Over the years, I have had very limited success matching successful conversions to content from the Amazon Associates program.  I have done very well in other affiliate programs, but always felt like I was missing something with Amazon Associates.

1. After all, Amazon is a great website
2. It converts well
3. It treats its customers very well
4. It offers almost everything
5. The interface is easy to navigate and highly optimized

So why can I hardly ever get something to convert through the Amazon Associates program?

Creating Best Seller Amazon Associates Lists

I read through Darren Rowse’s (aka ProBlogger’s) article titled 11 Lessons I learned earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program.  Its about a year old as I write this article.  Its a great article with maybe a little more emphasis on motivation and giving someone ideas about what can be done as opposed to how to actually DO IT. 

One of the ideas that I thought was off the charts for insight was number 6, Social Proof Marketing 1 – Best Seller Lists.  The basic concept is that once you do everything else (get enough people of the right type to your site primed to do the right thing) offering up to them a list of the products that the majority of buyers actually choose to buy is one of the best ways to get them to convert.

• Show them the hot products.
• Show them the products that made the cut in $$$ for other readers
• Show them the results of the cloud and crowd after they performed their due diligence and put their money where there mouth is.

But I had a huge problem with the recommendation

1. The recommendation assumed you already have sales results with Amazon, despite the insinuated premise that most people do not including Darren (in the early days)
2. It also didn’t really show you how to gather this information together inside Amazon Associates.
3. 

So I tried to figure out a way to get best selling product information on Amazon Associates for areas that might fit my audiences.  No luck, there just isn’t a tool there nor information.

Then I tried working into this information via Amazon itself.  I figured if I could at least get the product list of best selling items, I could add the Amazon associate links afterward.  Then when/ if I actually get more sales data to work with I could customize the listings starting from the set of ALL Best Selling products > in a Category > in a sub category > Filtered by a Keyword search.  My later customization could slice that one more time, for the my own audience interacting with those sets or subsets.

So here’s how you can create a list of best selling products on Amazon.com

1. Go to Amazon.com
2. 
3. Choose a Department, and category in the department, such as Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry>Shoes
4. 
5. Peform a keyword search within that department>category
6. 
7. Filter the default results of ‘relevance’ by Best Selling with the sort box on the right upper hand corner
8. 
9. 
10. Make sure you reality check those results!  Amazon’s vendors and marketing companies can cook these numbers a bit by buying back product.  Amazon probably doesn’t like it, but do consider whether you fully trust the results enough to put something in your best selling list, or at least disclaim it if you do.
11. 
12. Alternately, you can also come up with a list of items that has the highest user reviews on Amazon.  Again, this is subject to people cooking up the numbers.  If a company or marketing company had an employee or third party buy something, that person that bought could now go in and write up a review on Amazon that may be higher than normal.  Similarly, a competitor could buy the product and write up a bad review.
13. 
14. This could happen regardless of your list, so keep it in mind and maybe remind your readers, but at the end of the day, you are simply providing a presorted list anyway, and the whole point of the exercise is to provide them useful information when they need it, and then let the crowd continue to improve upon the list as they too make their own informed buying decision.

Other Amazon Associates Resources, Tips & Articles (External Links)

1. How to make money through Amazon Associates/Affiliates Program
2. How to Track Multiple Amazon Associates Campaigns
3. How to Make Money With New Amazon Associates For Blogger: It’s a Snap
4. Amazon Associates: A Real Case Study
5. Top 7 tips I used to make $41,438.42 in 2009 with Amazon Associates
   1. Includes creating Best Seller List on Amazon and the percentage of this earning total that came from Best Seller Lists -15%!
   2. Top 5 Worst Ways to Make Money with Amazon Associates
6. Build a WordPress Amazon Associates Store with AffiliateBang

People covering Amazon on Twitter

• Amanda Stone
• eMarketingScientific

Related posts:

1. Drop Ship Products-How Do I start Selling Products from Drop Shippers?
2. Two Cool Plugins from WordCamp Boston and Many Honorable Mentions

However, when I went to set up their account, I rapidly realized that PayPal had done a large rewrite of their setup procedure for non-profits.  It was almost impossible to find the information in PayPal by doing searches, but after spending 45 minutes on hold, I was guided one click at a time to the Non-Profit account setup page.

