(Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes)

Does managing affiliate links feel like underwater barbecue? Like, no matter how much work you put into it, it’s just impossible?

Well, you’re now in luck: Managing affiliates links has never been easier, with the Thirsty Affiliates plugin for WordPress.

Introducing Josh Kohlbach’s Thirsty Affiliates

My biggest problem with affiliate marketing is keeping track of everything. For some reason, I’m not naturally inclined to maintain the business documentation allowing me to find out where all my affiliate links are stashed. It’s a real problem.

Josh had the same problem, and he did something about it. Something we can all benefit from. He wrote a WordPress plugin making affiliate management trivial.

With Thirsty Affiliates, that stress of “Where did I put that affiliate link?” is gone for good.

Thirsty Affiliates takes the stress out of affiliate link management

I’m reaping two main HUGE benefits using Thirsty Affiliates:

1. The link management system is five times easier to manage than raft of spreadsheets. All my affiliate links are right where I want them: in WordPress. Before, I was attempting to keep track using a variety of spreadsheet-based systems. Boring. Difficult. Not worth it. Very stressful.
2. Huge time savings: I log in to my WordPress, and all my affiliate links are right at my fingertips. Incredibly efficient compared to external tracking with spreadsheets or documents.

These two benefits alone repay the purchase price.

Let me be more clear: several months ago, as a pre-release reviewer of Thirsty Affiliates, I liked this plugin so much I sent Josh a few code modifications to make the plugin even better. Trust me, the purchase price of Thirsty Affiliates is far, far less than my hourly rate, and I don’t waste professional time mucking around in hideous code (unless handsomely compensated).

Features to make your affiliate management trivial

Check out how Josh made Thirsty Affiliates tame the affiliate linking beast:

• Add your link once, it’s handled forever via the magic of WordPress custom post types.
• Easy configuration using the standard WordPress settings interface.
• Links are automatically backed up. Just do your normal WordPress backup, it’s handled.
• Inserting a link into a blog post or page is really easy using the standard media library interface. It’s as easy as inserting an image.
• Links can be categorized for added power and flexibility.
• Import/export: enter your affiliate once, and only once, and you can export them to use on another WordPress site.

There’s more, and Josh is continually tweaking and adding handy little features to save you time and reduce your affiliate link management stress overload.

Other reasons I love Thirsty Affiliates

Imagine that thing, that “thing” you have been meaning to get around to, for years. You know, that project where “If I only had the time, I could Rock The Casbah on this thing.” Everyone one has one of these “things,” and for blogging, that thing for me has always been…

…dealing with affiliate links.

I even went so far as to start writing a WordPress plugin for handling affiliate links.

But it’s a good thing I didn’t get very far with my plugin, because Josh Kohlbach and his Thirsty Affiliates plugin has Solved. That. Problem.

Because I’m a programmer, the first thing I look at is the source code. And with Thirsty Affiliates, it’s plain to see Josh’s 15 years experience as professional programmer. The code is well-organized and well-written. It’s all straightforward WordPress and PHP, coded up using best practices.

This means Thirsty Affiliates has some serious shelf life.

1. Well-written code, which means Thirsty Affiliates is easy to maintain and extend. This means it’s a good investment for you.
2. Leverages WordPress custom post types. This is the Right Way To Do It.
3. Link redirection and automatic nofollow attribute.

It’s these little touches which really matter.

What could use a little more polish

Ok, I have to be totally honest here: I’m not a big fan of the styling for the editing screen. But that’s really minor, and it is a branding thing, which is also important.

• Super easy: Add a field for each link to the actual account affiliate site on the affiliate site (versus the sales link). As mentioned above, keeping track of all the moving parts is tough, and one of those parts is the affiliate account itself. For example, as an affiliate of StudioPress, it would be incredibly convenient to have a link to my ShareASale.com account.
• Fields for setting the alt and title tags for links and images would be really nice.
• The most pressing feature would have to be getting a Quicktags button for the WordPress HTML editor. I never use the visual editor, and having to switch back and forth to drop in a link is annoying. However, since most people use the visual editor, Josh was right to have that working first.
• (Super technical) Automatic parsing when an affiliate delivers a cut-and-paste link.

But these are all really minor issues compared to the time I’m saving and the peace of mind resulting from integrating Thirsty Affiliates into blogging. Revenue generation must be considered as part of a viable content strategy, and it just got a lot easier.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

WordPress Affiliate Management Plugin: Thirsty Affiliates

(Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes)

For those of you familiar with “startup culture” or who worship at the altar of the Church of Lean, I’m pivoting business models at the moment.

Which means I’m busy plowing time into Things Other Than Blogging.

But I’m still here. Sort of. Think of me as lurking on my own website.

Lay as low as I might, I still have duties to perform. Updating WordPress to 3.0.4, trying to figure out why CommentLuv reroutes my AJAX request to delete the luv on semi-spam, the usual.

