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There are several ways in which merchants track sales back to their affiliates and credit them with their commission. The most common one relies on planting a cookie in the surfer’s computer. As long as the cookie with that affiliate’s details is stored on that computer, the affiliate will get credit for any sales made.

When surfers choose to manually delete their cookies, or if they surf in “stealth mode” with cookies disabled, sales cannot be tracked back to the affiliate who referred the surfer.

That’s not the only problem though.

Some people deliberately and quite effectively steal sales by deleting your cookie and replacing it with their own.

You work hard on building a website, choosing a matching product, bringing the traffic and just as the surfer clicks on your affiliate link in order to make a purchase…… a nasty piece of software overrides your affiliate cookie with someone else’s cookie and rakes in your commission.

I’m not talking about some hidden viruses that the surfer got infected with. Nope. These are usually toolbars that the surfer knowingly (though not always willingly) installs. They are known among affiliates as parasiteware. And, at least in some cases, affiliate programs not only agree to this, but even cooperate. Actually, some of them directly benefit from this as well.

Their “revenue model” is simple and looks innocent enough to surfers:

Download our toolbar and every purchase you make on X,Y,Z website will generate a contribution towards a charity.

What they don’t tell you is that their toolbar uses the same kind of cookie as an affiliate, effectively deleting/overriding previous ones. If you got to the site through an affiliate link from a blog or a website, that blogger can kiss their commission goodbye – they won’t be getting anything from the traffic they worked so hard to get. The toolbar company on the other hand will be getting a commission, giving away a part of it to charity.

Is Your Income Effected?

As some of the largest websites and affiliate networks play along and even promote such toolbars, practically any affiliate that works with a large network is affected. The most common toolbar to employ this tactic can be found at OneCause.com. They cover merchants such as Amazon, Ebay, Expedia, CafePress and hundreds more. If you promote any of the merchants on their list, you are losing some money.

Note how the percentage of the money that goes towards charity is significantly lower than the real affiliate commission offered by these merchants. Hmmmm, could it be that OneCause is in it for the profit?

What Can You Do?

Affiliate education is the first step. I recommend visiting the forums at ABestWeb where they specialize in affiliate marketing. While there, make sure you check the parasiteware forum and this thread.

If you find out that you’re promoting merchants that are involved in this practice consider changing to another merchant, if you can. At the very least, write to them and let them know you don’t like it.

Having done my research, I can recommend one decent affiliate network that makes a point of not cooperating with parasiteware: ShareaSale (yes, that’s an affiliate link right there!) It is not the only network I work with, but it does have some very good niche sponsors, great support and they’re committed to helping their affiliates make money.

Keeping a blog fresh with regular posts can be a challenge. At some point or another, we all feel we have simply run out of  stuff to write about. Some people call this “Writer’s Block” and there are as many ways to overcome this horrible condition as there are writers. Today, I’d like to share one surefire way that always works for me.

When I don’t have an idea for a new post, I take a break from writing, turn on my RSS reader and go out there reading other people’s blogs. As always, I take the time to leave comments on almost every post I read. Most comments are short – either a compliment to the writer, or a reference to some point in their post. Some are not.

As I type out my comments, if I find that a comment takes me more than a few sentences to express… I turn it into a post! On one of my own blogs of course.

I take care to address the original post, with a solid link back, of course.

I am always polite and respectful.

I take care to evolve my own reply into a post – not copy someone else’s post in my own words.

I go back to that blog and mention that I have a reply for that post in my own post. Alternatively, I post a quick comment on that blog explaining my view, noting that I plan on going into more details in a post on my blog.

It’s a win-win situation with several advantages:

1. I get to express an idea in a more elaborate way by the form of a dialogue.
2. I interact with another blogger on a more profound level and I acknowledge their contribution to online discourse in something deeper than a comment.
3. I get exposure to my own post and blog (be careful – whatever you do, you don’t want to create a sleazy traffic bait).
4. I get to keep my quality content on my blog (rather than writing a post-long comment on someone else’s page).
5. I get myself a brand new spiffy post – which is what I was after to begin with!

I started doing “this” back in 1997.

“This” means creating websites, promoting them and monetizing on the traffic (as opposed to creating websites for other people’s business need). It’s a pretty common business model for most of us.

The Age of Webmasters

Back then, we were called webmasters.

