I know that some of my readers are Amazon Associates. If you are then (at least for EU Associates) you will need to update your websites from tomorrow. The Amazon Operating Agreement update - effective 22 September 2011 – requires a new form of statement to identify you as an Amazon Associate. The new statement required is:
“[Insert your name] is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to [insert applicable site name (Amazon.co.uk/.de/.fr/.it/es)].”
The change from the existing statement is not major but it is required. There are quite a few other changes to the Amazon Operating Agreement as well; give the new version a read when you have a moment to make sure you comply.
The WordPress team has today released WordPress 3.1.3. This release, which is a security update for all previous versions, contains the following security fixes and enhancements:
- Various security hardening;
- Taxonomy query hardening;
- Media security fixes;
- Improved file upload security;
- Cleans up old aborted WordPress file imports;
- “Clickjacking” protection; and
- Other security fixes.
See the WordPress announcement for more information.
WordPress 3.2 Beta 2 has also been released today.
May 25th, 2011 in
Websites and software | tags:
WordPress |
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On 12 May 2011 The WordPress team released WordPress 3.2 Beta, some three months since the release of WordPress 3.1. The aim is to release WordPress 3.2 by the end of June 2011.
New features include:
- Performance improvements. It’s much faster!
- Distraction-free Writing. The aim is to allow you to focus on what matters most — your content.
- Admin UI Refresh. A facelift to keep it feeling young.
- New Default Theme. Twenty Eleven.
- Browse Happy. WordPress is made to work with modern browsers. If you visit your Dashboard using an outdated web browser, it’ll let you know there’s a newer version available.
- Admin Bar. More links to make it even more useful.
As with all beta software, this is software still in development and it is not recommended for production sites. If you choose to use it at this stage please report any bugs you find to the WordPress team.
May 18th, 2011 in
Websites and software | tags:
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I was asked for some advice recently by someone who had had an idea for a website to sell a product online. He had paid quite a lot of money to have a smart looking website built and then he spent even more money advertising the website online. To say that the website was not a success is an understatement!
He asked me what he should have done as he already had another idea.
This person was aiming to come up with a series of ideas for websites. The intention is to take an idea, build a business around it and either keep it or sell it on. Clearly, he needs a cheap and cheerful way of finding out if an idea will translate into an acceptable level of profit.
My suggestion was to take each idea, do the basic research and then set up a small cheap website offering a product for sale. Then carry out some basic search engine optimization and very low cost online promotion. Monitor the hits to the website and the response. If the website produces sufficient demand then, and only then, set up a business to sell a product. At this stage the website would be worth spending money on and promoting properly.
If the website failed he could always modify it to display Google AdSense or similar adverts and then sell it on to cover its costs. Someone will buy it!
A while ago I posted ‘You only need two tools in life‘. An engineer friend of mine has since pointed out that this is not entirely true. He says that there are two more tools that you need:
- A big hammer for shifting things that do not want to be shifted; and
- An even bigger hammer for those occasions when the big hammer is not big enough.
While most of us do not use hammers in our work, we probably do all require “similar” tools, perhaps software, for when something does not want to be shifted.
P.S. When your computer doesn’t work, however tempting it may be, don’t hit it with a hammer. You may feel better, but the computer still won’t work! And the even bigger hammer won’t help either!
May 4th, 2011 in
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The WordPress team has released WordPress 3.1.2. WordPress 3.1.2 is a security release for all previous WordPress versions. It addresses a vulnerability that allowed Contributor-level users to improperly publish posts.
You’ve written a great article and included links to a landing page on your web site. Readers read your article and some follow your links. What happens next?
The answer is that it all depends on your landing page. If it under-delivers you will lose your reader, possibly for ever. So, when it comes to designing your landing page, your Number One concern should be the overall user experience.
A Successful Landing Page:
- Keeps visitors at your site; and
- Facilitates further action, for example, buying something.
Here are some tips to help you with your landing pages:
- Relevancy – Make sure that your landing page is relevant to the article.
