Cloak Your Affiliate Link for FREE!

As an affiliate marketer, you probably would like to have the links to your affiliate offers appear to be links from your own domain. It’s also a good idea to change the link appearance to make it a little harder for your links to be hijacked. Affiliate links usually have this format: affiliateid.hop.clickbank.net

It looks much better, and many times increases your sales, if the link appears to stay in your site: www.mydomain.com/special-discount

Many new marketers try to use a URL shortener to hide the affiliate links, but to most users they look odd, and make them wonder where you are sending them, and are expecting it to be a big sales pitch. Even though TinyURL, Bit.ly, and other shorteners have gained a lot of popularity, they may not be your best choice for marketing on your blog or website. Their place is in Twitter where you must keep your URL’s short.

You can also buy cloaking programs to change your links, and most of them work great.  The problem with them is the cost. Most of them are expensive, and for a new marketer, may be more than your budget can afford.

An inexpensive and very effective way to change your links is to use a simple PHP script. You can create your own, or you can download the script I found and use it for your affiliate links. Here are the steps to download and use this  free link cloaker script:

1. Download the script from this location
2. Once you have download the script, upload it to your domain FTP and run the installcloaker.php file.
3. Create a MySQL database for this application on your hosting control panel. 
4. Put your database info on provided field (You can leave the table name blank), and press “Submit” when you are done
   
5. You should see the successful message on the next page if you done correctly.
   
6. To start cloaking your link, run the newcloak.php file from the script location on your browser. Put your affiliate link on “Link” and your affiliate keyword on “Keyword” field.
   
7. Press “Submit” and you should be getting your new affiliate cloaked link.

This script does require you have your own domain name, and paid hosting for your site.  This is one reason some people use TinyUrl or another URL shortener, to save money while they are starting out. I always recommend using paid hosting and your own domain name as soon as you can.

Using a PHP script to modify your affiliate links is a great way to make your product offers appear to be from your own site, and increase your conversion rates.

How to Embed Your Favorite Fonts to HTML Site or Blog

Creating great looking Headings and Titles has been a big challenge for marketers. Many of us have just been happy using the old standby fonts of Arial, Verdana, Times, etc; but that gets boring very fast. The next logical step has been to use a graphic in place of the text.  While this looks great, it takes much longer to download, and you can’t edit the text on the spur of the moment. Using a graphic doesn’t work very well for a blog format, where you have a new title every time you post.

Finally with the new features of CSS 3 and support in the newest internet browsers, we can embed True Type Fonts in our web designs, using CSS. This allows us to be creative, and to design pages and layouts that look fantastic, without requiring the painstaking work of creating graphics for everything. This can save us a lot of time. As an internet marketer, you don’t want to be spending all of your time creating graphics, when you should be creating content and communicating with your market.

Setting up to use embedded fonts does require a little work up front. Here’s the steps to start using embedded True Type Fonts on your websites:

1. Prepare the font file that you want to use in *.ttf file. ( It would be great  if you already have the *.eot file)
2. Convert your *.ttf file into *.eot file using this Web Font Converter (http://www.kirsle.net/wizards/ttf2eot.cgi). (You can skip this step if you already have the *.eot file of your font)
3. Once you already have the *.eot file, upload the *.eot file into you website.
4. Define your font on the CSS file like the example below and make sure you define the URL correctly. You could also add another font attribute if you like.
   
5. To set these fonts to be used within a specific class or division, there are two ways. One method is to set it normally through a tag rule and the other one is to give the font a class statement so you can use the font on a specific tag or division.
   
   
6. To use the font, you just need to call it using class tag. For example :
   <div class=”bradley”>This would be Bradley Hand ITC font.</div>
   
7. The result should be showing like this.
   

By adding embedded True Type Fonts to your sites, your pages are going to load faster, look better, and be much easier for you to maintain. The only negative you need to be aware of is only the newest web browsers support CSS 3’s embedded True Type Fonts.  Currently it requires Firefox 3.5, Opera 10.0, and greater, most versions of Internet Explorer have support for the embedded fonts. If your reader is using an older browser, they will not see the format you intended. It would be a great idea to check out your sites with a range of popular browsers to make sure how it will appear. Most times the browser will switch to a default font, and the blog will at least be readable.

