Net Biz Whiz

How to Create an Automatically Updating Wordpress Copyright Date

Shawn S — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:03:13 +0000

Most webmasters place a copyright date somewhere on their site, usually in the footer. If you are using WordPress, your theme may already have this built into the footer code. However, it probably isn’t coded to update the year automatically. This can be easily fixed by using one of the built in date codes in WordPress. Just copy and paste the following into your footer somewhere.

© Copyright 2008 – . All rights reserved.

It will look something like this, as you can see on this site at the bottom of the page:

Change the year 2008 to match the year your website first launched. This creates a proper copyright notice by covering the entire period of time from the launch of your site to current. You can also replace with your domain name if that is more appropriate for your website. Now you will never again need to worry about going back through your sites and updating the copyright notices at the beginning of every year.

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Win Your Own Niche Website

Shawn S — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:14:36 +0000

Mark Hansen of The Niche Store Builder has a contest going on at his new site called N1WAY Readers Guide. Both of Mark’s sites have a lot of great information for building niche sites, but his N1WAY site is specifically geared for those readers who are following the N1WAY Guide, a great 9 step guide to making money with niche websites. The latest price is only $24.95 and I think it’s well worth it. Mark followed the guide to build the site he is giving away. It’s a beautiful site chock full of great content and is already pulling in some coin. Check it out at www.golfputterguide.com and then head on over to his guide site and enter the contest!

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Textbroker Review: Part Deux

Shawn S — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 02:37:42 +0000

Back in December, I posted a review on Textbroker. I’ve given them another shot with a few articles recently and thought I would give an update on the results. Basically, I’ve decided Textbroker is a crapshoot. There are definitely good authors on there, but you may have to go through a few duds to find one. Once you find one you like, your best bet is to save them as a favorite author and return to them in the future. The downside to this is that you have to use Textbroker’s direct request feature in order to select a specific author and this typically results in a higher article price than posting the article to everyone. However, the old saying remains true I guess…you get what you pay for.

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Great Themes at Elegant Themes

Shawn S — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:11:58 +0000

If you are using WordPress to build websites, then you might want to go check out Elegant Themes. These are some really nice themes that I’ve begun to play around with. Several of the themes come with multiple color schemes which can be changed within the admin panel by simply choosing from a drop down box. The code is simple to navigate for editing purposes and the downloads include any necessary plugins as well as an easy to follow installion and setup guide. The best thing though is the price. As of the date of this post, you can get access to all his themes for $19.95 per year. If you are like me, you probably like to avoid subscriptions but I think this one is a no brainer. If you choose to discontinue your subscription after the first year, I don’t see anything in the agreement that says you can’t continue to use your previously downloaded themes. I’ve paid over fifty bucks just for one Revolution theme and several of these themes are just as appealing in my opinion. Anyway, go check it out. You might find the theme you’ve been looking for.

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How to Have Your Blogroll Show on Your Home Page Only

Shawn S — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:04:41 +0000

For those of you running WordPress with a blogroll in your sidebar, you might want to set up your blogroll to show on your home page only. Why? There are two good reasons: it’s better for you and it’s better for the sites listed in your blogroll. It’s better for you because it minimizes PageRank bleeding. Unless they carry the nofollow tag, all links pass along some of your PageRank to whatever page is being linked to. Having your blogroll appear on every page of your website only increases the number of offsite links which you are giving PageRank to. If you have five sites in your blogroll and 100 pages on your site, that makes 500 links which could be draining your PageRank. By having your blogroll show on your home page only, that number would be reduced from 500 to just five.

It’s also better for the sites listed in your blogroll. Using the previous example, each site listed in your blogroll would receive 500 inbound links from your site not counting any links you might give them in your content. This just isn’t natural and Google realizes this. What reason would there be to link to another site 500 times? None really, and this is why the search engines have begun to devalue site wide links (those that appear on every page of your site). By having your blogroll show only on the home page, each site in your blogroll will receive just one link, but it will be considered a higher quality link by the search engines and will likely be coming from the page on your website with the highest PageRank, your home page.

Placing the blogroll on your home page only is simple to do in WordPress. All you need to do is edit your sidebar code by replacing your blogroll code with the following:

Now your blogroll will only show on your home page, you will minimize your PageRank bleeding and the websites you are linking to will receive higher quality links from you.

