Knowledge is potential power. The goal of my website is to provide knowledge that assists readers in making money online and learn from other people’s costly mistakes. I recently had some business dealing with Wordpress.com. I have decided to write about my dealings with Wordpress.com. Hoping that all readers will learn from my situation. This information should allow you to save both time and frustration.

I began blogging with three blogs hosted by Wordpress.com. I have used many blogging platforms and found Wordpress to offer a large number of features, while being user friendly. One of my first blogs was Bruce’s Money Rants. While Bruce’s Money Rants is still available, it currently is in its second incarnation. My first blog was squelched by Wordpress.com.

Wordpress.com was attractive because of its builders. The gentleman who created the Wordpress platform also created Wordpress.com (Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org, n.d.). There were several features that prompted me choose Wordpress.com.

1. I already had experience with the Wordpress software

2. Stated that they had over 70 templates available

3. I could add widgets and plug-ins

4. Ease in tracking site visitors

5. Having an address of “xxxx.wordpress.com”

At first, I was enjoying Wordpress.com. I created “emergencymgmt.wordpress.com”, “lifeofreedom.wordpress.com”, and “brucesmoneyrants.wordpress.com”. My main blog was on money making. My plan was to develop the other two later. My first surprise came when I chose a template. I had about 12 templates available. You had to pay to access the 70 templates. Next, I found out you cannot upload external templates.

I also was limited in the widgets available. Wordpress.com does not allow external widgets to be uploaded. They do offer some widgets. Users also are not allowed to add java script to their widgets. Java script is required to monetize your blog through Google Adsense or Amazon.com.

I was able to insert HTML into widgets. This allowed me to place small banner ads in the blog’s sidebars. Not as lucrative as Google Adsense or Amazon may be but it was something. This type of advertising does require you to manually change the code to show a different ad. I was not completely turned off. Wordpress after all is a great blogging platform.

I reached a point where I was happy with my blog’s look. It was not perfect but was the best I could reach without paying Wordpress.com extra money. I was not trying to get something for free. I was more than happy to pay for Wordpress.com’s extra services. I just wanted the blog to be self sustaining. I began posting links in different blog directories and posting everyday. Within a week, I was seeing some results. My Wordpress.com blog had a high day of 12 unique visitors and was already indexed in Google.com. I was pretty pleased.

I began focusing on writing posts to assist readers in making money online. I wrote about making money blogs and resources that I found useful (i.e. ZacJohnson.com and e-books). I also wrote about products, courses, etc. that had helped me learn about internet marketing.

My next move was to register with blog directories. I searched the web and came across a listing of 50 web directories. Each directory required you to register to submit your site. I spend two days registering the site.

Doomsday soon came. I signed up with a internet marketing course called Blogging for Dollars. In my view, this course offered some very useful tips. I believed readers would find it helpful. I wrote a review post about my experience and posted it.

I woke up Thursday morning and checked my blog’s stats. The blog was gone. My screen now stated that “This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service”. I was still able to sign in to my account and view my emergencymgmgt.wordpress.com blog. I also could still view stats for my World’s Dumbest Criminals blog that was not hosted with Wordpress.com but used their statistics widget.

I did not write anything bad. Every time I quoted someone else, I stated the author, site I quoted, and linked to the source. I reviewed Wordpress.com’s Terms of Service. Of course, Wordpress.com’s Terms of Service is a couple of pages long. I was looking for restrictions that could be relevant to the posts I had made. Here are the ones I found:

1. “the downloading, copying and use of the Content will not infringe the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret rights, of any third party”

2. “you have fully complied with any third-party licenses relating to the Content, and have done all things necessary to successfully pass through to end users any required terms”

3. “the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing)”

4. “your blog is not named in a manner that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company. For example, your blogs URL or name is not the name of a person other than yourself or company other than your own”

There was the culprit. I had included affiliate links in my reviews. So I could tell people about products, whether or not I had used the product, as long as I was not an affiliate. It did not matter that I had bought the product, offered proof of the purchase, and had found it useful.

It is important to hear both sides of any story. Wordpress.com has the right to run their site and business however they see fit. I sent a note to their tech support. All I was asking for was an explanation, nothing more. Again, it is their business. But, it would be good business to offer customers an explanation. Patiently, I watched for a return email.

I went to my World’s Dumbest Criminals blog to check my statistics. The Wordpress.com statistics widget now showed “account suspended”. I went back to Wordpress.com and attempted to login. I could not even login now. I guess this was the answer to my support e-mail. Do not answer my e-mail just shut off the account.

