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Shopzilla Publisher Program

Shopzilla is an ad network (currently in beta) that pays per click (CPC). I have been using it since last month and it has done really well on my product related site – DigitGeek.

I have tried many ad networks on DigitGeek like AdSense, Kontera, Amazon, TTZ Media, Chitika and WidgetBucks and none have done as good as Shopzilla. It has to be because Shopzilla has clickable images on their ads which gets it more clicks.

Both Chitika eMinimalls and TTZ Media used to have clickable images, but stopped it later. They even made their ads display only for some countries. I hope Shopzilla wont do this in the future as it can reduce the Click Thru Rate a lot.

As long as they don’t do it, Shopzilla will be a good alternative to programs like Chitika’s eMiniMalls, TTZ Media and WidgetBucks.

They offer different content types like ‘Top Search Results’, ‘Custom Text Links’, ‘Search Boxes’, “Banners’, ‘Product Pods’, and ‘Text links’.

shopzillacotnenttypes

Shopzilla has a similar feature to the AdSense channels called Placement IDs which are helpful to find out which ads are performing the best.

Screenshots

‘Top Search Results’ ad: 336×280

shopzillatopsearchresultsad

Banner: 468×60

Watch this video:

You can watch the above video in higher quality here.

Here’s how you can get Shopzilla to display ads related to the posts on WordPress blogs (thanks Tim):

For WordPress users, you can automatically use the Page Title as the keyword (or “Search For” as they call it) for Shopzilla ads. These are for the ‘Top Search Results’ ad type. Create the Top Search Results asset using just the letter “a” in the “Search For” field as the keyword. Pick the banner size, set your colors, etc, and then get the HTML code. Look in the HTML code for the following:
/keyword-a/
Replace that with this:
/keyword-/
That code should take the title of the WordPress post and use it as the keyword for the ad unit.

Shopzilla will perform best on product related sites, so if you own one make sure to register for Shopzilla.

They currently do not accept everyone, but you can register and see if they accept you. DigitGeek was accepted in a few hours.

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Date Published: Aug 14, 2008 - 4:14 am

Banned on Digg

I noticed some days back that JohnTP.com was banned on Digg, but first thought that it was a temporary thing. But it seems that this blog is really banned on Digg.

bannedonDigg

But for what? I have not submitted any post from this blog for maybe more than a year.

What I think happened is that someone submitted my post on Socialelves (my opinion on a pay per Digg site) to Digg which might have pissed off some Diggers and they then buried the story

I have not contacted Digg yet because I don’t think that would be of any use. Once a site’s stories gets buried a number of times it gets banned automatically.

Its sad that a site can get banned on Digg because of someone else. Its time someone bought Digg from Mr.Kevin Rose or made a better Digg!

Has your site ever been banned on Digg? Have you got it unbanned?

Update: just contacted Digg Team and waiting for reply.

Update 2: Just got a reply from Digg Team. As expected they are not going to unban this site

Thanks for taking the time to contact us at Digg.com regarding your website.

As you know, Digg is a community-driven website – our community has consistently reported the domain to which you refer as spam.

From our FAQ (www.digg.com/faq):

Does Digg differentiate between spam and spamming?
Spam is very subjective. Many times, the spammer honestly doesn’t think they are spammers, so we generally leave that up to the Digg community to decide with the report/bury feature. We may delete users who blatantly and consistently submit obvious spam. Additionally, comment spam is against our TOS and will result in an account ban or deletion, depending on the severity. Submission spamming is different because it may be quality content but the submitter is “spamming” every story from their blog/site. While we welcome users to submit their own content, overdoing it often incites the users to mark the user as a spammer, the site as a spam site, and otherwise decent content as blogspam. We recommend considering this before you engage in this activity. Remember, if domains are consistently buried and reported as spam, the site may be banned.

Because unblocking your domain would not be in line with the best interests of the larger Digg community, we will not reverse this decision.

For more information, please see http://digg.com/faq and http://digg.com/tos

Thank you,

-Digg Support

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Date Published: Aug 12, 2008 - 10:02 pm

How to make an Archive page for your blog

A few readers in the past have emailed me to ask on how I made the Archive page on this blog. I thought of writing a post on it after reading this email from a reader

Hi John,

I have one doubt. What plugin do you use to create the Archives page http://www.johntp.com/archives/

I have searched many places but didn’t find an answer.