As a webmaster, you were expected to have a variety of skills, including:

1. Web Design
2. HTML coding
3. “Advanced” coding skills (or at least how to hack away at javascript)
4. Search engine optimization know-how (it was pretty basic back then)
5. Social media skills (at the time, it was participation in online forums mostly)

We were jacks of all trades. We had to know how to work with Photoshop, flash, HTML editors (or the code itself), run newsletters and much more.

Oh, and we had “websites” – remember those? Just good ole’ HTML web pages, where you had to change the HTML code and re-upload files via FTP to keep them up-to-date.

The Age of Bloggers

Things sure have changed!

Websites today are complexed dynamic creatures, relying on a variety of technologies to deliver unique customized pages to each visitor. They do a lot of clever things. One of them is that they allow users to interact and leave their own key-print.

What’s more, design standards have changed. You can no longer get away with cheesy web pages with animated gif’s for a background (thankfully, I may add!) Visitors expect a higher level of usability and an overall sleek look. To a great extent, design has become the realm of professional web designers and coding these smart sites has become the domain of professional coders.

These changes brought along the CMS’s, or Content Management Systems. And these beget Wordpress – a fully customizable and relatively easy-to-use CMS.

So, what’s left for us, content publishers? Well, mostly, but not only, creating content.

We write, we promote, we interact with the net. We have the ability to quickly and easily update our websites.

In fact, our websites are now called blogs, and we call ourselves bloggers.

So, How About You?

I still consider myself a webmaster first, and a blogger second. I still enjoy tweaking code and design and I still create static web pages too.

I think the title I prefer the most is a web publisher.

How about you? Are you a blogger? a webmaster? something else?

Haven’t done  a news & views roundup in a while, so time to check my RSS reader folders and link to some good webmasters reading material.

Search Engine News

Bing’s Stefan Weitz: Where Is Search Going? Weitz provides some interesting insights about the future of search engine development, and no, social media is not the main topic he discusses here.

The Buzz Not Quite Dying Out

But it’s taken an interesting turn over the past week, as more people got upset with the perceived breach of their privacy. Google Getting Wrong Kind Of Buzz:

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that Google’s new social networking service Buzz violates federal consumer protection law.

Of course, it didn’t take long for this headline to show up: Class Action Complaint Filed Over Google Buzz

Google responded by saying  “With Buzz We Failed To Appreciate That Users Have Differing Privacy Expectations”

Pete Cashmore provided a nice overview of Buzz, taking into account both the privacy issues, in his CNN column:

Google Buzz: What is it good for?

Still mad at Google? You may like this article published on Gizmodo:

How To: Escape From Google’s Clutches, Once and For All

Facebook

I enjoy Facebook as much as the next person, and apparently both me and the next person have been complaining about it being slow and at times unreliable. Looks like Facebook was listening:

How Facebook Became Twice as Fast (But Still Not Fast Enough)

Can’t have the good without the bad. That annoying Farmville game seems to be going stronger:

FarmVille Wins Social Networking Game of the Year Award

FarmVille Surpasses 80 Million Users

I really hate Farmville. It’s not just the annoying messages in my stream, but the very nature of this game displaying the false idyllic facade of farms, when in reality, the food production industry is a big-money cruel machine of mass production at the expense of animal welfare.

If you dislike Farmville for this or any other reason, you may need this -

HOW TO: Block FarmVille on Facebook

Other Stuff

Google Maps Adds Businesses in 30 African Countries

Ok, you may not be visiting Africa anytime soon (or maybe you will be), but I appreciate the fact that Google is taking the time and effort to do this. Google Earth/Google Maps were invaluable to me on our last big family trip in the US. It just feels good to know that the same kind of information is available elsewhere as well.

I won’t name any blogs, but I have seen this on several blogs. Every once in a while, either as a regular feature or just a once-in-a-while thing, they post what might be described as “sexy pictures”. Nothing explicit, nothing that would be illegal anywhere, but not exactly family-friendly either.

I am not a prude and personally I’m not offended by the imagery.  I’m definitely not about to tell any other blogger what they should or should not do on their blog. That said, I do want to share with you three reasons as to why I think posting “sexy stuff” on your blog may not a good idea -

Offending your visitors

I want to get this one out of the way. Maybe you couldn’t care less and that would be ok, but just keep in mind that you may be alienating some people. Even if your post or imagery are relatively benign, they may trigger some unwelcome responses, not to mention adult-oriented spam.

