June 1, 2010
It’s not completely down, but it’s malfuctioning. I don’t know why it is, and can’t find any news on it yet. If anyone knows what happened, feel free to comment.
In the meantime, I’ve been considering possible solutions. Wordpress.com and other large, high traffic sites are often targets for spammers and other nasties that less popular domains don’t have to worry about on the same scale. I’m making a list of sites that host WordPress powered blogs for free, in another post. Comment to get added to the list.
Posted in The Mega Sites, WordPress.com | No Comments » | Tags: wordpress, wordpress blog, wordpress down, wordpress hosted blogs, wordpress problems, WordPress.com
April 6, 2010
One of the sites where I teach online courses now has a great affiliate program. If you have an educational or information site, you want to get in on Universal Class.
They review their affiliates before accepting, and have a limit of how many they will allow. So get there and sign up now, while there is still room.
Universal Class is an online learning site where people from all over the world teach people anywhere in the world a wide variety of subjects ranging from core education to career training. They offer Continuing Education Units and certificates. Instructors correspond with students through course chat, email, and forums, and they support a variety of media. So if you have some knowledge that you’d like to share, you may want to become an instructor.
Whether as an affiliate or a teacher, you’ll be helping people by referring them to the site.
Posted in Affiliate Programs | No Comments » | Tags: affiliate program, direct sponsor, direct sponsorship, online courses, partner program, universal class
March 10, 2010
Because of new laws that require that purchases made through affiliates who reside in Colorado have to include sales tax, Amazon.com has deactivated their affiliates from that state. So now, Colorado joins North Carolina and Rhode Island on what’s basically an affiliate blacklist.
This means a massive loss of income for many webmasters unless they jump ship and change states. With more states considering the sales tax for online purchases, no matter which state the buyer resides in though, things look pretty grim for affiliates all over the country.
I’m anticipating dark days ahead for all affiliate programs if things continue like this.
Posted in Affiliate Programs, The Mega Sites | No Comments » | Tags: affiliate program, affiliates, amazon, colorado, discontinued
January 13, 2010
It looks like the problem with quotes and apostrophes in Wordpress is back. It seems to be striking at random. Not all sites are affected, but many people are having issues with unwanted back slashes proliferating when they edit their posts.
It’s hard to say if it’s the server’s problem or Wordpress’s. I’ll post information if I find a solution that people who aren’t PHP developers by trade can use.
So far, two of my Wordpress sites are affected, but the rest aren’t. It’s strange.
Update, January 22, 2010
In order to fix the problem, my host had to turn off magic_quotes on the whole server, not just my directory. I still don’t understand why some sites were affected and some weren’t.
Posted in Problematic CMS, What Makes A Website Suck | 1 Comment » | Tags: apostrophe, backslash, magic quotes, quotes, wordpress
January 11, 2010
The changes in Google’s algorithm and policies has many megasites squirming. For awhile, many were dominating the “web waves” by providing an easy way for experts in a variety of topics who maybe weren’t expert webmasters, to create visually appealing sites in a jiffy. Even better, many were able to make money through affiliate and ad programs, who wouldn’t have if they had to roll their own websites.
The problem is, as with many things, when the word got out, the spammers and spammists (people who make junk webpages just for the ad revenue) moved in. Tons upon tons of irrelevant, innacurate, and outright false information was posted by people who knew nothing about the topics on which they were writing. In some cases, the information itself was fairly accurate, but it’s just promotion for some kind of scam or scheme. The person who posts it seldom knows much or anything about what they’re basically regurgitating from an advertising page that they copy and paste from their affiliate program.
Thank goodness, Google has noticed, and has started to look out for things like duplicate pages. I don’t know how, but it seems they’re also looking into accuracy as well. I’m sure they don’t catch everything, but I’ve noticed that almost as soon as I get annoyed that a page is crap, I look for the same keywords a few days later, and it’s not on the first page anymore. I don’t think Google has a microchip implanted in my brain, so it looks like maybe, just maybe, they’re reviewing sites or looking at site reviews on social networks or forums.
If that’s the case, then there are a few mega sites that need to start checking themselves before Google does.
Topics I’ve personally noticed are problematic are recipes, braiding, sewing, and craft techniques, and exercise and nutrition. I recently felt actually compelled to post in some areas because the existing articles were just pure lies and bull. I sincerely hope that any how-to, education, or information sites out there start reviewing articles more carefully. If not, having tons of misinformation is going to make them less credible to readers and to search engines, which is going to cost them.
Basically, keywords don’t cut it anymore. If you’ve got a page on how to braid cornrows that doesn’t have instructions on how to braid cornrows, you suck and you’re not going to maintain a high rank or relevance. So check your information before you post it, and check information other people are posting on your site…or else.
Posted in The Mega Sites, What Makes A Website Suck | No Comments » | Tags: answer, answer sites, ehow, encyclopedia, how to, how to site, hubpages, info site, information site, large sites, mega site, online encyclopedia, squidoo, wiki
January 4, 2010
Because broken pages suck, and misalignment sucks.
Little is more annoying to any site member than popups. In that small group of things that are actually more annoying are transparent popovers. I don’t know exactly how these became popular. I’m considering blaming Facebook. Why in the world any site that isn’t Facebook is using them is beyond me. Maybe they don’t read enough of Facebook users’ complaints about the popovers not loading properly, and begging them to go back to navigating to an actual webpage when you click something.