I don’t use any plugin to create the Archive page, I just use this code:

`Browse by Month`









Browse by Category

You may also use a WordPress plugin called Clean Archives. I have not tried this plugin but have seen some bloggers using it to display all the posts of their blog on the archive page.

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Date Published: Aug 12, 2008 - 10:53 am

125×125 Ad Management Plugins for WordPress

If you sell ads directly on your blog using block advertising (125×125 ads), then you will be knowing on how time consuming it can be to add ads from advertisers on your blog and then remove them when they expire. You may have also wanted to rotate your ads to give your advertisers equal exposure.

Here are two easy to use WordPress plugins that should make managing your 125×125 ads a lot easier: UBD Block Ad and WP125.

Watch the below video to find out how they work:

You can watch the video in higher quality from here.

If you like the video, please rate it on YouTube and you may also want to subscribe to my YouTube videos to be notified of any videos I upload to YouTube in the future.

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Date Published: Aug 10, 2008 - 11:46 pm

Exclude your own visits in Google Analytics for WordPress blogs

During the early days of your website, you will find that most of the traffic you see on Google Analytics for your site is from your own visits. To prevent this, you can try excluding your own visits in Analytics.

You could do this by IP or maybe even cookies. The best method I find for WordPress blogs is to use this code :

your Google Analytics code here

This code will prevent adding analytics code to a page when it’s requested by a logged on user. I am currently using this code on my blogs and it’s working well.

You can watch the above video in better quality from here.

Thanks to thinlight.org for the code.

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Date Published: Aug 08, 2008 - 1:59 am

How to add AdSense for Search on a WordPress blog

Here’s my first video post. Its on how you can replace your WordPress blogs search with the better AdSense for Search. Why is it better? Read my ‘7 reasons to use AdSense for Search‘ post.

Since this is my first screencast, do not expect the video to be perfect

Note: You can watch the above video in higher quality here.

This video was created using Camtasia, which I took some time to learn but it was fun and worth it. I will try to put up more video posts again.

I hope you like the video and if there’s something you don’t understood, leave a comment.

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Date Published: Aug 06, 2008 - 6:51 am

7 reasons to use AdSense for Search

If you still use WordPress search on your blog and have not tried out the improved AdSense for search, here are seven reasons why you should:

1. send traffic to lower traffic sites: AdSense for Search lets you specify a list of sites to search across. Using this option you can send some traffic to your lower traffic sites by placing AdSense for search on a site with more traffic. When a user makes a search, they will get results from all the sites you specified. I have added the DigitGeek URL for the search on this blog, so if you do a search for a keyword like ‘nokia’ you will find results for both this blog and DigitGeek.

2. search results: If you are using WordPress search, you will find that the search results are displayed according to post date – the newer posts show first. One the other hand, AdSense for Search displays results that best matches a users search query.

3. opening of search results page: With AdSense for Search, you can choose whether to open search results on Google or within your own site. By opening the search results on your site itself, you wont lose your visitors.

4. easy to use: In many WordPress blogs, I have seen half of the post shown as description for a post on the search results. This makes it hard for users to go through all the search results. In AdSense for Search, the description is shown only a bit and so it makes it easy for users to go thorough the search results.

5. make money online – Ads that are relevant to search terms are shown

6. search engine users - AdSense for search displays your site search results the way Google search results are shown, so search engine users will be able to find what they are looking for easily.

7. top queries – AdSense for search displays a list of the top queries made on your sites. This could give you many post ideas.

Are you using AdSense for search ?

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Date Published: Aug 03, 2008 - 12:00 pm

Increase your Twitter Followers with Twitter Counter

We all know about the FeedBurner FeedCount that we use to display the number of readers our blog has. Here’s a similar counter for Twitter called Twitter Counter which can be used to display the number of followers you have on Twitter on your site or blog.

The Twitter counter may help you get more followers just like the FeedBurner FeedCount helps you get more subscribers for your blog. I currently have my Twitter Counter displayed near my FeedBurner FeedCount.

Here’s a sample of how the Twitter Counter looks like:

If you use Twitter, don’t forget to follow me

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Date Published: Jul 31, 2008 - 3:30 am

Have you tried the AdSense Video units?

Today while checking my AdSense earnings, I noticed a new option in the AdSense Setup page -’Video units‘. I think these were already introduced by YouTube earlier, but it was never shown on the AdSense Setup page until today.

