PDFBrander is an excellent server side PDF rebranding solution for webmasters and bloggers. Unlike traditional rebranding tools which invariably require the end user to download a PDF file and an executable rebranding program, PDFBrander offers a much cleaner and simpler solution.

PDFBrander is a script that requires installation on your server but it is extremely simple to set up and there is no need to mess with databases or anything very technical at all.  The script is well supported with very thorough video and PDF documentation so even the less technical should have no difficulties getting it set up.

Once installed PDFBrander is also simple to use from the built in control panel.

Once you have created your PDF, the script will find all the hyperlinks within the document and offers you complete control over which of those links will be rebrandable. You can choose to let the end user replace both full URL’s or a selected segment.

After completing the simple form, your rebrandable documents are then ready for people to download and can be integrated into your website in a variety of ways. You can see an example of how this works on a WordPress powered site at the following link on one of our own articles here – it will open in a new window for you:   Twitter & WordPress Marketing

As you can see, all the end user has to do is add their own affiliate links, click a button and their personalized copy becomes immediately available for download. There is no complicated software for them to install and no messing about figuring out “placeholders” or how to format their links. This ease of use makes it much more likely that your affiliates and visitors will make use of the service and that others will do the same.

viral marketing of this nature is extremely effective but only if it is made as simple as possible for people to use. PDFBrander provides that simplicity. If you have an affiliate program of your own, think how much this will help your affiliates to promote on your behalf and the likely increase in exposure and traffic you can generate. Even if you don’t have an affiliate program, rebrandable reports are a great way to encourage others to promote your PDF’s as they have an incentive to do so in the form of their own links being contained in the reports.

You can read the official promotional material below. Overall we can highly recommend the script to affiliate program owners and anyone who is interested in generating more traffic through viral marketing with rebrandable PDF documents and you know that this comes from a customer with genuine hands on experience of the product.

You can use existing PDF documents or create new ones. If you are looking for a good PDF creation software we use a free program which makes it extremely easy to create PDF’s and in the spirit of sharing we have made it available for you to download through the following link:

Get Easy PDF Maker Here.

You can download your copy of PDFBrander Here

Free PDF Report You Can Rebrand and Share

If you are using either Twitter or WordPress or both, this new short report will help you to get the most out of both. Whether you are looking to drive more traffic to your WordPress powered sites or to your affiliate marketing offers, the tips and tools in this concise guide will help.

The report is 18 pages in length and introduces some of my own tried and tested methods but will hopefully inspire you to do some creative thinking yourself.

You can download a copy of the Twitter and WordPress marketing report, rebranded with your own affiliate links (See the form below) and you are free to use your branded copy in your own promotional and marketing efforts. Rebranding is a simple case of adding your own affiliate links in the boxes filling out the captcha and downloading your PDF.

When you give away your branded copy containing your links, you can pass on the same rebranding rights to your visitors, subscribers, readers and customers.

Such rebrandable PDF books and reports can be a great draw and the simplicity of the brand new server side branding method we have installed makes the whole process far less painful than the more traditional branders that made people jump through so many hoops that they often lost heart and never rebranded anything.

With a few mouse clicks this report can be personalized and downloaded ready to be shared. No complicated brander software to download to your machine and no learning curve. This will encourage your visitors to rebrand and pass along the report and heightens interest in your own blogs and sites by virtue of the fact that you offer something of perceived value.

Try it for yourself and see how simple it is.

You can then use the report in a variety of ways – add it to your blog as a gift, share i with your subscriber list, add it to giveaway events, use it as an opt-in reward to build your own list, write a post about it and link to the download. Those are just a few of the things you can do to increase the viral effect of your report and how you can achieve a viral effect for your affiliate links. Think creatively!

We will be offering more ebooks and reports as time goes by so please subscribe and be the first to know – the early bird catches the  worm!

(IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do not have a Clickbank affiliate link you can get one here and you can get a free SocialOomph account here

If you leave any of the boxes empty the links in your PDF will not work correctly)

The WP Mail Ads plugin is an excellent addition for almost any WordPress user. Most people are familiar with WordPress and the different emails sent out by the system – you get an email for a new account, for a lost password, for comments etc…..not to mention all the other plugins that tie in with the WordPress email system. Think of all these emails going out to your customers and all they are getting is a boring WordPress system message..

They get it, look at it quickly and then go off and do their thing. The power here is, people almost ALWAYS read WordPress system emails because they usually contain important information. For example, if someone signs up for your site, they are going to want to read their username and password email, right?.

With WP Mail Ads you can now add whatever message you want to the end of every message sent by your WordPress site(s). Just take a second and think of the opportunities here. You can use it to add links to related offers, add support messages, get people like your FB profile, sell advertising space….and loads more, all from the built in WordPress email system where people are automatically drawn to opening the emails.

Your WP Mail Ads Plugin comes with a multi site license so you can use it on an unlimited number of sites. The uses are only limited by your imagination but how about using WP Mail Ads in some of the following ways….

• Cross promote other sites
• Sell it as a branding service to your clients!
• Link to affiliate products
• Add a Follow me link for twitter/Facebook
• Add a “Made by” message
• Link to your product FAW
• Add an Upsell offer
• Add an extra newsletter subscribe link
• “Thanks for commenting” message
• Add a custom signature
• Add a link to your favourite post
• Ask a question to encourage interaction
• Add a survey link, Feature a users site
• Top commentator of the month…..and really there are so many more ideas you might come up with!

There is no other WordPress plugin out there that does what WP Mail Ads can do.

It works with all major plugins that trigger WordPress to send emails and will keep a record of all stats for up to 12 months. So, wjy not start to take full advantage of all the emails that WordPress sends out – for a very low one time cost you can have this neat plugin up and working for you just minutes from now.

You can order your copy of WP Mail Ads Below – Payment Is Via PayPal and your download will be delivered to you immediately after payment is received.

QR Codes are gradually becoming more and more familiar both online and off and they can be extremely useful and profitable. Now that they are mor

e widely recognized, they are becoming even more so.

If you are not familiar with QR Codes yet, they are basically a simple bar code that can be scanned using modern smart phones and you can embed within those codes all kinds of messages, web addresses, phone numbers etc. They are commonly used to provide exclusive offers and many big name companies are now utilizing them on offline advertising materials. You can use them online, add them to signatures, use

them as profile images, print them and distribute them offline, use them on business cards, posters, flyers etc.

Sample QR Code

For the non technical it might seem like wizardry and seemingly complex but if you know how to create codes you can often sell them to local businesses anxious to mimic the big boys or simply to widen their audience.

There are plenty of online generators now but what we have here are two QR Code generators that you can install on your computer enabling you to create unlimited codes containing whatever you choose. One is a WordPress plugin and will work right from you WP dashboard allowing you to quickly create multiple QR codes of various types which will then be easily accessible from within your WordPress admin area.

I hope you will find them useful – with a bit of imagination, QR Codes can be extremely good tools to have in your marketing arsenal. I’ve also thrown in some great little niche marketing bonuses within each download which you’ll have access to when you download either software.

Download QR Code Easy – Click Here

The following video is a quick demo of the WPTagz plugin. This version is not rebrandable but is fully functional and works exactly as shown in the video.

Download WPTagz QR Code Generator For WordPress

Related articles

• Codee Software Launches Business Edition QR Code Product (prweb.com)

Our Limitless Profits review is based on our actual experience of the product which we purchased simply in order to prepare an honest and fair assessment of what the program offers.

Like many Clickbank products, the sales page offers only slight clues as to what  you might expect to find inside and makes many of the usual claims although the presentation video is keen to point out that this is not a “push button” software – let’s face it, most of us know that that kind of thing doesn’t really exist.

Limitless Profits is aimed squarely at those who are just entering the world of affiliate marketing and after watching the sales video we were keen to take a look inside and see what they were offering, particularly as it is sold on the basis that you will not need a domain, hosting, or a website.

I’m pleased to say that this claim is true. The system that they are offering relies far more on viral marketing methods and is delivered via a WordPress powered membership site. Once logged in you will have access to a thorough video training section which clearly lays out what you need to do and it is basically pretty simple stuff.

The membership costs $47 one time, or, if you click to close the window, you will get the $10 discount on the second page, so, basically, it’s going to cost you $37.  Is it worth it?

To be honest, yes, it’s worth the small one time investment. Some of the content might not be new to the more experienced marketer but such customers will still find it useful as the software will save you a lot of time in setting up viral marketing campaigns. It really is just a case of point and click. Many of the affiliate programs you will be utilizing are well known and you may well be using them already.

The system offers some clever and useful ideas into how to achieve everything you need without shelling out any additional money whatsoever. There are a couple of minor problems which I can’t really talk about without giving too much away but they are minor and do not detract from the total package.