Speaking of spam, I’ve been pestered by that stupid, piss yellow, cross-eyed rabbit pitching dump truck loads of quasi-legal (?) pharmaceuticals. I won’t dignify this pest with either a name or mention of his “products.” I’ll post the gravatar next time I find it my spam queue [got it!]. There’s never just one, Jay Oh En En One is grabbing at least a third, sometimes a half of my spam queue. Greedy offensive bastard rabbit (OBR). Shelly Kramer are you paying attention? This TLA is dedicated to you.

So why would anyone do this? Easy money I guess.

How easy?

Go do a Google search the Offensive Bastard Rabbit’s name. See what comes up. I’m getting happy pills for 8 of the top 10 results searching on Jay Oh En En One.

The lesson here is obvious: spam works. If spam didn’t work, people wouldn’t do it.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Spammeister Flash Jay Oh En En One Search Results shows all

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

Johnson Yip operates a Windows and Linux computer help blog, writing about office suite software, computer security software, system utilities, multimedia software, web browsers. Johnson also publishes articles on content management systems, blogs, forums, and web design for beginners. Johnson comes here from a comment a while back, noting his Adsense results seemed to depend on background colors of the ad. I invited him to expand on that comment as a guest post.

Running ads?  Consider your advertisement design

-by Johnson Yip

Many kinds of websites rely on advertisement for revenue.

For example, software download websites also use Adsense, and also advertise a wide range of freeware, shareware, online software or trialware in addition to the software on the current download page. These sites commonly integrate the advertisement into the website, resulting in a unified, clean layout for the site as a whole.

Readers tend to stay longer, revisit, or recommend sites which have clean layouts which look professional and easy to read. This can increase your chances of earning more from ad revenue from returning visitors.

If you have advertisements, especially ads running in your text, consider design explicitly incorporating ads. Designing your blog for ads is easy and obvious, but consider designing your ads as well.

Design your advertisements

I like to consider my ads as mini websites within my blog.

Since many pay-to-click advertising programs like Adsense also let you customize backgrounds, the font size, color, and font style, I can make sure the ads don’t contrast too much with the blog, yet still stand out enough to draw attention.

Typically, I match the ad font with a similar font and size which my website is using.

Also, I make the border of my ads white to make my website and ad blend well together with the blog content and links.

This model is proven by websites such as Facebook, Squidoo, Hubpages, Ezinearticles and other content-rich sites all of which use white backgrounds for both their ad and website background. Using white makes the website feel less cluttered and the ads blend well.

White also can be a very relaxing colour for some people, so they stay longer and you have a greater chance of getting ad clicks from visitors.

I also find Navy Blue for my ad links works well. It’s a noticeable color, but not overly bright like so many ads you see on the internet. Bright blue or sky blue are common ad colors, and readers may develop banner blindness, igoring ads rather than reading them.

Integration, not deception

Notice how hard it can be hard to find the real download link on download pages hosted  on some download websites with white backgrounds like Softpedia which host freeware, shareware, and trialware? Tricky, right?

Users feeling tricked and might not return to your site. And that’s bad for future earnings from ad clicks.

But blending your ads with font and background helps improve your reader’s experience; such changes make your blog nice to visit.

Mixing your ads too close to your content might get more clicks, but it can be against the terms of service for some advertising networks, so I usually don’t mix my ads so close to my regular content.

Since I don’t want readers to be confused about which links are mine, and which are advertisements, I leave one blank line to separate my ads from my content.

Result from ad redesign

In summary, I:

1. matched the blog font and advertisement font, in size and weight;
2. made the ad borders white;
3. matched the advertisement and blog background colors.

The Adsense ads are now less bright and annoying, and blend well with the rest of my page and content.

These design changes helped increase my Click Through Rate by a measurable 0.5%. Every little bit helps!

Plus, my content is still easily readable since it is not covered in ads.

What’s your experience with advertisement design? If you haven’t ever thought about it, has this been helpful? If you have designed ads, what happened?

Johnson Yip enjoys volunteering at Free Geek Vancouver a computer recycler charity reducing the amount of electronic waste by fixing old computers for non-profits and sell to the needy. In his spare time he enjoys web design, playing video games, and watching movies. Visit Johnson at his Computer Repair Tips blog.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Running advertisements?  Consider your advertisement design…

(Reading time: 9 – 14 minutes)

I’m writing up this sales page and thinking to myself “This is really crap copy, just terrible.” Whence my mind freely-associated back umpteen and a half years to the The Horrible-Terrible. To wit, the annual April Fools edition of the Bloomington, Indiana, Herald-Telegraph.

A newspaper which is now, evidently, called the Herald-Times.

I searched Google to prove that the Horrible-Terrible once existed. No luck. Couldn’t find a thing.