You should start using embedded fonts today, so your sites are easier for you to work with, faster to download, and you are prepared as everyone switches to new internet browsers.

Make Your Content Publishing Auto-Pilot

How do you update your blog? Do you write every post, one at a time, and then post them immediately? Do you ever get a day off?

As a Blogger, you may want to start thinking like the producer of a TV Series. Plan out your season, lay out the story line you want to convey for the entire season. This will give you much better control of your blog. By planning your season of blog posts, you can produce posts in advance, schedule interviews with Market Leaders in your niche, produce videos, and many other things you cannot do on the spur of the moment.

You may be wondering what do I do with all of this content, now that I’ve created it ahead of time. You go ahead and load it into Wordpress, and schedule your posts to happen when you want. That’s right, you could take a week or two off and your blog would continue updating without you behind the keyboard. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Of course, the first thing you need is your content, you’ll need to prepare a fair amount of content ahead of time. You’ll need to decide the schedule for your posts, and then setup Wordpress to post on the schedule.

Here’s the steps to setup your scheduled posts:

1. Logon to your Wordpress administration page.
2. On the “Posts” tab, click “Add New” to add a new post.
   
3. On the right side of the page (Publish Section), click “Edit” on “Publish” line.
   
4. Put your desired time on the provided field. Then, click “OK“. Once, you have prepare your post and other details and click “Publish“.
   
5. The post will be published to your page on the defined time.

There are a few niches where this does not work well. If you were going to setup a blog with several months worth of posts in the Digital Camera or Laptop market, by the time your post or review was published, it would be old news. No one would be searching for the product any more. For fast moving product reviews you may still need to post manually, or at least on a much faster schedule. I still like to use the schedule function, and write a weeks worth of posts at one time and have them post during the week. This gives me more time for promoting on other days, instead of always feeling pressured to finish a new post.

Is this practice commonly used by bloggers? You bet your bottom dollar!  Even the great teacher, John Reese, of Traffic Secrets 2.0 recommends this process. If you’re ready to take control of your blog, start working with scheduled posts, and take a day off!

Hey, What is This Font?

Have you ever been browsing around the internet and found a great looking website, and you simply love the font they are using? I used to just stare at the font, trying to figure out what it was, or browse through a directory of fonts, hoping I could find it.  Many times I would spend hours, browsing through font directories, until I thought I was going blind.  Most times I did not have much success on locating the font I wanted, and just went on my way, frustrated. I had already envisioned, in my mind, using that exact font on my next project.

Then finally, one day I found the solution to this dilemma. While I was searching on Google for a font, I came across a great website, www.myfonts.com, which has a great feature called “WhatTheFont”. Using their website, you can upload a graphic sample of the font you like, and their program will attempt to identify it. I uploaded the font I had been trying to identify, and I was amazed as seconds later I knew the name of the font.

If you have a font you are trying to identify, here are the steps to using their site for font identification:

1. Visit http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
2. On the upload field, Click “Browse” and pick the image that contains a font that you want to find out and hit the “Upload Image” button.
   
3. On this tutorial, I use this image as an example.
   
4. On the next page, you will have to verify the letter which shown on the image. If the text field is blank, you will need to write down the correct letter on the text field.
   
5. Hit “Search” and you should be able to compare your font with the search result and find the closest match for your font.

WhatTheFont is very good at identifying many fonts, but it is not always accurate.  You will still need to compare the results with your font to make sure it identified it correctly.  Sometimes it may not identify the font at all, but there is a great alternative on their site.  You can upload the font to their forum, and have the typography guru’s who frequent their forum attempt to identify it.  You’ll get the best results if you use a large image of the font.  Though WhatTheFont works great, there will always be those rare times when no one can identify the font for you.

Using the proper fonts in your heading, and subheading can greatly enhance the appearance of your site.  When you can not name the font you are wanting to use, WhatTheFont can save the day!