So, does it do what it claims? Well, we spent an evening going through the videos, skipping some of the stuff we already knew but we did indeed learn some new things and were impressed with the content and the software that is the key – certainly in a time saving sense. We set up all our campaigns within an hour or so and then began the promotion process. There is absolutely no reason why the program shouldn’t deliver what it claims it can. How fast it will do so is dependent on many factors but in terms of returns vs time and effort spent it is well worth it.

After purchase you can expect the usual upsell and it’s an expensive one although probably worth it if you can afford it. However there is absolutely no need to buy anything other than the product itself which, in these days of deceit and misdirection, is a refreshing change.

If you are a struggling Clickbank affiliate, this program will certainly help you make sales but it’s not restricted to Clickbank by any means. Expect to spend a short time watching the videos, completing the necessary affiliate account registrations if you’re not already using them and then the rest of the time promoting your campaigns – the more you put in to spreading your viral campaigns the better but this can be spread out over days or weeks or you can get stuck in and spend some intensive online time setting up the promotions.

Limitless Profits – Click Here Now To Visit

Overall we’d say it’s a good product for the price and worth investing in. We will watch our own affiliate campaigns carefully and see how well it performs in the real world but we have reasonable expectations that it will deliver sales and commissions over the course of time.

Related articles

• How To Achieve Higher Revenue as A Clickbank Product Vendor (articles.thecaymanhost.com)
• How To Make Bigger Profits With ClickBank (ronmedlin.com)
• This Weeks Top Five E-Marketing Products on ClickBank (desktopserver.com)

Free PDF niche marketing reports and ebooks for bloggers and affiliate marketers are extremely useful in a variety of ways and as it’s been a while since I gave anything away I thought it might be nice to share a collection of niche reports that you can download immediately and use to promote your own site, opt-in list or whatever.

There’s no catch here, you can use any of these free reports as your own giveaways and rewards, you can even add them to free giveaway events if you choose.

No opt-in is required. The link below is a direct download.

The free reports cover a variety of niches so hopefully there is something useful for everyone. They are all contained in one zip folder that can be downloaded from the link below:

 Click To Download Your Free PDF Ebooks Here

Inside you will find the following free reports, all of which you may give away or even sell if you wish. You may use them in free marketing giveaway events, use them to build your list, offer them to your own website visitors and social networks. I hope you will find some of them useful and as you can see, some of the most popular niche markets are catered for.

Below is a sample of just one of the titles to give you an idea of the type of content you can expect – this is the Membership To The Bank report and is best viewed by clicking on the full screen mode:

The other included titles are listed below:
twitter Marketing Mastery
JV Fast Profits
Membership To The Bank
Domain Flipping Treasure Map
Work At Home Maximum Profit
Facebook Marketing Profits
Hand Over Fist Moneymakers
Work  At Home Maximum Profit
PLR Godfather
Building The Business Brain
Offline Super Cash
Fitness Resolution Fortress
The Basics Of Bodybuilding
The Beginners Guide To Golf
The Basics Of Forex
Energy Efficient Home Ideas
Super Speed Dating Secrets
Authority Anthem
Courage and Confidence
How To Make Her Fall For You On The First Date
10 Sure Shot Ways To Get Your Ex Back Within One Week

video Review Of  This Excellent video Marketing Software

Traffic Player review – A WordPress plugin that enhances videos from YouTube and any other video sources watch the video now for full details of this excellent video marketing software and how it can increase traffic and sales to any videos.

WordPress Custom Widgets Plugin

A WordPress custom widgets plugin may not sound very exciting but if you are using a free or premium theme that does not include custom widget area functionality, this WordPress plugin could be just what you need.

So what are custom widget areas?

Most WordPress users are familiar with widgets and using them to add content to their sidebars but many people don’t know that widgets can also be used within the content of their blog or website too.

If you use a theme framework such as the excellent Catalyst you will have very flexible custom widget options already available to you within your WP-admin dashboard, and a good number of premium themes may also include some sort of custom widget options but if you don’t have them, this is where this plugin comes in.

Until you have used custom widget areas you probably won’t miss them much, but, like so many things, once you’ve used them it’s hard to do without them. You can use custom widgets just the same as you use your regular sidebar widgets to display all manner of things including javascript, banners, advertisements, sign up and opt-in forms etc. This ability becomes extremely useful when writing posts, building pages and tweaking the overall design and functionality of your site.

The plugin is simple to install and use. Once you have uploaded to your site you will see a new menu item under “Settings” titled “Custom Widget Area” where you can create your new custom widgets. You can then visit your widgets page where you can add widgets within those new custom widget area – let’s say you want to place an adblock or banner withing your post content as an example – you create a text widget containing the relevant code and then drag it into your newly created custom widget area and you’re set to go.

As you create your content, using the visual editor, you will see a new icon in the menu bar at the top. Place your cursor where you want to embed the custom widget area, click the icon, choose the desired custom widget and preferred layout and click add. The plugin will create and insert a shortcode to generate the desired content.

Once you are familiar with this simple process, creating and adding custom widget areas is fast and easy and you can use them anywhere on new and existing posts.

Full Details of This Plugin can be found at WordPress Custom Widget Areas Plugin

More Related WordPress Plugins

Widget Ninja

WordPress Widget Bundle

WP Pro Advertising System

Google Plus Widgets Collection

WP Social Lock is a WordPress plugin that was originally sold, I believe, as a WSO through the Warrior Forum but we came across it more recently when trying to solve the problem of locking specific content on a WordPress site until the visitor took a specific action – we wanted to make content available only after the visitor shared a specific page or post either via Facebook, twitter or Google +1.

This is not a new concept and marketers have been employing such “social content locking” methods for some time now but despite the fact that there are a variety of options on offer we constantly found that either the solutions didn’t work or were capable of only fulfilling part of our requirements.

We’ve listed most of the things we tried at the end of this review so that you won’t have to search as hard as we did!

The good news is that we found a winner in WP Social Lock, a neat little plugin now owned and distributed by Marc Hennes who has proved to be a very helpful and responsive plugin developer.

The video below sums up WP Social Lock in a nutshell if you don’t wish to read our entire post.

As you can see from the above demo, the idea behind WP Social Lock is to restrict certain areas of your site from public view, much as you would do with the various content locking plugins available as stand alone scripts or features of membership plugins, whereby only registered or logged in members can see certain content on your site. There are plenty of free plugins that can do this in the WordPress plugin repository. However, what this plugin allows you to do is restrict your selected content to only those who share your selected URL via one of the three main social networking sites and at present there are not any free plugins that do this as far as we know.

The benefits of this are obvious. First and foremost it will generate traffic from all three of the social networks as people Tweet, Like and +1 your page/post and give it exposure to potentially unlimited new visitors. It has excellent viral potential and used wisely can gain you a lot of visitors and perhaps a lot of customers or subscribers, whatever you are looking for in essence.

The claim that you will generate huge numbers of backlinks is perhaps true in part, although how much weight Facebook and Twitter links really carry is anyone’s guess to be honest and as for Google +1 it’s perhaps too early to tell how much an increased number of likes is going to impact your ranking or SERPS results. Ultimately though, none of these increases will do your sites any harm and you will get more traffic.

WP Social Lock has been around for a while now but its usage is still not as widespread as you might expect for such a neat little WordPress plugin. As we’ve already said, there are several others around, most more expensive and invariably incapable of offering shares on the big three networks. There are several Facebook only plugins but despite Facebook‘s massive reach there are still plenty of people who don’t use it. Restricting content based on a Facebook “Like” is a little tough on those folks, as indeed is restricting it to just Twitter. By using the three options in WP Social Lock you probably have the majority of internet users covered.

The plugin is easy to install and use – entering a simple shortcode before the content you wish to lock is all there is to it really.

So what about problems? Well, like many WordPress plugins, conflicts can arise with themes, other plugins you may be running etc. but Marc is helpful and responsive with his support so if you do encounter any issues they should be resolved fairly quickly. When you run other plugins that rely on the API’s of sites like Facebook and Twitter it’s not always the plugin’s fault when odd behaviour strikes.

One question that was raised frequently when the plugin was first launched and only offered Facebook and Twitter options was whether it would affect the spidering of your content by search engines. The answer to this is no – even though human visitors cannot see the content until they complete the required action, the spiders are granted full access to read and crawl the entire post or page so there should be no detrimental effects on the SERPS performance.

We had one minor issue with another plugin we were using on the site where we first tested WP Social Lock but after a quick process of elimination we isolated the conflict and informed Marc, who immediately set to work in the quest for a solution. We found our own fix in the end but our emails were all answered promptly and helpfully.

(If you would like to see a real world example of a page on which we deployed WP Social Lock here is one you can check out).