You could accuse me of telling tall tales being fanciful, but I delivered that Herald-Telegraph for most of a year when I was 14 or 15 or so. Thursday was coupon day. I can still feel the newsprint on my hands.

I did, however, run into a picture of Monroe County [Indiana] Sports Heros on the Herald-Times website. Who else but Jennifer Hooker, the 15 year old Olympian with whom I attended sophomore English. At age 15, she was 5′ 9″ and placing 6th in Women’s 100 meter freestyle in the 1976 Montreal Olympics (Live. On TV. Braces and all.) I have to admit, I wasn’t quite as tall. Nor in very good shape.

But enough shaggy dog stories. Let’s get back to this terrible sales page.

As you know, smart and discerning reader that you are, sales pages should have no links taking the reader away from the action.

Well, we’re not going to do that today.

We’re gonna be bad instead.

Since I release an updated Blog Post Engineering roughly every couple of months, I’m never betting the bank on a single sales page. I can make a sales page terrible, so I’m going to. Make it terrible that is. Here’s how…

Should you wish to purchase “William” (and you should), you must click on one of the links below, and purchase it from someone else.

To wit, you must purchase Blog Post Engineering from one of my Esteemed Affiliates.

As it turns out, my Esteemed Affiliates are now driving the majority of sales of Blog Post Engineering. (Which means I need to raise the price. Soon. As in October 31.)

Each one of these people has enlisted as an affiliate for Blog Post Engineering, and I am delighted to promote them. Each one of them has published a review of Blog Post Engineering, in some cases months ago. What follows is an excerpt from their review, enticing you to click through and purchase.

Note: please click through first for the person you wish to purchase from, then click through on the others.

In no particular order, let’s see what they have to say.

Josh Kohlbach

Blog Post Engineering Review – Get Your Blogging Handled. Period.

I start by opening up all the handy chapter markings. There’s a lot here and it’s all good stuff, it matches up with the stuff I jotted down earlier to make it easy to find the in depth content.

Each part is separated into specific points which guide me exactly where I need to go. There’s section headings which contain all these points and it’s all internally linked (one of my favourite things in PDFs is making use of this awesome publishing platform by using features like internal linking inside the document).

Dave has this thing or-gan-ised.

His methods of explaining things have always been quite good on his blog Website In A Weekend, but this is a little different. I found it to be more tightly focused like instructional material. Now depending on your personality this may sit nicely with you and it may not. What I suggest is not reading it from start to finish, but rather reading the parts of the book you’re interested in and implementing them straight away. If you do this, then you’ll be set and you can go back any time for more once you’ve grasped and implemented a concept.

Get going on Blog Post Engineering with Josh Kohlbach.

Jenn Jinright

Jenn Jinright weighs in with Maximize your SEO without the headaches:

So, how does this product help you? Lets take a look at a couple of quick points!

• It will take the worry about SEO out of the writing process and put it in the publishing, which is where it belongs.
• unSEO- The concept helps you deal with the most basic form of SEO, which actually improves your writing. Even if there were no search engines to optimize for, the tasks presented in this product would help your writing become it’s shiny best!
• You get a handy check list to help you be sure you’ve included everything!

Get your Blog Post Engineering from Jenn.

Justin Matthews

Justin Matthews announces Blog Post Engineering Affiliate Page!

I liked how it read more like a conversation than a textbook, it was easy to follow and retain the information. It is formatted to look like a book, so it kind of feels like reading a book. There are plenty of links to articles on Website In A Weekend. I had already read most of these posts so I could really see the implementation of the concepts described.

I swear I did not break Justin’s legs. No one can prove anything. Get your copy of William from Justin.

Ralph Carlson

Ralph can’t abide all that technical stuff either, and found that Blog Post Engineering helped free his inner blogger:

So if you are a rank beginner unseasoned in the ways of the web, or even starting to feel competent, you need to meet Dave Doolin who can sling some serious shit about blogging but has dedicated the last year or so to making sense of the incomprehensible world of blogging to those of us who just want to do it right without having to be an expert. His website is full of information, advice and resources to get bloggers moving but now there is more. He has just produced a new version of his E-Book, Blog Post Engineering and it is genuinely new and improved.

Let Ralph free your Inner Blogger.

Mr. Robert Hayles

Did you know? Blog Post Engineering is useful even if you live in a yurt. It’s true! See what Mr. Bob Hayles, Website In A Weekend’s most prominent yurt resident, has to say about BPE’s “unSEO” approach:

After you’ve written what you WANT to write, and after it you come up with a catchy title that you WANT, then, and only then, go back and do the un-SEO thing. It might mean that you need to tweak your writing a little (less and less the more you write) or it might not. It might mean that you need to tweak your catchy title a little (less and less the more titles you write) or it might not. In other words, always remember, you are writing for a reader, NOT a search engine. You are ADJUSTING for a search engine.

