Welcome to March

Welcome to the second JournalXtra newsletter of the year where you will learn what’s new, what’s hot and what’s not at JournalXtra. February was an incredibly busy month for me. I invested a lot of time adding and updating many articles. Here’s a brief recap of what those articles were.

New Articles

How to Split a Website Across Multiple Servers

Have you ever in your wildest dreams thought, I wish I could use my domain name on more than one web server so that I can use it with multiple white label sites. No? Yes? Probably? Sometimes white label and co-brand sites just do not provide as much server space, site customization or products needed to build a successful website. Thankfully, what one sponsor doesn’t provide another might and, if not, your own definitely server will. This short EasyGuide explains exactly how to configure a registrar to re-route traffic for specific sub domains of a website so you can have site1.mydomain.com and site2.mydomain.com on different servers.

The Webmasters Network

10,000 Backlinks in 1 – The Best URL Submission You Will Ever Make

During February I discovered a new plug in for Wordpress. Called the BungeeBones Remotely Hosted Directory, it aims to provide a remotely hosted and managed directory for Wordpress blogs. It works similarly to a webring but with a difference – it displays as a directory and not as a sidebar advertisement billboard for other people’s blogs. It has a lot of potential and will, eventually, provide thousands of backlinks to its members as more and more webmasters take to using it. I highly recommend the use of this plugin. You can see JournalXtra’s standalone version of the directory here.

Rant About the Amazon Affiliate Program

Yes, I finally killed off the Amazon ads that littered the sidebar. They were ugly, didn’t generate any income, slowed down the site’s load speed to an unbearable level and Amazon’s we-only-pay-you-if-people-click-the-right-ad-for-their-location ad system is much too fiddly to implement and check (my stats didn’t match their stats). Plus, Amazon has made changes to their contract that’s too overbearing for a small site like JournalXtra to cope with. If you wish to read more about my decision to remove Amazon’s ads then please follow the link.

Happy Songs to Keep us Smiling

A few of my friends felt a bit low at the beginning of the month so I thought I’d add some sunshine to their lives by pointing them to a few uplifting happy songs. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find happy songs on the Net. It’s ridiculous. Eventually, after a few hours of searching, I came up with, and you might want to sit down before you read this, are you ready? Sure??? I found four. Yes, four (4) happy songs. Amazing. I know. I couldn’t believe it myself. I was so caught up in the excitement I nearly forgot about you guys. Luckily I didn’t and I posted them here for you to enjoy too.

Ebooks Directory List

Everybody who uses a computer knows what an ebook is so I won’t go into detail about them but suffice it to say I have added 85 ebook directories to the Webmaster’s Toolbox. Ebooks are a fantastic way to advertise and get targeted traffic to websites, landing pages and sponsor sites. Best of all, good ebooks go viral. So, what are you waiting for? Get writing, save it as a pdf and submit it to an ebook directory.

How to Check for Dead Links within a List

This is a must read article for every URL collecting surfer or webmaster with a list of links in a file that need to be checked for life signs. The process is simple – download the right script, properly format your links, run the script. Easy. Even easier when the instructions for using the script and formatting the links are provided in an EasyGuide. Need to check the links on a website? I’ve answered that one too.

Find Hot Current Search Terms and Keywords

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon a website that listed real search terms in realtime. I thought I’d revisit the guide and update it. I was shocked, the website listed in the original article had changed. It no longer provides realtime search terms, it is now an advert for a web design company. It appears the site’s designers played a not too uncommon trick on us – it had used the domain name to provide a service that would gain lots and lots of backlinks while it matured. Once the backlinks were in place, they converted the site to its real function of advertising a web design company. One has to respect the cunning of its architects; nevertheless, I was a little pissed at it but it did give me the impetus to re-write the whole article instead of just updating it. The new article lists several sites that provide near realtime and historical search words and phrases entered into search engines by surfers. I hope you find it useful.

Brand New Download Section

JournalXtra now proudly boasts its brand new, all shiny and sparkling, download section. No, don’t go looking for movies and music ’cause ya ain’t gonna find any in there unless I’ve created them. This new part of the site is home to all the free downloads linked within other parts of the site along with other goodies I decide to give away. It is still under development and already has a few GIMP plug-ins, scripts and brushes ready for download. The download area is part of a new strategy I’m using to attract traffic so expect to see it fill up with all sorts of free stuff over the next few weeks and months.

Updated Articles

The Suffusion Review has been updated to show off the theme’s new admin panel and its ever increasing list of widgets and config options.

The GIMP guide has had another script repository added to it and the scripts download zip file has been replaced with a larger one (it’s better to grab this from the download section than the guide). The guide will be re-written over the course of March so expect a surprise if you view it in April.

