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Google Will Start Notifying Users with Malware

A couple of days ago Google announced that it will start notifying users of its search engines about possible infections of malware or trojans on their machines. Initially the effort will be focused on the DNSChanger trojan, but hopefully it will be extended to other malware.

DNSChanger is a Windows-based trojan which changes the registry containing the nameservers your computer uses to find websites. As a result you’ll type something on the browser and will be redirect to another website, possibly containing further malware.

In order to be notified about a possible infection all you need to do is to search on Google.com. Here’s how the warnings looks like:

google-malware-report

If you are wondering why they don’t this more often, here’s why, according to a Google security engineer:

“In general we want to notify users [of malware infections] anytime we are capable of doing so, but the fact that we don’t do this more often is really just because it’s hard to come across cases where we can do it this accurately. In many cases we only have maybe a 90 percent confidence that someone is infected, and the false positive rate of 10 percent is simply too high to be feasible. But in this case we can be essentially certain that someone is infected.”

The site KrebsOnSecurity has a detailed piece on the matter. Here’s the link to the full article: Google to Warn 500,000+ of DNS Changer Infections.

Original Post: Google Will Start Notifying Users with Malware

Daily Blog Tips

Date Published: May 24, 2012 - 3:51 pm

A Platform to Test Your Affiliate Marketing Offers

I am always looking for new websites to use as marketing platforms for my projects and products, and an interesting one I found recently is called UKritic.com.

Think about it as a Squidoo for product reviews. Basically users sign-up and write reviews about the product they have used or bought. Unlike other websites with user-generated content, however, UKritic will give you a piece of the action if people reading your reviews end up purchasing the product.

In other words, they are totally fine to have affiliate marketers aboard.

If you are just getting started with affiliate marketing this might actually be a good place to test things out. That is, you could pick a range of products and niches you want to promote and test things out on their platform.

After that you check what types of reviews and products convert better, and then you decide if you want to spend time and money building a whole website around those or not.

Here’s a video explaining how it works in detail:

Right after you sign-up you’ll be able to start writing your reviews. Before your profile becomes public, though, you need to have at least one review approved by the moderators, which is a positive thing in my opinion, as it helps to keep the level of spam down.

If you visit the site you’ll notice that every review has three big orange buttons pointing to the seller’s website: one on top, on on the sidebar and one at the bottom. Guess what, you can provide your affiliate links when writing the review and those buttons will carry it for you, so you get commissions for buyers going through your Ukritic review. You can also embed affiliate links in the body of the review if you prefer.

Overall I think it’s a nice idea, and I believe the approach to support rather than prohibit affiliate marketing will definitely help this platform to become popular, so check it out here.

Original Post: A Platform to Test Your Affiliate Marketing Offers

Daily Blog Tips

Date Published: May 23, 2012 - 3:49 pm

How To Keep Your Brand Consistency As A Blogger

A brand is way more than your logo and slogan. The overall style that defines you as a blogger can tell people to expect this and that from you. People tend to like what they recognize. We give trust to things that all to something familiar. If you make it easy for anybody to perceive who you are and you stick to that persona you’ll surely make a good impression in the long haul.

To state it upfront: diversity is undeniably good when you are a blogger. You can settle upon a wide range of topics to write about, you get to revamp the site from time to time and explore new ways to express yourself on the social media. A brand’s life is more relaxed in the blogosphere than, for instance, in the B2C world where each product has to create strong recognition in order to sell. We all know that.

However, what I am going to say (in the next 200 words or so) is just this: once you have defined your own style, stray from it no more so that you’ll earn readers’ trust and build a loyal fan base.

Clean your blog’s appearance

When it comes to the design of your website, every detail should make a harmonious statement. Choose an assembly of no more than maybe 2-3 matching fonts (Kernest can help you combine them aesthetically). Decide the class parameters for links and set some unitary rules over when to use bold and italic in the body of the articles.

Images and color palettes used on the site also need to be coherent all together. And the core element, your logo, should be nothing less than wonderful. It’s a good idea to hire a designer on this, to be sure the graphics will be distinctive and appealing. If you’re on a tight budget, 99designs can be a great alternative.

