For those of you who don’t know, PLR stands for “Private Label Rights.”  Quite simply, PLR articles are articles that you purchase the rights to use without having to credit the author.  You can simply put the articles on your website, blog or in your e-book.  Most of the time, you can even list yourself as the author as long as you don’t claim the copyright.  It sounds good, doesn’t it.  Well, it can be under the right circumstances, but, improperly used, it can be disastrous.

Let’s consider this example.  Say you operate a website on computing and you purchase the rights to use an article called, “Getting the most out of your operating system.”  It’s a great article.  It’s keyword rich and packed full of useful information.  You’re sure that your readers are going to love it and that the search engines will just gobble it up.  With that in mind, you post it to your blog.

Now, let us assume that the search engines do index your article and it even gets good marks on Google.  That’s great.  Or is it?  Let’s continue on with the example.  Imagine that a potential customer is searching the web for advice on operating systems and they see your site’s listing.  There’s the article with your byline.  It sure does look impressive, but there’s trouble.  A few lines down, there is another site with the same article, but someone else is claiming the byline.  It gets even worse.  There’s another site with the same article down further still.  The potential customer is now curious and clicks a few pages on the search engine and finds several more pages with this article, all with different authors.  Suddenly, this article that was supposed to make your site look good has done the exact opposite.  Your credibility is shot!

How can you avoid this?  It’s simple.  You can write your own articles or you can hire someone to write exclusively for you.  If you simply must use PLR content, get it from quality sources that don’t resell the same article hundreds of times.  Of course, this last option can get rather expensive and it’s tough to convince yourself to pay $20-30 or more for one article when there are websites offering hundreds of PLR articles for pennies each.  Just remember the old saying that you get what you pay for.

Another thing to avoid are sites that promise large quantities of new PLR articles on a monthly basis for a small fee ($25 or so).  Usually these sites rely on other members or low-end paid writers to create their content.  The result is that you end up with articles that are either written by novices who are simply writing editorial content with no real informative value or you get articles written by people to whom English is a second (third, fourth, fifth) language.  Either way, you’re usually wasting your money.

Also, don’t fall for tricks that some sites use where they offer to rebate your membership fee if you write an article or two a month for them to distribute to other members.  Sure, many of these sites are honest, but, honest or not, this is not in your best interest.  Many of these sites will make your article available to their membership right away and then later decide that the article was somehow not acceptable so that they can avoid paying you.  Whether these site owners do this intentionally or by oversight, the results are the same.  You end up with articles being used that bring you no benefit.  You don’t get any publicity and you still have to pay your monthly dues at the PLR site.

A much better outlet for your writing talents would be to write articles and submit them to article directories such as ezinearticles.com.  At least webmaster who get your articles there agree to leave your byline and resource box attached.  By the way, a “resource box” is a box at the end of the article that tells about you and gives a link to your site.  You’re still not getting paid for the article, but at least you’re getting some publicity.  Best of all, most of these article directories cost little or nothing to join.

So you see, when it comes to PLR articles on your website, the best advice is to use them very sparingly, if not avoid them totally.  I know of no hugely successful webmasters who rely on PLR content to fill-out their sites.  Neither should you.

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3. How Are You Doing?

1. Use your e-mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc) to manually send e-mails to your visitors.
2. Use a script to automate the process and send the messages directly from your website’s server.  And. . .
3. Use a paid service.

Let’s take a look at each option so you can decide which one is best for you.

Option 1 – Using Your E-Mail Client: This option may be OK if you are e-mailing a small group of people (say less than 50).  Once you are sending out messages to more people than that, it gets to be a real headache.  First off, you have to manage subsciptions manually and make sure that you remove people promptly when they unsubscribe – unless you want to be in violation of numerous laws.

Secondly, you are likely to run into trouble with your ISP (Internet Service Provider).  Most ISPs limit the number of people you can send a message to.  This limit is usually around 50 recipients, but you should check with your ISP to make sure. 

Thirdly, this process can take a long time to complete, depending on the number of recipients you have. 

Additionally, if anyone reports you to your ISP for spamming (sending unsolicited commercial e-mail), whether you are or not, you could find yourself blocked out of your ISP.  Ouch!  That’s not a good thing.

So, I would say that this might be a good option if you are running a small, personal site and you are only writing to 25-50 people at a time.  I certainly would not recommend using this for business.

Option 2 – Using A Script On Your Website’s Server:  This is a better option to be sure.  Many webhosting providers offer some great scripts preinstalled, such as PHPList for example.  These scripts automate subscriptions and removal requests and send the messages.  Whether this is a good option depends, in large part, on your hosting provider.  Like most ISPs, many hosting providers put a cap on the number of recipients you can send an e-mail message to at one time.  This is to avoid spam complaints.  As with ISPs, webhosts may also terminate your service if you receive such complaints.

