I would like to give out a warning that WordPress is cracking down on affiliate marketing blogs.   I think it is important to pass this warning on and possibly save a few people from the headaches of having their blogs deleted.

For the record this warning is for people who have a free blog hosted at WordPress e.g. username.wordpress.com.   If you are using the WordPress software on your own hosting account you have nothing to worry about.

However if you have a free blog at WordPress you have to follow their terms and that is some scary reading for internet marketers – here are a few examples of what they don’t allow:

…content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost
the search engine rankings of third party sites.

Affiliate marketing blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs.

Ouch… that just banned two of the powerful uses an internet marketer has for a blog.  Even worse, most of the other free blogging platforms like Google’s Blogger have similar terms and they will suspend/delete your blog without blinking.  Here you can read WordPress’ complete  Terms Of Service  and see the  Types of Unacceptable Blogs

Blogging is an extremely potent way to achieve good search engine rankings, build your list of subscribers and generate traffic to your own sites or affiliate sites.  In my opinion every serious internet marketer should be using blogs, it’s just that powerful.  But if you are using blogs for marketing purposes you should not use the free blog platforms, the risk is just too high.  Fortunately there are some good alternatives.

There is no doubt that WordPress is the best blogging platform out there and I wouldn’t recommend using anything else.  The absolute best solution is to set up a WP blog on your hosting account and domain.  That way you have full control over everything and don’t have to follow other people’s terms.  The best how to guide on setting up a WP blog is  WordPress Made Easy  from Mike Paetzold – without it I wouldn’t be able to post this.

Mike Paetzold also has a free blogging service called  MyCCBlog.  You get a fully hosted WordPress blog with all the SEO bells and whistles.   MyCCBlog  is easier to set up than a free WordPress or Blogger blog and a whole lot better – Most importantly  MyCCBlog  is internet marketing friendly and you won’t have your blog suspended just because you use it for marketing purposes.

Alright now that you have been warned about the fickle nature of WordPress.com, don’t get discouraged. Using blogs for affiliate marketing is very powerful when done the right way. Here are two of my favorite blogging resources for affiliate marketers.

Atomic Blogging  from Alvin Phang is an excellent course and it includes some very nifty WordPress plugins and templates you can’t get anywhere else.  Alvin is a having a sale right now and until Feb. 10th you can save 60% on  Atomic Blogging.

Blogging To The Bank  by Rob Benwell. Rob is one of the pioneers in affiliate blogging and I’m truly amazed at the amount of content he gives away in his step-by-step  Blogging To The Bank  guide.

Hope you found this information useful. Please leave a comment if you have any  feedback.

Article Of The Week

Safe online transactions tips

With the advancement of online technology, more and more businesses are moving online. There is hardly any need now to personally make a trip down to the local mega-store and buy products. From clothing to video games to pharmaceutical products, almost everything can be found online.

Most websites selling products or services utilize credit card transactions, as well as Paypal (a popular online payment portal).

However, are online transactions really safe? How does the average consumer ensure that they do not get hoodwinked while making a purchase online?

Here are a few tips to take note of:

1. Do not make online transactions using public computers. Public computers might have “keyloggers” (programs that log keystrokes) and other spyware to retrieve sensitive information.

2. When making transactions from your personal computer, ensure that you have the basic security measures up-to-date. (E.g. Firewall, anti-virus program, anti-spyware programs)

3. When comparing prices of products, take note of any company which have prices that are very much lower than their competitor’s. This company might be a fraud.

4. Always attempt to make transactions on the actual website. Do not attempt any purchases via links in emails. Those emails might be frauds.

5. Only make transactions on sites that display a security icon (check for the little lock located on the lower right hand corner of your browser). Websites like Amazon.com, Ebay.com, Craigslist.org and Ablewise.com provide very secure payment methods for their products and services.

6. Ensure that the “http” in your browser’s address bar has changed to “https” to indicate a secure transaction.

7. Before giving any sensitive details (e.g. credit card numbers), call up the vendor in order to check their authenticity. At the minimum, liaise with the vendor via email, find out specific details of your purchase, and how you are going to purchase it.

8. Always keep a printout of the receipt which is provided at the end of transactions. Match these receipts with your credit card statement to ensure that the correct amount has been credited.

Lastly, ensure that your passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive information are kept secret at all times. If you suspect, even a little bit, that your account has been compromised, notify the webmaster and request that they cancel or suspend your account immediately.

Lately we have seen quite a few site reports, emails and forum posts about virus and trojans on the traffic exchanges. That’s why I thought it was time for another “public service” post with some tips, tricks and education.