Create a post trademark

It may be a crossed interview held simultaneously by two bloggers with a single interviewee. Or a face-to-face type of post like Daniel does. Or anything you would find relevant. Find a special formula of post and regularly spice up your blog with it. This is a trait of A-list blogs that you can easily put into practice.

Admit your own biases publicly if they exist

It’s pretty hard to keep 100% unbiased – and actually few blogs try to. The essential thing is not to camouflate your partialities behind a fake objective tone, or you will lose credibility. First of all, choose carefully who you advocate and make sure you do believe in that party, so that you can write about it in a convincing manner. After that, go ahead and tell people: “This is me and those are my beliefs; now hear what I have to say”.

For instance, if you’d like to advocate Microsoft and hence you love Internet Explorer, make your readers aware of that, so that they won’t be intrigued that you refused to review their app just because they’re on the Firefox bandwagon. You got my point. Maybe you’re not in for Pulitzer award, but anyhow it’s good to be honest.

Use whitelabels

Customize and adapt everything that may interfere with your public presence and wipe out parasite messages. For instance, we often use third party services to create and disseminate web forms and surveys, newsletters or press releases. In respect for your own image, all materials that are sent to the public should display your own logo and bare the minimum identification elements of the original service.

I really am tired of those newsletters I occasionally with a prominent Vocus mark on their headline. It takes me some 5 seconds to realize the message is actually from a financial blog I subscribed to, and this thing sucks. Consider spending a few bucks more and maybe buying a license for the sake of having a whitelabel material that you can customize for your own brand.

Design a brand-centered Facebook fan page

Apart from the website itself, Facebook is the second best piece of web real estate for your blog. Customize your fan page to display the distinctive appearance of your blog. The cover photo can be a sample of your site’s header or a combination of graphics that resemble it, like Lifehacker has. You can unleash your creativity with the Welcome tab HTML – make it speak clearly about your brand!

Remain a real person

A friend’s advice: don’t let your own personality be assimilated to the blog itself. You are the head of it, but you may lose opportunities of networking and personal development if you incorporate your image totally in your work. Put up a profile for yourself on social networks, apart from your business pages. This way you will add value to your business online presence, by proving there is a real human behind it.

Good luck!

Laura Moisei has a degree in Communication and writes for 123ContactForm.com, an app that helps users create web forms and surveys for any blog and webpage. Laura’s daily delights are blogging, photography and good food.

Original Post: How To Keep Your Brand Consistency As A Blogger

Daily Blog Tips

Date Published: May 22, 2012 - 3:49 pm

How to Upgrade WordPress via SSH

For most WordPress users updating to a newer version is pretty straight forward: log into the WordPress dashboard, click on “Updates” and then select the option to update WordPress. Within 10 seconds or so you are set.

Depending on the settings of your server, though, the automatic update option will not work. In this case you’ll need to perform the update manually, which means deleting and uploading the files via FTP, which takes a lot of time (around 15 minutes for all WordPress files with an average Internet connection).

Is there a better way? Yep, and it’s called SSH. SSH stands for Secure Shell, and it’s a protocol for remote communications. Using this protocol you can basically connect to your server and perform commands as if you were using the computer personally.

Warning: Make sure to backup all your data and databases before trying any type of update, as you could mess things up and lose everything. Try the stuff below at your own risk.

First of all you need to contact your hosting provider to make sure you have SSH enabled on your account. After that you can login to your server by typing

ssh user@mydomain.com

on the command line, and after that you’ll be prompted to put your password. Usually the user and password are the same of your FTP account, but they might be different.