Consider also that some people may be browsing from their work place where standards may be stricter, or from home where younger family members may be about with the parent not expecting anything out of the ordinary when browsing for blogging advice.

Google Ads

If you run Google Adsense ads on your blog, you could be in trouble if you run them alongside anything that may be considered “adult stuff”. It can be a thin line between legitimate “sexy” and forbidden “adult”, so why risk your account? The same could apply to other advertisers – current or future ones.

Google Search Filters

Perhaps most importantly, saucy images and the accompanying comments could trigger Google’s search filters. That would mean searchers who have their settings to either moderate or strict search filters won’t be seeing your pages in the search results. Why get your site flagged like that? Is it really worth it?

As some of you know, I live in Israel.  It’s supposed to be winter time here in February, but it definitely is not. I have a household full of six kids (only two of which are my own), making this nice lazy banter-noise in the background.

Just can’t get myself to write any brilliant web publishing advice today, so I’m not posting here today. Well, apart from this post, I guess.

I’m not the only one posting about not posting. I ran a quick search and looks like quite a few bloggers have done the same -

This guy either has no internet connection of he’s doing school work (he’s not sure, apparently)

Melissa from Australia was too busy commenting on other people’s blogs so she never got around to posting (almost)

Nancy is under the weather – get well soon, Nancy!

The Literate Housewife is busy watching the Olympics

Dave the Designer is having issues with his Typead Editor

The Vermont News Guy has a fairly official take on the announcement

And my favorite: Dave tried to list five reasons why he won’t be blogging today

Ending this post before I cross the 200 words line. After all, it’s NOT a post.

Google officially rolled out their Buzz service yesterday. Logging into your Gmail account, you should already be seeing it there.

If nothing else, it’s bound to cause a major buzz. I would have skipped the lame joke, but I don’t think I have to since Buzz doesn’t skip the lame questions on its profile page (what’s my superpower? come on, can you get any more geeky than this?).

So, what’s the Buzz? Google’s new social medium. It let’s you use your Google/Gmail account to automatically get into a network that encompasses all other Google/Gmail users. There you can start threads by posting messages out to the world (or at least those that follow your buzz).

Here’s a short video by Google demonstrating what Buzz can do -

My first response was: Oh no, not another social network to monitor! I really do think Google is a bit late in jumping on the social network wagon. With Facebook, Twitter and other networks so well-established, is there really room for a new one? For us as webmasters/bloggers – is it worth getting into the Buzz arena in order to promote our sites?

Why Buzz Will Be a Success

I have no crystal ball, but here are eight reasons why I think Buzz has  a good chance at becoming a Huge success. That means you need to start buzzing to your potential visitors -

1. This it IS Google and they are using their huge base of Gmail users.
2. No need to get invites or register – Buzz is on your Gmail page whether you want it or not.
3. Not much of a learning curve – just plug and play.
4. No limit on length of messages – easier to speak your mind.
5. Full integration of images and videos. Unfortunately, no drag and drop (as Wave was supposed to have), but still, easier than to add pictures to your tweets. More importantly, easy for your followers to view your media.
6. Being Part of Real time search results. Obviously, with Buzz being part of Google, this is where Google will be able to pull real-time data from in the easiest, most efficient and fastest way. As a blogger or webmaster – you want to be part of that.
7. Multi-platform integration. This is probably a huge factor. Right now, you can already integrate your blogs, twitter, flickr and picasa accounts. Google clearly states that it intends to bring together other platforms as well – all under Buzz of course.
8. Last but not least: mobile phones integration. Buzz on your mobile looks different than Buzz for web. It syncs in to your location right away and brings up new features that correlate with that.

I suspect that lessons have been drawn from Google’s experience with Wave. Buzz seems to be doing a lot of what Wave said it would, but it’s easier to use and starts off with a wider base of users. In my opinion, that’s the key for its future success.

Check your Gmail account for your Buzz “folder” and join in the fun. And of course -

follow me on Buzz!

Can you imagine your world without the little green bar?

You may just have to get used to the idea as many SEO experts think this exactly where we’re heading.

Google has been hinting about this for a while now. Google reps have mentioned this on their webmasters FAQ a while ago -

Don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner.

In a more recent move, Google sends us yet another hint. Google Webmasters Tools no longer displays you Pagerank. Yup, the most official indication of your Pagerank is now gone.

The next logical step for Google to take is to remove the green bar from their toolbar as well.