The Webmaster’s Toolbox has had a lot of updates. To name a few of them, there are more links website and product review sites, more ping services and an ebooks directory and syndication site list. All the links have been re-checked for activity. I am aware that some of the links still point to sites other than their intended targets, I apologize for that and promise the offending URLs will be weeded out over time; you are welcome to help me there by pointing them out (use the contact form listed in the menubar).

March will be just as busy as February. I have several articles half started and several more lined up to be written. I’ve hinted at what some of them are above but I can’t say too much because other webmaster might steel my ideas. I hope you had a good February and I wish you a brilliant March.

To my readers and friends who are in Chile, I sincerely hope you have not been too badly affected by your recent Earthquake and Tsunami. Those of you who have been affected by it, I can not imagine the devastation it has caused and will not pretend to understand what you might currently be suffering. All I can do is pray that you get all the help you, your family and friends need to get through it and get passed it. I am here if you need to talk.

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Just a quick comment to let you know I’ve removed the Amazon ads that once adorned the sidebars. I’ve been considering their removal for the past month or two because they slow down the site’s page load time but I wavered on the side that some visitors might find them useful so I left them up. However, Amazon has twice adjusted its user agreement within the last 30 days. One of those adjustments changed their linking policy and the second one served to combine its Amazon U.K, Amazon FR and Amazon DE user agreements such that one agreement for Amazon EU covers all three programs. That latter change is a little guise about EU harmony and a big ruse to inflict ever more stringent rules to its affiliates; rules that heavily favor Amazon over its affiliates. As you can tell, I am not happy with the changes. To be blunt, I feel pretty shafted by Amazon and I am sure many other webmasters will feel the same once they read Amazon’s new user agreement.

Amazon was and still is one of the most complicated affiliate programs to administer due to its use of separate sites for separate customer regions. For an affiliate to receive commission from product referrals the referred referees  had to purchase directly from the Amazon site to which the affiliate referred him/her. For example:

when an affiliate (publisher) sends someone to Amazon U.K and that someone purchases an item through Amazon U.K then the affiliate earns commission; but when someone is referred to Amazon U.K and moves across to Amazon US and makes a purchase through Amazon US then the affiliate earns nothing.

That means that affiliates who wish to advertise Amazon products for commission have two choices:

1. sign up to one Amazon site’s affiliate program (usually Amazon US) and advertise its products solely, or
2. sign up to all Amazon programs and use an ad server like OpenX to display separate ads from each different Amazon program according to a visitor’s geographic location.

As you can see, Amazon already favors itself above its affiliates beyond reasonableness – it gets a lot of free publicity from webmasters who hope to make a financial return on their hard work and valuable advertisement space.

The first alteration Amazon made to its affiliate program (less than a month ago) prohibited webmasters from adding their affiliate links to search engines and permits Amazon to not issue commission to affiliates when visitors arrive at Amazon through links listed by search engines.

Reasonable enough, Amazon has to protect itself from those webmasters who use unscrupulous advertisement methods to drive prospects to Amazon via their personal affiliate links. However, there is one slight issue with this rule: search engines find links to websites through websites; it is entirely possible for a scrupulous webmaster to link to an Amazon product on his/her own websites and for a search engine to display the link to that Amazon product when it returns its search results; hence a well intentioned webmaster who follows Amazon’s rules might be penalized through no mistake of his own; and this is especially likely when products are advertised via Twitter which is something Amazon encourages its affiliates to do.

It is my understanding that the second (and most recent) major alteration, the one that unifies its British, German and French user agreements prohibits the use of Amazon links in forum, blog and other website signatures and prohibits the use of automated shops except those provided by Amazon. To a lot of webmasters (not I), these are standard marketing practices. A lot of webmasters will now have to change their signatures and close their automated shops.

I have one more Amazon link to remove from my network of sites. Thankfully it is served by OpenX so I can replace it with a link provided by a more favorable advertisement program. With the exception of that link, from this time onwards, I will not advertise products for Amazon until they change their affiliate program to one that is less hostile to the webmasters who use it to advertise Amazon.

I will still buy products through Amazon, they have some pretty amazing deals I just won’t be advertising their products for the foreseeable future.

I do have another reason to be grumpy about Amazon: for the whole time I have advertised their products I have made not one sale. Tens of thousands of ad impressions across several websites and zero sales and a couple of click-throughs. I will stick with the likes of Clickbank, Affiliate Future and Affiliate Window from no onwards. At least their products sell and they pay more commission which helps pay toward my server and domain registration fees.