Once you are logged in you need to browse to your public_html directory, which is usually where WordPress is installed. If you are using a sub-directory, navigate to it. Then type this to download the latest WordPress files:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

After that type this to decompress the file:

tar xfz latest.tar.gz

Next we need to delete the wp-admin and wp-includes directories, which you can do with the following commands:

rm -rf ./wp-includes rm -rf ./wp-admin

Now you want to move the new wp-admin and wp-include directories to the root, so type the following commands:

mv ./wordpress/wp-admin ./ mv ./wordpress/wp-includes ./

Finally, go inside the WordPress directory with

cd wordpress

and copy its content to the parent directory (i.e., the root) overwriting the old ones:

cp -rpf -f * ../

Finally, type “cd ..” to go back to the root directory and delete both the tar file you downloaded and the wordpress directory with this:

rm -rf ./wordpress/ rm -f latest.tar.gz

That’s it. All you have to do now is to run the upgrade script on your WordPress install (i.e., domain.com/wp-admin/upgraded.php).

Original Post: How to Upgrade WordPress via SSH

Daily Blog Tips

Date Published: May 21, 2012 - 3:49 pm

The 5 Deadly Sins of Blogging (And How to Avoid Them)

A lot of beginner bloggers do a heavy about of sinning when they first start out…

I’m not saying they’re bad people, it’s just that they are committing nearly all of the deadly sins that bloggers need to look out for.

“But wait, aren’t there 7 deadly sins?”

In the religious context, yes, but as a blogger, there are really only 5 sins you need to worry about…

1.) Gluttony

“What does gluttony have to do with blogging?”

Simply put: when you “consume” too much and don’t create some kind of output, you are being gluttonous.

For bloggers, this comes in the form of information rather than things like food.

The over-consumption of information is dangerous, it leads to someone who is always out on the prowl for the newest trick or tactic, but who has never put them into practice.

This is especially important if you read a lot of “blogging about blogging” blogs (hey, I’m just being brutally honest, as usual).

It’s not that they don’t provide value, it’s that they can get you captivated in the “ooh shiny” mentality, getting caught up in the so called ‘latest and greatest’ when you should be busy implementing a solid foundation of techniques that work, including things like creating great content and writing guest posts to promote that content.

2.) Greed

A lot of bloggers are susceptible to this sin, hell, even established bloggers are suspect.

So, what is it about greed that can really hold a blogger back?

First of all, greed often has people putting up invasive advertisements & promoting crappy products, all the while not maintaining a focus on building a thriving audience.

Your readers are not commodities, they can be loyal customers if you treat them well, and brand advocates if you treat them very well.

They are also people, would you want to be treated in misleading ways on another person’s website?

Of course not, so don’t promote filth with an affiliate link just to make a quick buck, and don’t throw up advertisements on your second week blogging: build an audience, build an email list, and treat people with the courtesy that they deserve, there’s much more to blogging than making a quick buck.

3.) Pride

This sin is a surefire way to failure.

“My content is so good, I don’t have to promote it, the quality will do the talking!”

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but here’s two things why that won’t work:

You are probably overrating how good your content is (it’s your “baby”, you’re bound to see it differently)
There is a ton of great content on the web now, businesses often have content strategists that work on just their blog (like I with my posts on the HelpScout blog)

The overall point: It’s a competitive market; scratch that, a hyper competitive market, in almost every niche!

There are people who are paid to do what you are trying to succeed with, how can you hope to compete?

Great content is now the price of entry, NOT the defining factor for a successful blog.

So, how can you market your content without being a sleazebag?

You’re reading a method right now: write for other blogs in your space, that one should be obvious to you if you aren’t totally new.

You also need to be creating content that’s easy to plug into conversations.

You needn’t be afraid of emailing people about a new piece of yours if it relates to them in some general way, such as if they are in the same industry.

Want to know how I got Neil Patel, a guy with 100,000+ follows, to tweet about my article?

I asked him!

Crazy, ain’t it?

I told him that I had this planned as a guest post for his site, but thought it went with my brand better.

I also (via email, the best social network) asked if he wouldn’t mind sharing the piece if he enjoyed it.

He tweeted it within the hour, he’s a nice dude!

You shouldn’t be badgering the same people every time to you post something new, but reaching out to new folks from time to time will do amazing things for your blog’s promotion, trust me.