First of all… there will always be cheaters, hackers and other scumbags on the traffic exchanges and on the internet in general. So even though sites like Dragon Surf fights the good battle every day and tries to keep your PC clean, we can’t give you any guarantees and neither can any other site despite what they claim… That’s why it’s vitally important that you take the necessary precautions to protect your own computer.

What I’m going to share with you now is the combo I have been using to protect my computer(s) for the past 3 years. You don’t necessarily need to use the same software, but you do need to have all the components in place. A real benefit to my package is that it’s 100% free – Normally I’m a big believer in paying for quality, but in this case I don’t need to – So I can spend that money on advertising instead

Here are the components you need to adequately protect your computer while surfing, and my recommended software for the job.

1. You need a firewall
If you are using Windows XP or Vista you already have an in-built firewall and in my opinion it does the job just fine. You need to make sure it’s turned on at all times and that you get the regular updates from Microsoft.

2. You need anti-virus software
This is probably the most important component and I personally use Avast. The Avast home edition is free and all you have to do is download it and install it. Once you have it installed it you need to register for a key and that key will work for a full year (you can then get a new key). Avast offers all the real-time protection you need, it updates automatically once or twice a day. It will also scan and protect your email and you can do full system scans (I do that at least once a month).

You can download Avast for free here … And register for the key here.

3. You need spyware protection.
This is where most people get it wrong… anti-virus software is not enough. You also need to protect your computer against spyware and adware. Most free spyware protection only allows you to scan your PC but does offer real time protection. I have found one that does, it’s called Spyware Terminator and in my opinion it beats many of the paid solutions. Spyware terminator will work 24/7 blocking spyware before it reaches your PC and it will also automatically update with all the latest definitions.

You can dowload Spyware Terminator for free here.

4. My extra weapon
Even though I have Spyware Terminator I also use Ad-Aware from Lavasoft. The free version does not offer real-time protection so I just use it to do an extra scan once in a while to see if the other programs have missed something… The free version is great for this purpose.

You can download Ad-Aware for free here.

That was my 3 part protection combo and extra weapon. I can guarantee you that they will do a superb job at protecting your computer while surfing. But whatever you do, make sure that you have a firewall, anti-virus and spyware protection in place before you start your next surf session.

Got any question or comments, feel free to leave a comment to this post.

Pinging your website without knowing why you are doing it, might be a problem. Especially if you are pinging the wrong services.

A ping helps you to inform other services which collect information about your feeds and list them into their database. These services have a list containing recently updated websites.

Also, you must be aware of the fact that pinging won’t deliver direct traffic to your website. It will simply generate indirect traffic to your pages by sending requests to other services which are using feeds for content.

Some services, like Yahoo, after receiving a ping, they will put your websites on a list which is going to be “spidered”. Having robot activity on your website is the ideal way to get listed in the major search engines.

Pinging your website it is the best way to attract search engines and get more traffic.

Some example’s of “what you shouldn’t do” :

• don’t ping blog related websites if your website it isn’t a blog
  

• if you have a blog, and you don’t have podcasts, don’t ping websites which are concentrating only on podcasts (just an example)

• ping only when you have updated your content

• do not ping your website if you have no feeds in it

All this info might be helpful and you should really focus on respecting other websites terms, unless you want your pings to be ignored.

Some good advice there! Here’s a few links worth using…

• Technorati     which is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. Register & claim your blog!
• Ping-O-Matic   is a service you can use to manually ping your blog.  Ping-O-Matic currently pings 20+ blog search engines.
• Pingoat      lets you ping over fifty blog services instantly.

DEMO ~ TRAINER is aimed at helping so many people to make money on-line for real.“One quality sadly lacking in internet business relationships these days is consistency. The response to my weekly e-mails has been fantastic. “This is great! Just for a click you can keep accumulating a wealth of knowledge and learning at your own pace.

New! – Improved Learning Options!

New! – Postings every week to benefit your Learning curve!

New! – Members Listings to optimize Your Blogs and Websites to the Max!

New! – A Great selection of Lessons and Tutorials from the Basics up! All designed to help You promote any Business on-line to day.

Are you willing to spend a few hours per week learning? Look after your PC and it will serve you well.

I am a FREE SERVICE and am not asking for your money, just your time.

Place http://demotrainer.wordpress.com in your favorites Today!

Let me have your Suggestions for Topics that you would like to see here.