WARNING!  If you work for a religious non profit, if you attempt to call PayPal it is likely that their phone menu system will drive you nuts and you might be tempted to utter blasphemy or its equivalent in your religion.  You may want to remove yourself to a less public place before the phone menu system drives you to curse up a storm!

That’s exactly what I’m going to show you here so you can save yourself and your non-profit 45 minutes of wasted time and possibly excommunication, a stoning or 30 lashes or something!

I’m also going to share with you some information from PayPal about accepting donations from your Facebook page, which might prove very useful.

How to set up a PayPal for Non Profit Account to Accept Donations

The general process to set up a Non Profit account with Paypal requires multiple steps and probably can not be completed in a single session nor day.  You will have to create a Business Account first, highlighting your non profit category during the setup form.  PayPal will then contact you requesting information that proves your Non Profit status.  Once provided you can then apply to PayPal to create a Non Profit account and you will then be allowed to receive donations via PayPal with the lower Non Profit rates mentioned further below in the ‘How to Find general information about PayPal for Non Profit Accounts.

Here are the Steps

1. Click here to Go to PayPal’s home page

2.  Click on the Sign Up link at the very top of the page

3.  Confirm or change the country and language options as needed and then Click the Get Started Button in the Business Section (the Personal and Premier options are only for individuals and individuals cannot be non profits, even if they are unprofitable!)

4.  From the next Web Payment Solution Form Screen provided next, choose

This is the base level account and as you will have to go through the confirmation phase with a PayPal representative anyway this is the best place to start, if you need additional or higher level services, these can be added or adjusted later, but they typically can not be chosen first.  Get your non profit designation confirmed before you attempt to do anything else.

5.  Depending on your Browser or how many times you might have explored the PayPal site the next screen you see may give an outline of the sign up steps to follow, Click the GO button (or possibly the Continue button) to proceed

alternate screen if you have started this step once before in the same browser and PayPal remembers you

6. Start completing the application form by choosing your Organization type, I won’t tell you how to fill out your name and address, but DO pay attention to the Business Type and Category and Sub Category fields as they are VERY important for Non Profit Consideration

7.  Don’t worry too much about the amount sections of the form, use conservative numbers especially if your non profit has never collected money online via donations before, better to start at $0 and work your way up rather than set unrealistic expectations.

8 Hit Continue

9 You will now need to enter some information that will create your PayPal account.  Tips! Use an official email address for your organization for someone that DOES check their email regularly and DOES have authority from your treasurer or equivalent.  You can add other email addresses later if necessary, including generic email addresses to be used on your website.

10.  After you hit Continue again, You will need to link up your checking account and then you can proceed to wait for PayPal to begin processing your account setup and application.  They will send you a request of the additional information that they need which will include proof of your non profit status.

How to FIND general information about PayPal for Non Profit Accounts

1. Go to PayPal’s home page

2. Click on the Business Tab

3. Click on the Why PayPal Tab?

4. Scroll down to the bottom of this page and click on the link PayPal Products for Business (yes I know we’re talking about a Non Profit sign up but hang in there PayPal isn’t organized terribly well, they seem to consider a Non Profit as a type of account within their business account category, probably a programmer thing.)

5. Scroll down again and see the links at the bottom for Non Profits and Political Campaigns (click which ever is appropriate!)

6. IF AND ONLY IF you already have a PayPal account for your organization you may wish to Click ‘Try it Now’ (after investigating the information provided) in order to create a button (if you already have an account)  This silly button will only walk you through an example of how you might create a donation button if you actually had an account but WILL NOT set up an account for you.

How much does PayPal Charge for Non Profit Accounts?

PayPal Pricing for Non Profits is Cheaper.  There are only two tiers and they are priced as follows:

*PayPal pricing tiers normally start off at 2.9% and only drop down to 2.2% after a $10,000 threshold is reached.

How do I accept Credit Cards in the office or Over the Phone for my Non Profit?

PayPal has a separate service called Virtual Terminal for processing credit cards over the phone or in person.  The account type of above would be used on the web only where a person comes to your site, clicks the donate button then fills in their credit card information themselves.

Under the virtual terminal program, a person might recite their credit card information to one of your employees over the phone and that employee would enter the information into the virtual terminal to process the credit card transaction.

Virtual Terminal is considered and add on or extra service and there are no discounts for Non Profits for this Add on.

Virtual Terminal has a fixed monthly fee (think of it like a subscription fee).  That monthly fee is $30 whether you process transactions or not.