4.) Sloth

Oh man, this one can get a lot of people.

I’ve had people email me about their struggles with their blog, and when I got to visit it, they haven’t posted in 2 months!

That’s an extreme example, and sometimes it’s more insidious: people who are posting regularly, but doing nothing to market their content.

Sometimes, it might even be necessary to have a “1:1″ ratio for posts, or an “80:20″ ratio for marketing vs. posting.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I’m saying that posting 1 guest post for every post on your blog can be the ideal way to actually build an audience.

I’m also saying that, in some cases, spending upwards of 50, 60, 70, or even 80% of your time marketing your posts can be the way to go.

As a new blog, you should be focusing on creating a unique angle and outstanding content: don’t worry about posting once a day, that’s a load of bull.

Instead, create posts that are worthy of promotion, and spend the next week promoting the hell out of them (and your blog in general) with guest posts, emails, networking, etc.

Sounds goofy, but people far more experienced than me will tell you the same thing.

People like to think great content promotes itself, and that’s true, but in such a crowded place as the internet, who’s going to get the ball rolling?

The answer: you.

5. Envy/Lust/Wrath

I’ve combined the last 3 sings because they all relate to one thing (in my eyes)…

Caring too much about what other’s are doing.

It’s easy to get envious of others reach & audience, lustful of their income, and even angry that you cannot seem to do the same.

But such is business, and such is life.

Everybody has to start from square one in some fashion or another, and worrying about others does nothing for your own projects.

It’s okay to “observe” others; learning from people who’s advice you actually trust is a great way to skip having the same failures as them.

Be wary though: in the world of online marketing, there are some seriously shady characters.

What to be weary of: “Quick” fixes to anything, bizopps that target people who are total beginners in business, software that promises the world, people selling shady SEO techniques, anything that makes a process you know to be a lot of work (like building a successful blog) look easy; if it looks too good to be true, it’s a scam.

Over To You

Do you commit any blogging sins?

How do you plan on “repenting” and getting back to business?

Thanks for reading, I’d love to see you down in the comments!

Gregory Ciotti is the founder of Sparring Mind and a regular columnist for DailyBlogTips. Download his free ‘Conversion Psychology’ e-Book today to learn the science behind increasing conversions.

Original Post: The 5 Deadly Sins of Blogging (And How to Avoid Them)

Daily Blog Tips

Date Published: May 17, 2012 - 3:48 pm

The 5 Deadly Sins of Blogging (And How to Avoid Them)

A lot of beginner bloggers do a heavy about of sinning when they first start out…

I’m not saying they’re bad people, it’s just that they are committing nearly all of the deadly sins that bloggers need to look out for.

“But wait, aren’t there 7 deadly sins?”

In the religious context, yes, but as a blogger, there are really only 5 sins you need to worry about…

1.) Gluttony

“What does gluttony have to do with blogging?”

Simply put: when you “consume” too much and don’t create some kind of output, you are being gluttonous.

For bloggers, this comes in the form of information rather than things like food.

The over-consumption of information is dangerous, it leads to someone who is always out on the prowl for the newest trick or tactic, but who has never put them into practice.

This is especially important if you read a lot of “blogging about blogging” blogs (hey, I’m just being brutally honest, as usual).

2.) Greed

A lot of bloggers are susceptible to this sin, hell, even established bloggers are suspect.

So, what is it about greed that can really hold a blogger back?

First of all, greed often has people putting up invasive advertisements & promoting crappy products, all the while not maintaining a focus on building a thriving audience.

Your readers are not commodities, they can be loyal customers if you treat them well, and brand advocates if you treat them very well.

They are also people, would you want to be treated in misleading ways on another person’s website?

3.) Pride

This sin is a surefire way to failure.

“My content is so good, I don’t have to promote it, the quality will do the talking!”

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but here’s two things why that won’t work:

You are probably overrating how good your content is (it’s your “baby”, you’re bound to see it differently)
There is a ton of great content on the web now, businesses often have content strategists that work on just their blog (like I with my posts on the HelpScout blog)