No, instead, a something that would be a popup but isn’t quite, appears in a little square, with the rest of the window grayed out. You type things into it that are supposed to get sent to the site. When you’re done, it’s supposed to disappear, or show an X somewhere so you can close the darned thing, and return to the page you were at.
Instead, things don’t quite work out this way, but you have no recourse with a back button. If what was supposed to happen, didn’t, you have to do it five times to figure that out.
Then you need to send feedback, and guess what? The feedback form is also in a popover, and your report that there is a problem also may or may not get there.
Heck, whether you’re using IE or Firefox, the popover might not even load. You get a gray box error that says some obscure hieroglyphic java something or other doesn’t exist. How do you get it to work? Who knows? Who cares?
Obviously the people who run these sites don’t care about their users…just about having whatever’s supposedly the latest thing. Well this thing has rendered a few websites that I used to like, dead to me.
Posted in What Makes A Website Suck | No Comments » | Tags: annoying, annoying site trends, popovers, sites that suck, things that make people hate your website, things that will kill your website, upgrades from hell, upgrades that suck
December 26, 2009
In case some haven’t noticed, Amazon.com has discontinued their affiliate program for sites in states that are taxing referral revenue aside of what we already pay in income tax. It appears to still be an option for larger sites that can change server locations, but for smaller webmasters, we only still have product links up because there is nothing to replace it.
Information and content heavy websites often get “where to get…” email from our readers. We liked being Amazon affiliates especially when they expanded beyond books because that answered the question and made us look good. Now that it’s gone, many of us still show the links (and make Amazon money) because our readers haven’t suddenly stopped needing books or hard to find supplies.
An example, I wrote a page on how to make real coffee sometime ago. Problem is, where does someone find a cezve/ibrik (Middle Eastern coffee pot)? Even many people in Los Angeles can’t find them unless they get lucky. Amazon.com has merchants who sell them though…nice ones, and a wide selection of them. So this is why I still have their links up. For some items, they’re the only place people are going to find them because they allow the tiny shops in the middle of nowhere to sell their goods.
So now there’s this hole in the market. Over time, people are going to shift to doing direct advertisement for businesses because the Amazon links aren’t making them anything. If not, they’ll just not have links to where people can find the products. That’s what I did before Amazon. I just told people what the things were and where they were most likely to find them.
I noticed that Google has a feature called Google Base that makes it easier for people to find products through search. Businesses can upload their catalogs, and if someone is searching for that product, they get to it much more quickly than the old way of just spidering pages. It’s really neat, and could be applied to Adwords.
If Adwords advertisers could upload their catalogs with an ad blurb and small photo for each product, then the blurbs could display as ads. I think readers would like those ads better because it would bring them specific things they want, with less hassle than going to a site that may or may not have what they’re looking for in stock.
Google should make product boxes. That would make for attractive ads, happy readers, and more money for Adsense publishers and Adwords advertisers.
Posted in Contextual Ads Revenue, Opportunity Knocks | No Comments » | Tags: adsense, adwords, buy now, buy now button, buy this, google, hole in the market, market hole, opportunity, product link, product recommendation
December 20, 2009
Lately, many Google Adsense publishers are finding out that lots of ad space is leading to less ad revenue. Site owners selling themselves cheaply by having ads in multiple places on every page end up getting the lowest bidders and fewer clicks because it means the ads are often less relevant to the site context.
Here and there, I’ve picked up a few tips, and come up with a few of my own based on performance.
1. New sites should not bother giving up their traffic.
Until you start getting more than 100 hits a day, you shouldn’t bother giving up your traffic with ads in top-half spots on your site. If anything, use a banner or link unit at the bottom of the page so that your readers will have relevant exit links to go to instead of just someplace in their favorites.
The exceptions are if you’re getting constant “Where can I buy…” email from your readers, or your site is all about the exit. If you’re telling people where to buy stuff, Google is just bringing them more of that sort of information, which is a good thing. In that case, the ads are actually part of your content, and more is actually more. Max out ad space, but try to do it in a way that is graphically pleasing.
2. Sidebars and rectangles are where it’s at.
For your one prime space per content heavy page, use one sidebar on the left, or one medium or large rectangle. People like sidebars and squares. They don’t really seem to like leaderboards or banners at the top of pages for some reason.
3. Blend in the text colors, but roll your own borders on squares/rectangles.
Remember, you aren’t allowed to make any individual objects next to the ads, but you can use nice looking color or design borders. If you treat the ad space like it’s special, then your readers will too.
4. Get rid of ads that are not performing.
If a month goes by and you notice that a placement is not performing, just get rid of it. It’s probably either invisible to, or annoying your readers. It’s just better gone.
I’ll post more tips as I find them, but this should get you started on a higher clickthrough rate. The basics of what the steady earners are saying though, is that the reason their earnings are staying steady is because they don’t sell themselves cheap. Ads space should be much more scarce on your site so that it takes more money for bidders to get a spot.
Posted in Contextual Ads Revenue | No Comments » | Tags: ad frequency, ad placement, adsense, google, high earning, tips, webmaster
December 7, 2009
I’m still pondering what to do with this domain, but I think I’m almost settled with a few ideas. It should obviously be a site about money, so I’m going with that theme. It’s probably not necessary to focus on only one aspect of it though. So I’m strongly considering making this a community where people who have some knowledge can pass that onto others.
Over the next few days, I’ll be adding various features to the site. Hopefully they’ll attract visitors with questions and answers. Stay tuned…
Posted in Money's Mama News | No Comments » | Tags: ideas, news, website
December 5, 2009
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments » |
Recent Comments