In my search to get people to visit my sites, I tried a lot of things.  I paid for submission to search engines, joined banner exchanges, joined site rotation schemes, pay-per-click ads, etc.,  If you can think of a way to promote a website, odds are that I’ve tried it at one time or another.  Some worked much better than others.  One technique still sticks out in my mind.  It is the use of “purchased hits.”

If you go on eBay or search the web, you can find many companies offering to send you thousands of visitors for a small fee.  This sounds really good and you may be tempted to take the plunge, but be warned.  Things aren’t always as they seem. 

When you purchase hits, the vendor usually sends your site out as a pop-up or pop-under window on other sites.  So, while you are technically getting the number of hits you paid for, you’re not getting qualified, interested traffic.  A good number of visitors will not even be English speaking and, for those who do speak English, they have not requested to see your site so they have no vested interest in it.  In fact, most of the people who are seeing your site are likely to view it as a nuisance instead of something they are interested in.  This is a double whammy.  Not only have you gained negative attention for your site, but you’ve spent money to do it.  Ouch!

Oh, it gets worse.  In addition, many web hosting companies consider this activity as a form of SPAM and may close down your hosting account.  Talk about adding insult to injury.

All-in-all, I don’t believe that paid hits are the way to go.  I would suggest using that money for more reputable advertising, such as pay-per-click or e-zine ads where you are at least getting visits from people who really want to see your site.

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.

That was the case this past wee when I began receiving a ton of  messages promoting Opportunity.com.  It is the new affiliate marketing training site founded by John Reese.  I must say that the pitches I heard sounded pretty good, but I wasn’t sure that a product like this is necessary.  After all, I strongly believe that a new person can get a pretty good affiliate marketing education just by reading and digesting the knowledge found in Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook.    Even with my reservations, I decided to purchase a membership anyway.  After all, they offered a money-back guarantee and the worst that could happen is that I would have a new topic for a review.

So, I joined and checked out the site.  At first glance, I did notice that the site is very easy on the eyes.  The light blue and white color scheme allow you to focus on the site without the eye-fatigue that “loud” colors can cause.  Then, I started looking at the content.  There are some areas that are still waiting to be filled in and several pages announce that more material is on the way, but I still found enough to keep me occupied for quite a while.

I will say that the opportunity listing is very helpful.  As an affiliate marketer, it is difficult to track down which vendors belong to which affiliate programs (such as Commission Junction, ShareASale, etc.) but this listing allows you to find vendors through several different programs.  That’s very helpful when you are trying to find products to promote on your website. 

There is also a section called “My Opportunities” where you can store information on programs that you’re interested in or that you belong to.  Believe me, this is very helpful.  I know, first-hand, just how hard it can be to keep this stuff straight.  So many times, I have joined multiple affiliate programs, just to forget all of the ones I belong to.  The ones that are forgotten don’t get promoted and soon, I get an e-mail telling me that I am inactive in their program and I end up scratching my head because I didn’t know that I was in their program to begin with.  This feature is going to save me a lot of aggravation like that.

Although those are good features, my favorite feature of the site is the training section.  There are tons of videos that cover everything from the basics that a new affiliate marketer should know, all the way to advance topics that will give you the edge on the competition.  My son, Kevin, and I started watching some of the introductory videos last night.  The videos were complete and easy to understand.  In fact, they may have been too easy to understand.  After awhile, my son (who has never done anything with affiliate marketing) was starting to say, “OK, OK.  I get it.  Let’s move on.” 

After Kevin went to bed, I stayed up and watched several more videos.  There was a video on using Google Alerts to build your business.  Now, I’ve used Google Alerts for years, but only for personal news gathering.  Who knew that it could be a business-buildign tool?  In fact, some of the videos teach how to use resources that I didn’t even know existed! 

The site isn’t perfect and my long-term membership will depend on the site being regularly updated, but, for now, it is worth the price of admission.  If you are looking to use affiliate marketing to monetize your site, I urge you to join this site for a month or two to see if it is for you.  Only you can answer that question for sure.  I know that I’ll be making the most of it and John Reese can rest easy because I won’t be asking for my money back.

So, now I have two items to recommend to friends who want to make money on their websites using affiliate marketing:

1.  The Super Affiliate Handbook (Click Here For Information)
2. Opportunity.com (Click Here For Information)

(Please keep in mind that this review is not from a marketer who is promoting the product just to make a buck.  I am an actual Opportunity.com member.  I paid full price for my membership and I use this website as part of my own business.)

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!

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

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.

When it comes to HTML editors, you have lots of choices.  Some are quite expensive and others are actually free.  With the free ones, you usually get what you pay for.  Most of the lower end editors tend to be “buggy” at best.  On the other end of the spectrum, you can get a robust and reliable application with a hefty price tag.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get the best of both worlds?  Well, you can.

For several years now, CoffeeCup HTML editor has been my editor of choice.  It’s quick, full-featured and works like a champ.  Seriously, I’ve tried a lot of HTML editors (and I do mean a lot) and only one of them impressed me more than CoffeeCup HTML editor.  That was Adobe Dreamweaver (with a hefty $300+ price tag).  When I did a head-to-head comparison of the two applications, I didn’t find Dreamweavers advantages to be worth the huge price difference.  That’s why I chose to stick with CoffeeCup.

Here are a few things I really like about CoffeeCup HTML Editor:

• It incorporates both a plain text and a WYSIWYG editor.  Using the WYSIWYG editor to do something and then looking at the plain text editor to see how it really was done, is a great way for new webmasters to learn HTML.
• It is very intuitive.  There are lots of “one-click” options to add elements to your website.
• CoffeeCup HTML editor includes tons of included code snippets that you can incorporate into your website quickly and easilly.
• It also includes website templates that you can modify, thus saving you lots of time.
• They offer a free, light version of the software and offer a free trial of the full version.  You get two ways to “try before you buy.”
• Upgrades are included.  Whenever I sign in to my CoffeeCup account, I can see updates to the software that I’ve purchased and I can download them for free.  How cool is that? 
• Their customer service is the best! 

Folks, I’m really quite impressed by this software and I believe that, once you try it, you’ll be impressed too.

Head on over to the CoffeeCup website  to see their HTML editor and full line of excellent web design and management software.

– Improve productivity by scheduling a post transfer action such as deleting, moving or renaming a file after it has been transferred.
– Complete security with Local OpenPGP file encryption, FIPS 140-2 Validated Cryptography, enhanced SSH and SSL capabilities, and more.
– Improve performance thanks to faster navigation through large directory trees.
– Support for Networked UNC Paths: Ability to access UNC shared drives in your local folder by either IP address or machine name.
– Support for Microsoft IIS and Apache Web Servers: Connect to and transfer files over HTTP/S connections with Microsoft IIS and Apache web servers with full file/folder listings and navigation.
– Support for Microsoft Windows 2008, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista

In the past, security wasn’t the huge concern that it is today.  Now, securing your data is vital, even if you’re just uploading to your website.  I’m glad to see that the new version of WS_FTP takes that on.

We’ll be doing a review of this product in the coming weeks.  If it’s as good as all the previous versions I’ve used over the years, I have no doubt it will be great.  Right now, I just wanted to let you loyal WS_FTP users (and prospective users) know that the new version is officially available.

For more information on the new release, click here.

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.

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.