The ratable fees vary depending on the size of the transaction as follows

You pay only one $30 monthly fee and 2.4% to 3.1% plus $.30 per transaction based on your monthly processing volume.

There are no set up or cancellation fees and no long term commitments.

The pricing table above applies to domestic payments in US dollars. There’s an additional 2.5% charge for any currency conversion and a 1% charge to receive payments from another country.

So if you set up a non profit account and Virtual Terminal any charges that take place on your website would be processed at the lower/cheaper rates and any that were processed under virtual terminal would be at a higher rate.  This would give you an incentive to push your donors to use online tools as opposed to over the phone or in person donations where it is practical or possible even if that means setting up a computer terminal for donors to utilize or a terminal at an event.  If it saves you 0.5% – 0.9% on a donation, that might be worth a few hundred dollar investment in an extra PC with internet access, but do make the financial review yourself first.

What Documents will PayPal need to Confirm my organizations Non Profit Status?

For a U.S. based tax-deductible and tax-exempt organization, you’ll need
to fax:

• Evidence of tax exempt status or registration with any applicable
  regulatory bodies, such as a §501(c)(3) Determination Letter

OR

• Proof of tax-deductibility with a subordination letter, illustrating the
  account as a child of a larger, more national organization.

AND

• A copy of a bank statement or voided check or cheque. The document must
  include:

Your organization name and address pre-printed on it from each bank
account that you intend to add to your PayPal account.

Each bank account that you add to your PayPal account must be under the
ownership of the organization and cannot be a personal bank account.

• If this is a tax-exempt only organization, you’ll need to provide:
  Evidence of tax registration status and/or registration with any
  applicable regulatory bodies governing your jurisdiction.

OR

• Subordination letter, illustrating the account as the child of a larger,
  more national organization.

AND

A copy of a bank statement or voided check or cheque. The document must
include:

• Your organization name and address pre-printed on it from each bank
  account that you intend to add to your PayPal account.
• Each bank account that you add to your PayPal account must be under the
  ownership of the organization and cannot be a personal bank account.

Any non-U.S. based organizations will need to provide:

• Evidence of tax-exempt status and/or registration with any applicable
  regulatory bodies governing the organization’s jurisdiction.
• A copy of a bank statement or voided check (cheque) with the
  organization name and organization address pre-printed on it from each
  bank account that the organization intends to attach to the PayPal
  account (if applicable).
• Link to confirm the organization’s registration status online (if
  applicable).
• A brief organizational summary or Mission Statement.
  Subordination letter from the parent organization (if applicable).

All documents should be faxed to 303-395-2862, ATTN: Compliance – Due
Diligence. Please remember to include your email address as registered
on your PayPal account on any correspondence or faxed items.

Here’s how to find more information on nonprofits:

1. Go to the PayPal website and log in to your account.
2. Click “Business” at the top of the page.
3. Click “Nonprofits” at the top of the page.

How do I sell tickets to events?

Enabling people to register for your non profit events via Eventbrite is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get started.    Eventbrite manages all the software for managing event registration.  You can easily setup an account quickly, then copy paste a widget to your own wordpress powered website that will manage the registration process from your site using eventbrite tools for you.  Eventbrite does take a commission of the ticket sales, so you have to make certain that the net fee you receive covers your costs and contribution goals.  That cost is the trade off you make for saving money and time creating, developing, rolling out, and maintaining an independent web system.

How do I Accept Donations on my Non Profit Facebook Page via PayPal?

You will need to set up an account with PayPal’s partner site WhatGives.com

Update – Do Prepare for More Traffic and utilization on your server

8-25-10 update

This month as I help a client prepare for their first event utilizing the tools above we noticed a couple things that will be important to your own non profit organization’s success at fund raising online with pay pal.

The number of page views on your site will likely increase after you add the capability to your site to take donations or process event registrations.  Quite simply, your site starts to transform from simply informative to interactive.  People start clicking and doing things on your website.  This means an increase in page views and in aggregate this might increase the use of your server or hosting plan.

If you run a popular charitable event and process registrations (as we were) you may also notice a lot of activity as the event date gets closer.  We saw a small but important increase in total traffic, but the interaction level was very high and started slowing down the load time of our site.