You don’t have to live in a yurt to reap the benefits of unSEO. Hoocouldaknowed?

Francisco “DiTesco” Perez

DiTesco lists it all out here: Blog Post Engineering:

Up until now, I have never recommended my readers to buy any eBook of some sort, let alone an electronic manual . As you all know, I am a strong advocate for all things free (so long as it exist). However, in this case, I am opening an exception due to the following reasons:

• Dave is no “John Doe”. He has built a long lasting reputation and has spent years of research to craft this reading material.
• I have read it myself and I highly recommend it, specially if you are in to blogging for the long haul.
• Lifetime upgrade with unconditional money back guarantee. You don’t like it, request for a refund with no questions asked. Can’t beat that!
• Ultimately, you can be an affiliate of BPE. Convert two, and you have got your investment back. Then it’s all free.

Help DiTesco help you, get your copy here.

Ryah Albatros

Ryah is an Information Junkie… and she’s delighted with Blog Post Engineering:

I happily recommend BPE to you because it’s an all-round tool; yes, it’s about writing blog posts, but I learned so much more. As mentioned SEO was explained clearly, the promotion section showed me it doesn’t have to be difficult, and the new area of repurposing old posts is full of ideas. With regular revisions it’s always cutting edge, and Dave proves that it works by his examples for WIAW.

If you only have money for one product, buy Blog Post Engineering. It will equip you for turning your blog into something outstanding.

Let Ryah help you stay on the cutting edge.

Eleanor Edwards

Eleanor is irrepressible: Why hitting publish isn’t enough to get squillions of readers:

I have a secret weapon. There’s this thing that I do. A check list really. I write my stuff and as I’m doing so, I’m mentally ticking stuff off.
Stuff like post titles and tags. SEO stuff that I, as a fluffy girly, have no right to understand.

But it’s a doddle. You know those kids books you get where they take a fab picture and break it down into little steps so any idiot can do it? It’s that but for blogging. With words and examples and all that stuff.

This cool check list thingy is called Blog Post Engineering. It’s been sat in my side bar for a couple of months now. It’s Dave Doolin’s baby and whilst I’ll wax lyrical about it to anyone who asks, I’ve never written about it on here.

Let El help you get sqillions of readers. (By the way, El donates her affiliate commission to Give A Brick, a UK registered charity.)

Tara Gentile

Tara is building an amazing empire online. Check out her site and what she has to say about Blog Post Engineering:

If you’re completely new to keyword research, SEO techniques, and copywriting for the net, this guide will give you a great starting point and help you to get your brain in the right mindset. If you’re a seasoned web writer looking to gain traction, you can use this guide to jumpstart your search results. And at just $20 $23, it’s way cheaper than paying me to work with you one-on-one on your SEO.

Way cheaper? What a deal!

Breaking the rules, for real

So there you have it, the terrible sales page. I didn’t “break the rules” here, like every one else breaks the rules. Which is to say, they don’t really break the rules, they just say they do. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” etc.

I think I just rained utter contempt on the rules!

I have no idea if this will “work.” I hope so. Each of the people who chose to enlist as an affiliate – and write a review – risked their reputation. For Blog Post Engineering. For me.

And I really appreciate that.

Accordingly, the price is going up to $47 on Midnight Pacific time, October 31, 2010. Lock in your lifetime access now, before the price goes up.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

The Horrible Terrible Sales Page (Blog Post Engineering v. 0.7.4 “William”)

(Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes)

Since we’ve established that we want to make some money online, the next question is “How?”

That’s a really good question, and I can help with part of it. First, let’s review the foundation requirements for successful online businesses:

1. Market for products in chosen niche. Can you demonstrate the ROI with a solid business case? In other words, somebody has to feel it’s going to wax their car, whiten their teeth, or do whatever it is that makes them feel smart and attractive.
2. Authority knowledge in chosen niche. In the long term, you really do need to know what you’re talking about. This involves stuff like “learning.” Doesn’t have to be difficult, but it will take time.
3. Presence in market. Being an authority and being first to market means nothing if you have no presence in your market.

Item #2 is my particular strength. If there’s learnin’ to be doin’ you can be sure I’m on it. What’s more, once I learn something I can teach it.

Let’s be about it, then, and apply #2 for content curation.

Content curation

First, let’s take a look at the problem:

Go ahead, click the picture, take a look at it full size.

My goodness. What a mess. What is all that stuff, anyway?