The World without Google Pagerank

Granted, your average web surfer has no idea what pagerank even means. Yet, what about that part of the web dealing with constructing and promoting websites and blogs? how will the disappearance of Pagerank affect us?

Here are some possible effects:

1. No more endless blog posts and forum threads about “when is the next pagerank update” followed by an endless stream of “My pagerank went up/down!!!” when it actually happens.
2. No more stupid replies from webmasters/bloggers who won’t exchange links with you because “your blog is only PR2 and mine is PR4″.
3. No more sites that exist solely to let you know what your pagerank is.
4. No more relying on this so-easy-to-manipulate metric when buying/selling websites.

In other words, the thing to say once Pagerank is gone is: good riddance.

What do you think? Can you live without knowing what your site’s PR is?

I finally gave in to peer pressure and bought the Thesis theme for my blogs.

All the cool blogs seem to be running on Thesis nowadays, so I figured it’s worth a shot. Total disclosure moment: I honestly am not that enthusiastic about it on the get-go. There is a lot of hype on the thesis website and I’m more of an understatement kind of person. Sorry, but “check out the new awesomeness” is just the kind of phrase that makes me wary.

Still, I just paid $164 for this, so I’m going to give it a fair chance and hopefully be pleasantly surprised. I’m going to install it on some new blogs, while jump starting a few others with regular templates. Here’s what it looks like, fresh out of the box, on a new blog with just one post -

I wonder how much of a difference thesis is going to make in terms of traffic and specifically search engine traffic. One of their top claims is the SEO qualities of this theme. Personally, I believe off-page SEO is much more important than on-page optimization. With off-page promotion being roughly the same, let’s see if Thesis provides any unique traffic edge.

My expectations in the design department are even lower. With all due respect to the theme’s fabled design “customization”, I can ALWAYS tell a thesis design. Something about the navigation system, and often with the fonts, layout and overall feel to the site that gives it away.

So, I just installed the theme on a new blog (on an aged domain) and will start hacking away. This product is definitely not an “out of the box” solution. Just looking at the new page in front of me, it’s already offering an unrelated image on the main page, and the widget areas have text directed at the site owner. You can’t just activate this one – you need to prepare everything in advance, unless you want your users to see unrelated content on the blog.

Oh well, better get to work then. I’ll let you know how it’s going and reveal the result in a future post.

What about you? Are you using Thesis? Love it? Hate it?

I know many people are wondering how to actually make money from their blog or website. Hopefully me sharing my revenue sources may help some of you.

I’ve been a web publisher for over ten years now. During that time, I also gave birth to two wonderful boys, so I am also a full-time Mom. I don’t think you can say I got rich off web publishing, but it does generate a nice steady monthly income, and has been doing that for years.

I love that because -

1. I work from home, available to my kids when they’re here.
2. I work only 20-30 hours a week.
3. My work time is extremely flexible.
4. I still make much more than the average salary, and probably more than I could have made in almost any other career option (especially if you look at an hourly rate).

That I immensely enjoy what I do is definitely a nice bonus!

Where Does the Money Come From

First, let me state (the obvious?) – you need traffic to make the money. Whether that traffic is channeled through one mega site/blog, or divided among many is not the main issue. I have one “biggish” site (over a million pageviews a month) and a bunch of smaller ones. Here is how they make me money:

Direct Advertising Campaigns

I have several small-medium size companies that publish on my sites by buying campaigns directly. These are usually banner campaigns of various sizes, or upgraded listings on a directory that I have. They are always niche-specific.

Niche-specific Advertising Networks

I work with one good niche-specific network for my largest website. They deliver national campaigns with good rates and a nice check every month.

General CPM Advertising Networks

I use Casale Media as a filler for the rest of my inventory. The rates for non-specific campaigns are low, but it still adds up.

CPC Advertising

I use Google Adsense on most of my websites. Have been with Adsense since the very start and I’m happy with the results. There used to be a time when Adsense made up 70% of my income, but its relative share is now down to 30% or so.

On some sites, and in specific sections, I also throw Kontera into the mix. I am happy with Kontera’s revenue, but the contextual links can be confusing for users, so I prefer to avoid them on some pages.

CPA or Affiliate Marketing

I promote products both in blog posts (as the subject matter of a post) and in sidebars. Amazon is my main program, because of their good affiliate tools and good conversions. I also promote a few programs by ShareaSale (yes that’s an affiliate link)  and a few ebooks from Clickbank.