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SubmitEdge Review: Article Submission

2012-01-23T13:08:39Z

Outsourcing basic tasks is a great way for a hobby blogger to increase productivity. If you are a one-man-band then there is only so much work that you are going to be able to do, and if you are working full time and running family then progress is always going to be slow.

As part of my link building strategy I have decided to try one of the many 3rd party marketing services to try and get one of my sites a wider audience across the Internet.

The service I am going to trial and review is SubmitEdge.

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SubmitEdge Article Submission

My first trial is to use the Article Submission service. I have just purchased the $30 deal which promises to deliver a “professionally written” article and post it to ten article sites.

The promising thing about SubmitEdge is that they have a wide range of prices points allowing hobbyists to purchase basic services. I find that many SEO companies are geared towards large scale commercial outfits which is no when your nudget barely stretches to double figures!

The Experiment

I have picked a relatively new site which I have been working on for a few months now. I have got dozens of well written original content articles published on the site, but according to Google Analytics traffic numbers are low. There is really only the usual background noise amounting to perhaps 50 visits per month.

This should make it fairly straight forward to spot any uplift in traffic resulting from improved search engine rankings. My plan is to try a number of the SubmitEdge services to see what kind of uplift I get.

I don’t expect to get to a #1 position! Or even a top 10 slot for the many competitive keywords I’m chasing right now, but I do expect to see some kind of increase in traffic numbers.

The Article Submission Service

You can read through the details on the SubmitEdge website, they give a fairly comprehensive run down of what’s going to happen. But briefly, the idea is they knock up a 500 word article for you on a subject of your choice using specified keywords, this is then submitted to a number of article sites depending on which level of service you order.

The whole process is simple enough and if you get stuck there are some videos on the site to hold your hand through the form entry.

The Results

I have to make it quite clear that this little experiment is very unscientific. If the results are poor it could be a reflection on the quality of my website, if results are good it could be due to other promotional activity that I am doing alongside.

But for the purpose of this post I will make the realistic assumption that my site is decent and I will limit my own link building activity, in fact there are no external links to this new site as far as I am aware.

So how Effective has Article Marketing been?

Article Quality: OK, let’s start by setting expectations. Made for marketing SEO articles ordered cheaply off the Internet are never going to be high quality publishable articles. For that you are going to have to hire a professional writer and pay professional rates.

So what I am looking for is something that makes sense, is on topic and contains the relevant keywords. I should also make it clear that I did not give a huge amount of direction to the author, I simply requested that they wrote an article on the broad topic of buying birthday presents.

So how good was the article? The message and content actually seemed better than expected, and although the spelling was perfect (spell check?) unfortunately the quality of English was dissapointing.

I’ll pick out a couple of examples:

This means that you need to decide on the birthday gifts so that the moment becomes a special for them.

If you are a guy, you should worry your lady with such downright funny gifts

So on the whole, the article comes across as a “written for SEO” affair. I am not annoyed by this as it was always a possibility and I was prepared to take the risk to see what the service is like. The good news is that if you are just interested in the submission aspect of this deal, you can supply your own article for them to submit on your behalf. However, this does appear to be at the same price which is a shame.

So the question is, what will Google make of the article quality? For SEO purposes perhaps it doesn’t matter that the English quality is poor, after all, it is probably better than Google’s algorithm’s ability to understand it! For now at least. But whenever I see something created for SEO sake I do start to doubt its effectiveness.

It is possible to both build links for SEO purposes and add value to the Internet. I’m not sure this is happening here. Still, if we get an uplift in traffic, the experiment can still be deemed a success.

New Back Links: It’s not hard to track down the new links that have been created as a result of the article submission, I just did a search for a distinctive phrase seen in the article and Google listed them out.

You also get a comprehensive report from SubmitEdge that lists out all the sites that they have sent the article to, including the email address, user name and password used – perhaps useful if you wanted to make any changes yourself. The report also lists out the PageRank of each article site if you are interested in that kind of thing.