Well, let’s see. I have:

• Josh Kohlbach’s Reducing Bounce Rate report.
• Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starters (And a present. Go get on Danielle’s list and you can get presents from Danielle too)
• Jade Craven’s networking material. I got in early on Jade’s stuff. Saved $$$ bank. You should get in early on Blog Post Engineering. You’ll save $$$ bank too.
• Various bits and pieces of Dave Navarro’s work, including the mighty fine How to Launch the **** Out of Your Ebook.
• Some Ittybiz free bonus stuff (oops. Haven’t looked at that yet.)
• A folder with other ebooks (maybe yours?)
• Annabel Candy’s ebook on successful blogging. Oops again, I forgot, she hasn’t launched it yet. Get your copy next week.
• Roberto Koci’s Hungarian translation for hRecipe plugin.
• TOP SECRET stuff, which I can’t show you. Have you ever wondered why they always stamp TOP SECRET in screaming red letters? It practically begs you to rip it open and see what the big deal is (My suspicion is it’s mostly stuff like “What to serve at White House dinners to give unwanted diplomats gas pain.” Top secret indeed). Wouldn’t it be better if they just sort of nonchalantly printed top secret?
• Great gobs of programming stuff, like interpreters, text editors, code, etc. Super cool. Boring… Next!
• That’s enough for now don’t you think?

It’s an embarrassment of riches! And yes, I have read most of this stuff at least once. Some of it is getting implemented right now, some is scheduled for the future.

How to make sense of content?

Obviously, there’s a problem. I have a lot of very cool stuff, and I don’t know how to organize it.

I cannot be the only one suffering from this problem. What I want is a way to quickly store my stuff, and quickly find it again. More than that, I want to understand what I have. And I don’t want to have to think about it overmuch.

Curation is far more than organizing. If possible, I’d like to know:

• What it is.
• Who wrote it.
• Who owns it? How is it licensed? What can I do with it?
• Where I got it. How I got it.
• When I got it.
• Why I got it.
• What I intend to do with it.
• What other people have done with it.
• Why it’s important.

In this example, we’re looking at information stored in documents of various flavors. The bigger problem for bloggers is information spanning documents such as these, RSS feeds, Twitter feeds, bookmarking lists (e.g., delicious.com), etc. The list is long and growing longer daily. (Yes, daily, for real.)

Note the reverse problem: how do you, as a blogger, ensure your content is curated effectively?

How to figure it out

To get started in content curation (or any other subject), the very first thing I recommend is to find out what other people have done, and are doing right now. Specifically, poke around in Robert Scoble’s feed, and find Jeremiah Owyang and Alex Schleber. You can find all three easily using Google, and all three have written about curation.

What we as bloggers need is to know which technologies being developed in Silicon Valley and other hot spots are useful for bloggers, and exactly how bloggers can use them. (This is partly a curation problem itself.) If you see yourself more as a marketer or business person, there’s little difference in strategy. Substitute “business person” for “blogger” and carry on.

Here are 7 specific actions you can take to get a handle on this rapidly-evolving topic:

1. List the top 12 players in content curation. These may include startup founders, university professors, and bloggers.
2. Define content curation. What, exactly, is it? Does anyone really know? Or is it just a buzzword du jour? Does the definition depend on the content? (That is, does curating blogging and social media content differ in some way from curating audio or video content?)
3. What tools currently exist to help bloggers curate their own content? What about curating other content?
4. Could Google (or other) custom search be considered a piece of the curation puzzle?
5. How does content curation compare with “real” curation? What are the analogous activities to collecting, archiving, analyzing, interpreting and displaying?
6. How does curation benefit bloggers? Be precise.
7. How does content curation benefit other businesses? This is where the real money is, provided you can create a relevant product, and market that product effectively. The need is there.

This may be the first in a series of articles (no promises) examining the nuts and bolts of skill-building in a micro-niche. The above suggestions can be adapted for any field of study, not just online enterprises. I’m using blogging as a concrete example for Website In A Weekend readers.

And let me preempt any criticism concerning the quantity and type of information littering my computer screen. Anyone saying I should just delete all this stuff and get on with it, I’m cool with that. You’re probably right, I probably should delete all this stuff.

But the problem remains.

Businesses CANNOT just delete content. Instead of your ebook (or maybe not your ebook), this desktop screenshot could just as well have been filled with invoices, marketing collateral from collaborators and competitors, and regulatory documents where non-compliance incurs civil (or criminal) penalties.

What then, delete it all? I don’t think so.

Big businesses can snap up graduates from UC Berkeley’s School of Information. Can you be part of the solution for small businesses?

Micro-niches are exploding

Content curation for blogging is just one example of a micro-niche. There’s many others. For example, Corbett Barr is taking on the traffic generation for blogging. Alex Whalley is focusing on keyword optimization. I’m going after the write/publish/promote a single blog post niche.

I’ve created a list of people moving rapidly into other niches, and another list of rapidly evolving micro-niches, all material for a future blog post.

What about you? Have you given any thought about finding something where you can excel? A topic where you will be regarded as The Authority?

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Content Curation – Carving out your very own niche (Saturday Morning Surfing)

(Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes)

Scratch most bloggers on this here Blogistan “circuit” deep enough, and they’ll have to admit: “Yeah, I wanna make some money blogging.”