An additional downside to this is that most of these scripts are somewhat difficult to configure, even the pre-installed ones.  If you don’t get the settings just right, your messages may not go anywhere, or, if they do, they may not look as you intended. 

Even if you find a script that is easy to use and your ISP has a pretty good cap on recipients, you have to ask if the system has room to grow.  Again, this isn’t so important if you have a small list for a personal site and know that it will never grow very big.  On the other hand, if you are using your site for business, this is a very big concern.  What happens when you get 10,000 subscribers or more?  Well, a list that size uses up considerable resources.  In order to keep your site from dragging down the performance of other sites that share the same server, your webhost may require that you move to a dedicated server.  This will greatly increase your hosting bill (possibly by 1,000% or more).  That smarts. 

Even with all the negatives, this may still be a good option if you’re:

• …running a large site that is making good money so that the increased hosting fees don’t hurt too bad.
• …a techy type who likes to tinker with software and wants to have total control over the process.

For most of us, the best solution is going to be number 3.

Option 3 – Using A Third-Party Service:  This is the option that I highly recommend for people running business sites, especially those who either have large lists, or aspire to someday.  The reasons are quite simple:

1. The software is already set up.
2. Your list is managed by professionals.
3. Each subscription request is recorded (including IP address).  This comes in handy if you have to fight spam charges.
4. The subscription management process is totally automated.  You don’t have to manually add or remove subscribers.
5. You won’t get in trouble with your ISP or webhost for sending out too many e-mails. 
6. Your e-mails will look more professional because most services offer very professional templates that you can use.
7. You get the option of sending plain text messages (which work with most ISPs, but are not too pretty on the eyes) or HTML messages (which look like mini websites) or a combination of both.
8. Most services allow you to have multiple lists at no extra charge.

This is the option that I have used for sometime.  If you are running a business site (or even a large personal one), this is the option that makes the most sense.  Once you decide that this is what you want to do, you then have to find a good service.  Here’s where you want to be careful.  If you choose a fly-by-night operation, and they fail, you lose all of your subscribers, or, at the very least, you’ll have to contact them and ask them to re-confirm when you move your list somewhere else.  People really hate that.

You also need to watch out for services that overprice their service.  There are companies out there charging $100 per month or more for “e-mail marketing.”  That’s just “name brand crazy.”  I wouldn’t suggest paying anywhere near that for the service.  In fact, I think $20 per month is usually too high.

For stability, service and price, I recommend two services: AWeber and GetResponse.  I’ve used both over the years and have found them both to be excellent.  When I first started creating e-mail newsletters and lists (several years ago), I used AWeber and I found them to be great and full-featured and they still are.  Then, one day, a friend suggested I try GetResponse using their free option and I did.  I really liked it.  It had many of the same features that AWeber offered, plus a few additional ones and the paid version was a little less expensive than Aweber.  So, over time, I made the switch and we’ve been with GetResponse ever since.  That doesn’t mean that you have to use GR. 

Both services offer a great value for the money.  What I suggest you do is visit each site, look at their features and costs and decide which service works best for you, your site and your business (if you have one.)

Click here to check out GetResponse.
Click here to check out Aweber.

Happy e-mailing.

Tim

BTW,  Aweber offers a free “test drive” of their service.  As for GetResponse, they offer free acounts (with some limited features) so you can test their service as well.  I’ve included sign up boxes below if you would like to sign up for one course or the other (or both).  Enjoy.

	Would you like to receive a FREE, seven-lesson email course that will power up your email marketing and profits? Sign up NOW Your Name: Your E-Mail: Remember, your privacy is safe!

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As a general rule, people usually respond to that question by saying, "fine" or "I’m OK."  How boring is that? In fact, those type of answers have become so common that the person asking how you are isn’t even listening to your reply.  Let’s shake that up a bit.

Whenever someone asks me how I’m doing, I say something like, "I feel pretty."  Sometimes, I even break out in song about it.  Now, coming from a nearly 300 pound man, that answer gets a reaction.

Other answers I use often are "I’m squishy" (and I say that as I pat my belly).

If I’m not feeling particularly funny at the moment, I simply say, "I’m blessed" or "I’m blessed beyond all possible comprehension."  That usually kick starts a conversation, but it is true.  I am a very blessed individual.  I’m betting you are too.

The trick is to stand out.  Don’t get buried in the "sea of sameness."

Be blessed, y’all.

