I did. For almost an hour I tried to find a reason for this annoying thing and finally decided to google for it.

The most helpful solution was at bestwpthemez.com where it says the reason for this is there’s a tag with the same wording. Once I removed that tag, the category updated with no problems! Hurray.

Once again, I wanted to say thanks to the author, but the comments were for logged-in users only. WTF?!

So I preferred to spend the same time I would have spent registering on writing this quick post. And, thanks to the author!

- Alex

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Current post was originally posted on:

Category Not Updated – Annoying WP Error

I just found out about a cool online, free, SEO tool. I’m amazed that I didn’t know anything about it before, but whatcha gonna do, right? I guess I was never into SEO before.

This tool is the LinkDiagnosis, which will help you tremendously if you’re doing any kind of SEO for your sites, but haven’t yet purchased any of tools that I did hear about (*cough* seo elite *uncough*).

First of all, there’s a FireFox extension, so that’s cool , you gotta love those…

With this service you can run analysis on

1. Links:
   

   This tool can show you all the important information about your competitor’s links. The report includes PageRank, anchor texts, no-follow information and more.

2. Sites:
   

   Having your site indexed is first step in getting traffic from search engines. This tool goes through every url in your XML Sitemaps file and reports if its indexed properly.

3. and Pages:
   

   See when the page was first indexed. Just right-click on any page and click “Get Page Age” and you will see when the page was indexed by Google for a first time. This information can help you to evaluate e.g. if pagerank is accurate or if its worth getting a link from that page.

Other than that is seems that there’s some link trading action going on over there. You can signup to be a publisher and sell ad-space on your site, or become an advertiser and buy ad-space on other sites.

One thing I can tell you right now is that I’m not going to sign up to be a publisher… no sir, not after the good ole Google slapped the shite out of this blog following my attempts to do business on TNX.

That’s right, despite their claims of being invisible to G… yea right, invisible.. what a joke. Took me months to get any rank back, still haven’t got to where I was. Brr…

So, try that LinkDiagnosis tool and be good.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

SEO This Time: A Cool Service To Help Your Efforts

Yea, you… And you, with the Mac… And everyone else in the bunch.
I know you’ve read it, Google Analytics is there for a reason.

What does a guy have to do to get some comments around here?

Well, too bad.

Since only two people commented on the previous post I’m not even going to draw the winner. I’m going to split the prize and give each one of the commentators the outrageous amount of $5 US dollars.

Wish me a prosperous month when you buy yourself a beer. (And not that American p%#s either. Get something Belgian, and dark)

Deneil and Dragan, please contact me with your paypal emails so I could send you your prizes!

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Announcing Prize Winners

When you work long hours in this business it gets lonely sometimes.

By the end of the day I’m dying to talk to someone. Just to share what I went through during the day, the bad stuff, the good stuff, you know? But with someone who has a clue about internet marketing.

But, hey, on the other hand, you know better than to start singing out the offers you’re running. Sometimes a few words are enough to get a brand new competitor on your plate.

So, it’s a constant battle between the urge to socialize and discuss, and the more down to earth “keep your trap shut” urge.

Anyway, yea, back to work… This blog comes in handy after all haha. I’ve rarely used it for this purpose, but it’s nice to have your own place to vent some steam.

Did you ever feel the need to share something with someone but couldn’t?
I would love to hear that — comment please! $10 prize for the most original comment. *Subject to editorial review. Promo can be canceled at any time without prior notice. Did you really make the effort to read this fine print? lol

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Quick Venting

Luckily, although I knew nothing about making money online, I knew enough about the Internet to dig deeper than that. I started reading blogs, sifting out splogs of course, read a few forum discussions and basically got the feeling of this niche.

Like any of you probably did, I followed the gurus and opted-in to all kinds of mailing lists to receive free ebooks and how-to’s. I was swamped with information and the many money-making techniques. I was dreaming of multiple income streams and was ecstatic…

…during exactly one month.

After that moth, I started to suspect that with all those offers, methods, techniques, and way to make money online, it is probably a big bubble to get beginners to pay for info products.

Obviously enough, I ended up doing exactly nothing of what I’ve read as ways to make money online. I made a pledge not to buy another ebook ever again and, as a general rule, not to pay for anything again.

It’s human nature to choose the easiest path and stay in the comfort zone and, so I did. I was blogging and hoping to monetize the blog at some point. The “wonderful” and very promising ways to make money online I discovered in my initial research were long forgotten.

This is the point where most people would just forget about making money online and Internet Marketing altogether.

Make Money With Affiliate Programs: A Year Later

The comfort zone for me was not to spend too much money, and not to go where I was new. I had WordPress skills naturally I chose to go the blog way. A full year has past before I realized I needed to change my strategy, making minimal sales that wouldn’t even pay for my grocery bill. A full year!

Fortunately, I had the brains to realize that a huge change is needed, and enough persistence to make myself go into new online ventures.

I have chosen to pay for PPC coaching, and bought a really outstanding Internet Marketing ebook: One Week Marketing.

It’s been a few months since, and those two have provided me with the needed insights to dominate niches using both SEO and Pay Per Click, and for the first time in a long time I started to see sales coming in.