Some of the more well known sites submitted to include:

GoArticles
Articlesbase
Ezinearticles
Articlecity

There are a large number of smaller less well known sites too, but either way, we are now looking at a load of new back links that we didn’t have before.

But what difference, if any, did the article submissions make?

Traffic Uplift: And this is where it really gets interesting. To be honest I’m not too bothered about the quality of the article and which sites they submit to as long as I see some kind of results.

I should of course note:

It is impossible to fairly attribute any change in ranking to specific links.
The quality of my site is also significant.
We don’t know how long it takes for Google to pick up on these links and take them into account

But my site currently has no back links and I believe it is good quality. There are almost 50 or so unique and well targeted articles that are more than just meaningless waffle. In fact my site had way more information than many similar successful sites in the niche.

So here are the results from Google Analytics:

At the time of writing I have only a couple of weeks worth of data, so it will be interesting to see what long term benefits there might be, but sure enough Google Analyics does indicate a small increase in my traffic volume. What’s more these visits are all coming via Google from people searching with highly relevant terms.

Perhaps unsurprisingly I have not had a single visitor arriving through one of these newly created links. This goes to show that these article marketing sites aren’t really a great source of visitors themselves and the published article isn’t really grabbing anyone’s attention.

Conclusion

My expectations for a $30 service were low to begin with, like most things in life you get what you pay for. I have no complaints about how SubmitEdge operated, they kept me informed of progress, results were presented clearly and they delivered as promised.

The difference in traffic volume after the article was submitted was noticeable, but it hardly set my site ablaze with new visits. I would say that it is likely the uplift is only visible because this test site was so new.

Would I recommend you purchase this service? I think that if you have a new site and want to get it noticed by Google, then yes I would – this is a small price to pay to get your first visits.

If you run a competitive established site I can’t help but wonder if the quality of the article submission and the sites they appear on won’t be enough to make a real difference to your rankings. For that I think you will have to look at one of the more expensive services.

What Next?

My next plan is to try one of the more comprehensive link building services. I’m going to spend a few hundred pounds to get some solid link building done, but before going ahead I need to get more content onto the site. I need some great pages to link to!

But by going for one of the more significant deals I should expect to see a much bigger variation in traffic. I am looking to see if SumbitEdge can really deliver on their promises.

Follow my RSS feed to see what happens next!

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Jez’s Jumbo Make Money Online Resource List

2012-01-20T13:53:24Z

Updated for 2012! This list is under constant revision. Know of a site that should be on here? Let me know!

Want to learn more about how to earn an income online? Like the idea of generating a second income through hobby blogging? Or just looking for the best MMO resources that you’ve never heard of?

This jumbo resource list aims to pick out the key sites that you will want to check out, great for beginners, great for those looking to build up their bookmarks – this is the number one resource list on the web.

All sites here are ones that I have enjoyed and found useful. No one has paid to be on this list (although some have tried!).

Note: I have not set out to build a comprehensive list of every site out there, the goal is to build the best list of the top sites.

Content Management Systems

Nobody builds their site out of HTML any more, you want to use content management system. Here are my preferred free platforms:

WordPress: If in doubt, the ever popular blogging platform is the place to start. With a tonne of plugins, books and sites dedicated to WP you’ll have no shortage of support. This site is powered by WordPress.
Joomla: Need a more comprehensive content management system? Joomla is a great piece of free software for running more complex sites. Needs more time to setup and manage, but more flexible than WP.
Drupal: Don’t get on with Joomla? Drupal is another popular alternative for a more complex site.
MediaWiki: This is the software that runs WikiPedia, but anyone can download it and setup their own for free. For example I run the wiki: SammyWiki.com.
e107: Included for old times sake, although has been reborn for 2012. The new version is looking very competitive.

Blogging Resources

Blogs are a great learning resource, entertaining to read and keep you in the loop. Here are they ones that I follow.

