I recently spoke on the “Affiliate Marketing Blogging Secrets” panel, part of the Monetization track at Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas with….

Jim Kukral, Moderator
Brian Littleton, President of Shareasale (shown in pic with me)
Angel Djambazov, Managing Editor of Revenews.com
and Todd Sawicki, stepping in for Ben Huh from ICanHasCheezburger.com.

I’ve had several people since then ask me for a list of the “tools” I mentioned that I personally use on my sites.

Many of my websites use the WordPress platform, therefore I incorporate a lot of WP-Plugins (as I haven’t taken the time to convert to Thesis Theme yet).

Link Cloaking – I use this to mask my affiliate links, and it automatically adds the “nofollow” attritube. There is also NinjaAffiliate which is more robust, but is not free. Someone also mentioned SkimLinks.com, but I haven’t had time to experiment with them yet.

I also like to import content from my other sites that aren’t powered by WordPress and my Twitter status updates into the sidebars of my blogs, therefore I use the Aggregate Plug-In and Twitter Tools. More recommended WordPress Plug-Ins.

Speaking on monetizing my blogs, my main source of income is generated through affiliate programs, but I also generate revenue through additional sources, such as…

Chitika – The organic traffic visitors that I receive via Google Images generally aren’t looking to buy anything, so Chitika is cool in that it only shows relevant ads to the keywords they used to search with that pay per click.

List Building – Collect email addresses on individual post pages. I use AWeber to create hover pop-overs (usually unblockable), sign them up to receive the RSS feed via email, and set the thank you to a CPA offer (ie MarketLeverage Email Submit).

Affilistore – I have played around with this free downloadable script to make datafeed stores. If I can make a website with it in under an a hour, I’m presuming most others can as well. I downloaded datafeeds pertaining to my niche from ShareASale, changing my user id and re-uploaded to my new site. The only “marketing” I’ve done is adding the website and it’s sitemap to Google Overview and watched the sales come in.

Banner Ads – Since most people do not actually click through a banner, I prefer to shy away from CPA and CPC offers, but instead sell banner space or use a banner network such as Glam Media or TodayShow Network that pay per impression.

Google Adsense I presume everyone already knows about Google Adsense? Chloe Spencer from NeopetsFanatic.com fully monetizes her website with only Google Adsense.

Chloe was on the panel before mine “Are You Getting the Most Money Out of Your Blog as You Can?” with Dave Taylor, Tim Jones and Chris Pirillo, which was similar to our panel.

Some people wrote blog reviews about our panel, including Ms. Babble and Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media. I think our session was too “basic” for them and aimed more towards newbies.  Can’t please ‘em all.

Scared that I have a virus, worm, parasite, whatever, I google its demise and end up in the WordPress forums.  Many cited that upgrading WP alone did the trick.  So I upgraded to the latest version of WP and was able to post normally.  My blood pressure went down.

Until yesterday when I got the same Magic error on the same blog!  Double WTF! My first instinct was to pick @yonnage‘s brain, hoping he could make the magic disappear into thin air, but he had to go and get married on me and take the day off! Doesn’t he know marriage is sometimes overrated? Anyhow…

Back to the forums I go. To solve the problem for good, I had to manually edit all of my plug-ins as 50% of them had a line a crap code (example) at the very top of them that I had to delete (Yes, Chris Pearson, I know I need to convert to Thesis Theme).  A couple plugins wouldn’t let me edit them without an error, so I deleted those via FTP and reinstalled.

Wait, I wasn’t done yet! I then had to reinstall the wp-includes/vars.php file to get the final Abracadabra! Now, hopefully (fingers and toes crossed) everything appears to be working fine!

Do you Believe in Magic?

This past weekend, though, I think I got the best compliment ever in person from my Uncle Lee, who I haven’t seen in several years as he’s been in the military.  He came “home” with my other two uncles, who I do get to see a couple times a year.  We all laughed so hard that I cried reminiscing the “old days” of growing up together.