I currently have the Video units at DigitGeek below posts on single pages and find both the YouTube videos and the AdSense ads are related to the content. I am not sure how well they perform though.

AdSensevideounits

Hove you tried the AdSense Video units? Did they do well for you?

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Date Published: Jul 30, 2008 - 12:00 pm

Hit the Digg Frontpage with SocialElves

socialelves We have seen some ‘pay to Digg‘ sites in the past which promised to get our stories on the frontpage for some fee. Here’s a similar but better service called Social Elves. They say they are the first organic manual Digg service.

I found the site when one of their team members contacted me to advertise on this site.

What is SocialElves about ?

We take your interesting story and combine it with the power of Digg networking.

We don’t pay people to Digg.

Instead, we use our established Digg contacts.

We promote your story to those who are interested.

We guarantee over 200 Diggs within 48 hours of your order.

Most stories get front page with over 400 Diggs and tens of thousands of hits!

Since we don’t force people to Digg, your story must be genuinely interesting.

If your story isn’t ‘Digg worthy’ or we can’t deliver 200 Diggs, we provide a full refund.

Our experience with social networking is unrivaled!

socialelevesscreenshot

Instead of paying other people to Digg, SocialElves uses a collection of accounts and reputable connections established on Digg. They will ’shout’ your story through various accounts and spread it through their contacts.

When our story is submitted on Digg, most of us shout the story to our friends on Digg and they vote for our stories. The more friends we have, the more votes we get. But how easy is it to make friends on Digg that will always digg your submissions, for that we have to be an active Digg user.

These guys are active Digg users and will do all the work of promoting your story on Digg for a price. They also say that they will pay your money back if your story gets under 200 diggs within 48 hours of payment.

Note that SocialElves don’t guarantee front page. They only guarantee over 200 Diggs within 48 hours of your order. My question is, do we have 48 hours time to hit Digg frontpage? I have heard that we have only 24 hours time.

One good thing is that SocialElves don’t reveal your digg story URL or any other story they have promoted earlier. So there’s little chance for your story to get buried by the Digg team.

Also since they don’t reveal their Digg usernames and yours, noone gets banned. Also it will be you that submits your story, so no one can find in that way too.

I remember that for some other ‘pay to digg’ site, users were banned and stories buried because the Digg team were able to find the username of the people running the site and their users. But on SocialElves, I don’t think this problem will be there.

Overall this service sounds good to me as they don’t pay people to digg and only use their accounts to promote our story.

Who’s behind Social Elves?

We are a team of internet marketers and web developers that have utilized Digg to promote our own stuff. Naturally, we began to gain more power and experience as time went on. We were soon able to take almost any story to the front page of Digg. Seeing the success of ‘pay to Digg’ programs and the absence of natural Digg marketing, we decided to give birth to SocialElves.

How much do they charge?

$300

Is it worth the money?

I cant guarantee because I have not tried them myself, but I found one story from socialelves.com that was submitted to Digg and it did not reach the frontpage. Here’s the Digg link.

This does not mean that they cant get your story to the frontpage and also I don’t think that you have to worry about the $300 you pay them because you will mostly get more than what you pay (maybe more than double the money).

Here’s why:

Getting on the Digg frontpage can send you a lot of traffic and get your site many links from different sites that will get you good traffic from Google and other search engines and will make you good money too. So you could easily make the $300 that you pay SocialElves to hit the Digg front page.

My tech blog got to the Digg frontpage recently thanks to my friend who is an active Digg user. The blog got a lot of traffic, comments and links after that and is now ranking well for many iPhone related keywords and gets good traffic from Google now. The site earnings have increased too.

I remember when a tutorial related to utorrent from this blog hit Digg frontpage years back, it got many links from different sites, forums, blogs (its still getting) very fast and very soon the post became the first result for the keyword ‘utorrent’ in Google and other search engines.

Google has and is still sending a lot of traffic for that post and made me good money too

So you see once your story gets on Digg frontpage, you will be making money for years form the post. So paying $300 is fine, you will earn it back

If you still do not want to pay for getting on Digg frontpage, you should:

1. be an active Digg user – submit useful stories and make many friends who will digg your submissions. Then submit your own content (though I don’t think Diggers like people submitting their own content)

2. find a Top active Digg user who is willing to submit your story. Your story, provided its good, will have more change to get on digg frontpage as these active users will have many friends who will digg their submissions.

What’s your opinion about SocialElves?

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Date Published: Jul 29, 2008 - 11:17 am

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