Overall, we love this plugin and recommend it to anyone who is looking for ways to boost their traffic. All we would add is that it isn’t something you should use indiscriminately. Selective restriction of your best/most valuable content is quite reasonable but overdoing it could be a real turnoff for a lot of people if you demand they share too much before allowing them access and they will be more likely to move on if you get too heavy handed.

If you would like to try WP Social Lock for free you can download WP Social Lock Lite free from here. (The Lite version allows you to lock content subject to a tweet on Twitter).

We hunted high and low for both free and paid solutions to social content locking on WordPress and came up with quite a few but in terms of value for money, user experience, layout, ease of use and features, WP Social Lock was a clear winner. Here are just a few others that we looked at, tried or rejected. All have their pros and cons, and as you will see, most are not quite as simple or well featured. We are going to be looking at a free plugin in the course of the next few weeks which although not really a competitor to WP Social Lock is pretty cool in its own right so watch this space for that one.

Other Social Content Locking plugin options for WordPress users:

WP Like Lockout – we haven’t personally tested this one but the sales page itself employs the lockout which seems a bit counter productive if you ask us. It would appear to be an OK plugin if you want to use Facebook likes alone but it uses popups which are a lot more intrusive and potentially frustrating for visitors than WP Social Lock’s interface. Much will depend on the settings you elect to use on the popup. It is also more expensive by around ten bucks so in terms of value for money it’s in last place here on that basis alone – there are better and cheaper choices as you can see. If you want to see it in action there is a video at this link WP Like Lockout

Google +1 Content Locker – simple, easy to use and cheap at just $7.00. If you’re going to go for a single content locking option Google might be the best bet as opposed to Facebook. Only time will tell. You can get Google +1 Content Locker here.

WordPress Like Locker – from the same author as the above and also cheap at $7.00. We have used this in the past and it’s effective enough, not overly intrusive and simple to use. If all you care about is Facebook likes it’s a good enough choice. See the details at WordPress Like Locker

Social Traffic Pop  – the third option from the same stable as the previous two plugins. Works on all three major networks – Google +1, Facebook and Twitter. Comes in at $18.00. We like this one and have used it in the past but still prefer the non pop up approach to content locking overall. Having said that, this is the cheapest of the plugins that support all three networks and represents good value for money. Read more about Social Traffic Pop.

This list is not exhaustive and there are other products out there which may or may not float your boat but if you want an easy professional looking social content locking plugin, our recommendation for WP Social Lock is one we are happy to make.

Please let us know what you think in the comments section. Have you ever used WP Social Lock? What do you think about social content locking in general? Would you ever try it or do you think it would  put off your visitors? Do you have any experience of other WordPress solutions that we haven’t mentioned?

Would you like to sell your ebook on Clickbank for free – without the normal upfront registration costs, marketing costs, website and sales pages creation and all that hassle? I got an email recently from Harvey Segal and I always have time to read emails from this guy because his advice is invariably good.

If you’re ready to submit your book and start making money and don’t want to read all this stuff just click here to sell your ebooks online for free

If you’ve never heard of Mr Segal he’s the man behind such gems as Clickbank For Newbies and the Ultimate Supertip both of which have helped a lot of people to make money online. When it comes to Clickbank this is on expert you should take notice of, he runs the Ultimate Guide To Clickbank and it’s as valuable and relevant today as it was when he first launched the site – don’t be fooled by the simple, some might say ugly website design – the content outshines the look and lets you get right to the meat of making money on Clickbank fast. I’ve made money with all of Harvey’s products and recommend them highly.

Anyway, on to the latest email, the reason you came here you want to publish an ebook, sell an ebook online, perhaps sell an ebook on Clickbank and leverage the huge power offered by their affiliate network.

The problem is you’re on a very tight budget, maybe you’re great at writing, you have a great subject and valuable information, but you’re not so hot on how to publish and sell online.

Want To Sell Your Book On Clickbank? Click Me Now

Well,  you’re in luck having landed on this page today. If you’re comfortable with setting up a sales page, marketing and paying a fee to get your books published in the Clickbank marketplace you might like to read my post about Creating Your First Ebook but if all that is too much trouble and is just standing in the way of selling what you have written we can take care of it all for you with a brand new service.

This brand new service isn’t going to cost you anything up front. That’s right, we’re going to show you how to submit your ebook to this new site where they will take care of all the technical, nerdy marketing and up front costs for you.

Sound good? You bet it’s good – that’s why we’re recommending you check it out now if you have a book you’ve been wanting to sell already but just haven’t got past the final hurdles or if you are looking to sell a book you’re working on right now or planning for the future.

Head over to We Sell Your Books – it’s a simple looking site but it’s consequently easy to navigate. You could submit your book in the next couple of minutes and be making money this week.

Good luck and please let us know if you found this post useful – share it and help your friends and readers make some money online.

Facebook pages  have become a great way to promote all manner of things online and to help drive traffic via the huge social network.

Facebook allows anyone to sign up for a developer account and create customized fan pages where content can be inserted into an iframe to serve all manner of content to page visitors. However, with more and more users now using Facebook via a secure https, unless you are delivering your iframe tab or page content over SSL visitors will no longer be able to see your carefully crafted content without clicking on a link that asks them to revert to non-secure browsing in order to see the page. Most users won’t do this of course because they will feel threatened simply by the warning.

At the moment, your pages remain live but at the end of October 2011 Facebook will insist that you server a secure version of your iframe. It hasn’t yet been made clear what will happen if you do not do so.

SSL certificates are expensive and if you don’t have one this represents a bit of a dilemma.

However, there is now a free and easy way to make your Facebook iFrame  tabs and pages available over SSL and it is  very quick and easy to set up.

Head over to the website of Social-Server.com, register with  your name and email, and all you have to do is enter your URL, click a button or two and presto, you will be given a shiny new https: URL which you can add in the relevant field on your Facebook page or app options and your iframe will be served perfectly to anyone whether they are using https: or not.

An awesome free service that will save Facebook developers and fan page owners huge headaches and not inconsiderable sums of money.

If you have any iframe content on Facebook pages, now is the time to fix this and ensure that your visitors always see what you want them to. Don’t wait until October, you could be losing a lot of traffic already.

If you know anyone else who might benefit from this great free service please share this article with them to help them out and we welcome your feedback in the comments section below.

Clickbank CDR is something many affiliates and vendors often know little about. Clickbank articles have become commonplace but there is still a lot of misinformation spread around about the Internet’s largest digital information product retailer.

I see a lot of newbie related questions and a fair amount of unsubstantiated claims along with the usual scam type accusations being thrown around. If you are new to Clickbank or thinking about signing up as an affiliate in an attempt to make some money I hope this hub will be helpful.

Let’s get something out of the way right at the outset. There are people who make a lot of money with Clickbank, but they are almost certainly in the minority of the 100,000 plus affiliates who have a Clickbank account. It is unlikely that you are going to become one of these “super affiliates” in your first month, despite all the products out there that claim they can do just that for you.

However, if you are looking to earn some extra income, Clickbank is just another affiliate network that can help you do it. As with most affiliate networks it costs nothing to sign up, but if you are going to earn any commissions you are going to have to do some work. This is where most people fall at the first hurdle. If you are starting from a position of zero knowledge of internet and affiliate marketing, you have a lot to learn and it is going to take time.

Having said that, I am going to address an issue that is extremely controversial and has caused a lot of nonsense to be written about Clickbank claiming that it is a scam etc. etc. These claims are often made by disgruntled people who are prone to signing up for anything and everything on the web without really understanding what they are doing and, 99% of the time never reading any site’s terms of service or conditions of participation. These are the people who click on the “OK” button every time and then cry when they fall foul of a site’s rules.

You will see the relevance of this shortly, I promise

I have also seen claims by Clickbank affiliates that they are being cheated out of commissions but it all seems to be based on the number of “hops” they are getting in relation to the number of sales/conversions. From this they deduce that someone must be robbing them??? Unfortunately, in my experience, conversion rates can vary so wildly on a given product and are dependent on so many other factors that it’s a shaky foundation to base such accusations against the affiliate network. However, I digress, so let’s move on to this controversial issue….

Clickbank’s Customer Distribution Requirement or CDR

Did you know that a large percentage of Clickbank affiliate accounts, supposedly around 90%, are
inactive? It is quite a shocking statistic if it is accurate. The main reason for
this high number of dormant or inactive accounts is something that few people know or even talk about. It is however a very important part of Clickbank’s terms of service and it often proves to be a killer for many
hopeful Clickbank affiliates.

If you manage to sell an item or two on Clickbank, hold the celebrations. Before getting paid you need to need to meet the Clickbank Customer Distribution Requirement. Here is what that means, taken directly from Clickbank’s site:

“In compliance with US law, ClickBank will withhold payment of any account balance until the following criteria
is met:
* Sales made with 5 or more different credit card numbers and
* Sales made with two different payment methods (either Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal). Note: PayPal
purchases do not count toward the minimum 5 different credit card numbers”.

