Why I Like Name.com For Domain Names

I have used many, many domain registrars over the many years in this business. For the longest time I used Godaddy until about a year and half ago. That is when I came across Name.com. If you have used Godaddy in the past, you know how hard it can be to be to just get from point A to point B in just getting a domain name registered or renewed. On top of that they want to upsell you at every turn and make navigation very difficult. Now this post is not to really knock Godaddy, as I have used them over the years with only one domain stolen about 7 years ago. It was my own fault and I got it back with the help of Godaddy. This post is to point out how easy Name.com is to use and navigate. It is super simple to transfer over domains there as well when the come up for renewal. All you need is the authorization code for the domain name you are transferring from your current registrar. You will get a few emails of course to confirm the transfer, but I have never run into any problems. Name.com is also active on Twitter and have a blog in which they alert you to upcoming specials. I have nothing to gain by referring you, I just like to give credit where credit is due and by the end of this year, Name.com will be the registrar for all my domains. Give them a look.

Mike Johnson Autoblog Blueprint Review

I was sent an invitation a while ago to review the Auto Blog Blueprint for a limited time and finally got around last week to getting inside and really see what it is all about. First of all let me say the name should let you know what it is all about. You have heard about me talk about WP Robot before and in essence this is a road map of how to use that plugin along with several others to create money making autoblogs. You will need to own WP Robot or some other autoblogging plugin, but it is centered around WP Robot, which is the best I have tried. All of the other plugins used are mostly found in my top 40 Wordpress plugin list I did a while back. The videos and instruction are top notch in this membership site and it is just a one time payment to join. Mike Johnson also offers a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee if not satisfied.

Let me say as I have mentioned before, if you get into autoblogging, you need to make sure your host can handle it. I have a few set up on shared host, but am pushing the envelope. The others I set up on a few of my VPS servers. If you want to try it out on a shared host like Hostgator, you may get a way with it for a while to learn the system, but be prepared to get better hosting the more taxing you get on the host. Just a warning up front on this.

The modules are well laid out by Mike and there is a forum for members as well. Like anything else, you need to read and learn his system before jumping in head first. There is a ton of information inside and you will be tempted to leap before understanding it all. Lay yourself out some time, to watch and read everything first. As he says in the video, most will buy and never follow his teachings because of not having the patience to learn first or stick with it. For those of you wanting a step-by-step tutorial on how to build these properly, Auto Blog Blueprint is what you are looking for. I highly recommend it and it has been around for a while.

Authority Codes & Perpetual Traffic Reports - Free

Happy Saturday. I came across a few reports from Ryan Deiss today that you may or may not learn a few things from. The Authority Codes report shows you basically how to use Google and the Firefox SEO Quake Plugin to find great sites to leave comments on. The Perpetual Traffic report is an unique read, especial on his Google history and his ranking triad. He also is giving away a free "Cherry Picker” software, but it really is just for surface research and definitely not in depth as Micro Niche Finder or Market Samurai for those serious about keyword and niche research. All in all the reports are an up-sell to his Perpetual Traffic Formula program he is releasing on July 28th at 2pm EST. I found the search terms in the Authority Codes report the most useful out of all this overall and will leave it up to you as to what you find most useful.

Socrates Wordpress Theme Download Review

When the Socrates theme was released, I purchased it on the first weekend and installed it on a revamped site. I wanted it to take a hard look at it from a newbie stand point. There has been a ton a buzz about it and now the newness has worn off, so I figured I would give my review on it. First, it is a good theme, especially from a newbie viewpoint. It is much easier to use then the other Flex themes out there. If you like header images, you will like Socrates as well. In addition to huge selection they give you, several others are offering free headers for the theme as well. The large RSS and Twitter buttons are great for sites you are wanting to promote followers with. The rotating ad and easy to add Adsense are also pluses for newbies. I have also seen the support side of things and the creators seem dedicated still to fixing the early bugs and adding a few more features. They have released several updates since I purchased it. Is it the end all, do all theme for Wordpress and the last one you will ever buy? No, I do not think so. It is however, quick and easy to use and great to build niche sites with. It is a theme I suggest only if you can fit it in your budget. It is not a miracle worker, but takes a lot of the little work out of initial site builds. I like it and will continue to build with it when the need or niche arises. I use a large selection of themes, but ones that require a large header, Socrates will be my choice to build with.

