Glowleaf

I know every webmaster likes to put those social bookmarking buttons on his sites. Some overdo it, others make it work and get like 200 tweets and 500 facebook shares. I honestly haven’t cracked that shell yet, I don’t know how to make something that popular. What I do know on the other hand, is that “Like” works better than facebook share.

It looks like this:

and you can get it from the Facebook developer pages here. Customize it the way you want it and voila! It is ready to get slapped in your pages.

I love this little piece of code for many reasons.

1. It is minimal, and it fits every website. You cannot possibly argue with your designer about integrating this widget. I mean, come on. Even the background is transparent.
2. It shows pictures of people’s friends. I can’t even begin to talk about how awesome that is. Instead of those ugly boxes for facebook pages that show a bunch of strangers, this widget shows the users friends faces. People just want to click it.
3. It shows a count of people who liked this. Crowd mentality here, if people see that 100 others liked it, they will like it too.
4. The code geolocates to the user’s native language setting on facebook. Yea, awesome.
5. Facebook has made the “Like” feature a reflex to all casual facebook users. Put the code in the right position and visitors will like it on autopilot.
6. It actually brings traffic.
7. Sneezers (see Seth Godin) who like your page are going to bring their pack. And a pack’s interests are usually common amongst its members.
8. It is a one click deal. Even though Facebook share is optimized to the heavens for fast sharing of internet goodyness, it is still 2-3 clicks too long. This little baby is ONE CLICK. ONE.

Seriously, just try it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: facebook developers, facebook like, facebook share

Lately I have been spending my time creating minisites. Through a lot of trial and error, I have gathered some tools that I prefer and some setups that work for me.

Of course there might be tools and plugins out there that perform better. These are just what I use.

First of all, lets talk about the concept. An affiliate minisite must:

• Be deployed in a narrow niche.
• Be automated.
• Provide revenue.
• Rank well inside its niche.

I always use wordpress, so I got the ranking a step higher right from the start. A narrow niche needs some keyword research and some planning, but in the end all you can do is to try it and see what happens.

I suggest that you get a juicy main keyword in your domain, it will help a ton with ranking.

Wordpress not only ranks well, but it also comes with a nice bunch of plugins for automating the minisite.

What I like to use are the following ones:

• Feedwordpress
• Tweet this
• Realvms
• Digg-digg
• Next gen gallery
• WP super cache
• WP e-commerce
• WFReview
• And Thesis theme, not a plugin, but it has so many abilities that it honestly counts as one. Make sure to get Thesis Open hook plugin if you use the theme, it will make your life a lot easier.

Feedwordpress syndicates RSS feeds to add to your minisite. But it is not only useful as a splog maker. It can also keep a minisite fresh with content, without looking spammy. How? By having it pull RSS feeds from social bookmarking sites. I suggest you use Digg search results RSS for juicy snippety action! And the best thing is, that it is all current and popular.

Tweet this can automatically tweet the post you publish. The newest version also auto-tweets scheduled posts, which is awesome. I use this in a technique I call, “crier”. It is simple really, you make a twitter account dedicated to your minisite. You setup the account, pic, link, background and add a few friends to it. Then you put Tweet this to tweet your new posts. That way, the twitter account acts as a crier for your minisite. It is simple, easy, and works fine.

RealVMS is one of the powerhouses. What it does, is automatically scrape youtube and embed videos in posts. All along with their comments and tags. How awesome is that? Yes, pretty awesome. Did I mention it can automatically bookmark the video to Delicious? Just add a new category, “keyword + videos” or something like that, and have the plugin add new vids daily.

Digg Digg is one of my favourite social bookmarking plugins, because of the large buttons that pull the bookmark count from the mothersite. I love it. Don’t overdo it, most sites are useless. Stick to the big ones.

Next gen gallery is well known to everyone. I use it as a little cheat, I always gather some pictures of the niche, and add them in the minisite’s gallery. I social bookmark them, and it pulls a nice bit of traffic that way, plus some image hotlinks. The fine touch is that this plugin’s widgets look amazing, I always add random thumbnails to the sidebar.

WP super cache is great for lifting the load off your server. If it works right off the bat, you are lucky. If something conflicts with this plugin, you are pretty much screwed. Everything seems to hate it. Nonetheless, it is worth trying to load it because it works amazingly well.

WP e-commerce is free, and has a premium for addons. In its basic use, it can be used to create minisites/ministores. Yes, they work great. It also has a buggy import feature, which means you can import a product feed from any affiliate network. If you pull it off, it will work like a charm. Your ministore can then be added here, which if approved, will bring a trickle of valuable traffic.