Looking back many years (to 2006), I tried to figure out why I got myself into this blogging business. It came down to two things:

1. I wanted Google Analytics on my blog rather than Sitemeter, and WordPress.com didn’t allow Google Analytics. Sitemeter cost money for what I wanted. And WordPress.com seemed to have a number of “we know better than you” restrictions, always a sure way to make me contrary.
2. I was running a consulting/freelance operation at the time (2006), and since I would have had to pay for WordPress anyway, so I simply installed it on that hosting account. At the time, I didn’t plan on making money directly, but wanted to keep that option open.

So, the freedom to do what I wanted, which included making some coin, lead to self-hosting my WordPress blog.

Face it: if you’re self-hosting your blog, do not fool yourself:

You ARE in – or thinking about – the make money online business.

Because there is absolutely NO point in dealing with all this pain otherwise. Blogger, WordPress.com, practically dozens of other venues offer outlets for your pure creativity unencumbered by pecuniary concerns. I have at least a couple of blogs on WordPress.com. I don’t post on them anymore. No return on it. (Except for highly targeted backlinks.)

All these other services do offer paid upgrades for commercial venture.

Some of these services may be a much better solution for your business. Running a full-on blog can be incredibly time-consuming. Now, I’m talking high heresy, I realize, but it’s the (Ugly) Truth.

But I’ve never seen a clear fit with paid hosting for my vision, which keeps me on a self-hosted platform.

What’s your story? Why, exactly, are you self-hosted (or not)? Tell the truth in the comments!

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Money blogging: Everyone’s dirty little secret (Saturday Morning Surfing)

(Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes)

I would never ever recommend that someone new to Internet Marketing spend large sums for a coaching program, software package, or any other huge investment into online business.

When I first began working online I did invest a bit more money than I had earned – that’s a bit hard to avoid in the beginning when you are still figuring things out, getting your sites up, and maybe making a few pennies on pay-per-click ads.

Invest after earning

But I started with under $50, not with a $5,000 coaching membership. My start-up investment included the cost of Holly Mann’s Honest Riches, the cost of web hosting, and the cost of a domain name. That was it.

After my sites began to earn some consistent income, I began to use that income to invest in other products, services, or information, which I could use to expand and improve my sites, increase my reach, and thus increase my income.

On a simple Excel grid I kept track of everything I spent versus everything I earned. For a while, even when I was earning some money, I was sometimes “in the red” a bit, in terms of having invested more than I earned. But this was something like $100 in the red at the worst, not $5,000.

When I see or hear of people promoting coaching programs for new Internet Marketers, for $5,000, I cringe.

That does not mean that there is never a good time to invest $5,000 in your business, online or otherwise. But where Internet Marketing is concerned, the beginning is not the right place to start with big investments!

Unless you fall under an exception, which I will explain below.

Reasons to start small

Here are a few of the reasons why I would never recommend that someone invest large sums when they are new to the field:

• How do you know yet if Internet Marketing is for you? This is a unique field. Some people are made for it, but some aren’t.
  Internet marketing requires a passion, a persistence, a self-discipline, and a willingness to learn.

  But most of all, if you don’t have enough interest and drive in the field, to persist long enough to begin earning a substantial income, you might wind up quitting before you start.

  And you know what? That’s okay!

  There is nothing wrong with dipping your toes in the water and taking them out if you decide that mountain streams are not to your liking. Drive back into town and find the nearest heated swimming pool.

  My point being, that some people test the water of Internet Marketing and then find it’s not for them. Some jump right into it and keep right on going with complete enthusiasm – even if it takes them two years to make their first dollar! But if you have made a huge financial investment and then find out that it’s not for you, you might have a serious problem.

• When you are new, you are less familiar with the field and can not differentiate easily as to which products or services you really need, and which will be the most useful for you in terms of Return-on-Investment (ROI).
• Internet Marketing is a big field and there are many forms of online business. You might eventually find that your heart is in blogging. Or it might turn out you do great with running Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns, or membership sites, or mini-sites, or some other form of online business. When you are just starting out, you may not have found your place yet. You could invest too much in a product or service which turns out to be in the wrong field and thus of little use for you in the long run.
• When you are new, it is more difficult to differentiate between scams and legitimate products and services. When you become more familiar with the field you will be able to recognize these things much more easily.

These are a few reasons I can think of off hand, but you can probably think of more.

There is one exception I should mention.

If you have money to throw around and you feel like throwing it around, by all means, go ahead. Just be aware when you are throwing it around and when you aren’t.

If you are a multi-million-dollar hotel chain owner and you are considering trying your hand in Internet Marketing, $5,000 may be pocket change for you. It might make sense for you to invest $5000 when you start out, particularly when this investment saves you time. In that income bracket, your time is much more valuable as compared to your money. As long as you know that you might lose it if things don’t go as planned, and you are okay with that, then I would say, go ahead.