New Wordpress Datafeed Plugin

A received a few messages regarding this Wordpress Datafeed Plugin. A couple of folks wanted to know if I have used the plugin yet. I finally got around to buying and testing it and it is exactly as advertised. It works off of product feeds offered by affiliate programs such as Commission Junction, ShareASale and etc. The directions are very easy to follow and some videos on site as well. If you are looking for an easy way to integrate more products into your Wordpress blog using feeds, this plugin is for you and I stamp it with my endorsement. This is another great Wordpress plugin to have in your arsenal.

Commission Ritual Review

I have been hit up by two of my readers as to my thoughts on Commission Ritual training product. I hadn't had a chance to get to it until today. I never had heard of Brian Johnson beforehand so that is both good and bad deepening on how you look at it. I laid down the money today regardless to see what it was all about.

The great thing about the program is it only cost you $4.95 to have a look. After 7 days if you like it, you are billed the rest. Very nice option as it shows he has faith in what is behind the door.

Inside you get a very detailed 121 page ebook that helps you follow along with 80 videos. That is not a mis-print! Over 80 videos and well done videos at that.

Now quite a bit of the videos are aimed at newbies who struggle with even setting up and installing Wordpress. So if you are new to Wordpress ingeneral, he has you covered in here. He also covers niche research, keyword research, site setup, content creation and the structure. His methods are not new, but a little mixture of everything out there along with common sense.

Why good thing is what he teaches is above level and not trying to game Google. He gives you a VERY detailed and well laid out plan to follow with a bit of a different twist. If you are in need of a structured course and plan, Brian has it in here.

Also thrown in are some 20 plus Wordpress templates and yes he even shows the newbies how to install these. I looked mostly at his meat and potatoes and believe you will profit from it. I intend to pattern the next site I build around his methods, but it likely will be in December some time. There are many ways to skin the cat in the business and his way is sensible and very learn-able.

In closing, for $4.95 you can see for yourself. I do not put my stamp of approval on many of these courses as many are just junk and trying to game Google without any pure methodology. You will see several things that I teach inside along with a few other things I never have touched on. Worth every dime in my opinion. Well thought out and laid out course.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners eCourse

If you have read my blog for a while or ever visited the BANS forum, you will recognize a poster by the name of Bunny. Her real name is Laura and she has been a student of the business for quite a while. Laura is a prime example of how to stick with something and learn every facet of this business. She knows how tough it is for newbies in the business.

Laura has just released her Affiliate Marketing for Beginners eCourse. I was asked to preview this a few weeks back and all I could say is WOW!!! If you are new to this business or have been struggling with getting your feet planted firmly, you NEED this course. It is thorough and I mean thorough. This is no thin eBook eCourse either. Be prepared to set aside some reading time as this is no pamphlet or one night read.

There are 270 pages in this eCourse and it is jam-packed with step-by-step instructions, tips, and techniques to start affiliate marketing. All of this is divided into 55 short, manageable lessons.

If you are new to this business and web site building, I highly endorse this course. You will get your money's worth and be on the fast track.

Use this link and code soggy1116 for $10 off until November 30

Free CJ Commission Junction Wordpress Plugin

I am always on the lookout for free or paid items to help me with my niche sites. A reader recently sent me a link for a free Commission Junction Wordpress plugin to check out and I have gave it a try. What a nice little free plugin it is. The setup is quite easy, but please note you will need a CJ developer key. This long string goes in the middle box of the setup. The top box is called the CJ Websiteid and this number should be your PID number for whatever site you are using under the Web site Settings tab that is found under the Account tab in your Commission Junction dashboard. The last box in the plugin setup is the Advertiser Id. You can leave this blank to search all of CJ, but you must be an approved partner for any results it finds.

Say for example you are an approved affiliate through CJ for Overstock, you would enter in the number 2626374 in that box and can have listings from their inventory only. So in essence, this is an Overstock Wordpress plugin as well. To display listings on a page or post, you enter the below call in the content area:

[cjniche keywords="+red+dress" listing="3"]

The above statement would pull 3 listings with the keyword parameters of red dress. If you have any questions about this plugin, feel free to comment.

Another Nice Looking Wordpress Site

As much time as I spend on my own sites, I also like looking at and analyzing other well built sites as well. I always have more to learn and try to look at any advantage I can learn. Came across another great site today, built with Wordpress. Very nicely SEOed with great content. Monetized with some CJ affiliates and Google adsense and ranks well on its target keywords. Backlinks mostly from the authors other sites and own blog, but seems to be getting the job done. I am sure this site does indeed earn money and is nice and simple and effective.

What do you like or dislike about this site?