Summary and Insights

So what did I learn from all that?
Let me give the beginners a piece of advice:

1. Try to join a community of like minded people. That way you will have a way to easily find out what works and what doesn’t. What program is a scam and which is a true money maker. Find a paid forum or a paid coaching program, this automatically weeds out spammers and freeloaders.
2. Keep in mind that work is required to achieve results online. Nothing is easy, and your initial efforts will be tough.
3. If you feel that you “need” or “must” pay for another ebook or tool, refer to Advice No.1 above. Consult others. It is very probable that someone has already bought that and has a solid opinion, which is not biased like the opinions you’d find on a blog or a sales page.
4. This one could possibly be the best advice. Go at it.
   If you just read about a wonderful way to make money, and don’t give it a go, you might as well forget about Internet Marketing and watch Youtube videos all day. You can’t possibly expect to catch fish without throwing in the line, can you?

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Make Money With Affiliate Programs – Why 90% Fail Miserably When Doing Affiliate Marketing?

A lot of the things are not secrets at all, and are available if you know what to look for. Knowing what to look for comes with experience, or if you have someone point you in the right direction.

It’s like when I was starting out over a year ago. I was thrown from one way to make money online to another. I was so thrilled by the fact that there are so many way to make money online, at first, that I was pretty much sure that I was going to be stinkin’ rich in two months. Three months at best.

I’m not stinkin’ rich and many months have passed since. What went wrong?

Simple, Not Easy

Most of the ways to make money online are simple. But there’s a big difference between the simplicity of the method and the ease of making it work for you.

The major obstacle that rises in front of a beginner when he realizes that he’s going to have to pay for stuff. Most think that everything is free on the internet, and those who pay for services are suckers.

Well, most beginners are ok with paying for hosting (which would also give them a free domain name). But that’s where it ends… They would try to get everything for free and are going to spend 6 months threading water. Most will quit not too long after.

Let’s take mailing lists for example. The simplest of schemes.

You get people to opt in to your list by offering them something in return, that had to do with a certain niche. That way you will have a list of people who are interested in a particular subject.

The next step would be to take suitable CPA offers and gently pitch them to your list, while trying to establish a strong relationship with the subscribers.

Simple? YES! Easy? NO!

First of all, enter our major obstacle; a beginner would probably not sign up with Aweber, or any other autoresponder service in the first place because there’s a monthly fee involved.

“What’s the point of singing up and paying monthly fee if I’m just starting out?”
Sounds familiar? How about:

“I can’t justify the cost of the autoresponder because I’m not yet making money…”
Duh!

Drum roll please… The secret of part 2 is:

Have a Plan

A beginner would not have a plan. He would typically go on and try a new technique every once in a short while. Is that because of the lack of a plan or the other way around? Who cares…

You have to have a plan. You have to know what you are going to do today, tomorrow, next week, next month.

You better sit down and write:

1. I want to reach 2,000 subscribers on my mailing-list in the red widgets niche within the next mont. I will do that by doing a, b, c, etc…
2. I will make profit by mailing to that list the following offers: a,b,c etc…
3. The expense is going to be X, but the potential profit is going to be Y.

Now ask yourself a question:

Am I prepared to take a risk and enter this venture?

You see, this is a beginning of an online business in affiliate marketing.
Having a detailed plan will show you how to start making money today, even before you spent a penny.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

The Big Secret of Affiliate Marketing, Part 2

Sell products? Sell services?
What are we selling exactly?

See, that’s when I stopped and had an “AHA!” moment. I suddenly realized that we are not supposed to sell at all.

I used to work as a project manager in marketing agency once, and I don’t remember any of us selling anything to the customer. Why should online marketing be different?

We are not online sales reps. Marketing has a different purpose.

We are to inform a potential customer that a product he wants or needs is available for him at a certain location. That’s it. No selling!

The customer you want to grab is already holding his credit card in his hand. He wants to buy. He’s online to see whether or not he’s being suckered into something, and to know if there isn’t a better deal for him.

So, you don’t go: “Can I interest you in a great Red Widget? Only $27… All your friends would be jealous! Buy NOW!”

You should be more in this direction:

“I have a Red Widget that is making a lot of people happy. All their friends are jealous because this red widget has this and that advantage over the other red widgets. You can find out more here…”

You see the difference? Why sell anything to someone who’s already a minute from signing the deal? You just need to nudge him in the right direction…

Of course, you can choose to target a different audience. Let’s take those who are looking to compare stuff first and have not yet decided. But, it’s all the same…

Don’t sell. Be of service to them and they will appreciate your treating them like people instead of like a herd of sheep.

Have a different perspective? My comments are open for you

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

The Big Secret of Affiliate Marketing

Even “better” news: currently Google’s on a huge slapping spree on the Content Network.

QS on the content network is getting ever more tighter, and a lot of people that were banking on the content network are forced to rethink their strategies.

What I meant in the title that you may get slapped for something you did in your past. It was supposed to be a fairly short post but it isn’t, so, bear with me, I’ll give some examples first.

What is the Google Slap?