I am not writing this article out of revenge or spite. My goal is to allow other budding affiliate marketers the chance to learn from my story. Wordpress is a great blogging platform. Affiliate marketers only need to be careful when trying to make money. It appears that Wordpress.com wants to provide a great blogging platform…as long as you are not trying to make money.

Technorati Tags: wordpress

Quite a few people work with free article content which they get from articles directories. Publishing these on their web sites helps to increase the numbers of their visitors, hence a rise in revenue. It is quite a significant point for someone who has just started in affiliate marketing, but has not got sufficient financial funding yet. In order to start making money, first they have to build some niche websites to attract visitors.

Even if this may look like the only choice for you if you are on a tight budget, it is definitely not a method to create a successful website and an adequate income. There are actually some reasons why this could be harmful to your business attempts:

Search Engines. If your site has in fact published the exact duplicated content which other sites are showing as well, the search engines will penalize you for this. Your search engine ranking will not improve if a variety of websites have identical content.

You need a good search engine ranking in order to pull visitors to your site so that they have an opportunity to click on your affiliate links. Without enough traffic to your site, there won’t be any income for you. Therefore, it should be paramount having the right search engine optimization for your site.

Increasing Your Click Rate. Despite all the hard work and effort one has to invest to achieve a top search engine result, it is only half way down yet. You have to persuade your visitors to click on your affiliate links as well. Can you imagine, if they are confronted with the identical free article content they recognize from various sites, they won’t be attracted to click on your links. Because nearly all people like to buy something that is endorsed by either someone they trust, or who is an expert on the topic.

If your site is only showing copied content from other sites, no one will see you as the expert you claim to be and as a result, they won’t trust your product endorsements. This will decrease your click through rate.

Author Bylines. If you use free content, usually you have to  position the authors byline beneath the article. It could be a problem since nearly all author bylines contain links. If a reader reaches the end of a genuinely interesting article, it is very likely that they then click the author’s byline instead of one of your affiliate links. This is the only motive why they offer free article content in the first place. The purpose is to get their names and links publicized. Running your business this way may not result in a successful outcome.

These three points together will strongly affect your income purely for the reason that you use free article content from article directories. It may be the only alternative for a few, but if you can afford to buy your personal unique content, definitely go for it. However, if you are on a tight budget, it might be wise to write your own articles and once your financial situation has improved, make use of a professional service.

Technorati Tags: blogging tools, free article, free article content, free content

Tread carefully and resolve to take all precautionary measures as you are joining the race as an entrepreneur. You might have read about products such as Google Shadow that will automate your affiliate business.

Affiliate marketing businesses do take the risk away but you still need to conduct this venture as you would  with any other business. If this is the only means of income for you, try to put in your best effort so as to make it a success. In this article we will look at ways to get your business going and make it successful. By following the advice in this article your affiliate marketing business will get off to a great start and will stay that way. One program that has taken the market by storm is profit lance – it was targeted at beginners who just started their affiliate marketing business.

The first golden rule of any business is to identify the demand. With affiliate marketing programs you’ll likely be given a range of products to sell. Check that these items are in demand. Steer clear of fashionable things. An item that is popular and sells quickly today can soon change into an unwanted item tomorrow. You need a product that will never go out of demand. That way your long term sales objectives will be met.

Next, do not put all of your eggs into one basket. Offering a variety of choices is never a bad advice. Many affiliate marketing programs offer a selection and it is best to go with these. Basing your business on one product may work in the short term. However, someone will eventually come along with something better or cheaper.

Next, you have to distinguish your company and demonstrate how your products and/or services are superior. What do you offer that sets you apart from other businesses? You should always use tact when talking about your competition. Discourtesy would only be disadvantageous to your business reputation. Instead, reinforce anything positive there about your product.

Later on, remember to insure your private enterprise. It may be smooth sailing for sometime but things can turn ugly all out of a sudden. Sometimes, people have accidents. Have you thought about what you are going to do if or when one of your products injures someone? Today, people can be sued for just about anything. Make sure you are insured in case the worst happens.

Fifth, always strive to provide your clients with the best and fastest service. But sooner or later you will hit a technical problem and at that point you must let your customers know what’s going on. Things happen, that are beyond your control. Most customers are very forgiving if they are made aware of this.

Keeping your customers in the dark could result in loosing them for good. Finally, keep your customers happy. The happier they are, the more likely they are to come back. Offer your customers incentives such as savings on their next purchase. It may cost you more, but only in the short term. Keeping your customers happy will result in them referring you to others. Affiliate marketing businesses are easier, because they minimize risk. Everything else is like any other business. You need to work very hard to keep your customers happy. You need to set yourself apart from others and protect yourself against the worst. By following the advice in this article you will be giving your business the best possible chance for success. Read our google shadow review to get an idea on how this software works. This will help you to achieve results much faster.