Moving Big Files from a Hosting Server to Another

At some point in time, you will probably need to move your website to a new host, whether it is to save money, for new features, or to increase your storage and bandwidth. The process of moving your website to a new host can seem very intimidating.  You want to make sure you get all the files moved, without bringing down your existing site first. If you have a slow or non-reliable internet connection, then downloading your site to your local PC, and then uploading to the new host can be time consuming and may fail.

It would be much better if your could use the high speed connections of the two ISP’s, and transfer directly from one server to the other. This will be much faster, and definitely a more reliable way to transfer your site. The best way to accomplish this is using LFTP.

If you’d like to try this method of transfer, you’ll need to verify your hosting is Linux based (most are), and that you have SSH access to your account. Also, check with your ISP and make sure the LFTP command is available. Once you have verified those few items from your new hosting company, you are ready to move your site.

Here are the steps for mirroring your site with LFTP:

1. Access the destination server using your SSH access. You can use SSH client like PuTTY for it.
2. Connect to the source server using this command :
    lftp -u username, password, ftpsite
   Where :
   username is your source server FTP username
   password is your source server FTP password
   ftpsite is your destination hostname
3. Then, after the FTP connection is established, type this command to transfer the data from your source server to destination server :
   mirror /path/to/source_directory path/to/target_directory
4. The transfer process will begin after you type it.

A few things you need to watch out for, first, make sure you choose the correct directory structure for your new host, or you may end up with the files nested inside of another directory.  Secondly, if you are using any database driven sites, like Joomla, OSCommerce, Mambo, and Wordpress, the database will not transfer properly. All the files will mirror across perfectly, but the database will not be up and running. LFTP will not transfer a password protected folder either. You would need to remove the password, transfer the folder, and then assign a password once the folder is transferred.

Even though there are a few shortcomings to the LFTP mirror, it is one of the best ways to quickly move your entire website from one ISP to another. It is a fast and reliable way to move your website.

Add Digg-This Button to Your Blog Posts

One of the first places I want the word about my blog posts spread is on Digg.  Digg gives a good boost to my traffic, and to the rankings of my blog post on the search engines.  Digg is even more powerful if it is not only me “digg’ing it”, but if my readers submit a digg comment also.  Most people do not even think about submitting a Digg about our blog posts, unless we ask them.

Just putting a comment on our blog requesting they Digg the article is usually not very effective.  How often do you take the time to go open Digg, login, type up a comment, and submit it, just because someone asked? If we really want our readers to Digg the story, then we need to provide them with a fast, simple way to post their Digg, and right at the moment they finish reading our article.  The best way to increase your readers Digg’ing your article is to provide them with a simple link to Digg that fills out most of the information for them.

The Wordpress Digg This Plugin can fill our needs for simplifying the Digg submission process for our readers.   When they click the Digg It icon, it will take them directly to Digg’s site, letting them quickly Digg your post.  The Digg this plugin will even show the Digg count for our blog post.

To install the Digg plugin only requires these few steps:

1. Logon to your Wordpress administration page.
2. Once you have logged on, go the “Plugins” tab on the left panel and click “Add New“.
   
3. On the search field, put “WP Digg This” and hit the “Search Plugins” button. Once the search result appears, hit “Install” link on the “WP Digg This” plugin.
   
4. On the plugin description Window, click “Install Now“.
   
5. Once the installation has complete, don’t forget to click “Activate Plugin“.
   
6. To add the Digg button to each of your post, createedit a post. On the New/Edit Post page, scroll to the bottom page and you should see the “Custom Field” section. Put “digg” on the “Name” field and “1” to the “Value” (without quotation mark) and click “Add Custom Field” button. Then, you could proceed with editing and publishing your post. The digg button should be showing on your blog post if your plugin is correctly installed.
   

Like many plugins, if you want to change the location of the button, you will need to tweak your theme code.  In most cases the default location works great.

Digg is a very powerful method of promotion, and one you should not overlook.  Installing the Digg This plugin will increase your number of Diggs, which increases your traffic.  We all know, increased traffic results in more income, and I really Digg increased income.