- Functional – Make sure that your landing page is functional and has a clean design. Keep up to date with website design (use designs that convert) and make sure that your website looks up to date.
- Clear Messages – When designing your landing page focus on the benefits that you are offering and make it very obvious what you want visitors to do next.
- Make your “sale” on the landing page – Don’t make your visitors work. If you want them to buy a product, start that process right on the landing page, and high up on the landing page at that. Each extra step you add before making the sale is an opportunity for your visitors to drop out.
- Integration - Build your landing page as part of your website. This will mean that the landing page will be indexed by search engines as an integral part of your website.
- Use multiple landing pages - Create a landing page for each different product or type of product. This way you can apply the other tips in a much more focused way.
Take the opportunity to review your landing pages now with the above six points in mind. Update your landing pages if necessary, but be sure to evaluate the results. You should then be well on your way to increasing your rate of conversion.
Article Marketing has evolved.
Eight or ten years ago, ten or 20 good, well-targeted and well-placed articles on topics in your niche would have given a good boost to the web traffic to your website or blog. Today, however, there are many many more websites and blogs and a huge number more articles, all chasing (admittedly a larger volume of) web traffic.
As Article Marketing has evolved over the last ten years or so, what it takes to have an influential voice in your niche has changed. Today, to get the same return from Article Marketing as you did in 2003, you probably need between 200 and 500 articles. This may seem like an impossible task, but it’s not if you “think big”.
How do you “think big” in Article Marketing: start by thinking small. Choose micro-niches. They are much easier to dominate. You are dealing with more specialized and focused and, if you choose your micro-niche correctly, more valuable information.
Then think big. Set goals – start with having 100 articles, then go for 500 articles and then 1,000 articles. Once you have say 50 articles, start setting results based goals too – there is no point producing articles if they don’t produce results.
Produce “Evergreen Articles”, i.e., articles that are not just relevant today, but are likely to remain relevant far into the future. If an article stays relevant to future readers you will not need to replace it.
Thinking Big means thinking Long Term. According to Ezine Articles, the average article generates between 25 and 250 views per year and has an average CTR (click through rate) of about 3%. Assuming that you have 100 articles, each of which has 250 views per year, you can expect 750 visits to your website. You should, however, aim to do better than this. So long as you keep producing articles, your results should improve as time goes by.
Article Marketing is not a short-term method, but it still works very effectively if used properly.
The WordPress team have released WordPress 3.1.1. This release is a maintenance and security release that fixes almost thirty issues in 3.1, including:
- Three security issues;
- Some security hardening to media uploads;
- Performance improvements;
- Fixes for IIS6 support;
- Fixes for certain types of permalinks; and
- Fixes for various plugin compatibility issues.
The WordPress team suggest that users of older version of WordPress update to 3.1.1 promptly.
Fore more information refer to the WordPress team announcement.
April 6th, 2011 in
Websites and software | tags:
WordPress |
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If you believe some of the rumors circulating on the internet, recent changes made by Google have “killed” Ezine Articles by taking away 90% plus of the article directory’s web traffic. If true, this would be a very significant factor to take into account when planning your article marketing.
Fortunately, according to Ezine Articles, the 90% rumor is not true. The article directory has admitted that Google’s recent search algorithm update did have an impact on traffic, but it was to the tune of about a 10-35% decrease. They also pointed out that some niches actually gained traffic from the update. To me, a 10-35% decrease is still very significant, but remember, Ezine Articles is still serving over 1 million visitors to their website every day.
Fortunately, quantity is not the only factor; quality is important too. The Google changes were aimed at reducing the amount of low-quality, thin content that previously ranked highly in search results. If you don’t produce low-quality, thin content you should be OK.
Ezine Articles has already made changes to improve the content included in their directory. The changes also seem to apply to existing content: if you edit an existing article and it does not meet the new guidelines it may be rejected completely even though it was acceptable before. So beware.
So, is this the end of Ezine Articles as a useful resource. Of course not, so long as you use it properly.