So I quickly deployed some of the tips I describe in a separate article about optimizing a wordpress site for page speed load times.  At a basic level, I added a cache plugin and configured it, not a beginner step.  I also installed a plugin I love called wp-smush-it.  This little plugin processes images in your wp media library and makes the file size smaller so the images and pages they are on load a little faster.

Every bit counts, especially when you are trying to raise money through non profit PayPal donations, or process registrations through your new PayPal account.  You want the check out process to run smooth and fast regardless of how many visitors are on your site and doing something!

This is a good challenge to deal with so don’t shy away from it.

Related posts:

1. Migrating Cancer Services of Gaston County from Joomla to WordPress as a CMS
2. My Google Domain Will Not Forward from GoDaddy – 301 Redirect Issue & Solution Prescribed by GoDaddy

This patch is provided from a Japanese coder that figured things out(BIG THANKS!).  There is NO patch currently from Artisteer themselves, but I HAVE successfully used this patch myself on a PC running 32 bit Vista.

You can get more information and download the Artisteer WordPress 3.0 patch here.  (it will require replacing some of the application files in Artisteer, but its easy to reinstall the old files if you need to.

Next month (May 2010) WordPress 3.0 is scheduled to roll out.  I wanted to make sure my themes and my client themes will be ready for the upgrade from WordPress 2.9.2 to WordPress 3.0.  This is my ALPHA attempt at documenting what is needed.  I WILL update this article as I learn more about upgrading themes to WordPress 3.0 or Artisteer themes to WP 3.0 functionality.

WordPress 3.0’s eminent launch has been talked about since last summer.  Its general release date was always stated in general terms of ‘It will launch when it is ready’.  Well this goose is almost cooked. 

Over the last few years I have designed and rolled out hundreds of different WordPress themes.  Compatibility was never an issue with WordPress themes for the most part (at least for most of the life of the WordPress 2.x era.)

Now, I do not play in the WordPress development world.  I stay in touch with a few people that do, but its not my cup of tea (yet).  WP has about 202 million users worldwide and by the last numbers I saw (but can’t seem to find now) there were close to 400 million websites powered by WordPress.  I’d actually bet that the number of WordPress websites is a great deal higher by about 20-40% as the number I last saw is over a year old.

Regardless, 202 million users for 400 million WP websites is a lot of people that need to make an evolutionary leap on a system.  This isn’t going to be a Windows 3 to Windows 95 type of move, probably closer to 95 –> NT.  The point is that a large number of new types of functionality are going to be possible with WordPress 3.0 and with that new functionality a lot more possibilities to make great sites and to really screw them up (using the wrench as a hammer).

There are lots of sources talking about the new functionality in WordPress 3.0 and how to install WordPress 3.0.  But I couldn’t find any sources that talked about what a site owner would need to do to upgrade their existing them to get the most out of WordPress 3.0, initially.

I had heard a reference to the topic of how to upgrade themes to WordPress 3.0 or how to make an existing theme compatible with WordPress 3.0 as proposed for a NYC WordPress Meetup, but I’m not in NYC and the slides aren’t out yet so I kept looking.  I couldn’t find anything on YouTube, nor anything useful on Twitter, which is probably not a surprise to anyone. 

Then I checked Slideshare and found a presentation by a user named Yoavf whom I later learned is Yoav Farhi’s who I think works on the Automatic Theme team, but if you really want to confirm his credentials look no farther than his twitter profile where he states that he is NOT a Social Media Expert so at a minimum Yoav is probably not a social media douche bag either.  That’s about as much trust as you can find on the internet these days, so I’m buying what he’s selling (ergo going to test his recommendations from his presentation which was free to view) and go from there. 

Now the key slides for understanding the basic requirements to upgrade your theme to WordPress 3.0 seem to fall in the slide 42 – slide 46 range.

How to upgrade a theme to use WordPress 3.0 Custom Backgrounds

Slide 43-44

Simply add the following line in your theme’s function.php file

add_custom_background();

Note Otto on WordPress takes a much deeper dive into what you can do and how to do it when it comes to WordPress 3.0 backgrounds.  In general Otto’s tips and blog rock, so I’d advise checking it out for other useful tips such as this one (WordPress 3.0 Theme Tip: Feed Links) if only I had found his site earlier I might have avoided this mistake myself. 