Uncle Lee took me aside and told me thank you for inspiring him to create his website GTO Alley six years ago. He took my advice to pick a passion and run with it, and his website has been profitable since its inception.  Sure, one site alone usually doesn’t allow one to quit their day job, but it’s some nice extra ”fun money” as my first site was over a decade ago.

Since looking over his site today, I’m going to email and offer him some tips that I think could earn him even more revenue. The top five tips being…

1. Convert to a WordPress site complete with recommended WordPress plugins.  WordPress just isn’t for blogs anymore.  I use WordPress for 90% of my websites (including this very one).  Sure, it may be a hassle to convert all your HTML pages, but it’ll be worth it in the end.

2. Change Google Adsense ads from “Link units” to Ad units” – the reason being that you don’t get paid for the first click on Link units, just if they click on an ad on the second page, whereas you get paid on the first click of Ad units.  Plus I personally think the Ad units are more appealing to the visitors to click on.

3. Add Chitika | Premium Ads to cash in on your search engine traffic.  Only traffic arriving from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc will see the ads, and the ads will highlight the keywords they used to get there, thus increasing click-throughs.  I added Chitika Premium to one of my sites a few months ago (just on the “Single Post” pages of a WordPress site), and it’s been making over $100 per month. Not too shabby for simply adding a few lines of code, eh?

4. Create a XML Sitemap – you can do this for free at XML-Sitemaps.com. Then submit that Sitemap using Google’s webmaster tools.

5. Remove ”function disableRightClick(btnClick)” script. If people really want to steal your images, all they have to do is look at your source code (as I did to get the banner image below). If you have your own copyrighted images, add a watermark with your site URL right on the picture for free advertising.

I hope Uncle Lee doesn’t mind me constructively criticizing his site publicly!?! But my hope is that my suggestions may help someone else. Gotta pay it forward.

And I suppose I should give a shoutout to my other uncles’ websites so they don’t feel left out…

My Uncle Brian’s website (he is actually younger than me – yes my mom and grandma were knocked up at the same time…) is American Muscle Authority for his car restoration business.

And my Uncle David actually designs and develops websites at iGroupStudios. His clients - surely, you’re heard of them – include Suze Orman and Omaha Steaks. If not, you live under a rock, and please don’t call me Shirley.

More recently, I participated in Darren Rowse’s Challenge 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (for those already with an established blog).  I can honestly say he offered some helpful tasks (including why and how they work) to perform each day to improve your blog’s traffic and income.  You can now download Darren’s Workbook and use it daily (like I did) or set your own timeframe (weekly, monthly, all at once), and I guarantee you’ll see positive results.  Actually Darren himself offers a money-back guarantee if not satisfied.  All I offer is my word.  Join over 16,000 other bloggers in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge today.

On the show, we talked about various WordPress Plug-Ins that we recommended.  Chris, on the other hand is “anti-plugin” and stated you don’t need plugins if you use the Thesis Theme from DIYThemes (hint, hint). Chris gasped and had to pull the sword from his chest after I said I currently have 36 plugins activated on my shoe blog (obviously I don’t use Thesis Theme…. as of yet anyway…) 

I picked 8 of the plug-ins I recommend to highlight…

1. Aggregate – Allows you to place the contents of an RSS feed into your posts, pages &/or sidebar.

2. All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box Search Engine Optimization (I actually forgot to mention this one, but Karen brought it up!)

3. Google XML Sitemaps – Generates a Sitemap.xml for search engines (Chris recommends submitting your sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools.)

4. Link Cloaking Plugin - Cloaks outgoing links (ie masks affiliate links). Missy recommended the MaxBlogPress Ninja that Shoemoney has been pimping, so I may have to give that plugin a try.

5. phpBay Lite – Adds eBay auction listings to your posts with just keywords.

6. Post-Plug Library Supports Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins.

7. Subscribe to Comments – Allows readers to receive an email when new comments are posted to an entry. This is the only plugin that Chris recommended!