WFReview was discussed in the previous post. It is a powerhouse in regards to making minisites, and it synergises so well with the previous plugins. Trust me, if you see a minisite, with thumbnails on the sidebar, posted videos with today’s date, news snippets to Digg, and a bunch of ratings and comments on the posts you will doubt whether this is autogenerated or not. It is a premium plugin, but it is well worth it.

I know that the tricks I use are rather well known, or seem trivial. The thing is that when used all together, they amount to a nice sum of traffic and ranking to my minisite. Coupled with the right offer, the minisite is profitable.

Now, how to make the minisite profitable? Well, you really should not ask that. The monetization methods of a minisite should be made beforehand, while in the early stage of planning. Generally, I like to use 2 monetization methods, one being affiliate links, and the second being ppc, Adbrite or Adsense. If and when the minisite matures, I like to add a third monetization method, selling text links. Selling links is perfect, because it eliminates the upkeep cost of the minisite and is very stable.

The build I do to each of my minisites is rather complicated, but I will try and break it down here. This is an analysis of the points above, so I can’t help but repeat myself:

• Base articles.
• Sidebar widgets.
• Crier and auto-bookmark.
• Fresh videos.
• Fresh social news.
• PPC monetization.
• Aff text link monetization.
• Set it and forget it banners.
• Mailing list creation.
• SEO, by hotlinks, social bookmarks and tags.

Base articles, are usually 10-15 that I write or order related to the niche. They are my base SEO, and I carefully select titles, I post them with proper tags etc, and social bookmark them for the initial SEO boost. Then I just forget about them.

Sidebar widgets are the Next gen gallery thumbnail random preview, which looks very nice. Also, the recent comments widget, to show the site is active. WP-ecommerce can also show “products”, which looks very professional.

The crier is the twitter account that announces the new posts from the minisite. I sometimes add twitterfeed to this, and blend in affiliate links from some network’s RSS feed. The auto-bookmark is done by RealVMS, to delicious.

The fresh videos are put in a category, like “keyword+videos” by RealVMS.

Fresh news are usually found at http://digg.com/rss_search?s=keyword or any other social bookmarking site’s custom RSS feed.

For PPC monetization I use Adsense, a single ad space in the most prominent place, above the fold. Don’t overdo it.

Aff text link monetization is done either with:

• Hand-made pages linking to offers.
• Auto replaced keyword by WFReview to aff links.
• Product feeds turned into posts with their aff links.

Set it and forget it banners Amazon Omakase, product or category banner. I also love Unibet for casino, betting and poker banners. Their dynamic banners are constantly optimized and updated, so you don’t have to. Just add the code and let them do the rest.

Mailing list creation is done quite easily and automatically by Aweber. The lists are small, so the cost is negligible. Aweber has a signup form that is perfect for this job, the box popup that you also see on this blog. The minisite will slowly harvest those emails, and once they reach a respectable number you can blast some offers to the niche. Remember, the lists might be small, but they are targeted.

SEO is integrated in all parts of the minisite. The base articles make the foundation, the domain chosen is always with a juicy keyword in it. Auto-bookmark helps. The image gallery invites some hotlinks. The videos are embedded with their tags in the posts, which makes wordpress rank great. The RSS scrapes are relevant and have lots of variations. For the minisites that make consistent cash, I usually throw up a TNX campaign so it can rank for my keyword. That last thing works very well, but it is costly, so it is only viable on high-profit minisites.

Design tip: You can use Greenbox logo maker to make a cool looking logo for your minisite in no time. It will help sell it better.

As you can see, each minisite created that way takes a lot of thought and work to create. But you must see it as a long term investment, because each of these sites will create a revenue stream that is stable and long lasting.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: affiliate sites, minisites, niche sites, wordpress plugins

Today I am going to talk about a premium wordpress plugin, called WFReview.

Since most of my readers are also Wickedfire members, you probably know of WFReview already. Whether you already own WFReview or not, I suggest you read on. There are plenty of tips.

WFReview is rather simple, it enables you to import csv files into templated posts, and adds a rating feature. Yes, the five star thingie.

What is so great about this plugin, is that when used right, it can supercharge an otherwise crawling site. How? I will show you.

First of all, the import function works great. I have never had a problem even with huge csv files, and even when I did, it proved out to be my fault. The csv import can be automated, to keep a site such as a niche store up to date. WFReview can be set up via a cron job to fetch an updated csv file from FTP. That csv file could be an auto updated product export from Commission Junction for example (it can be found under Account-Services-Create product export in your CJ panel).

Most sites will have no need for that, but automation is always good to have.