Tim

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Here’s a recent experience.  Recently, I received an e-mail from one of those so-called Internet marketing gurus advertising a product called WordPress Crusher.  The e-mail looked pretty good and I decided to check out the website.  The sales copy on the site was very persuasive and I found myself deciding to give the product a try on one of my WP sites.  So, I purchased the product and downloaded it.   After all, how could I go wrong.  It came with a “100% money back, no-questions-asked guarantee. ”  (See the image below).

Once I downloaded the product and reviewed it, I discovered that it probably wasn’t something we wanted to use in our business.  So, I contacted the seller (at the e-mail address provided on the sales page) and asked for a refund under the guarantee.  I had deleted the files form my server.  Several days went by and I didn’t hear a word so I contacted him again.  After not hearing anything again, I decided that my only recourse was to open a dispute via PayPal since I had used their service to pay for this product.

After opening the dispute, I figured that the seller would respond and we could get this resolved, but he didn’t.  It is now becoming apparent that he really doesn’t have any intention of living up to the guarantee that he offers on his website.

Ten days, or so, after opening the dispute, I escalate the dispute to a “claim status” with PayPal.  Unfortunately, this is only for physical goods which are not delivered and not to dispute the quality or suitability of a product so I wasn’t getting anywhere this way. 

The bottom is that I am out $47 and the seller has shown that honoring his guarantee is not a priority.  Believe me, I’ll remember this the next time I see an offer from him.    I don’t go around asking for refunds to products that I’ve purchased.  In fact, I believe that this is only the second time I’ve asked for a refund such as this in the last seven or eight years.  I don’t ask often, but, when I do, I expect the request to be handled quickly and professionally.

Now, you may be wondering why I don’t tell you the name of this seller.  Well, quite simply, I don’t desire to give him any more publicity.  Plus, there may be legitimate reasons why there has been no contact and I don’t want to run the (very slim) chance of damaging someone’s reputation in this way.  Of course, I can’t know that there are problems, if he never replies to my e-mail.

Am I saying that this product is bad?  No, in fact I didn’t even test it out.  I simply reviewed the code and decided that it wasn’t something that I wanted to use.  This could be the greatest product since sliced bread, but I’ll never know because all trust that I had for the seller and his products has now gone down the tubes.

With all of this venting in mind, here are my two suggestions for you:

1. Stay away from a product called WordPress Crusher.  You’ll never know when you may end up dealing with the same person I’m dealing with.   And
2. Honor any guarantees that you make.  If you are not willing to stand behind your product, don’t say that you are.  It’s just not fair.  Besides, the customer asking for a refund today may also be buying your big ticket item tomorrow.  You can’t burn customers like this.

Now, for an important question.  Do you think I should reveal the seller’s name in this post?  Let me know what you think.

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We had a lovely day of going to church, having a nice lunch and playing games on the Wii.  It’s always nice to do things as a family. 

Take care and God bless.

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This morning, before going to church, I decided to take a look at Google to see which pages on this site had been indexed.  Since this is still a fairly new site and I haven’t started promoting it in earnest, I expected to see one or two pages.  Nope!  To my surprise, every single page of this site had been indexed by Google – including the articles I posted last night.  That’s unreal.  I can only imaging how this will grow as the site grows.  This is very exciting.

Now you know one more reason why I am a WordPress fanatic.

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Now, before we start, I want you to keep in mind that I’m not a professional video producer and this video was produced quickly so don’t expect Hollywood-style production values.  With that said, enjoy the video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7fsMQx4xAA

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Here’s the way it works.  You go to a site that you like and click on their “share this site” link.  Once the page loads, you simply put in your name, your e-mail address, the e-mail addresses of your friends and a brief message.  Then you click “send” and then software on the website’s server sends your recommendation to your friends.  It sounds good, right?  Well it was good, but now (like so many other things) it has been co-opted for SPAM.

You see spammers are going to these sites and loading them up with harvested e-mail addresses and a “personal message” that is nothing more than an ad for whatever product or site they are really pushing.    I cannot tell you how many times a day I get some alleged “recommendation” from someone I don’t know, only to find out that it is a thinly disguised ad for some medication, home refinance scheme or porn site.  It’s not only annoying, but it’s downright criminal!!  The spammer is not only stealing the legitimate site’s bandwidth and reputation, but they are also putting the legitimate site in danger of having their IP address blocked by ISPs for spam.

As a webmaster, you should really think long and hard about this before putting this type of link on your website.  After all, it’s your reputation and site that gets hurt from this type of attack.  You’ll note that we do not have a “recommend this site” link on our website.  This is the main reason why.  As for me, I think I’ll stick to safer and, in the long run, more beneficial promotion methods such as article promotion, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization and forum participation.  That’s my recommendation for you, too.