8. Youtuber – Adds YouTube videos to posts easily.

Other WordPress Plug-Ins we discussed were…

AdRotator – Rotates Ads (duh)

Adsense Deluxe – Inserts ads into posts

Category Visibility – Post only certain categories (Karen recommends this for “hiding” personal stuff from the main category line up)

Linkshare Link Lookup – Shawn Collins reviewed this.

Do you have a favorite plugin for WordPress not listed above?  Please leave a comment and tell us!

Missy Ward announced that she is the new affiliate manager for DIYThemes, the home of the Thesis Theme for WordPress. And the best part, Missy is working on a performance basis, with all the money earned to be donated to the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF). WTG, Missy!

The Thesis Theme boasts the strongest SEO of any theme, so I see why Missy herself uses it for her blog, MissyWard.com and loves it.  Lots of other well-known bloggers, such as CopyBlogger and SimpleMom use the Thesis Theme as well. In fact, I think I may purchase it for my shopping blog.

So, improve your website and donate to NBCF at the same time either by purchasing the Thesis Theme for your WordPress blog or sign up to be an affiliate yourself.  Missy is also offering great incentives, like a free pass to Affiliate Summit East 2009 in NYC (details). See you there! 

At Affiliate Summit East in Boston, ShareASale handed out special “got babies” tees, in which I had my god-daughter, Merin, model for me (isn’t she cute?) I didn’t let her keep the SAS-Boston shirt though, as I have a friend (a fellow Kiwanian) who has a little boy named Boston.  It was too boyish for the little Hannah Montana fan anyway.

I also scored a new black tee, prepackaged as ShareASale’s signature star.  I had Merin hold it in the picture, then washed it before taking my mug shot in it, as opposed to my previous white ShareASale tshirt.  I suggest yellow tees made up for the next run since yellow is their signature color associated with the star logo. And well, I’ve been told yellow is a good color on me.

It was great to see Brian, Carolyn, Sarah and David in Boston! Yes, I missed you Nate. I have yet to meet Michael, Brian’s brother, though.  A couple years ago at an Affiliate Dinner in Chicago, I remember asking Carolyn why Michael never attends functions.  Carolyn had me believing that Michael was a figment of Brian’s imagination – that Brian was really Michael.  And I believed her, as it all made sense why I had never met him! You had me going, Ms. Carolyn!  I guess Michael was in Vegas, but I missed him! Maybe next time?!

Anyway, if you aren’t associated with  ShareASale.com yet as either an affiliate or a merchant, you are missing out!  They are the best network at listening and implementing everyone’s ideas! I got invited to the ShareASale Think Tank 2008 in San Diego next month (last year in Scottsdale was AWESOME), but I am disappointed that I will be unable to attend – my son is a senior football player, and I don’t want to miss the Parent’s Night game!  I will get to see the ShareASale gang earlier that week though as I’ll be in NYC for Affiliate Summit Social Media (ShareASale will be hosting another fabulous party) and SMXE.

On a final note here is the screenshot from ShareASale’s website yesterday in rememberance of 9/11…

ShareASale will be closed for the day of September 11, 2008, in memory of those lives lost, and to honor the heroes from that morning and thousands of other mornings when peace was chosen over war. The events of September 11, 2001 touched millions of us both here in the United States of America, and abroad. For each life that was stolen, a memory and a legacy was left behind to carry – and for those who carry them, life has changed forever. Each year, we close our offices today and we encourage others to take this day in rememberance not only of what was lost, but also in celebration of everything that we have in our lives. The families of victims from that morning would give anything to spend one morning with their loved ones, we encourage you to go out and live today to the fullest that you can. Affiliate Marketing can wait until another day.  We will never forget those who lost their lives, or those who gave their lives in the hope of saving another.

Way to go, ShareASale! And thanks for the shirt/s!