Here is Amazon’s official overview of its new EU user agreement, enjoy:

Operating Agreement Update, March 1 2010 version compared with February 1 2010 version

The Associates Programme Operating Agreement has been updated effective March 1, 2010. A single Operating Agreement governing the Associates Programme for each of the Amazon sites in the UK, DE and FR, and a combined sign up process for new Associates enables enrolment in one, two, or all three programmes at once. The updated Operating Agreement has been restructured to make the information you want more accessible. In addition, some terms of the agreement have changed. For instance, the updated agreement clarifies or modifies (see sections referenced below for applicable agreement provisions):

• your rights and obligations regarding content, offers, and links posted in connection with the program, as well as your use of our content and trademarks (see Linking Requirements, Programme Participation Requirements, and sections 3,4, 5, and 11 of the Operating Agreement);
• your responsibilities for your site users’ claims (see section 5 of the Operating Agreement);
• your obligations to provide us with certain information and for keeping information you give us accurate and up to date (see section 2 of the Operating Agreement);
• your obligations as to communications regarding your relationship with us (see section 10 of the Operating Agreement);
• prohibitions on (i) your placement of Special Links in posts to the Amazon site (e.g., in reviews or on forums), (ii) your use of sub-tags to identify specific users, (iii) making inaccurate, deceptive, or misleading claims about any product, the Amazon site, or any Amazon policy, promotion, or price, (iv) your ability to collect account information used by our customers in connection with any Amazon site, and (v) your use of any malicious or harmful code or any automatically-installing software application on your site (see Linking Requirements, Programme Participation Requirements, and section 10 of the Operating Agreement);
• your representations and warranties (see Linking Requirements, Programme Participation Requirements, and the preamble and sections 5, 12, and 13 of the Operating Agreement);
• your indemnity and other obligations to us (see section 5 of the Operating Agreement)
• our rights to monitor your compliance with the agreement (see section 4 of the Operating Agreement);
• rights to withhold payment of advertising fees in certain circumstances (see section 4 of the Operating Agreement);
• our right to charge administration fees on and/or close dormant accounts (see section 8 of the Operating Agreement);
• the minimum advertising fees that you must earn before payment by direct deposit, cheque, or gift certificate can be issued (see section 8 of the Operating Agreement);
• the amount of prior notice of any modifications to or termination of the agreement (see sections 14 and 15 of the Operating Agreement);
• our rights in what you submit to us (see section 12 of the Operating Agreement); and
• limitations of obligations and liability (see sections 17 and 18 of the Operating Agreement).

This is only a general summary of some of the changes and does not affect the interpretation of the updated Operating Agreement. Your continued participation in the program constitutes your acceptance of the updated agreement. Therefore, please carefully read the updated Operating Agreement.

The full new agreement is available here.

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The first proper news update of the year. January has been a busy month for me not just with JournalXtra but also with the other sites on my network. I own and manage quite a large number of websites which lagged a little bit last year due to the work I put into JournalXtra. Getting a little annoyed, I decided to stand in front of a mirror and have a good talk with myself about how I should proceed this year. I can tell you that it was a funny site to watch me waving fists at myself as I argued the pros and cons of different management styles. The outcrop of my little self-confrontation is that my reflection coerced me to better organize my time hence from this point onwards I will endeavor to provide a minimum of one article or other update for each manually managed website per week (excluding news updates and special events). So you lucky readers can expect at least 4 (yes, four) new articles or tool additions from JournalXtra this month and every month after it for the foreseeable future (please don’t be upset if I relapse to one every here and there).

Right, back to the main purpose of this update. During January I wrote 2 new articles, added 2 new tools to the Webmaster’s Tool Box and introduced the new EasyGuides category into which I’ve placed all the tutorials I’ve written for JournalXtra. Those tutorials are still available in their specific subject categories and their page links remain the same so there’s no need for you to worry about your bookmarks. Here’s the lowdown on those articles:

Added

5 Steps to Twitter Success explains how to increase followers, write noticeable tweets, how not to get suspended or blacklisted from Twitter Search and how to get an account re-activated or un-blacklisted.

Create Glossy-Look CSS Controlled Navbar Buttons is the second part to an earlier guide which explained how to create navigation bar buttons that remain highlighted when clicked i.e how to keep an active page tab highlighted. This second part explains how to style the buttons with glossy images to give them that all impressive web2 look.

The new EasyGuides category is the place to go to locate any of the tutorials I write. All the old tutorials have been added into it and all new tutorials will be added into it. This category is additional to each guide’s subject category.

Added 50+ free classified ads to the marketing tools section. For those who are unaware, JournalXtra is the place where I bookmark many of the resources I use to promote and build my websites. I place those resources that require form filling into one convenient list so that they open up in an iframe on the same page as the list i.e the links don’t need open in multiple tabs. A few product review sites have also been added to the classified ads page (look at the second set of bookmarks).

Updated

Snazz-up Your Website with Free Graphics and Sound Effects had a few items added to it and a few bug fixes:

New stock image and clipart image providers,

A table of content has been put at the top of it to facilitate navigation, and

Minor errors with the page layout and one or two links have been corrected

That’s all for this news brief. I hope you enjoy reading JournalXtra and that you have a good February.

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