Before you get started

As a general rule, in Internet Marketing, I would ask yourself these questions before paying for any product, service, or information which is meant to help you earn money online:

1. Does it make sense to me that this product can help me earn money online, and do I understand how and why this is? Or am I just taking someone’s word for it? (The answer to the first question should be “yes” and the answer to the second question should be “no!”)
2. Can I invest this amount of money without putting myself at serious risk on some other front?
3. If I invest this money, and lose it if things don’t work out as I hoped, could this situation be described as “disaster,” “life crisis,” or “financial catastrophe?” The answer to this question should be “no.”

I hope this helps. If you meet a new Internet Marketer or Internet Marketer-to-be who is hemming and hawing about their first investment or purchase, please feel free to send them to this page.

Anna Williams is a blogger, webmaster, photographer, and poet. She has lived and traveled in four continents, and currently lives in a forest, in the Pacific Northwest. Visit her personal blog, view photos, or read poetry. Anna offers website development and related services.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Building Your Blog from Nothing, not Building from $5,000

(Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes)

I’m sitting here at Dos Palmas, Website In A Weekend central, wondering what to write about today. I’m listening to a new Deep House mix by my friend DJ Native State, who, sadly, just doesn’t do that “web thing.”

But life is good overall.

I could write about money. But everyone writes about money, what more could I say? (Probably a lot, but not right now.)

Let’s tackle something a little more difficult: software licensing.

Namely, why some software is free, and other software is not.

Actually, software licensing isn’t that hard to understand. Fundamentally,

The details hinge on exactly what kind of license. Because there are a bunch of different free licenses.

First, some backstory.

What most people don’t get is that most of the first 10-15 years of the internet was built by people working for Big Government, Big Corporation or Big Education.

This is a fact.

I used to be a part of it. You can look me up at the Wayback machine if you’re so inclined. They have me back to 1996, at Tennessee.

Such folk have no need to make money on the internet, because their salaries are already paid. They built the internet on your tax dollars.

They are not your customers. They aren’t anyone’s online customers. Except maybe Amazon and O’Reilly.

Giving away everything for free not only made sense, it was the right thing to do.

By and largely, this is a good thing. The entire internet runs on freely available software such as Apache, MySQL and PHP. This software is the result of millions (or tens of millions) of dollars of investment value into programming and engineering.

Software with the capability of WordPress also requires millions of dollars worth of engineering and programming. At least initially. Once the problem is understood, and the tools are built, developing something like WordPress becomes much easier. It’s like that “overnight success” thing. You know, overnight success takes 10 years. But it takes that initial investment of time and money to get it figured out.

The private sector, with it’s command and control structure, isn’t really capable of producing this sort of self-organizing engineering. What you get ex nihilo from the private sector is software like (s)Lotus Notes. A good idea in theory, in practice, not so much. Or even Facebook, all built on free software, but the user interface is execrable.

Clearly, we have all benefitted from free software.

But I’m not being entirely clear about this notion of “free.”

Some software is “Free” as in free speech. Not free as in free beer.

Of course, other software is free as in free beer.

All depends on the license.

WordPress is free as in Free speech.

That means you can do whatever you want with WordPress, except deny your changes to WordPress to anyone you transmit your code to.

Want to create the most blazing fast WordPress installation ever and sell hosting? No problem. Optimize WordPress and sell as many hosting accounts as you like.

But if you decide you want to sell your code, you are required by US copyright law to transmit every change you made to the WordPress code.

And this makes perfect sense. The people that wrote WordPress decided that such a license was their Terms and Conditions for you to use WordPress. They wrote the code, they chose the license.

Themes and plugins

As it turns out, I like the Thesis theme quite a bit, and as a developer myself, have no problem paying for Thesis. It costs money to live.

As it also turns out, the Thesis developer apparently copied code directly from WordPress into Thesis.

Oups.

That code has subsequently been removed. The discussion resulting from that put Thesis (rightly or wrongly) under some pretty intense scrutiny from WordPress developers.

As a result, Thesis core code is now under a Free software license. “Core code” meaning all the code interacting directly with WordPress.

The styling and behavior of Thesis remains under the same proprietary license as usual.

Here’s whats important.

There is a fundamental legal issue that still hasn’t been resolved: Exactly what constitutes code derived from WordPress?

In my opinion, theme and plugin code should not be regarded as being derived code. However, my opinion doesn’t count for shit, and unless your name is Mullenweg or Jaquith (or other contributor to WordPress), your opinion doesn’t count either.

Before anyone starts hyperventilating… I’m cool with this.

Seriously, I’m cool with it. They wrote the code, they gave it away, I benefit massively. Unless a judge rules otherwise, that’s how it’s going to be. If you don’t like it, go write your own code.