WFReview can also be used as a massive site generator. With the right csv data, you can generate a blog thousands of pages long in no time. It will also look good if you dedicate enough time to it… The custom template for the posts is where you need to put most of your attention. Make a test csv file 2-3 rows high and test and re-test the template until you get it right. Don’t forget that this is plain html, which means you can add whatever you like, clickable product thumbnails, buttons, similar posts code etc. Just do it right, its the most important step.

Now, how do you get those csv’s?

There are plenty of options:

• Google them. You can search for filetypes you know.
• Generate them at google squared. Here is the square for “space shuttles” for example. The squares can be cleaned up manually, then exported as csv files. I suggest similar categories, e.g. horror movies, action movies, comedy movies.
• Get them at factual. It is still in beta, but there is a wealth of data in there.

Ok, then. Lets say you generated a couple of those massive post blogs. What now. How do you monetize them?

WFReview makes it easy. There is a keyword rewrite function, which lets you automatically rewrite any keyword to a link. It is under the “Affiliate links” tab. Yes, fill it up with your aff links. I told you it rocks. But don’t use it only like that. Use it to link to your moneysite’s posts, deeplinking with nice anchor text while keeping it clean.

Another cool feature of WFReview is the “Generate reviews” function. It basically creates fake reviews, randomly votes of stars in your posts. It is really good, but you need to keep a few things in mind:

• It doesn’t comment. Of course, a rating looks ok by itself.
• Put a small number of ratings, like 3-17. The problem is that the randomizer ends up averaging the ratings, and if you put too many, you end up with 2000 posts all with 2,5 rating. It doesn’t look natural, and it defeats its original purpose.
• Voter’s names are pulled from two files, one for male names and one for female. The files are plain text, firstname_female.txt and firstname_male.txt. The problem is that noone on the internet actually signs with their first name. Just check out WOW, for all those druuuids and Gand@lfs and Legolasses. Instead, I created a username list that I use, that I feel is more realistic. You can download it here.
• The autogenerated comments are great, but what is really great is that rating forces interactivity in your site. Make sure to put a “Recent comments” widget in your sidebar, and fine-tune the rating classes and the whole layout to provoke rating from the real visitors. Auto comments are fine, but their real purpose is to kick-start the site. Remember that.

To summarise, WFReview is an amazingly powerful tool. It enables you to make great affiliate sites. I strongly encourage you to buy it, but only if you are willing to take the time and utilize this powerhouse to its fullest.

Did I mention that all future updates are free?

Click here to Buy WFReview

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: csv import, minisites, niche sites, review plugin for wordpress, wfreview, wordpress

There are a ton of scripts and plugins to rewrite links, and hide affiliate links. Most “how to make money gurus” say that you absolutely need to hide the affiliate links in order to profit.

I say that is wrong.

There is a good reason for that. Lets see what happens:

1. You hide the affiliate link.
2. Your reader does not instantly realise that he got through your referral link.
3. If he signs up, you get credit.
4. You end up with more signups.

Now, lets see what happens when you don’t hide your affiliate links:

1. You show the technique, and link to the offer/service with your affiliate link in plain sight.
2. Your reader sees it is a referral, but voluntarily clicks on it.
3. He signs up at the service, uses it following your instructions, and sees that the technique works.
4. The reader is satisfied, and his trust in you is increased.
5. The next time you refer him to something, he will jump on the wagon with no hesitation.
6. You end up with more signups.

I prefer the second scenario. There are downsides of course. You will get a ton of emails saying “I signed up under you, now tell me this and that and the next”. Some will make legitimate questions, which you should answer. Others will paraphrase the demand “gimme your credit card info”, and thus you can ignore them.

The point here is simple:

If you don’t suggest shitty products, your readers will be more than happy to sign up under your link.

This is a fact, and I know it by experience. I have used every single one of the products or services that I have referred, and I have gained a degree of return from every one of them.

How do you like that for a make-money-blogging secret?

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: affiliate links, make money online blogging

My RSS is riddled with blogs, about blogs(!), marketing, making money online, affiliates, travel biz, php, wordpress, design, viral marketing, social media promotion and a bunch of other things.

And from time to time, every blogger feels he needs to write a post, on how to blog. It is like the offline world writers (you know, the guys that make books), if they have a book published, they can write an article on how to publish books.

That is not correct. Not at all. But people believe them.

You see, the problem with the internet is that anyone can write whatever he thinks. And despite what morons believe, not everyone is fit for teaching or writing stuff. Nowadays, every self-proclaimed blogger gets a few thousand morons blindly commenting “OMG AWESOME POST, GIVE US MOAR” on every single post, and he thinks he is a professional.

Ignore what self-proclaimed probloggers tell you about blogging.