Blogs about blogging: These are the sites I enjoy reading. Good for keeping up to date and learning some new ideas. They cover a range of topics from social media to marketing.

ProBlogger: Blogger Darren Rowse gave up his career to work full time as a blogger, find out how he earns a living from blogs.
ViperChill: Brit Glen Allsopp talks about his marketing efforts in great detail. Genuinely interesting posts from a likeable guy.
Seth Godin: Progressive marketing ideas from the chap who founded Squidoo.
Griz: Only occasionally updated but some amusing outspoken posts on the “make money online” blogging arena
Aggregated Blog Feed: Want to follow a load of affiliate marketing blogs in one place? Then this aggregator is for you.

The MMO Blogs: These guys are the ones with big followings and make big money. They tend to be less cutting edge as they can rely on existing momentum and I also find the style a little brash for my taste – too much emphasis on the capitalist idea of “money = success”. But definitely still worth knowing about.

Shoemoney: Jez Schoemaker’s blog rose to fame thanks to a big cheque from Adsense.
John Chow: Will relentlessly persuade you to sign up to Aweber (earning a life time referral fee), seems a good guy but I really don’t care what you had for lunch John!

Website Stats

Tracking how people use your site is an important means to optimisation. See how traffic is effected by the choices that you make:

Google Analytics: The popular free analytics platform from Google. Thanks to a recent update this is packed full of reports and tracking options. Nicely linked in with Adwords and Webmaster Tools.
WordPress Stats: Run a WordPress site? This Stats plugin from the WP authors is a great way to add stats right into your dashboard.

Search Engine Optimisation

Everyone wants to get to the top of the search engines, and although ultimately this means creating a great site, there are ways to make sure you get ahead of the competition.

SEO Blogs

John Battelle: Thoughts on the intersection of search, media, technology, and more.
Yahoo Blog: Long since eclipsed by Google, but still an Internet giant, read Yahoo’s latest on search.
Google Blog: With Google so dominant, the official webmaster blog is still a must read.

SEO Information and Tools

Google Starter Guide: If you only ever read one SEO doc from start to finish, pick this one! This doc contains pretty much everything that Google wants to share about search engine optimisation. There are no real secrets to SEO, you just need to go and do it!
SEOMoz: Great blog with detailed analysis and a scientific approach to search engine optimisation. Also a number of commercial tools, but I’ve never used them.
SearchEngineLand: In their words “the industry’s leading online publication for the latest search news, research and anaylsis, commentary and expert advice”

SEO Services

SubmitEdge: I’ve recently been trialling a number of their services and will be blogging the results once I’ve had a chance to monitor the impact. These guys offer a range of SEO services at entry level prices.

Revenue Sources

Let’s be honest, we all want to make a little extra money online! For that you are going to need to look at some revenue sources.

Automatic Revenue Systems

These are systems that, once installed, will automatically monetise and manage your earning potential.

SkimLinks: I have recently started using Skimlinks and have been impressed with the results. This system allows you to easily monetise existing links on your blog without having to do any extra work. They do take commission but this is extra money I wouldn’t have made otherwise. You can read more about my experiments in the SkimLinks area of my blog.
Adsense: Even if you’ve never used Adsense before you’ll be familiar with Google’s ad network. These are the little text ads you see on websites around the world, similar to the ones you see on Google search results. When you have them on your site you paid a small fee every time someone clicks on one of the links.

Stores

Amazon Associates: The worlds biggest online store has a very lucrative affiliate scheme. This has been my biggest earner since my very first experiments with making money online. The great thing here is that you earn money from everything that a person buys in the following 24hrs, which can sometimes be a big basket full – especially around Christmas.
Ebay Partner Network: The world’s biggest auction site is also a popular place to promote even though their earning system is a bit unusual – you get paid based on the “traffic quality” you refer.

Networks

If you want to promote a specific store which doesn’t run its own scheme in house you will normally have to sign up to an affiliate network to join up.