Please feel free to leave your comments, or to e-mail me your suggestions direct.

lorna69@earthlink.net

Why You Need a Blog

If you want to generate consistent, long-term traffic and sales, you need to start blogging. It takes time to build a blog. But if you create blog do a little each day, you’ll profit in the long run.

The first thing you want to do is go to either WordPress.com or Blogger.com and create a blog. You’re going to post content in your blog so it gets picked up by search engines.

Google loves these sites. So everything you post will get into the Google Search engine eventually. You’re also going to use Ping-O-Matic to notify all the blog services about your posts so you get into other search engines like Yahoo! and MSN.

Next, you need to get some articles up so you can get an Adsense account and make a little money with that too. You need some content in your blog before you can display Adsense ads and affiliate links.

You can write your own articles (if you have time), have a freelance writer do it, or you can get free articles at EzineArticles.com.

Setting Up Your Blog

Just go to Blogger.com and create a new blog. You’ll want to create a new blog for every product you promote. I recommend you start with Affiliate Cash Secrets for your first promotion because the affiliate program pays up to 75% commission monthly.

Once you create your blog, go to Settings. Under the Basic tab, add a description of your blog. The title can just be “Affiliate Cash Secrets.” I put “Building Your Automatic Money Machine” for the description. But you can enter whatever you want.

I also set Show Email Posts to NO. I don’t want any distractions in my blog. No external links, etc. My visitors are there to do one thing of two things: click on an affiliate link or an Adsense ad.

Next click the Formatting tab. Select “Show 1 Post on the main page.” I only want one article on each page because that gives the reader a stopping point where they come to my resource box and click through to my site.

Post template – here’s where you can add your resource box to appear on each page. It will not update your entire blog. But it will appear in the HTML editor every time you make a post.

Now click the Comments tab.

Default – new posts do NOT have comments. Again, you don’t want any distractions on your site. This isn’t a “fun blog,” it’s a “money blog.”

Finally, click the Template tab. If you want a different template, click “Pick New.” Google has a ton of tutorials on how to edit your template so I won’t cover that here. But you’ll notice on my blog that I changed my Links and put the Adsense ads on the side bar.

When you’re finished posting, go to Pingomatic.com and enter your blog name and URL. This will notify all the search engines that your blog has been updated. Only ping when you have added new content or made significant changes to your blog.

I would add about 10 pages to start. Then add 3-5 pages a day. After 3 months at 5 pages a day, you will have 450 pages listed in the search engines. That could easily generate a few hundred visitors a day to your blog.

Back Links from sites with a PR (page rank) of 5 or more will significantly increase your search engine rankings. And you’ll get crawled faster too. You can see the page rank of any site by installing the Google Toolbar at

http://toolbar.google.com

To get free back links, you’ll need to submit your original articles to these directories. You can use articles from the directories below as examples to write your own. Just make sure the end result is original content. And if your article is good, it may get reprinted by thousands of publishers.

Session Expired

Splash Pages ~ Capture Pages!  ~  Want one?

Look and listen to mine

See how advantageous it is to have a real page with solid information to capture all your visitors addresses.

www.iPodiums.com/lornaheath

Promote YOUR Biz and tell them where to go!!

Cost?   ~  a mere $4.98 per month

when paid Annually ($59.76)

Blast your message out all over the Internet.  Add music too.  Catch the attention of all those Millions of surfers.  You are not just another page.  You Will be noticed.

Build that list!!  Capture them today.  Don’t work blind! 

Know your visitors.

Get your own here.  Click on:-

GET ME MY OWN SPLASH PAGE

http://www.ipodiums.net/members/lornaheath/newmember.html

Click on the link below to read and review the information on setting up your default iPodiums Splash Page.

This tutorial is very comprehensive and will guide you through all the steps required to get your Splash Page up and running.

It contains information on using the U-M-G.com “Follow Up System” so that you do not have to deal with Auto Responders if you do not wish too.

There are also videos attached to this tutorial on how to “Copy and Paste” and how to “Edit your Picture” in your Splash Page.

This tutorial contains both text and video.

You can also print out the tutorial if you so desire or even save it to your hard drive as a PDF for review offline at a later time.

Click Here – To access the tutorial

Many students have asked if they can use the founders message on their sales page. Watch the following video to learn how

Watch The Video

Here is the code to copy and paste:

<p></p><embed pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash” src=”http://www.u-m-g.com/teambuild/foundersmessage/foundersmessage.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” quality=”high” height=”450″ width=”600″><p></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p><div style=”text-align: center;”><font size=”4″>Go to <a href=”http://www.umgsp.com”>http://www.umgsp.com</a></font><br></div><p></p>