That seems pretty clear. Most affiliate networks will require you to generate a minimum amount of commissions before you get paid but the Clickbank CDR specifically states that you must record sales from five different credit card accounts as well as sales from at least one other form of payment such as Paypal. (I find that a lot of my CB sales are through Paypal and credit cards lag a fair way behind). This in itself is not too bad if you can generate those initial sales, but the problems arise when you don’t and find your account marked as “dormant”. Basically here is what Clickbank say…

“Accounts
with a positive balance but no earnings for an extended period of time
are considered dormant. Dormant accounts are subject to a charge of $1
per pay period after 90 days of inactivity, $5 per pay period after 180
days of inactivity, and $15 per pay period after 365 days of inactivity”

This is the major cause of Clickbank affiliates losing heart and giving up. Many disgruntled people then sound off and complain bitterly of mistreatment by Clickbank. In short, they didn’t read the terms and fail to understand why those terms exist.

Clickbank are not perfect by any means. One of the other biggest complaints you will hear about them from both vendors and affiliates is that they stubbornly insist on allowing people to buy through their own affiliate link. Because of this policy, they came up with CDR, to prevent people from opening an affiliate account just to buy through their own link and pay a fraction of the product’s cost by earning commissions on each purchase.

So, you could say that CDR is a band-aid to fix a problem of the company’s own making.

Whatever your view, that’s the way it is for now so you have to work within those parameters. If you are suffering with a dormant account or think that you could well find yourself in the position at some point in time, you are going to need to make more sales, more quickly and that’s probably easier said than done of you are already struggling.

In an attempt to address the problem faced by so many, Harvey Segal, the author of many Clickbank ebooksand owner of a Clickbank dedicated site, the CBGuide, has come up with an ingenious answer. It is a short free report and you will not need to give out any personal information to get your copy.

I consider this an essential read for anyone working as a Clickbank affiliate or publisher/vendor. As with all of Harvey’s
offerings, it’s a very well thought out and executed product that will
genuinely help people to succeed with Clickbank. It also contains a very clever viral twist.

Download Your Copy of Clickbank For Newbies Here.

I am sure that when you have read the report you will see how it can change your Clickbank luck and help you and help you to help others. This is not another “make millions on Clickbank” publication, just a clever and simple way for struggling affiliates to get past the first hurdle and pick up their first check in the mail. Let’s face it, it’s a check you deserve if you have promoted products and made a handful of sales, and beats seeing your earnings steadily decline and dwindle away along with those aspirations and hopes of making some money online with Clickbank.

I certainly hope you will find it useful along with the other excellent resources I have listed below. These will give you further insights into affiliate marketing and Clickbank and are well worth a visit.

Now, go and earn those commissions and enjoy your first payment.

Catalyst Theme For WordPress Review

The Catalyst Theme is really a lot more than a traditional bolt on WordPress theme – it’s actually a framework that enables you to do some pretty amazing things when it comes to designing and building WordPress driven sites, whether they are blogs, static or dynamic sites or a combination of all three.

There are no longer any coupon codes published by Catalyst – sorry. However, they are currently having a one year anniversary sale and you can grab a lifetime Personal Edition membership for just $77.00 if you order during this special offer.

With Catalyst Theme, you are not limited to a single layout, one, two or three sidebars, one widget area or all the other restrictions that come with a single WordPress theme. With the Catalyst theme framework you can basically build unlimited custom page layouts, custom widgets, custom hook boxes and more, enabling you to design and construct every page and post template on your site exactly as you want them. You can have an individual header or footer for every single page if you so desire!  The real beauty of it though is not just the almost limitless customization available to you, but the ease with which you can implement them all.

Catalyst Theme - Order Your Copy Now

Firstly, Catalyst comes with 22 custom skins, which in and of itself might not sound like much, but with the Dynamik Child Theme that comes as part of the Catalyst bundle you then have over 600 No-Coding Design Options, meaning that combined with the base skins, you have at your fingertips an absolutely huge range of design options. Whether you are a beginner or an accomplished WordPress user, customizing your WordPress sites has never been easier or more efficient.

Once you have installed the Catalyst theme and the Dynamik Child Theme you can start to explore the power and flexibility of the framework using any of the Dynamik child themes as starting points, using those from the marketplace or just creating your own. Catalyst makes design very straightforward and intuitive.

At this point it might be prudent to show you an example of what Catalyst can do, and bear in mind this site was built over the course of a couple of days, starting completely from scratch after a request for a redesign of an existing WordPress website – Catalyst Theme Powered Site – Arteccentrix

You can even create your own custom child themes with a single mouse click, something you will not find anywhere else, not even with the mighty Thesis.

All the following features come with the Catalyst WordPress theme:

22 Custom Skins on which to base site design.

600+ Dynamik design options to tweak your site’s design to perfection. (no manual coding or CSS required)

Add any Custom CSS you likeBuilt-In Image Uploader to add the images that make your site shine.

Fill in a few fields, click a single button and download the themes you build. Use them for anything you want – your own sites, client’s sites etc. You can even sell them for profit if you wish.

Huge range of  Custom Widgets including Excerpt Widget, Author Bio Widget, Ad Widget a PHP  Widget and lots more!

Catalyst works with WordPress and WordPress MU (Multi-User)

Receive Free Updates for Life ( with automatic update feature)

You will also have access to the new “MarketPlace” where you will find more custom themes, skins and other add ons for your Catalyst powered sites that have been created by the Catalyst members themselves. Many of these are free but there are also premium products available within the store.

All this sounds impressive but if it’s also a little overwhelming don’t worry. Installing the theme is pretty much the same as you would follow for any other theme,the only real difference is that you actually install it in two steps, first the Catalyst Theme Framework followed by the Dynamik Child Theme.

Once you’ve done that you will be able to access all the theme‘s options from within your WP-Admin area. There is a lot to explore, and the more you look the more you find but you will also find an excellent support forum and some pretty comprehensive video demos and members support area that answers all the most common questions and shows you exactly how to use the powerful features.

Once you start to play around with the options you’ll soon feel comfortable and it’ all accomplished from within the theme itself so if you’re not CSS savvy, don’t worry. Things that can be a huge headache when working with regular WordPress themes are amazingly easy to achieve with Catalyst’s user friendly and clearly laid out interface.

I should add that when it comes to SEO, Catalyst has been fitted out with a pretty decent set of options that will ensure every post and page you write can be quickly and simply optimized for the search engines at the time of writing and can be easily tweaked at a later stage. Since using Catalyst I have, for the first time in my WordPress career, not bothered to use any SEO plugin and judging by the results, Catalyst does a very nice job at optimizing for targeted keywords.

A lot of thought has gone into the entire package and the developers have delivered a clean, logical and well laid out admin interface which is very intuitive to use and the tutorial videos are all anyone will need to understand and use the multiple options available.

For a good overview take a look at the following video while you’re here:

To sum up, I am so happy with my own purchase of Catalyst that I intend to eventually move the majority of my WordPress sites across to the platform. It is really that good and will make tweaking my sites in the future a whole lot easier. The latest release which came out a couple of days ago includes even more goodies that I have yet to explore.

Don’t think that this all comes at a premium price either – an unlimited site license for the Catalyst Theme comes in at just $77.00 (Basic Edition) or $127.00 (Personal Edition) and this includes lifetime updates. In that sense alone it is a genuine bargain. There are other frameworks out there but Catalyst is not only powerful and extremely flexible it is also fantastic value for money. Visit the site to understand the differences between the aforementioned license options which are extremely generous.

For those who need or want even more there is a developer edition ($197) which gives you access to an exclusive forum and more special features that are not available to regular members. Full details can be found at the site, so we’ll leave you to decide if the developer license is something you need.

Order now and take advantage of the special anniversary pricing options.

You Can Find Our More and Download Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework here

If you would like to see some of the sites built using Catalyst have a browse through the Catalyst Showcase

WordPress users – a fully automated sales, thank you and download system for Paypal, Clickbank and Ejunkie merchants.

If you are in a hurry you can download Digital  Product Demon Free Here -

If you are selling digital products through your WordPress sites, or if you would like to but have never been sure how to go about it, we have an easy and free solution for you.

Digital Product Demon- Sell Digital Products

If you want to use WordPress as a platform for selling digital products, need Paypal an Clickbank support and protection for your products to avoid them being accessed by those who choose not to pay for them first, Digital Product Demon might just be the answer for you.

Would you also like a tool that makes it easy for you to market products as an affiliate and effortlessly cloak your affiliate links?

Maybe you have a number of products you would like to sell through the Clickbank marketplace but can’t afford the multiple set up fees required or just don’t want to pay them? What if you could sell multiple products from just one account and pay only one set up fee of $50? Digital Product Demon can do this for you too.

