Monitor Your WordPress Plugins

Elliot Silver
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4

File this under common sense advice, but it’s something to keep in mind when using WordPress plugins. You should always be aware of how they work, what they do, and their current settings on your WordPress based website.

I have the Simply Exclude plugin used on a few of my websites. In fact, I essentially copied the meat of one of my sites to use as the base for my other sites. Unfortunately, I never checked the Simply Exclude plugin settings, and I had blocked a specific type of page on my site. Upon replicating that particular page over and over, I was creating pages that blocked search engines from seeing them. They aren’t critical pages or advertisers’ pages, but they are important.  Bozo move on my part.

The good news is that I caught this error and can advise you on not doing the same thing. The other good news is that upon allowing search engines to see those pages, I should see quite a jump in traffic. The bad news is that I was blocking certain pages for a long time, which probably cost me traffic and revenue.

Do yourself a favor when you develop. Learn about the features and functionality of all your plugins. Avoid silly mistakes like the one I made.

Here’s a Good Hurricane Domain Name to Develop: GoBags.com

Elliot Silver
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16

As I’ve done in the past, I want to share a domain name with you that’s for sale and I think the price is pretty reasonable. There’s no affiliate code with this, and I am not going to make a dime if you buy it (nor have I been paid or asked to post this).

With Hurricane Irene fast approaching New York City, I’ve been reading some of the news stories, and many with a local focus discuss hurricane preparedness. One of the essential things these articles mention is to have “go bags” ready in case an evacuation is necessary.

From what I understand, a go bag is basically a bag of supplies you can quickly grab as you are evacuating. According to the New York City Office of Emergency Management,  “every household should pack a Go Bag – a collection of items you may need in the event of an  evacuation. A Go Bag should be packed in a sturdy, easy-to-carry container such as a backpack or suitcase on wheels. A Go Bag should be easily accessible if you have to leave your home in a hurry. Make sure it is ready to go at all times of the year.”

I would imagine Go Bags are recommended in many other places where rapid evacuations are deemed necessary. There are a number of websites that offer tips on what to pack in Go Bags and many have sections where supplies can be purchased. In my opinion, someone could develop a website and sell these bags that are already prepared, and different bags can contain things that would be necessary for different emergency situations.

The domain name is owned by a private domain investor (who doesn’t know I am even posting this) and it’s available for sale on Afternic right now for $4,500, with offers over $500 considered.

I have enough projects of my own right now and no e-commerce experience, so this wouldn’t be a good fit for my company. Perhaps you can make good use of it.

What do you think about this name and its price?

Jesse Distad: WordPress Expert

Elliot Silver
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6

I want to give a big “thank you” to Jesse Distad who helped me with my blog’s migration to a new server. Jesse also helped upgrade the blog to the newest version of WordPress, made sure all of the plugins were updated, and went through the site to make sure the coding was clean and not going to cause any downtime.

I hesitate to write anything about great coders and/or designers because the moment I do, they become inundated with work for other people! However, I really appreciate Jesse’s help, and if you need a WordPress expert, you may want to get in touch with Jesse. His company is AdminDaily.com.

I was referred to Jesse by Morgan Linton and Chef Patrick, who have used him for their own website projects.

Bill Karamouzis of HallPass Media to Keynote at TRAFFIC

Elliot Silver
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0

Rick Schwartz just announced that the keynote speaker for October’s TRAFFIC conference in Ft. Lauderdale will be Bill Karamouzis, CEO of HallPass Media, The topic of the keynote speech will be “the challenge of developing our domains into businesses.”

Bill’s company has been written up in TechCrunch several times in the last couple of years, most notably to domain investors for its purchase of CookingGames.com for $350,000. While some criticized this purchase as being overpriced, the advantage for a development company like HallPass Media is that it knows conversion metrics and can base it’s acquisition price on actual experiential data. HallPass Media operated hundreds of unique games on it’s websites.

Previously, Bill successfully built and sold another gaming business, Addicting Games, to Atom Games, for an undisclosed sales price. At the time of the sale, it was one of the most trafficked websites in existence.

In April of this year, HallPass Media (which had independently raised $2 million) was acquired by MindJolt for an undisclosed price. The acquiring company is led by the founder of MySpace.

I think this is a wise choice for a keynote speaker at TRAFFIC. Bill clearly knows how to develop a business using strong domain names as the foundation, and I believe he’ll be able to give some practical advice to those of us building our own businesses.  

Blocking WordPress Spam with Akismet

Elliot Silver
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5

Comment spam is a nuisance just about every WordPress blog owner faces. I use the free Akismet WordPress plugin to block spam comments on my blog and my other WordPress-based websites. Akismet has blocked hundreds of thousands of spam comments from appearing on my blog and annoying readers.

One thing I’ve noticed quite a bit of lately are repetitive comments that are made by different people (or maybe even bots) that try to embed links or have keyword anchor text, and they aren’t being blocked by Akismet. Despite having “nofollow” tag attribute on all comments and in the comment section of my blog, people still think they may get some search engine benefits from posting links.

There are a couple of tell-tale signs that a comment may be spam. Of course it’s quite obvious when there are  keywords in lieu of a person’s name (some people always do this though). The other thing that people try is copying someone else’s comment word for word but they add a link below the comment. I guess they assume many people will just approve the comment and not notice the link.

It’s unlikely that these comments will be harmful to a blog, but they are certainly annoying to read. Akismet is a helpful plugin, but it doesn’t always do the trick.

Directories Can Be a PITA

Elliot Silver
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31

I’ve chosen the directory model for a few of my developed websites, and since one has several hundred paying customers, I think I can give some feedback about building and managing directory websites based on my experience.

Building a directory site can be a bit difficult if you start from scratch or customize a theme you like, but once you’ve got a design and platform that works, replicating it can generally cost just a few hundred dollars and should take several hours to complete. This doesn’t include the time and maybe money spent researching, marketing, and advertising the site, but rather just the cost of getting it started. All in all, it’s not too  onerous, which makes this a very good model for me.

If you haven’t managed a directory website before where people pay for listings, I can tell you from experience that they can be a pain in the ass, especially when you are working with small businesses.

People can be demanding when you ask them to spend their hard earned money on a listing. Some might not understand why an Internet directory listing is worth the price, despite the fact that they continually spend thousands of dollars on phone book advertising and newspaper ads. Many want to talk on the phone or in person before committing. It’s not the end of the world, but I would prefer to not have an hour-long conversation (or more) with just the chance of earning $49 for the listing.

Many small business owners will want or expect special  accommodations to be made for them (the standard listing page won’t be decorative or colorful enough). Others will ask you to make changes to their listing frequently. You’ll have people who want a listing but can’t complete it themselves and will require you to create it for them and then make changes. Some of your clients will expect instantaneous results, and they will complain to you when they haven’t received a single lead after 24 hours.

You will have a considerable amount of people who will create a listing but won’t be able to pay. Some just won’t be able to pay using the payment methods you offer. People will forget about their listing and file complaints with Paypal when their listing automatically renews…. the list goes on and on, and it can be difficult to manage an active directory.

Directories are great because they are fairly easy to set up, and customer-created listings help drive increased traffic to the website. They offer a strong recurring revenue stream, especially when your site gets significant amounts of traffic. However, there are plenty of frustrating aspects to managing a directory, so you should know what you’re getting into before you get started.

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