Commission Junction: Large international network, good for US and UK stores.
Affiliate Window: The biggest UK network, you’ll find most of the big online stores available here.

Community Sites

Affiliates4U: A great forum for UK based affiliate marketers, with many experienced professionals, amateur hobbyists, and everything in between! Plenty of market information and aggregated blog feeds available too.
WebmasterWorld: Forum dedicated to webmaster’s around the world, covering a broad range of topics from site development through to marketing.

Hosting

To get your site online, you’ll need a host, here are some of the options.

Self Hosted

If you want to install your own software and have full control you’ll need to purchase a hosting plan, here are a the ones I use:

eUKHost: Most of my sites are running on a shared server. Given that I have a vBulletin install on there my current plan is holding up well.
UK2: This site is hosted on UK2 and I bought my first ever domain through them. Their Cloud hosting offering looks like the right balance between affordability and flexibility.

Hosted

If you don’t want to shell out any cash, you can get started on a free hosted platform. Note that you have less flexibility here and it is harder (although not impossible) to migrate your content in the future.

WordPresss.com: WordPress is the most popular blogging platform on the planet. Probably.
Blogger.com: The Google owned blog host.
Tumblr: Simplicated blogging.

Social Networks

You probably have accounts on these already, but social networks can be a good source of traffic and even surpassing search engine traffic. If you don’t have accounts on the following sites, it’s worth setting them up. But remember not to spend all your time on these sites at the expense of developing your own

Twitter: Probably best left to the true fans, if you don’t enjoy using it continuously it’s a hard one to get into. But if you are an addict then I’d recommend setting up an account for your site.
Facebook: It’s fairly easy to set up a page for your site, but with limited resources you might be better off building your own web property. Still, worth having a presence.
Flickr: You might not think a photography site belongs here but it is massively popular and a well targeted niche photo group could be a good source of visitors.
YouTube: YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the web and getting videos to the top of the YouTube search results can be a big boost to traffic.

Thanks for checking out our jumbo list of online earning resources. I update this as and when I come across new sites so bookmark and check back from time to time. Before you go, sign up to our RSS feed for more useful information.

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Suhosin Compatability with MediaWiki and vBulletin

2012-01-12T21:10:46Z

Just a quick note to mention a problem I had with my web hosting recently.

As part of a series of changes to harden the server’s security, my host implemented Suhosin. Whilst I am always happy to see my host taking active steps to keep the server secure, it would have been nice to have had a warning that a configuration change is about to occur!

But anyway, it turned out that this had some negative affects on my site:

MediaWiki: Internal Server 500 error when trying to load index.php. My Wiki became totally inaccessible.
vBulletin: This still worked, but failed when trying to use admin functions such as deleting a post.

Fortunately a few emails to the support desk later and everything is back up and running! I guess it pays to have a host who can offer good support for when you hit these problems. So no loss of functionality and, in theory, a more secure server.

Of course hacks are seemingly inevitable so remember to keep good backups!

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SuPHP WordPress Problems

2012-01-12T21:08:16Z

As part of a recent server migration, my webhost installed suPHP.

This introduced a couple of problems that I will document here for future reference and for anyone else who might come across the same problems.

File Permissions: One of my WordPress plugins stopped functioning after suPHP had been installed, Simple Amazon Units failed to redirect users over to Amazon. Instead they received the dreaded 404 error! A quick bit of research quickly lead me to the problem – folder permissions need to be set to at least 755, in the case of my plugin, permissions were set at 777. Updating the permissions then allowed access into the folder.
.htaccess Error: Another consequence of switching this on is that php_value directives are unsupported. These had to be removed from my .htaccess files to prevent the Internal 500 errors I was getting. In the case of my host I was able to set php configurations through php.ini files within the folders, but note this might not be supported in your case.

These two problems aside, it seems to be business as usual on the sites.

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SkimLinks Review 2012

2012-01-07T12:46:36Z

Regular readers will know that I implemented Skimlinks for the first time almost a year ago, so I wanted to post a review of my experiences so far.