Digital Product Demon combined with WordPress will let you:

Easily sell digital products with just a PayPal account - PayPal is easy to use, but it doesn’t provide a way to hide your ThankYou page or protect your download links.

Digital Product Demon makes it easy to do both. It’ll hide your Thank You page so that only valid customers can access it and it will expire your download page and encrypt your download URLs so that your links can’t be shared or posted on “pirating” forums.

Support multiple products in a single ClickBank Account - Digital Product Demon lets you use separate sales, thank you, and download pages for each product you define. That means that you can place multiple products in one ClickBank account but still display individually crafted sales pages for each product.

Automatically cloak your affiliate links – The benefits of cloaking affiliate links have been discussed frequently here and elsewhere. DPD’s AFFILIATE mode handles this for you automatically!

Protects your Download Pages – Download pages can only be accessed through a link that includes the buyer’s purchase information. These pages are also set to expire after a period you specify – usually 3-5 days after the purchase.

Protects your Download Links – create ugly, cryptic, expiring links that can’t be easily shared or posted on forums and other websites.

Hide your digital product’s actual URL – anyone who sees your download link won’t have a clue about what your download filename is. Everything is generated using numbers, letters, and special characters that don’t mean a thing to anyone but YOUR software.

Automatically generate PayPal, ClickBank, and EJunkie payment buttons – saving you tons of time fighting PayPal’s button factory or customizing your own ClickBank buttons.

AND….because this is a WordPress plugin it’s very simple to install, use and customize! I’m offering it free to all my readers so you have nothing to lose and I’m not even going to ask for your email address – download the plugin, install it and see if it’s for you!

Click Here To Download Your Free Copy Of Digital Product Demon For WordPress

As an added bonus I’m giving you master resale rights to the product along with all the sales page graphics so you can use Digital Product Demon however you choose to help grow your own online business – sell it, give it away, use it to help build your list etc.

However, if this is still all too much for you and all you want to do is sell your own Ebook online, you can now take advantage of a completely free service that will take care of the entire process for you – building a sales page/website, marketing your ebook, and paying all the Clickbank set up fees for you. Check it out now at We Sell Your EBooks

Blogging For Beginners is another free ebook for my visitors and, as the title suggests, covers the basics of starting out as a blogger.

The book covers both the free Blogger platform and the WordPress option, giving the newcomer a good idea of the differences, advantages and pitfalls of either choice. The book is a short and to the point read of 26 pages that does a good job of explaining many of the things that many of us simply take for granted, but for those just starting out, it will be a helpful read.

There are no outlandish claims or rhetoric and the book is clearly laid out and isn’t consistently selling to the reader. There are actually very few links inside.

The only thing that is a little laborious is the section on installing WordPress on a hosting account – not incorrect, but it goes the manual route and doesn’t mention that there are simpler ways to do it, particularly if you choose a host who offers Fantastico which most decent providers using cpanel do nowadays.

That aside it’s a reasonable book for the beginner and it’s free to boot.

Remember, you can use the book as a giveaway on your own sites too either on its own or as part of a package of goodies etc. I have even provided a complete editable sales page with all the graphics so you can easily sell or give away the book using your own dedicated site or page. Unzip the file and everything can be found inside.

Download The Book and Sales Page Graphics – Click Here

For a full list of all the posts just visit the Free Ebooks and Software category at the top of the homepage or from the categories menu.

Whilst some of the items may be of interest to you in their own right, the main purpose is to provide you with more resources to help you develop and improve your own sites. To this end, all of the products may be freely given away to your own blog visitors or subscribers, or be used as gifts in exchange for an opt-in to your own lists etc.

I’m kicking off with a little ebook called “Internet Marketing For Newbies”, a basic introduction to the IM world, aimed very much at beginners but it provides a reasonable overview  in an easy to digest 27 pages. Unlike many ebooks of this type it’s not stuffed with affiliate links in every sentence and keeps things simple with a basic outline of many of the things you will want to learn more about in your new internet marketing journey.

If those new to the field are part of your target audience it could be a helpful read for them. It covers the basics of affiliate marketing, social media, landing pages, email marketing, viral methods, video and SEO etc.

Also included is a complete set of sales page graphics so if you want to resell the book or use the sales page to give it away you will have everything you need – just unzip the file and you will find everything inside.

Click Here To Download – Internet Marketing For Newbies

The Indexing Tool plugin for WordPress is something that will interest anyone seeking ways to improve their website traffic and backlinks and uses some simple but clever methods to increase your website’s visibility. If you are using article marketing in your promotional efforts, sit up and take notice of this plugin because you are going to like what it can do for you and your position in the search engine results pages or SERPS.

(You can check the plugin homepage here – WordPress Indexing Tool – it will open in a new window for you).

Why? Well, whilst there is no denying that articles and content syndication are still one of the best ways to build quality backlinks to your site, there is still one fly in the ointment and it’s a very frustrating one. The fact is, while you are busy writing away and submitting all that quality content and inserting those all important backlinks, often the search engines simply won’t index those links. When that happens, whilst they are not worthless, they are not doing much to help your rankings either.

Getting Your Links Indexed Is The Most Powerful Way To Boost Your Traffic!

Your first reaction might be  be to say “yes, they already are” but then you might start to think about the “what if” scenario.. What if you have 100 articles and only half of them are actually working to push your pages up the SERPs?

Sure you will be getting some direct traffic from them, and who doesn’t like an extra 5 or so visitors a day direct from your article? But are you missing out on the 1000 visitors a day you could be getting if that link was pushing your site up to the number 1 spot in Google?

Google Does Not Index Every Page It Finds

Article sites are huge. They all have thousands of pages added to them every day.. there are hundreds of Squidoo lenses and Hubpages created every day, I hate to think how many new profiles are created everyday on various sites. Google will not index them all.

So, what can you do? Well, here’s where this simple plugin can help – if you want a more thorough explanation of the whys and hows of it all head over to the plugin homepage which sets things out very concisely.

In very simple terms, this plugin leverages the power of RSS feeds in combination with your WordPress site(s) to virtually guarantee that they get indexed. It takes your feeds, any feed, checks if the pages in it are indexed and if they are not it posts them as links on your pages. Then when Google spiders your site, it finds the links and follows them to your un-indexed pages. Google will then index those pages. It’s really that easy.

Once you install it and set up your RSS feed you can forget it. The plugin checks periodically on a timescale you select, to see if the links are indexed and if they are it removes them from your site and replaces them with new ones that still need indexing. It’s a sweet little operator. You can easily mash up several feeds to make one too and the owners of the Indexing Tool Plugin cover all of this in the accompanying video and PDF documentation.

As an added bonus you’ll also get an additional Trackback Feed plugin that creates a feed of all the trackbacks to your WordPress sites and can be used in some ingenious ways in combination with the main product.

The authors of this plugin provide some great instructional PDF’s and video, offering a lot of good ideas on how to make this plugin combination work best for you and your sites. Installation is a snap and provided you are running WordPress version 2.8 or later it will install and function without a glitch.

This is a very useful plugin and if you already understand the potential of RSS feeds you will know that this is a powerful, simple and effective method and you’re probably already on their sales page!! When choosing premium WordPress plugins it pays to select them wisely but this one really is worth your consideration. Users of all the big article directories and places such as HubPages and Squidoo along with countless other content syndication sites should really put this one on their shopping list.

Indexing Tool WordPress Plugin Can Be Found Here

TweetAdder Review

TweetAdder Review  – Free Download Here

TweetAdder Coupon Codes For 20% Off – “HOTDEAL” or “WHO20″

As a twitter user with a reasonably large following it becomes more and more difficult to manage my Twitter accounts and to try and keep pace with updates, re-tweets, follows and unfollows. This has always been my biggest problem with Twitter when it comes to using it as a business tool.

I’ve used all kinds of applications to try and make life easier, but eventually end up neglecting Twitter simply because it’s so hard to try and stay abreast of things. I’ve used free and paid tools in an attempt to increase productivity and sales via my Twitter business accounts but they always seem to fall short of what I really needed. My TweetAdder review therefore comes after many years of experience of a host of other Twitter tools and software.

Then, came the launch of TweetAdder, a software that seemed to promise so much. Being skeptical about any kind of software that claims to be “the answer” I nonetheless took a loser look at this one, because it really did seem to have the solutions to many of the problems busy Twitter users face on a daily basis.

My biggest concern with many Twitter tools is that they can end up hurting your account, even result in accounts being banned if they break the rules, despite the author’s assurances that the software is 100% compliant with the Twitter TOS.

TweetAdder came with all the usual promises and guarantees, and every TweetAdder review I studied seemed to confirm that it was a genuinely worthwhile and effective service. However, before I parted with any money for what could well have been just another flash in the pan, I downloaded the free demo so that I could give it a trial run on one of my business accounts. Well, after the short demo period expired, I logged into PayPal and bought a full license straight away – it really is that good.