Micro Niche Finder Review

I have used several keyword and niche finder tools in the past and mainly have used a combination of many of them along with the Google keyword tool to get the job done in the past. Last week I decided to buy the Micro Niche Finder tool to test and review. I played with it off and on for the last few days and am thoroughly impressed with it. It incorporates to the Google tool as well which is very comforting. Some other of the highlights include strength of competition score, commercial intent score, LSI values, Amazon search and related E-Zine articles lin ks. The strength of competition score includes inAnchor Count, intitle Count and inurl Count links which is great as well. Micro Niche Finder is a desktop application as well and it lets you save projects and also export the data in several formats. Overall I would rate it 9 out of 10 and it seems they are committed to taking it a bit further. I plan on using this as my primary niche and keyword tool from here forward as it has a great feel to it. It really has integrated most of my favorite aspects into one easy to use tool. The user manual is also easy to understand for the newbies to the veterans. I have no problems recommending this product to anyone.

Build A Niche Store Wordpress Plugin WP BANS Review

I received an email from Casey Christensen who owns Designs by Casey. He wanted me to test and review his new Wordpress BANS plugin and give a review of it. The plugin is called WP BANS and can be found at http://www.wpbans.com. I gladly accepted being a beta tester and am grateful for the opportunity to review it.

The plugin simply put, pulls a designated amount product listings from your Build A Niche Store and inserts them into the bottom of your Wordpress blog post or page. It can ad products using keywords from your post title, top category or a custom field. The colors of the background and border can be changed as well.

THINGS YOU NEED BEFORE INSTALLING

You will need Wordpress installed on the root of the domain and BANS installed in a folder preferably named store. While not a must, it is a good idea to have a Wordpress/BANS template in place as to have a matching seamless template throughout the site. It appears it will work with both using different templates though.

THE INSTALL

I downloaded and unzipped the plugin to my hard drive and first noticed there was not a README or directions file enclosed. I am sure it was because this was a beta package and am sure it will be included in the purchased product. Dealing with tons of plugins in the past, I had a pretty good idea what to do. The plugin folder gets uploaded into the Wordpress plugins directory as with any plugin. You then log into your Wordpress admin and activate the plugin. Click Settings and then WPBANS in the menu bar. It nicely told me that WPBANS cannot find your store. You need to edit the BANS store location in the WPBANS Settings. I then inserted /store into the path area and was on my way. The "Get keyword from" option is a bit confusing and will need more clarification as I myself have never really used the Custom Field option of Wordpress and clarity on that would help. The other options are pretty straight forward and are very user friendly from my standpoint. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the easiest, I rate the install process an 8 and can easily be upgraded to a 10 with a detailed README file.


THE USAGE

I proceeded to write my first post and chose to use the title of the post to base my product selection on. Once I get a better handle on the custom field, that will likely be my selection in future use. Upon viewing my post I found what may be a bug. It did indeed pull matching products, but the product display runs into the title of the next post and also seems to have inserted an extra table row above the product listings. The listings seem to overlap the post area as well in the template I am using. The products indeed matched what I was wanting to show. This indeed is likely just a cosmetic bug and should be simple to fix. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being fantastic, I rate the initial usage process a 6 and it can easily be upgraded to a 10 with a fix of the bugs and clarification I noted.


OVERALL

The plugin definitely has a bug or two but should be rectified very easily. It seems it will be very user friendly and seems to work with both EPN and Pepperjam versions of the BANS software. It is very straight forward and can be up an running in a post in a matter of minutes. My overall initial rating from 1-10 with 10 being the best is a 7 and it is only a days work from being a 10.

SUGGESTIONS

It would be nice in future releases to have the ability to decide which post you want to display products in. I suppose using the "wpbans Custom Field" it would be possible to just leave it blank and no products would show. It would also be nice if the whole product title could be displayed under the listing as well. I would suggest giving an option to not cloak the links as I am not a huge fan of cloaking myself and every user should have that option not to cloak. A very detailed README file should be included as well.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This plugin is a hit, especially for those BANS users that have moved on into BANS/Wordpress integrations . You can never have too many weapons to choose from in the affiliate marketing world. $67.00 is a fair price to pay in my honest opinion and this plugin will likely evolve very quickly. It is straight forward and beneficial to every BANS user. I appreciate Casey letting me review and beta test this fine Wordpress plugin and look forward to more works of his in the future.

The site I tested this on is below:
http://passionduo.buildanichestoretemplates.info/

Below is a preview video of the plugin: