind of WP glitch? If it is, why don’t my blogs that are on their own domain now also falsely say they are using 2.5?

Has anyone else noticed this strange problem?

BTW I do plan on upgrading all my sites to WP 2.5 shortly, but I’d like to wait a few weeks to be sure that most of the glitches are out of the latest version. I also want to make sure that the plugins that I’m using have upgrades that work with 2.5 as well.

So for now I’ll stick with 2.3 which the majority of my sites are now using and those that aren’t will be upgraded within a few days. Just upgrading to 2.3 has been a pain because I had to widgetize some sites and change from really old themes with function calls that didn’t work with 2.3 to newer themes. For some blogs upgrading has been a total overhaul!

Make sure your next WP upgrade goes well with Preflight plugin

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Earlier today as I was surfing the net and reading some of the blogs I favor I came across an article about a new plugin that will help you prepare your WordPress installation for an upgrade to version 2.3.3 and coming soon WP 2.5.

The WordPress plugin is called the WordPress Upgrade Preflight Plugin. The current version, 1.1, is meant for those who are about to upgrade their WP installation to 2.3.

The Preflight Check plugin will attempt to check your other plugins and themes for any problems that might cause errors when upgrading. It apparently also works in 2.3 and may help identify the cause of any current errors as well.

As I stated in March I was slowly going through my sites and upgrading them from WordPress versions 2.1 and 2.2 to 2.3. I have a lot of blogs and to be perfectly honest with you I still have four left to upgrade!

I’m using some highly customized older themes on a few of my blogs and as I’ve upgraded I’ve found code that I had to alter to work with WP 2.3. I also had to update a number of plugins. This was time consuming work. I’m sure the Preflight Check plugin will make finishing my upgrades to my final four WP blogs a lot easier. Of course I’ve already updated the plugins.

The plugin author is currently working on a version for WP 2.5 so if you’re planning on upgrading to 2.5 soon be sure to check the Preflight Check page for updates.

Oh and don’t forget to backup your WordPress database and files before you do any upgrades! I use the WordPress Database Plugin which allows you to not only backup your files to the server, but to have your backup emailed to you as well. You can also schedule regular backups too.

Finally updated WordPress

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I have a lot of blogs. A LOT of blogs. I’ve been delaying updating them because I knew it would take forever.

I’ve slowly been updating my installations over the past week. For my newer domains it wasn’t such a problem because I could use Fantastico to update them … and since their newish they weren’t all that out of date.

However all my older blogs, including this one, moved servers twice last year and I lost the ability to automatically update with Fantastico when I moved the sites to new servers. If I’d done fresh installations using Fantastico to install WP on the domains and directories first and then transferred my former databases into the new installations I could have avoided this problem, but that’s not the way things worked out.

Oh well … I don’t mind manual updating the blogs. It just takes time.

I’ve had a problem with my blogs for a little while. My problems started back when the Bad Behavior plugin had a problem a couple of months ago. Remember something with the blacklists went wrong and it blocked people out of their WP installations until they either turned off their plugin or updated it? Well I did the update and I updated my Google Sitemaps plugin at the same time and ever since then I had an error message whenever I published an article (on 7 different blogs!) and I don’t think my do follow plugin was working correctly either.

Well now, along with updating this blog to WP 2.3.3 I’ve also updated Bad Behavior (it’s latest version is 2.0.13 if your keeping track) and Google Sitemaps ( Version 3.0.3). At first I thought I still had a problem, but I refreshed the permalinks and tada – it’s all working well again.

I wasn’t that far behind in updating WordPress. I think this blog was 2.2 … so it hasn’t been that long since I updated. However, WP has done a lot of updates in recent months and between the problems I was having with the plugins and being behind in upgrading WP I knew it was time to upgrade. I won’t fall so far behind again!

So far I’ve updated 6 new domains plus this domain. Now I’ve got 7 blogs on Feverishthoughts.com and one on yet another domain to manually upgrade. It will probably be a few days before I’m completely done … sigh.

Need some help with drop down menus

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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…]

Have you monetized your blog?

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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.

The War on Comment Spam

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Have you had an increase in general spam on your sites lately?

For some reason all my sites are getting more spam in the akismet spam folder. I’m using the bad behavior plugin, and I’ve been using it since February. The bad behavior plugin greatly reduced the amount of spam that was even reaching my akismet spam folder. Since February I went from having 500 spam a day per site (well my sites with fairly high traffic) to only one to ten spam per day thanks to the bad behavior plugin.

Lately though, I’ve found that I’ve been getting more and more spam in my spam folder and some that’s not even being picked up by akismet. Either akismet isn’t working quite as well as it used to or some thing’s changed out there.

Enough about spam that’s being generated by bots and hopefully being caught by akismet or whatever system we have in place to catch it. The spam that has continued to upset me throughout the summer has been human generated comment spam on my do follow blogs.

The other day I had one persistent comment spammer. This person left very lame comments “nice photo”, “I agree”, “I’m not in AUS” and so on, on two of my blogs. Lame comments are one thing, but this person left about 16 of these comments on the two sites and left links for two different businesses. In one of the SEO type keyword links were the words (use this as much as possible) beside the keyword Teeth Whitener. So the comment looked like this:

Teeth Whitener (use this as much as possible)
Nice photo!