Tweetadder doesn’t use the Twitter API like so many other offerings and this is a great benefit. The software can basically automate everything from tweeting, direct messaging, following and unfollowing users, retweeting and replying. For finding targeted followers based on keywords either from tweets or user profiles it is unbeatable.

Since using the licensed version of the software it has increased my targeted followers in various niches and increased my conversions on various affiliate products in a quite impressive fashion. As for increases in daily traffic to certain websites, it has performed admirably well. I have to say that overall I’m pretty chuffed with my purchase and recommend it unreservedly as probably the very best Twitter management software on the market today. I’ve yet to read a bad TweetAdder review and the only reason I can honestly see anyone writing one is if they are a competing product!

As with all things online, constant changes will probably mean that one day, someone might come up with something vastly superior to TweetAdder but until they do, well, shouldn’t you be giving your online business the edge that it undoubtedly provides? My TweetAdder review is based on personal experience and day to day usage and I can honestly say that it works, plain and simple.

I recommend that you download the free fully functional demo of Tweetadder for yourself and give it a spin – be warned though, you will probably find yourself unable to resist buying a license as soon as he demo runs out after seeing your own results. If Twitter has disappointed you as a promotional tool until now, Tweetadder could be just what you need to turn things around.

Tweet Adder Review | Free Demo – Download Here

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A Free WordPress Autoresponder

There are numerous autoresponder solutions and email marketing services available today, some free, some that cost, third party services such as GetResponse or Aweber and several others and scripts that webmasters can install on their own servers.

No time to read this post? Get Your Free WordPress Autoresponder Here

Whichever route you decide to follow there are benefits and drawbacks to each.

Third party services are most favored due to the fact that, at least with the two market leaders, deliverability is high and there is little chance of spam complaints finding their way to your door.  Features are comprehensive and due to their market positions, users of both GetResponse and Aweber usually find that integration and compatibility with other programs and services is generally high. The downside of course is the expense and some people are unable to afford or justify the monthly fees associated with the services.

Scripts are numerous but often installation is a nightmare and I’ve certainly tried a few only to find that they did not work as advertised or that support was non existent. There are paid and free solutions if you want to go this route, but, in all honesty, I’ve yet to find a genuinely great autoresponder script that is easy enough to get up and running for a person of limited technical skills and has all the features you might require or desire.

Having recently lost the services of my autoresponder and email marketing company, due to a major failure of their server and systems, I once again found myself cast into the tedious search for an affordable alternative to what was an excellent email marketing package. I wasted a lot of time trying and rejecting a number of scripts, looked at a few commercial third party services and was beginning to think that I was simply not going to find anything as good as I’d had at anywhere near the price I have been paying.

Enter the free WordPress autoresponder!

It was then that I came across the GWA Autoresponder for WordPress. A free WordPress autoresponder in the form of a plugin.

It was urgent that I found something as quickly as possible as all my opt-in forms were no longer functioning so it grabbed my attention because it was free, and because it was a WordPress plugin. However, I doubted a free WordPress autoresponder would have the functionality I needed and decided to take a closer look to see just what it could do.

I have to say that the free version will be more than adequate for a lot of WordPress users who just want to be able to set up an opt in form on their blogs and start building a list. It is really simple to install and set up and if you are a remotely competent WordPress user you can literally have it up and running in a few minutes. Basically if you can install a plugin, you can install the free wordpress autoresponder or GWA Autoresponder plugin too.

I downloaded the plugin and had it functioning very quickly but it soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to be a substitute for my previous service. Basically, it’s fantastic for those who have no need of anything more than a means of generating opt-ins on their WordPress site with a built in autoresponder facility that can be loaded with sequential messages and used to mail out to their list manually when desired. You can build your opt-in forms and use them on any webpages you choose, not just on your WordPress sites, which is good, but there are some limitations – hey, it’s free, so you have to expect some.

As a free user your opt-in forms will have a link back to the service which you cannot remove and your emails will all have a link appended to the footer too. If this really bugs you, you can pay a small fee of $5 to have the branding removed.

All in all it’s a great free autoresponder and I would recommend it to anyone who is not yet using any form of autoresponder or mailing software.

If you want to harness all the features and really have your own fully featured autoresponder which you can use to build an unlimited number of lists and forms, be able to redirect subscribers to any URL after opt-in, upon confirmation and on unsubscription, you will need to upgrade to the pro version.

Aha you say, here’s the catch! But really it isn’t, if you don’t need the extra functions you can use your free autoresponder forever and never worry about paying a cent. The beauty of upgrading is that it is an amazingly low one time cost of just $27.00 if you grab the one time offer that you will see when given the opportunity of taking the upgrade.

I bought a copy immediately because the value of the pro version would be very hard to beat anywhere. In terms of ease of use and customization options I’ve not seen anything better and certainly not from either free or paid scripts that I have experimented with. Also, support was very prompt and courteous and once you pay for the upgrade you will get access to some useful bonuses, and some comprehensive tutorials on how to use your new autoresponder in a variety of ways to get the best from it. It worked straight out of the box, requires no cron jobs, although you can use them if you need or want to, and there was no knowledge of script installation required whatsoever.

As a pro user you can import all existing subscribers into your lists without the need for them to opt-in again which is a bonus as anyone who has had to move a list before will confirm. The autoresponder is shared hosting friendly as it can be throtteld in a variety of ways to ensure you do not upset your hosting provider by overloading the server with your emails or falling foul of their hourly sending limits. Spam complaints are minimized by the fact that the autoresponder offfers double optin for all subscribers and records their information upon signup so their can be no doubt that they asked for your emails. Every email includes a one click unsubscribe link too of course. You would have to be an idiot to fall foul of the CanSpam Act using this software, but for those who are new to email marketing, there is plenty of advice within the interface as well as in the members area.

All in all a great solution for any WordPress user looking for either a free or paid autoresponder service. There is a lot more to the software but I hope this has given you a good idea as to whether it might be for you or not. The  free WordPress autoresponder is an entirely risk free proposition so why not try it on your blog and let me know what you think.

Download your free WordPress Autoresponder here

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Joomla can be used to build virtually any kind of dynamic website and although some claim it can be intimidating for beginners there is a huge amount of assistance both online and off for those wanting to work with this powerful platform.

Once you have installed the software the following Joomla resources will help you get the best out of the program.

Books about Joomla can be found and purchased online through Amazon

Immediate access to comprehensive online Joomla video tutorials can be found at http://www.joomla-tutorial.org

This video tutorial teaches you how to install Joomla, the most popular CMS today, using cpanel and Fantastico.

SEO Elite reviews can be found all over the web nowadays and this alone means that you may have considered using it yourself at some point. SEO Elite from Brad Callen has been around for several years now and in its latest incarnation, SEO Elite 4, is still performing well for many webmasters, even though it has had and continues to have its critics. All webmasters know that search engine optimization and keyword research are vitally important aspects of running a website or blog; at least if you want traffic to your sites.

Never an exact science, SEO has spawned a huge industry and not a little controversy over the years. The only thing that most people agree on is that the whole business is an ever changing sea of methodology and that what is a great SEO technique today, may be next to useless tomorrow. With search engines forever tweaking their algorithms and ranking factors, it is almost impossible for anyone other than those working on those factors, to know what exactly needs to be done to get a decent position in the search engine results pages and keep it.

Naturally, developers have come up with numerous software tools and packages to try and crack the business of achieving a top ranking, with varying degrees of success.

SEO Elite has been around for several years and has somehow continued to prove its effectiveness and worth, despite all the changes that are seemingly constantly being brought to the attention of webmasters. Whilst it is not cheap, if you have the budget and want to improve your results in the organic search listings of the major search engines, SEO Elite is one tool you should definitely consider.

Even though there are many alternatives out there, a great deal of them are not worth the purchase price and some are, sad to say, a complete waste of time and money. With SEO Elite you know that you are getting a regularly updated and powerful SEO optimization tool with reliable help and support. The features are comprehensive and we have posted three videos below so that you can see the sort of thing SEO Elite can help you with.

This only really scratches the surface but gives you a good idea of the interface and how quickly the software can help you with the detailed tasks involved in optimizing your website. To achieve manually what SEO Elite can provide in terms of research and suggested improvements would patently take a totally unrealistic amount of time.

You can find out more about SEO Elite or buy the software at the company’s website www.seoelite.com

If you are seriously considering working on your own on site optimization a tool like SEO Elite will do most of the heavy lifting for you and when used correctly will certainly see your sites improve in the SERPS.

The company also produces the excellent Keyword Elite and Affiliate Elite products and have established themselves as a trusted source of reliable and effective tools for webmasters, marketers and affiliates alike.

We hope you found the videos a useful insight into at least some of the the workings of SEO Elite.