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Over the years that I have been building and running websites, this has happened to me quite often.  I build a website that looks absolutely stunning to me.  I mean, I just love it and I think the whole world should see it so I tell some friends and family members about it. 

They, in turn, look up the site and go “ugh” and in “ugly.”  What happened?  Was my design really that ugly?  Thankfully, my design work usually isn’t the culprit.  More often than not, it is the result of cross-browser incompaitbility.  What looks fine to me in my browser, looks strange or disjointed in theirs.  The fancy code and scripts that I think make the site “pop,” don’t show up right to them and the resulting “holes” make my site look as though it was made of swiss cheese.

You may be inclined to believe that this only happens to Internet “newbies.”  Let me assure you that it can happen to anyone.  As a matter of fact, I’m dealing with this very issue right now.

You see, I have several browsers on my primary PC that I use to check my websites.  I use IE (of course), FireFox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.  When I was configuring this site, I checked it on the various browsers and the site looked about the same on all of them.  I was pleased.  That pleasure was short-lived however when I tried to show the site to some of my friends.  When I pulled the site up for them, the ad boxes on the right hand side would not stay properly aligned.  That’s when I discovered the fatal flaw in my thinking.  I had checked the site against several different browsers, but all of the versions I used were the latest stable releases.  I hadn’t checked it on any legacy releases.  When I look at this site using IE 7 (which is what I use in my office), the site looks great.  The ad problem appears when you view it in IE 6.

If I had checked it on a legacy browser, I could have saved myself a lot of embarrasment.  Just how do you go about checking your site on multiple browsers and multiple versions of the same browser?  Well, you could install a lot of software on your PC, but I really don’t recommend that.  There’s a much easier way. 

There is a free service called BrowserShots.orgthat will allow you to see what your website  looks like on over 60 different browsers.  All you do is go to their website and enter your domain name.  They send out the request to their farm of computers, each running a different OS and browser combination.  Each computer will pull up the site and take a snapshot of it.  These snapshots get posted to the BrowserShots.org site and you get a pretty good idea of what your site will look like to your visitor.  It’s a good deal.

When I ran this site through BrowserShots, I discovered that it looks fine in the modern browsers, but starts to look strange in some of the older ones.  In IE 5 and 6, there is the ad box issue.  In IE 4, some of the navigation coding and CSS go unrecognized resulting in a site that appears incomplete.

Once you know what the issues are, you can decide how to procede.  As for me, I will take a shot at tweaking the code to make the ad boxes appear correctly in IE 6, but I’m not going to worry about the display issues with IE 4 and 5.  In looking at the visitor logs for my sites, I see that so few visitors are using those browsers that it wouldn’t be worth the time and energy that it would take to correct.  After all, it’s 2009.  If someone is still running IE 4, they should seriously consider an upgrade.  After all, IE is free.

Well, folks, there you have another item to add to your pre-launch checklist.

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If that’s where you are, I have good news for you.  I have found the “real deal.”  For several years, I’ve been hearing about Rosalind Garner’s “Super Affiliate Handbook.”  When I first heard about, I remember thinking, “Oh great!  Another over-priced book by another alleged guru.”  And I didn’t order it. 

As time went on, I kept hearing about Rosalind and the book.  Knowing that scammers rarely stay around long and that no scammer could possibly keep up the years of positive press that Rosalind enjoys, I started to conclude that maybe she was legit and her book was worth reading.  Well, there’s no better way to find out than to read it.  So, a week ago, I went to the website and I purchased the e-book version.  Now, before you start to assume that I got some kind of a special deal or something, let me assure you that I didn’t.  I paid full retail so that I could give you an unbiased opinion of the book. 

Once I started reading the book, I couldn’t stop.  I literally went through all 212 pages in about three hours.  I couldn’t stop reading it!  Rosalind writes in a comfortable, easy-to-understand style that “clicks” with me and, apparently, many others. 

This book is no fluff, no hype and no nonsense!  It’s the “down and dirty” how-to stuff that so many promise but few deliver.  Let me tell you, this book delivers! 

The only drawbacks I found while reading the book was that Rosalind tended, at times, to go into too much detail for my liking.  Then again, I’ve been building websites for over thirteen years and was familiar with some of those areas.  If I were a novice at setting up a website, I’m sure those areas would have been much more interesting for me.

If I had to grade this book, on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the best book on the subject), I would give it a solid 9.  Knowing that nothing is perfect, I think that’s about the best recommendation I could give.  If you are serious about making money with affiliate programs, you’ll have this book in your library and you’ll read it and re-read it.

For more information on Rosalind Gardner’s “Super Affiliate Handbook” click here.

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