If you aren’t familiar with SkimLinks already, it’s a system that allows you to automatically monetise existing links around your site without having to do any work! It is particularly good for earning additional income from user created links, such as on a forum or in comments.

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SkimLinks Review

So how has my SkimLinks Implementation been going? Well here are some of the things I’ve tried since setting it up for the first time:

Rolled out to my MediaWiki powered site, SammyWiki.com
Deployed to forum using new vBulletin integration
Trialled SkimWords on my WordPress present finder site

As you can see, the SkimLinks team have been working hard to provide straightforward integration with well known forum and blogging platforms.

Another welcome update is the redesign of the reporting area. It is now much easier to quickly pull up reports broken down by site, by merchant, by time giving you a full view of how well your sites are performing.

How Much Money Can I Make from SkimLinks?

The question I expect most of you are interested in! Now clearly this is going to depend on a number of things such as how many visitors you get, how many sites you own, the “quality” of traffic and all the other many factors involved.

So how much have I earned from SkimLinks? To date, just over £400. Doesn’t sound a lot, and as a percentage of my overall income it isn’t one of my significant revenue streams. But as a hobby blogger this is still a very welcome sum of money. After tax (grrr!) this could make the difference when considering where to go on holiday or whether to buy a new tablet, etc.

And the best thing is, getting this extra revenue stream took almost no work. All I had to do was setup the appropriate plugins and register my sites on the SkimLinks website. They do of course take a commission off all sales but the key to remember is that these are sales you would not have otherwise made.

My top SkimLink earners are:

SammyNetbook.com forum area. Forum users often post links to products on ebay, amazon and other tech sites.
SammyWiki.com wiki and forum
This site has actually made a couple of sales
And in forth place, BirthdayPresentIdeas.net. I actually monetise most links here myself, however SkimWords is active and helps add a few extra opportunities into the mix.

Amazon Links

One slightly surprising addition to the SkimLinks tool box is the opportunity to override your existing Amazon links. You see, by default, all of your existing affiliate links are left untouched so that you can still gain 100% of the commission from these. This also allows you to install your own links if any particular link is proving extra successful.

This new feature automatically reroutes all of your existing Amazon links through the SkimLinks engine, thus allowing them to take their cut of your profits. Why would anyone do this? Well apparently you might want to so that you can take advantage of their reporting suite.

Personally I think I would much rather have access to the comprehensive Amazon reporting suite and keep 100% of the commission! Have you taken advantage of this option? Let us know.

Adding Infoboxes to MediaWiki Powered Sites

2011-11-01T22:11:54Z

One of the things I’ve been meaning to add to my Mediawiki powered wiki is an Infobox.

Having done some research into I struggled to find a good guide to get me up and running from scratch so I decided to write one as I figure things out for myself!

If you want to install a Mediawiki Infobox then this tutorial will tell you everything you need to know to get going.

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How to add a Mediawiki Infobox

The first article I recommend reading is the Wikipedia Infobox page. It’s useful to see the history of how they evolved and what they should and shouldn’t be used for.

That said, one good thing about hosting your own wiki is that you don’t have the wiki police on your back telling you what you can and can’t do!

1) Install the Parser Extension: This is required to allow logical functions in your wiki text. This Infobox implementation requires the extension to parse the relevant templates. This functiaonlity allows you to do all kinds of operations from basic arithmetic to complex logical statements. You can read more here.

Installation is standard:

Upload the files to your extension folder
Add the following to your LocalSettings.php:

require_once( ”$IP/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions.php” );

2) Common.css: The common.css file contains styles common across all skins. The code you add into this page will be used to stlye any Infobox that you create.

Locate and example on an established Wiki site, for example Wikipedia.
Copy the CSS code.
Navigate to /wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css
Paste and hit save!

If you want to customise the styling for your own site, feel free to go ahead and experiment.