The classic Google Slap, in PPC context, is a result of Google’s algorithm finding your page irrelevant to the keywords you’re buying. As an effect of the slap you may have some or all of your keyword bids raised up to $10 per click, by lowering your keyword Quality Score.

Since Google is a living and constantly changing organism, the slap has also evolved and now takes a few new forms that don’t have anything to do with relevancy.

Example 1: In an effort to improve user experience, Google is intentionally raising bids on keywords, and what’s even worse, artificially limiting traffic. That is a global trend and there’s nothing we can do about it. You might not even feel it, unless you run $100k/month on adwords.

Google hopes that by doing so only very targeted ads leading to laser targeted content will be shown to the user. Bummer for us, hurray for the users.

Example 2: Google doesn’t like (to say the least) certain types of offers. The best example are the infamous Acai Berry offers. But Grant offers are in there too.

While some Acai offers are totally legit, a lot of offers popped up that are plain ol’ scams.

These offers usually offer a free month’s trial for S&H only, $3-$5. Then the happy camper eventually discovers, ofter one month, that he had subscribed to a recurring charge. This is stated in the TOS of the offer, and this is actually a legit model many offers adopt.

The scammy part is that those offers make it nearly impossible to cancel these charges. Same story with Grant offers btw.

So, Google’s slapping the whole vertical. Doesn’t matter if you’re with a legit offer or with the scam offer. You will get slapped.

Example 3: Google doesn’t like data collection sites, as they don’t provide value to the user. If you’re running zip or email submit offers you will get slapped. It may take a day or it may take a month, depending on bot activity, but you will. Nothing helps.

That’s what I meant by Something From Your Past:

Example 4: Recently many affiliate marketers, on PPC-Coach and elsewhere, complained about experiencing a considerable decrease in Adwords traffic (on the content network) for no apparent reason.

After a while, I’ve seen reports of it happening on accounts that were, at some point in the past, running the scam offers (see example 2). It doesn’t matter if you repented and now run legit offers only. If your account had bad history with scam offers you’re going down.

Yours truly is one of them. I was toying with those offers when I was starting out a few months ago (not actually understanding what the fuss is about, so I’m innocent, lol). But I’ve had a drop in traffic from the content network during the last couple of weeks and it appears that the word is true.

To prove that I started a new account and moved all my legit campaigns over there. Traffic is now restored to previous levels.

So there you have it. Don’t mess with Google

- Alex

P.S.
Remember my last post about reasons to use proxies? The Easy Google Profit offer in this post is restricted to US traffic… A live example.

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

The Google Slap, Might Be Something From The Past

Ok, so I’ve been checking the stats on one of my campaigns and one thing threw me off the chair… I wonder why I wasn’t noticing this before: I had 8 sales coming from SE traffic!!

And here is the insight: Don’t ditch SEO.

When I went to do PPC I said good riddance to SEO. No more wasting time on social bookmarking, backlinks, etc. to build your traffic, since with PPC I get as much traffic as I possibly need as long as I pay for it.

But after having seen these sales I’m going to SEO everything from now on. These were 100% net profit sales since I didn’t spend a cent to drive that traffic to those pages.

So to make this post useful to all of you, I want to mention that my friend Mark from MasonWorld.com is having a nice little pomo where he gives you 21 free one-way backlinks (do-follow), from different sources. (he has a way…)

In light of my insight I’m certainly giving this a go… And so should you.

Enjoy!

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Quick Update: Just Had a PPC Insight

Once you set up you blog and have a bunch of niche sites running AdSense, making money maybe, you’re happy. Right? Right? Wrong!

Apparently I’m never happy, and must think of fresh new ways to improve on everything and make every small glitch dissapear.

One of those improvement-eureka moments was yesterday, when I said to myself that it’d be great to monitor my server to find what uptime it has.

Among other tools that are available on the net, I chose Basicstate.com. Why? Because it’s free and could answer my question. It runs checkups on the server every 15 minutes, sending email alerts if the server is down and allowing for basic statistics later on, for analysis.

Surprise, Surprise

Boy was I surprised when I got my first alert!

What?! – I said, this is impossible! This can’t be true with the top rated hosting plan I’m paying for! $7/month, mind you. Outrageous… (not sure if you’re getting the sarcasm, but yes, it’s me being sarcastic)

You can imagine how surprised I was when I got my second alert half an hour later. After that my face was longer than a horse’s and I went to sleep with heavy thoughts.

Wakie Wakie

Today I received a few additional alerts to my mail. When trying to browse to my site immediately upon receiving the alert everything was Okay, except one time what I indeed couldn’t access any of my sites. I guess the outages are very brief. Basicstate doesn’t report the duration of the outage.

So I guess, as usual, this coin has two sides:

• On one hand, it’s good to know everything that is happening on your server.
• On the other hand, I was doing fine without it, got nervous with it, and in retrospect I never should have bothered.

I really don’t care anymore- Every hosting has outages and that’s a fact. I’m sure every single one of them is doing everything they can to improve their stability, since competition is very strong, so If a server is down for a few minutes a day, no biggie.

Have fun.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

One More Tool You Couldn’t Live Without. Or Could You?