If you prefer the idea of free SEO software there are plenty of options too and I’ve discussed several of the best collections elsewhere. For WordPress SEO advice our WordPress SEO Secrets videos are a very good place to start.

I promised after my last post to give an update on the affiliate link cloaking complications caused by certain browsers not accepting cookies from “third party sites”. In simple terms, if you are using frames to cloak your affiliate links, Internet Explorer may well not accept your cookie if the domain in the browser address bar is different from the URL where the cookie originates. On standard privacy settings, which most users probably won’t ever change, this should supposedly only apply to third party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy but in practice it doesn’t always seem to be the case.

After pretty exhaustive testing, I’ve found a couple of things that work in the majority of cases – however, the problem still means that after cloaking your links you should check every one to make sure your cookie is indeed being recorded correctly.

1) The stealth cloaking option in Samurai Stealth Cloaker still delivers the goods and will normally set your cookie in IE. Check each link to make sure – I have tested using Clickbank and Commission Junction links and most were fine. However, occasionally a vendor’s link may throw things off for some unknown reason.

UPDATE: As of September 2011 SSC seems to have gone offline. We don’t know if this is permanent or not but if the links do not work for you and you are looking for a WordPress solution the Eclipse Advanced Link Cloaker may be a good alternative and comes in the form of a plugin or you could use the excellent Ninja Affiliate which has been around longer, costs less, is extremely effective and packs some great features.

If you would prefer a non WordPress alternative at a very low cost, take a look here at Affiliate Link Defender which you can pick up for less than six bucks.

If you use use the masked frame option in the script to cloak anything be sure to check very carefully in as many browsers as you can because you may possibly lose commissions from anyone using IE6 and above – the vast majority of internet users.

2) There is some software available that promises not only to ensure your affiliate cookies are correctly tracked in Internet Explorer and all other browsers but also to protect you entirely from link hijacking by parasite software installed on your visitors’ computers.

I’ve been trying this on Clickbank and Commission Junction links and in the vast majority of cases it works fine. I’ve also used it with some less well known networks without problems. However, once again, I would recommend users check their links to make sure. Keep reading for a review of the software below.

I have also been trying out cloaked links for programs using scripts such as Rapid Action Profits and the 7DollarSecret – these are affiliate programs that pay affiliates instantly, normally via PayPal and it appears that the construction of these links makes them a little trickier to cloak correctly. If you are promoting anything using either script, I would advise you to make doubly sure that you are going to receive credit and you may have to settle for using the raw link or a simple PHP redirect in some cases.

Review Of Covert Links – Affiliate Link Cloaking Software

CovertLinks is one of the latest cloaking solutions on the market from Perry Wolf and, credit where credit is due, it was his sales page that woke me up to the whole Internet Explorer cookie issues, which will teach me to keep up with the affiliate forums a little more as it has been discussed at length in several places.

However, CovertLinks goes a fair bit further than just solving that one problem and Perry claims that his methods of cloaking can also prevent parasite software from hijacking your links too. He explains how all this works, in layman’s terms on his website, but here is a summary of what CovertLinks can do – there are two methods available to you as an affiliate, HTML and PHP versions:

a) The CovertLinks HTML Version: An Advanced Framing Technology is used that displays the Merchant’s sales page on your    website in a Frame but uses additional methods to ensure your cookies get set.

b) The CovertLinks PHP Version : The PHP version uses an advanced method to “pull” the content from the merchant’s page and display it on your website without using frames. This ensures your affiliate cookies are set and provides additional security against Parasite Software.

Full explanations can be found on Perry’s website and even if you’re not convinced that you should be cloaking your links it’s worth reading.

So far my tests of the software have proved that it does exactly what it says on the tin, at least most of the time. Once again, it is not perfect and seems to struggle when dealing with more unusual affiliate links. If you are working mainly with the well known networks, you should not have too many issues. When faced with certain types of affiliate links though, just like SSC, CovertLinks is not immune from the occasional “brain fart”, or perhaps, more accurately, the links themselves are not.

Update : after a bit of back and forth with the man behind the software it seems to me, despite my non technical background, that the software can fail to pass cookies in IE. I have now tried it with all manner of affiliate links and with the default privacy settings in IE8 (based on the assumption that most users will not alter these) and CovertLinks does not always manage to get the cookies set. Reverting to a straight redirect solves the problem, but this means having to do that manually or with other software. So, here I am, using both CovertLinks and Samurai Stealth Cloaker in tandem and testing every single cloaked link I create.

This is not ideal obviously and it’s time consuming. I’m hoping that my feedback and examples of the software’s shortcomings will enable the developer to address them and remedy them in future releases, even though I got the impression that my suggestions that there were some issues didn’t go over that well.

There is one other aspect of it that I don’t like very much and that is the appearance in the title bar of the browser of “Covert Links – Show Page http://www.ehateverthelinkis.com” This doesn’t appear to happen on all links so I’m unsure if it’s intentional or if it’s a bug. IF it is intentional it is a rather silly flaw in my opinion – after going to such lengths to produce a secure link cloaking software you give the game away for the sake of advertising in the browser’s title bar? This particular issue really needs attention because, intentional or not,  it spoils an otherwise competent and good value product.

Now, as far as the protection from parasite software goes, I’m taking Perry at his word because I’m not technical enough to understand how such nasty trickery works. I’m not sure that SSC provides such protection, it doesn’t claim to, but that’s not to say it doesn’t when using the stealth mode.

I’m keen to use CovertLinks, as it does solve, at least in the main, a couple of pretty serious problems for affiliates. Sadly, unlike SSC, which is a script that resides on your server, CovertLinks is software that runs on your computer. I say sadly because in terms of ease of us, convenience and tracking, it is far less user friendly than the script. Each cloaked link has to be created using the software’s interface – basically a box filling and checkbox ticking exercise – which is pretty simple. You will then need to upload the resulting file to your server, either via FTP or through your hosting control panel.

This is a gripe that I probably wouldn’t have if I had never used SSC – it’s not really a big deal, it just seems laborious because with SSC you can create your links far more quickly and keep track of them far more easily using the simple admin panel which also gives you basic tracking facilities.

Having said that, CovertLinks certainly seems to be a more up to date method of cloaking and the way things on the web progress, it’s a good idea to keep up with current technology. If parasite software is as big a problem as some people are claiming, anything that can beat it is a good thing in my book.

The good news about CovertLinks is that it is pretty cheap, certainly compared to many other cloaking solutions, many of which are actually pretty useless in any case. As to whether it is better than SSC or equally as good, both methods have their advantages and disadvantages and choosing between the two is going to come down to what each individual considers more important to them, and perhaps budget. In terms of price, CovertLinks is a clear winner, but when weighing up the differences, SSC might still edge it out for some users. The choice, as they say, is yours.

TCH

However, I received an email yesterday advising that my account had been terminated after a fellow user reported one of my documents for advertising. I was a little surprised by this as I have had a number of documents there for some considerable time. It wasn’t too big a deal, these things often happen if you are involved in marketing online, but I was a little unhappy with the tone of the email and the blatant hypocrisy it demonstrated.

For those unfamiliar with the site, ScribD allows members to upload all kinds of documents, text, PDF etc. that can then be viewed directly on the site through the use of Flash technology. It has sometimes been called the YouTube of documents which is probably, on reflection, rather unfair to YouTube. There has been plenty of negative comment and argument about the technology and its merits and that isn’t what I wanted to talk about in this post. Just Google “Scribd sucks” and you’ll find plenty of information supporting and attacking the idea and the technology employed.

The email I received stated that another member had reported one of my documents and that as a result my account had been closed. Once you have been kicked out by Scribd there is no appeal process and no restitution. You are not permitted to join the site ever again. They are another company who include a catch all in their TOS that states they can close your account without warning or having to give any reason and this really should be a red flag to any internet user thinking of joining any site.

After a little bit of investigation it would appear that Scribd is not a smart service to use, so perhaps the loss of my account is a good thing. Let me expand a little further.

The site contains a lot of copyrighted material and although they claim they will remove any such content following a request from the copyright owner, it is a slow and laborious process and suggests they have little sympathy for people whose content is stolen and placed on their site. Many believe that this will be the downfall of the service and that eventually a legal issue will see them in trouble sooner rather than later. How accurate this assessment is remains to be seen.

Recently there have been reports of a 50% drop in the site’s traffic and allegations of overly aggressive SEO methods causing Google to become a little upset with them but again, I haven’t investigated any of these allegations very deeply. Someone also suggested that following promotion of the site by people like Stompernet and other marketing/SEO services there have been some rather hasty and ill conceived policy changes at Scribd due to their claims of link spamming and the like.

Regardless of the merits of any of these claims and allegations, Scribd is pretty much dead in the water for anyone involved in marketing. One of their latest rules apparently is that documents containing hyperlinks are no longer allowed.