3) Create Templates: The Wiki Infobox is made up of a number of templates, but don’t worry you can go grab these from another MediaWiki powered site. I went for good old Wikipedia!

The Wiki engine has the ability to import and export pages via XML which makes this whole process a cinch! When you export a page, you have the option to include all associated templates at the same time. So when you do the import you bring through all the required pages:

Locate the page you wish to export and use the Special export page to create an XML file containing all of the templates you require.
You should get a file that looks like this.
You can then import this XML file through your own Import Special page, you will find this at the following location: yoursitehere.com/wiki/Special:Import

Note: If you search for how to add infoboxes on Google you might come across an old guide that suggests adding each template by hand – you really don’t need to do it that way, the import / export method is easier and far more likely to ensure you get all the templates you need.

For more information on templates and infoboxes, check out the following links:

MediaWiki Template Help
Wikipedia Infoboxes

If you’ve got infoboxes up and running on your wiki, please let us know about it in the comment section below.

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How to Update the Previous & Next Entries Text in Thesis

2011-12-01T19:57:29Z

The default previous and next text in the WordPress Thesis theme isn’t particularly inspiring. Sure, it’s OK for a personal blog like this but I wanted something more explicit on my WordPress Plugin demo site.

So if you want to replace the “Previous Entries” and “Next Entries” text found at the bottom of your blog and archive pages you can add the following to your Custom_Functions.php file:

function previous_text(){
$previous = ‘← Your new previous text’;
return $previous;
}
function next_text(){
$next = ‘Your new next text →’;
return $next;
}

add_filter(‘thesis_next’,'next_text’);
add_filter(‘thesis_previous’,'previous_text’);

Of course all the Thesis filters are documented in the usual place, so go check this page out for more information.

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Free Internet Marketing eBooks

2011-10-10T20:37:43Z

Here are a quick couple of links to some free ebooks over at Bookboon.com. If you’ve not heard of the site it’s worth a look, you get to download a range of books for free on all types of topics – from business skills to self improvement.

Each book is written specifically for the site by a qualified individual so the quality should be high. Of course they aren’t quite free as you’ll see some ads scattered throughout the text.

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Free Internet Marketing Resources

Here are two books that should be relevant to readers here. Of course you should remember that these books are written by Internet Marketers and as always with these things there does seem to be an element of trying to draw you in to purchase more services.

I would suggest taking the useful information and continue to look for more free resources. Why not subscribe to our RSS feed for more free and useful tips for hobby website owners.

Foreign Language Blog

2011-10-10T20:37:24Z

A quick post for anyone interested in brining up their children bilingual. You may well be interested in a new blog dedicated to helping children and parents learn a foreign language.

The Language Kids website is a hobby blogging project that brings together a whole range of resources that should help any young learner acquire a second language.

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The site is a place to share your thoughts and experiences of bringing up a child to be bilingual. Go and check it out if you this is a subject that interests you.

I would love to hear from other hobby bloggers, do you want to share your experiences by submitting a guest post? Please get in touch via our forum

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bbPress 2.0 Released

2011-09-27T21:27:59Z

I am surprised by how few WordPress blogs have picked uo on this exciting news.

Earlier this week bbPress 2.0 final was released.

And about time too! WordPress has long needed an easy to integrate, clean, simple forum extension that lives up to the same level of quality as the blogging software.

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Integrated WordPress Forum

Here’s a quick overview for those of you who haven’t followed the history of bbPress. This forum software is a WP spin off that brings forum functionality to your blog.

I think it is fair to say that version 1 was neglected for a fair old period, with few new features and growing distance from the core WordPress product.

bbPress 2.0 changes all that, the devs have worked hard to bring a whole new level of integration between the forum and blog. It is clear that the two products are now working closely with each other, the forum admin and functionality matches the expectations of bloggers surely making this the number one choice for anyone looking for the best WordPress forum.

You can see bbPress 2.0 running on this site here.

Update: Turns out the Thesis theme doesn’t play nice with bbPress, some more work to do here I fear