I’m assuming that the line use this as much as possible was instructions to use that keyword as much as possible because in later comments other words were added to the keyword phrase.

I use Lucia’s Linky Love do follow plugin now so people have to leave a certain amount of comments before their links will follow. I love that plugin. Ever since I began using it the human generated comment spam has reduced greatly. I think this person was attempting to leave enough comments to qualify for links that followed.

I was angry at this persons blatant attempt to spam my sites, so you know what I did? I visited the two companies that he or she had attempted to leave links for and found their contact page. I then left them a comment that said something like this:

Have you recently paid a company to leave your links in the comment section of blogs? If you have, this company is doing your business a disservice.

In the last 24 hours someone left 16 comments on two of my blogs with links to your business and another business. The comments were left on fairly lengthy and detailed blog posts yet the comments were most often only two words such as “nice photo” or one line comments that didn’t make much sense.

Here’s an example of the comments that were left on my sites:

Example that includes keyword for link, ip address, commenter’s email address and comment

I’ve deleted all the comments left by this person, so if you’ve paid to have links added to blogs you’ve just wasted your money.

Other bloggers have stated they’ve been receiving these types of comment links as well and they’ve also been deleting them. I think you’d have much more success advertising your company if you approached individual bloggers directly or created an advertising campaign. You’d have links within articles if you did that and links within articles are much more highly regarded by search engines.

Since the comment spammer left their email address I also sent them a note asking them why they were spamming my site and I told them that I’d contacted the companies for which they’d left links. I also warned them that they might soon be out of a job if the companies stopped buying comment links.

So far neither business nor comment spammer have replied.

If you’ve also been getting comment spam similar to the kind that I’ve discussed in this article please feel free to follow my lead by contacting the companies who’s links have been left in your posts comment section. You can copy the letter that I wrote above and simply paste it into a businesses contact form. This should save you some time. Be sure to include an example of the type of lame comment spam you were bombarded with when the spammer hit your site.

Who knows, maybe the company you contact will reply to your note and ask you to write a blog post for them.

FeedSmith Plugin might help reduce CPU resource issues

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A couple of weeks ago when I was having hosting troubles I was trying to find ways to cut down on the amount of CPU resources that might be used by my sites. I updated my plugins and got rid or some that I suspected were eating up CPU.

So far every things been going well on my new host. I’m keeping my figures crossed. Of course it’s summer and there’s been a small dip in traffic across all my sites in the last month or so as well so I guess I won’t really know if I’ve cured my CPU resource problems until everyones back from holidays or back to work and school and using the web the way they were before summer got in the way.

Andy Beard had suggested that I try using the FeedSmith plugin for Feedburner. He found articles on other blogs that seems to infer that bots, feed readers and visitors constantly hitting a sites feed could be a substantial drain on CPU resources.

I’ve always been pretty good about checking my site stats and keeping track of what’s been happening with my sites as far as traffic goes and I’d already noticed that my feeds were hit more than even the main index page of my sites. So I decided to try using the FeedSmith plugin in order to see if it helped cut down on resource usage.

The plugin is very easy to use. Just download the FeedSmith plugin, upload it to your WordPress content plugins folder and activate it. All you need to do after that is create a feedburner feed for your site if you haven’t already. Once you’ve done that you can go to your WP dashboard, click options and then go to the admin panel for Feedsmith and input your feedburner feed for your blog. You can also create and list a feedburner plugin for your sites comments too.

What the Feedsmith plugin does is consolidate all of your sites feeds into a feedburner feed. As you probably already know, your themes header lists a variety of feeds that can be used with your site. The most common are rss1, rss2 and atom. You might very well have subscribers for each of these feeds. How can you keep track of how many subscribers you have when they are all subscribed to different site feeds? Funnel them all to your feedburner feed.

Now when a bot comes along to read your feed, or someone accesses your feed via a feed reader they’ll be directed to your feedburner feed.

In theory this should take some of the load off your site, or that’s what Andy and the articles that he pointed me to presumed.

Looking at my stats for this domain and my main domain feverishthoughts.com it does look like hits to my feeds have gone down substantially. Now the month isn’t over, and I haven’t blogged that much on this site this month so the stats on hits to the feed for this domain might not mean all that much.

At this point it looks like hits on this sites feed have been cut in half. Hits on my busiest website, the main blog on feverishthoughts.com are down by two thirds! Again, the month isn’t over and traffic has decreased a bit this month, but that’s my busiest site and there’s been a marked decrease in hits to that sites feed. So the plugin must be working.

A nice side effect of using the FeedSmith plugin is that it is now gathering better stats for all my subscribers so when I visit the Feedburner site I see that the number of subscribers listed for each of my sites has gone up.

I mean UP. Like 300%.

I knew that some of our sites had a lot of feed subscribers, but because they weren’t all being picked up properly by feedburner I realized that the numbers I’d been seeing were low. The new numbers that I’ve been seeing since I installed the plugin are much more believable.

I’ll check on the feed stats at the end of the month to see if there really have been less hits to my feeds thanks to the plugin and I’ll also check on them at the end of September which I expect will be back to normal traffic levels.

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