Technorati Tags: adwords, affiliate, affiliate marketing, blogging tools, google, internet, internet marketing, marketing

January 12, 2009 is the day when the highly anticipated niche blueprint system will be coming out on the market being the follow-up product to commission blueprint from Tim as well as Steve. The program will reveal to us all how the authors are able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars just by setting up small niche web E-commerce shopping sites. Over an eight week period from launch date commission blueprint sold over a staggering 15,000 units! This course was so excellent that everyone in the IM community was talking about it.

it’s no secret that Commission blueprint has made a large number of success stories and as a result the interest for the new niche blueprint launch progresses each and every day.

The core elements of the main part of the program consist of 23 videos and 26 manuals put together from the experience of both Tim and Steven, the main authors, and additional input from Ecommerce experts David and Michael Hermansen. If the quality of this upcoming product is anywhere near as positive as commission blueprint, I dare say this time next year there will be a fair amount of people with their own successful web e commerce businesses on the net.

There is no selling of e-books, software programs or promoting affiliate products, although you could if you want to. So in the type of niches that the program teaches you to target there is hardly any competition the majority of the time. Taking into account what I have seen until now, I would say this course removes all of the major obstacles faced by anyone starting out with web E-commerce.

From what I can see this product is close to remove all major problems for someone trying to get started in web E-commerce. When it comes to the nicheblueprint at the moment I would have to say that I have yet to see anything which could even come slightly close to this course.

You know, someone is successful when they are featured on the New York Times and Fox News and that’s exactly, what has happened with Tim and Steve as well. Even better is the fact that most of the success has come from very uncompetitive niches like for instance “train horns”. Another thing that I like about these two is the fact that they show rigorous proof of their income unlike many other marketers who will simply tell you what they have made. In the course they will even show you an example of a really simple website that anybody could have made (at least with their new platform) and that was incredibly  sold for $173,000 not so long ago. I predict that their upcoming niche blueprint program is going to sell just as great or better than their previous commission blueprint program and that as a result many, many more newbies to the Internet will be very successful in and beyond the coming year.

Technorati Tags: blogging tools, course, ecommerce, IM, niche blueprint, review, shopping

While Wordpress itself is a robust and complete blogging system, to really maximize the software and make money from Google Adsense you’ll need to install and use a couple of Adsense “plugins”.

Most of the plugins can be found by doing a search on Google, and installation is simple and straightforward. All you need to do is upload the plugin to your web host using an FTP, and activate the plugin inside your Wordpress administration area.

1) Adsense Deluxe Wordpress Plugin

The first and most important is a plugin called “Adsense Deluxe”. While this plugin will help you to display Adsense ads on your blog, it also serves other purposes. You can use this plugin to insert Javascript, PHP and almost any other type of code into your blog posts.

The Adsense Deluxe plugin will allow you to insert Adsense ads into your blog posts by including a simple code like this:

You can create multiple ad formats in the plugin’s settings page, and you can always change these later without having to modify the individual blog posts. This makes it easy to test different ad formats over time, and also to replace your Adsense codes with other ads if the need arises.

2) Adsense Injection Wordpress Plugin

Unlike the Adsense Deluxe plugin, the “Adsense Injection” plugin will insert Adsense codes automatically into every blog post, including older posts.

This is great if your blog already has a lot of existing content, and you don’t want to insert codes manually into all of them. As the name suggests, when you use Adsense Injection you “inject” your Adsense codes automatically and randomly into all previous and future blog posts.

Thus, you will not have to worry about what’s called “ad blindness” as your Adsense blocks will appear in different positions within your content. You can also randomize different ad formats and different alignments to make sure that no two pages have the exact Adsense codes on them.

Unlike the Adsense Deluxe plugin however, the Adsense Injection plugin cannot display other Javascript ads or PHP codes.

3) Adsense Beautifier Wordpress Plugin

The Adsense Beautifier plugin just makes your ads prettier. By adding an image on top or next to your Adsense codes automatically, the plugin can help you to achieve a higher CTR (click-through) and ultimately higher Adsense earnings.

The images are generic so you can use them with any type of content. You can also create and upload your own images to be used with the Adsense Beautifier plugin. If you do this however, make sure you check with the Adsense support team as you don’t want to violate any of their terms of service.

Gobala Krishnan
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/how-to-display-adsense-on-wordpress-with-adsense-plugins-88862.html