Adding Retweet Button to Your Blog Posts

Twitter has become a big part of most bloggers promotion efforts, and is a key way to keep in contact with their followers. Twitter becomes even more powerful, for our blog promotion, and communications, when our readers retweet our blog posts, spreading the word about our blog wider and deeper through the market. The time when our readers are most excited about our post is the moment they have just finished reading it, and this is the exact moment we’d like them to tweet about our article. Most of our followers are not going to think about tweeting or take the time to open Twitter, login, type in a message about our post, and send it. If we want to have our readers help us by tweeting about our blog, we need to make it easy and immediate for them.

Once again, a Wordpress plugin can come to our rescue. If you use the Tweetmeme Button Plugin for Wordpress, you will add a Twitter ReTweet button for every post in your blog, including both new posts, and all of your past posts. The ReTweet button even has a cool counter, showing how many times it has been used to tweet about your blog post.

When your user click the Twitter Retweet button, it takes them to their Twitter login page, once they login, the plugin has automatically inserted the RT @yourblogname and the title of your blog post. All the reader needs to do is push send and the tweet is on its way. You can’t make it much easier for your followers.

If you’d like to start having your readers promote your blog, you can install the Tweetmeme Button plugin by following these steps:

1. Logon to your Wordpress administration page.
2. Click the tiny arrow on Plugin tabs and click “Add New”
   
3. Put “Tweetmeme” on the search field, and hit the “Search Plugins” button. Once the search result appear, click “Install” on “TweetMeme Button” plugin.
   
4. Click “Install Now” on the plugin description window.
   
5. Once the installation has complete, click “Activate Plugin“.
   
6. The new tab will appear on your Wordpress administration page. Click it to visit the plugin setting. You could modify how the button is shown on this page.
   
7. The TweetMeme button will appear on each of your blog post and ready to be used.
   

Moving the button location is not as easy as I’d like to see. If you want to move the button from the left hand side to the right hand side of your blog posts, you would need to modify the code in your theme. It works great on the left hand side for most themes, I usually leave it there.

Install the plugin today, and give your readers a quick and easy way to Tweet about your blog, it is a great way to increase your readership without additional work on your part.

How to Make Your Wordpress Blog Becomes iPhone Friendly

One big challenge we face today is the proliferation of smart phones like the iPhone or Blackberry, and other handheld mobile devices like an iPod Touch.  Many people searching and reading information today, read them on their mobile devices while they are on the road, sitting in an airport, or even eating lunch in a fast food joint.  While we are thrilled they are reading our pages on their smart phones, normally our Wordpress blogs look terrible, and load very slow.  Our Wordpress themes don’t translate well to the small LCD screens, making it difficult for people to read our blogs on their devices.

Another shortcoming of many mobile devices is their inability to display any flash or java animations or ads we might be using.

We need to solve these shortcomings if we want the readers to keep coming back to our blog.  Luckily there is a great Wordpress plugin which can solve most of these issues.  The plugin I like the best is the Wordpress iPhone plugin.  The plugin takes our existing content, and converts it into another set of blog pages, optimized for reading on an iPhone or other mobile device.  When the reader comes to your blog, the plugin will detect what type of device, and direct them to either the normal blog, or to our mobile device optimized pages, automatically.

To install the plugin is very straight forward.  Just follow these few steps, and you will have it running in just a few minutes:

1. Logon to your Wordpress administration page.
2. Once you are there, click the tiny arrow on the plugin section and click “Add New“.
   
3. On the search field, type “Wptouch iPhone Theme“. The search result will appear and click the “Install” link to begin the installation.
   
4. Click “Install Now” on the new plugin description window. After the plugin is installed, click “Activate Plugin” to enable it.
   
   
5. To setup this plugin options, visits the Settings > WPtouch tab.
   
6. After setting up the plugin (which depends on your needs), your iPhone plugin is ready to be used now.

The iPhone plugin creates pages with the look and feel of an iPhone app.  Sometimes this is a bit annoying to users of other devices, but most people are appreciative of having the blog posts configured to work on their mobile device.  If someone prefers reading your blog page in its normal appearance, they can easily switch to view the standard blog pages.

Installing the iPhone plugin for Wordpress will make it much easier for your visitors to read your blog on their mobile devices.  This will produce more repeat visitors, and gives you the opportunity to successfully extend your marketing to mobile users.