Instead, take the entrepreneurial approach to blogging.

Let’s take this piece of garbage for example. Have it open in a tab so you can compare notes. And read it of course.

Now, this guy(?) tells people how to successfully launch a blog. The article ranks #1, because as you can see, it has 1k diggs.

Ok. But how authoritative are those opinions and the votes exactly? Let’s not forget, Digg is a crowd, that is why we call it the “Digg crowd”. A crowd is run by “crowd mentality”, meaning if a critical mass of people boo at something, everybody then gets to throw stones. If a critical mass of people cheer at someone, the whole mass is cheering now.

Summary: No, something that got “votes”, does not mean that it is valuable. On the contrary, it only means that it is popular. Popular != valuable. People need to get this deep into their heads.

Lets see his points in successfully launching your blog, one by one:

1. Connect with your readers through an about page and welcome message.

No. Connect with your readers through a well branded logo and a clever slogan that describes you in a sentence.

2. Don’t get seen naked: Never launch a blog with fewer than 5 posts.

No. Launch now. Launch yesterday! Your blog will never be complete and ready. One of the things I enjoy about webdesign is how you can tweak your site while its getting hammered by geeks around the world. Of course it is equally easy to fuck it up completely, but you never learn unless you break stuff.

3. Make sure a link to your RSS feed is available above the fold.

I agree.

4. Make RSS easier still: Add subscribe links to the most popular newsreaders.

5. Offer an email version of your RSS feed.

Yes. Feedburner takes care of those two, set it up, forget it. Nothing more to see here.

6. Put chicklets in your template.

Yes. But don’t overdo it, it is easy to get carried away and put up dozens of social buttons. Think about what your niche is. Sure, stumble upon votes would be nice, but is your site commercial? Then it is certain that no stumbler will ever stumble on your button. Is it a SEO blog? Put up Sphinn, it is all you need (despite them being anal fucking idiots who don’t know how to use their own CMS). You get the idea. Different social sites fancy completely different blogs.

7. Be your own promoter: Seed your best posts.

Yes. For some arcane reason, word is that submitting your own content is a big No-No. That is bullshit. It is much easier for a reader to click a vote up button instead of doing the whole submission, no matter how fast it is. Plus, only you can write catchy yet keyword stuffed anchor text and enticing descriptions.

8. Leave highly valuable comments on other blogs in your niche.

FFS no. If you really are going to comment, be controversial.

9. Reload quickly: Take advantage of your initial launch buzz.

If this is your first launch, NO. You have no idea what you are doing, and rushing content is a mistake. If you are experienced in launching sites, then yes, ride the wave, use the momentum.

10. Include tons of outbound links in your posts.

Yes. The internet is based on links. Dont ever listen to those assholes who tell you to hoard linkjuice and “keep the visitor on your site”. You don’t control the visitor. The visitor can do whatever the fuck he wants. By not linking you are reducing your site’s value. The biggest site in the world (yes, Google) is doing a single thing, sending traffic away.

11. If you have something to give, give it away!

Yes. Freebies always work. Sometimes they work too well.

12. Start real relationships with bloggers in your niche.

No. Don’t sweat it. If you are going to go deep in the niche, you are bound to form relationships anyway. By forcing your way into a gang, you will be seen as an idiot at best, and as a slimy abuser at worst.

13. Submit your blog to blog directories.

Don’t bother.

14. Submit your blog to general web directories such as DMOZ and Aviva.

Don’t bother.

15. Leave your blog’s URL as your signature when you participate in forums.

Yes. If what you say is worthwhile, people will want to check out your blog hungry for more. I do it, other bloggers do it, many people do it. Just do it.

16. Use your URL in your email signature.

Yes and no. It depends. It does work, but it might seem as too much “salesman” behaviour. It depends on your crowd, if it can support it, then do it.

17. Myspace or Facebook members: Put a link in your profile.

Yes.

18. Submit guest posts at other blogs.

Comment on their posts about how intellectually underevolved they are and you will receive the same benefit.

19. Ask friends for feedback on your site.

No. Your friends, unless they happen to be the top bloggers in your niche, don’t know shit about a blog. Never ask for their opinion, you will either get sugarcoated bullshit or opinionated ignorance. The best people to judge your site are your competitors. Never value an opinion from someone with no experience in the matter.

20. Go ‘Real-World’ with other bloggers.

Yes. If you are lucky to live near important people in your biz, by all means go for it. Don’t sweat it, as I said, let it come naturally. Real-world networking has benefits that come close to actual cheating

21. Dress up your comments.

No. And unless you have something useful to say, buzz off.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: blogging