The ramifications for you as a Thesis user: probably not much. Technically, none at all. Popular software going open source generally shows a step function in improvement shortly after the code is released. I know I have a few things I could change in the Thesis source.

How the whole issue plays out in a larger scale will be far more interesting. Web applications (please note date) aren’t quite the same as operating systems, code generators or dynamic libraries, so there is law still to be made.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

WordPress and Thesis: Free as in beer, or Free as in speech?

(Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes)

[I've raided Anna's archives again, for another timeless article. I could have written this yesterday. I bet some of you could as well. -Dave]

Do you ever feel like you don’t want to stop to sleep anymore? Do you ever feel like just going and going and going … until every incomplete website is built, until every article is written and submitted, until every new plugin is uploaded and set, until every email is answered or sorted or deleted, until every blog you should visit has been visited, until every PDF is written or edited, until every job is done, until all of your bookmarks are organized, until every incomplete social profile is updated …

I don’t know how many of you who visit my blog Building From Nothing have husband’s, wives, or mothers. 

But you know that expectant look you get when they are wondering if you are going to go to bed soon? 

Or sometimes it’s only a feeling you get, even if they aren’t looking at you directly.  Even if you can’t see them, you feel their eyes on the back of your shoulders sometimes … they are trying to be polite.  They know you are busy and enthusiastic.  But at the same time they are wondering…

“Does she ever sleep?”

Or is this just me?

I don’t advocate going day after day without sufficient sleep.  It can ruin people.  But sleeping too much can ruin people too!  And an occasional all-nighter never hurt anyone. So, me…

…I’m tired of sleeping.

I’ve finished a lot of projects.  It just never seems to be enough!

For every big project I complete online, I seem to have 5 more new ones tugging at my sleeve and nagging me for attention: 

“Mommy, mom, my turn!  I’m just a poor little baby website with only one page and I still have a comment from Mr. WordPress on me!  Its my turn!  Its my turn!”

I’m not just referring to my main blog, but other niches as well.  But I could easily spend all day every day on Building From Nothing, just adding content and pages and posts that I have been meaning to write and carrying along in my head.  I don’t diverge or disperse out of my current niches, and any new project I’ve recently embarked upon is complementary to the old.  I have old websites to overhaul, new software to learn about and implement, posts and articles to write … and everything I do is something that I know will be well worth it in the long run.  I don’t even think I do things out of sequence.  But sometimes there just seems to be so much to do!

I spent the majority of the past three weeks building up a Squidoo account with 50 Lenses for a certain niche.  Well, I finished that, and that’s great.  But as far as sleeping is concerned … sometimes I’d just like to put it on hold.

Anna Williams is a blogger, webmaster, photographer, and poet. She has lived and traveled in four continents, and currently lives in a forest, in the Pacific Northwest. Visit her personal blog, view photos, or read poetry. Anna offers website development and related services.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Internet Marketers – Who SAYS its time for Bed

(Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes)

There is an important principle which is too often overlooked in any income-generating endeavor.

That principle is EXCHANGE.

Fair exchange is when you give something and someone else gives you something of equal or similar value in return.

It’s even better when you give something a bit better quality or more valuable than what you have received.

Trying to get money for nothing is not only dishonest. In the long run, it is unworkable.

What kind of person tries to get money for nothing? Right – a thief, a robber, a criminal.

That doesn’t mean that everyone who plays the lottery is a criminal.

But I could imagine that if someone attempted to live off of lotteries, inheritance, gifts, or any of the more unscrupulous money-making ideas, one could eventually lean toward criminality.

Why? Because criminals try to get things for themselves without giving anything to others in return.

There are shades of gray, between the straight-out put-me-in-jail-tomorrow criminal, and the honest tradesman.

Online, we often refer to these shades of gray as “Get Rich Quick Schemes,” “Scams,” “Spam,” “Black Hat,” “Hype,” “B.S.,” etc.

A common denominator of many scams and unethical ways to “make money online” are that they promote the idea that one should receive money without offering anything valuable in return.

Think about it for a second.

When you see a home-based business opportunity, you often try to sniff out the scams.

Well one fast way of filtering out a lot of garbage is by just asking yourself – “Does this person recommend I give little or nothing of value in exchange for income?”

If the answer is yes – steer clear.

Even if you only earn money from ad revenue on your site – well, as long as you are providing useful information, entertainment, or something of value, you are giving something in exchange for that money. Right? You are also providing the advertisers with an opportunity to promote their own products.

Honesty pays off in the end. And it also feels better.

Anna Williams is a blogger, webmaster, photographer, and poet. She has lived and traveled in four continents, and currently lives in a forest, in the Pacific Northwest. Visit her personal blog, view photos, or read poetry. Anna offers website development and related services.

Post from: Website In A Weekend

Exchange