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How to Use HTML Anchor Text Links

Shawn S — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:40:42 +0000

This may seem like a very basic webmaster concept, but many of those who are new to building websites do not know how to use html anchor text links in their content and some of those who do know do not use them properly. If you don’t know what anchor text is, it’s the text on a website that you can click on and it takes you to another page or site. It’s usually a different color than the other text and may be underlined, although not always. The actual words being used to create the link is called the anchor text. This text helps tell the search engine spiders what the page being linked to is about.

For example, if you have a website about shoes and you link to another page on your site using the words “funny clown shoes”, then you are telling the search engines that particular page is about funny clown shoes. However, I see all the time where people use the words “click here” in their anchor text. This is telling the search engines that your page is about “click here” which makes no sense and won’t help your page rank for funny clown shoes. By using “funny clown shoes” instead, you are telling the search engines that your page is about funny clown shoes and when they follow that link and find actual content on your page talking about clown shoes, then the chances of your page showing up somewhere in the search results for “funny clown shoes” is much higher.

How do you create html anchor text links? If you are using a WYSIWYG editor like WordPress has, you can just highlight the desired text, click on the button in the toolbar that looks like a little chain link and insert the desired page’s url into the appropriate box. However, if you don’t have a WYSIWYG editor, you can use html instead. Just insert the following code into your content making sure to replace the text and url with your specific information. Make sure you don’t leave out any characters.

your url here“>your anchor text here

So for example, this: Google
will give you this: Google

Now you know the most basic elements of using html anchor text links to help build your rankings and drive more targeted traffic to your site.

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Build a Niche Store Review

Shawn S — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:59:37 +0000

Back in April while researching some products on ClickBank I came across a piece of software called Build a Niche Store, often referred to as BANS. At first glance I thought it looked like another get rich quick scam but after further browsing of the site and doing some Google searches I decided to lay my money down and try it out. In a nutshell, BANS is a website builder that makes it extremely easy to set up eBay affiliate sites with the goal of earning sales commissions from the eBay Partner Network, eBay’s affiliate arm.

For those who may never have set up their own website, the process is really not all that difficult. First, you need a domain name, but be sure and choose one without any domain name trademark issues. Domain names can be purchased for less than ten bucks a year from online sites known as registrars, the most popular being GoDaddy but I recommend Namecheap as well. Second, you need a hosting account. These vary greatly in cost and features but a basic account can be purchased for less than $100 per year with some hosts offering monthly payment plans. BANS recommends HostGator for their software and it seems to work seamlessly with the BANS software. You should check out several HostGator reviews as well as other host reviews before making your final decision. After getting your domain name and hosting account set up, you are ready to install BANS. Its manual guides you step by step through the installation process and you can easily have an eBay affiliate site up and ready to make money in an hour or less.

BANS succeeds greatly in making it easy to set up an eBay affiliate site but being so easy can also be a negative thing. By making it so easy, it also makes it easy to set up a site and then do nothing. In today’s affiliate marketing environment, Google doesn’t seem to care too much for websites that are nothing more than affiliate doorways to a merchant site. You’ve got to add something valuable to your site such as unique articles, product reviews or commentary about your niche. Offering your users nothing more than links to eBay will only put you at risk of being removed from Google’s index and since being in the search results is the key to getting traffic to your niche store, it will be hard to make any money if users never find you.

My personal experience with BANS has been somewhat of a roller coaster ride. I made my money back and more in my first month. The next two months fared about the same as the first. Because of my early success, I got too confident and left the sites sitting there stupidly thinking they would continue to grow. However, the opposite happened and my fourth month brought nearly nothing. I got discouraged and took some time off then came back with a stronger strategy. Now, any sites I build are strictly content based, meaning that if you removed all the auctions and other affiliate ads on the site there would still be enough content left to have something worthy of presenting to the user. I’ve just recently launched my first site using this strategy and I’m pleased with the early results.

I think one of the greatest things bout BANS is the community forum. It’s one of the best and most active forums I’ve been on and I’ll have to say I think the forum alone has been worth the price. There are lots of great and helpful people on there. The knowledge I have gained through the forum concerning not only niche store building, but Internet marketing in general, has been immeasurable. If you decide to give BANS a try, look me up on the forum. You’ll find me there as Shawn S.

If you don’t have the time to put into maintaining a website, then affiliate marketing may not be for you, but if you are able to commit a few hours each week adding something valuable to your site then BANS is an easy way to start making money in affiliate marketing.

Do you have a BANS story?

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