P.S. What do you think of my new WordPress theme? It’s GenkiTheme (Fixed Width)

I did take a little (ok, a lot) of slack from Sam Harrelson for bringing up Ping.fm as a resource during the session.  I think Ping.fm is a great tool as you can update all of your social networking sites (twitter, myspace, facebook, etc) all at the same time, and you can update via various methods (text, email, apps, etc. I use AIM).   Sam I am, on the other hand, thinks of this as spamming.

I offered to mud wrestle him over it, but since he didn’t show, I claim victory. Oh, and I’m getting sick of watching the Olympics, too.  Anyway, my theory is as long as you don’t use Ping.fm excessively, it’s not spamming, but a great source of traffic to your websites.  I use it when I write a new blog post and include the title and a twurl.nl link. This week, I’ve gotten the most traffic from plurk – a site I didn’t even know existed until joing Ping.fm. Now, I don’t suggest sending every tweet and facebook comment thru Ping.fm – now that would be spam, Sam.  Use in moderation, and it’s all good.

If you haven’t signed up with Ping.fm yet, today’s beta invite code is “vivalaping” (it was “pingitlikeitshot” the day of our session, thus the title inspiration).

I haven’t even signed up for half of the social networks available to use with Ping.fm, yet anyway.  You can even use it to post to blogger.  So, I’m making a list there of my social networks, mainly just to jog my memory.  Anyone know how to make the links clickable on there without manually editing them? The good thing about blogger is, once you update, you’re more likely to show up in the “Next Blog>>” for people surfing blogs.

Now, as if I don’t have enough food on my plate (and I’m hungry), I think I’m going to look for a new theme for this site. This one is boring me out. Revolution maybe?

Thank you for submitting, but we’re concerned that the content on this site contains hidden or somewhat misleading affiliate links.

But then I saw PreemieTwins.com was declined for…

This site is a reported attack site.

WTF!? I made that site eons ago for my premature twins.  So now, as if I’m not busy enough, I have to figure out what’s up.

I googled “preemie twins” and AVG said “This page contains no active threats.” but…. Google says “This site may harm your computer.” Double WTF.  I can rank #1 for those keywords, but who’s gonna visit after Google says my site will install malicious software on their computer!?  First of all, I’m a big advocate AGAINST malware (since it steals MY commissions), and second of all, I don’t think I’m smart enough to even create such scum.

So, my first inclination was that it’s the free wordpress theme I used, so changed that.  Nope, that wasn’t the problem.  Wasn’t any of my plug-ins either.  So, it had to be in my post content.

I go to edit the top post, and there I see it…

< i frame src= ” http: //61.xxx.x.xxx/ iframe/wp-stats.php ” frameborder=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″>< / i frame>

So I google that and found my answer on the WordPress forum. My site was injected with a 1px iframe due to a vulnerability in WordPress 2.2. And yep, I still had 2.2 installed on that site. I’m pretty good about updating to the latest version of WP on my blogs, but this particular blog doesn’t get a lot of my attention as of lately.

So I immediately updated to WordPress 2.6 – I suggest anyone that still uses 2.2 to do the same RIGHT NOW! But now I have to manually edit EACH and EVERY post as they deposited all kinds of scum links.

That IP address was from China. I just got a package today from China of some Coach purses. They claim they are “authentic”, but c’mon, I got them for a mere fraction of the retail cost. I think they are just damn good knock-offs, but no one has been the wiser.

Today’s t-shirt is from Foreclosure.com – the back of the shirt is the exact same screenprint as the front. Foreclosure.com offers a nationwide real estate search on foreclosures, preforeclosures, tax liens and distressed properties.  Great site if you’re in the real estate market.  They offer an internal affiliate program (25%+ recurring commission on subscriptions) and a program on CJ (payout $7 lead, $31 sale).  And they offer some cool marketing tools, even a WordPress PlugIn (but I didn’t want that in my sidebar).  I used their LAVA Listings Code, but it uses Javascript, and I couldn’t incorporate it into this post, even after downloading this Inline-JS WP Plugin.  So, click here to see the Lava Listings in action.

P.S.  I actually paid money for a t-shirt because I couldn’t resist this one.