This seems a rather extreme and stupid policy change and smacks of an attempt to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. It is hardly surprising that their visitor numbers are dropping.

After the email from them I went and did a quick search on the site to find countless incidences of self promotion, affiliate links, viral marketing documents etc. all of which would supposedly be in violation of their terms. This suggests to me that they have no way of monitoring the activity on their site effectively and are reliant solely on members snitching on other members to enforce their policies. This is hardly professional or encouraging to potential users of the service. Snitching on others is done for a variety of reasons so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that anyone with an axe to grind can soon sobotage anyone they choose.

Now, I freely admit that I had documents on Scribd that were promotional in nature, but they were also very useful, at least to the target audience. What really makes me mad about sites like Scribd is the hypocrisy they demonstrate in their email to members who are removed.

Someone described Scribd as an internet parasite which, although maybe a little harsh, also contains a ring of truth. This is a site reliant solely on content from other people, much like an article directory. Their words to me were that they offered the service free of charge and that it must not be used for commercial purposes which, on the face of it is fair enough. They go on to say that they have worked really hard to keep the site free of advertising in the interests of their “community”. This is the point when I start to get a little upset about the email because of its sanctimonious and, quite frankly hypocritical nature.

Scribd uses other people’s content to make money. The site is littered with Adsense ads around every document and yet they claim that advertising goes against all that is holy for their membership. To raise the flag of altruism around a blatanly commercial venture is the height of hypocrisy. There was actually a thread in their forums where some members had been enquiring about the possibility of revenue sharing being introduced on the site. the last time I looked, this had been studiously ignored by the site owners and will probably continue to be ignored. It is another prime example of big sites and big money saying – do as we say, not as we do.

I honestly don’t care whether the site fails or recovers and goes on to spectacular success in the future, but I do think that a great deal of what they aim to stand for is just a lot of hot air. The bottom line is that they want to make money from other people’s content but don’t wish their users to see any financial or promotional benefit whatsoever. That’s fine, but at least have the decency to be honest about it.

Ultimately, if you use or are thinking of using Scribd as a means of driving traffic or gaining something in the SERPS, certainly anything of a marketing nature, you might as well not bother. The site owners seem to have no systems in place to control what is posted there, which explains the copyright issues and demonstrates a rather cavalier attitude to preventing such infringements if you ask me. The snitching policy is all they have to administer their terms so you may see a document survive for a little while, as getting under the radar of a non existent radar isn’t difficult as much of the current content proves but I don’t think it is a site worthy of your time or your work. I fell for it but I’d advise you not to do the same.

Photo Credit : Technicolorcavalry

To kick things off I am going to talk about a subject that still seems very popular and that is, the best way to cloak your affiliate links. A while back I did post about the methods I was using or had used in the past.  Since writing that post I have continued to happily use my free Cloaker Buzz Elite which does an admirable job and asserted that I would never pay for any kind of link cloaking software. Ah the famous last words of a fool eh?

Always on the look out for time saving tools and easier ways of doing things I felt sure there was a better way to not only cloak my links but make them more manageable. Affiliates will know that after a period of time the number of affiiate links they are using just grows and grows until it is almost impossible to keep up. I had reached this point when the software that is the subject of this review came to my notice.

UPDATE: As of September 2011 SSC seems to have gone offline. We don’t know if this is permanent or not but if the links do not work for you and you are looking for a WordPress solution the Eclipse Advanced Link Cloaker may be a good alternative and comes in the form of a plugin.

Samurai Stealth Cloaker, I will say right off is a fantastic little script. Note the use of the word “script” – most of the cloakers out there, including Cloaker Buzz Elite, are windows based software. CBE is great but it still requires you to generate a file and upload it to your server for every link you create which is time consuming and not very efficient. Samurai Stealth Cloaker is different and is basically a small php file that you upload to your server. It takes minutes to do and then you are set to go. Cloaking any link is a simple case of logging into the admin panel, filling out a couple of boxes and you have your cloaked link. It’s so easy and so quick I don’t know how I managed without it until now.

The program allows you to choose exactly the kind of cloaking you wish to use, from a simple redirect to a fully secure encrypted link. Redirection to any web page of your choosing makes it a very powerful little tool and I’m loving its simplicity and ease of use.

The other advantage is that every cloaked link is stored in one file, making them immediately portable between domains. Each link also contains a basic but very useful counting tracker so you can see how many clicks your links are getting.

Another great bonus is the inclusion of a script for article marketers that completely solves the problem of affiliate links in places like Ezine Articles and that in itself is worth its weight in gold if you use article marketing to promote affiliate programs.

Before buying this tool, I bought another program for $97 and it turned out to be capable of nothing more than the free software I’ve used forever! I claimed a refund quickly but the point is, don’t be fooled by the claims of most so called link cloaking programs. Most of them are a waste of money. Samurai Stealth Cloaker is the exception and is the best money I’ve spent in a while for a time saving marketing tool.

Cloaking links is essential if you are an affiliate. If you are not doing it already, I recommend you start off on the right foot with this excellent tool

The sales page is one of the most upfront I have seen in a while with detailed videos showing exactly what you are buying and how it works, enabling you to make a well informed buying decision. If only more software vendors were as transparent as Michael Andrews, the man behind Samurai Stealth.

So, there you have it if you’ve heard enough and are ready to grab your own copy you can head right on over and buy your copy of Samurai Stealth Cloaker at a discounted price for a limited time only. I endorse the product wholeheartedly for affiliates everywhere. It is a genuine bargain.

Buy Samurai Stealth Cloaker Now at the special limited time price

TCH

(IMPORTANT NOTE – remember to test cloaked links to ensure that your affiliate link is being tracked correctly. Sometimes, depending on the merchant/affiliate network, certain forms of cloaking may cause failure to track your ID – fortunately with SSC this is rare).

If you really don’t want to spend anything I have a free affiliate link cloaker available for direct download here. Not as cool as SSC but it will do the job reasonably well and you are free to give it away to others as well.

PLEASE READ MY LATEST POSTS ON LINK CLOAKING FOR UP TO DATE INFORMATION

1) Affiliate Links and Internet Explorer

2) Link Cloaking Updates & Covert Links

3) Cloaking Links With Samurai Stealth Cloaker

I have written before about the impressive SmartDD, a secure digital download manager that is available for no cost. Frank Hayward, the man behind SmartDD, has recently launched a totally new version of the software and in response to customer feedback the improvements over the previous release are very wide ranging.

Originally, SmartDD worked only with PayPal and despite being very effective was still only really of use to those selling digital products of their own and using PayPal as the payment processor. Clickbank merchants, for example, were forced to use far more expensive scripts.

Finally however, the full release of the new SmartDD, going under the guise of Version 3 has been released and is ready and available for you to download immediately.

SmartDD now offers support for both PayPal and Clickbank as well as Kunaki and the ability to protect free sign up downloads (for example, you may be offering a product in exchange for an opt-in but don’t want people to share the download link).

SmartDD has not stopped there however. Version 3 also includes a built in web store and a built in affiliate scheme plus the additiional ability to set up one time offers (OTO’s). Head over to the product page now for full details of SmartDD version 3 and its capabilities

The latest version really is a powerful tool and the amazing thing is that you can still get it for free. This is not a restricted function version or a limited time deal. You can download the full version right now and use it on multiple domains to protect up to five different products/downloads for as long as you want. That in itself is an improvement over the old version which only allowed three products, so, with the increased power of the script and the huge increase in functionality, I’d say it’s the bargain of the year for internet marketers and ebay sellers – yes it works just as well with Ebay as it does with websites.

I still rank my own purchase of SmartDD as one of the smartest, most useful and valuable I have ever made online and if you are unlikely to ever sell more than five different products the free version is totally unbeatable.

On the technical side, in case you’re wondering, there are just three requirements in order for the software to work: Your web space must be running at least PHP4 & MySQL and also have the latest ionCube loaders installed. That’s it. You can even use an existing MySQL DB if you don’t have one to spare.

This is one essential tool if you are selling digital downloads online – essential for preventing theft through link sharing and essential as a truly efficient customer service tool. All your digital delivery taken care of on autopilot leaving you time to work on other things.

I give this latest version a huge thumbs up for ease of installation and use and I’m still exploring all the cool new things it can do. Recommended without reservation – even if you’re not selling anything right now, I’d go and sign up for your free copy of SmartDD right away and see just what it can do for any online business. Get Your Free Copy Of SmartDD Here.

I occasionally heartily recommend programs that I have used to great effect myself, affiliate programs notwithstanding, and with SmartDD you really are onto a winner. Frank even provides support to customers of the free version and is always helpful and courteous to a fault. This is one free piece of software you can count on and one you will be more than happy to upgrade should the need ever arise. Just try it and see.