How to update a theme to use WordPress 3.0 header customization functionality

Slide 45-46

Add the following code to your function.php file

define( ‘HEADER_TEXTCOLOR’,”);

define( ‘NO_HEADER_TEXT’, true );

define( ‘HEADER_IMAGE’, ‘%s/images/headers/default.jpg’); //%s is theme directory

define( ‘HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH’, 775 );

define( ‘HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT’, 200 );

add_custom_image_header( “,’mytheme_admin_header_style’ );

function mytheme_admin_header_style() {

?><style type=”text/css”>

#header {

background: url(<?php header_image(); ?>);

}

</style><?php

}

register_default_headers( array(

‘berries’=>array(

‘url’=> ‘%s/images/headers/berries.jpg’,

‘thumbnail_url’=>’%s/images/headers/berries-thumbnail.jpg’,

‘description’=> __( ‘Berries’ , ’mytheme’ )

),

‘cherryblossom’ => array (

‘url’ => ‘%s/images/headers/cherryblossoms.jpg’,

‘thumbnail_url=> ‘%s/images/headers/cherryblossoms-thumbnail.jpg’,

‘description’ => __( ‘Cherry Blossoms’, ‘mytheme’ )

)

) );

* note spacing and characters may need some correction, transcribing from a slide

How to Add a Pluggable Comment form to a theme for WordPress 3.0

Slide 49

in the comments.php file add

comment_form();

How to add WordPress 3.0 Menu Navigation functionality to an existing theme

slide 50-51

in functions.php file add

add_theme_support( ‘nav-menus’);

and then in the header.php file add or replace

wp_list_pages(‘title_li=’);

with the following

wp_nav_menu();

Now note from what I have read so far the new menu creation capability in WordPress 3.0 is nice for people that have never had a menu before, but for those of you using Artisteer themes or any of the numerous variations of Suckerfish menus, STICK WITH WHAT YOU HAVE FOR NOW the new functionality in WordPress 3.0 for menus is far less advanced than what you are probably already using.  It is not dynamic (so far) you will have to create every single new menu item manually.  It does not generate a new menu item every time you add a new page or sub page or category or sub category like most WP dynamic menus.

Here is a blog article that offers up some images of the WordPress 3.0 menu backend

How to add Custom Post Types functionality offered in WordPress 3.0 to your existing theme

slide 54

Go to your functions.php file and add the following

funtion post_type_reviews() {

register_post_type(‘reviews’, array (  // this will add a new post type for reviews as opposed to videos, or podcasts or whatever category you might think of

‘label’ => ‘Reviews’,  // guessing at the interpretation in the actual slide

‘singular_label’ => ‘Reviews’,

‘description’ => ‘My reviews on the tone of warbling toads at 6 pm from my dock office’,

‘public’ => true

));

}

add_action(‘init’, ‘post_type_reviews’);

How to Add Multisite functionality to your WordPress installation

now before you leap into this one, you better go do a lot of research, but from a code perspective the first step (possibly off a cliff with your host) is simplistic

slide 66

in your wp-config.php file after you have made a backup of this file simply add

define( ‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);

What happens if Categories no longer display in WordPress 3.0?

On some wordpress installations (doesn’t relate to Artisteer one way or another) after you upgrade to Wordpress 3.0 you may click on some sub category links and notice that a 404 error is returned as the result.

I’ve seen one proposed solution for this that will not work for most people if they have a lot of posts or pages.

The solution that I found relates to the permalinks settings.

If on an old wordpress installation your site had an option for /%category%/%postname%/ you will simply need to delete the /%category%/ option and go with /%postname%/ alone.

WordPress seems to now automatically use /category/ inserted into the permalinks whether you pick it or not, but things tend to break if you leave this legacy setting in.

Related posts:

1. Optimize Artisteer WordPress Theme’s H1/H2 Title Tags for SEO
2. WordPress Theme Design Contest – Win a Free Artisteer License
3. How to Speed up Artisteer WordPress Theme Load Times

Copywriting, Content Optimization, and SEO Optimization may be tedious, but they do not have to be time consuming nor arcane with the new Scribe SEO for WP Plugin & the upcoming Scribe for the general Web service, which methodically guides writers through the SEO copywriting and content optimization process boosting Search Engine Optimization Results as well as Click through from SERPs!

SEO Copywriting & Content Optimization – Automated by Copyblogger himself!

The Scribe service is the brain child of Brian Clark, aka Copyblogger, and he had great reason to create this tool, helping people achieve better results with Google’s Search Algorithm.

I successfully tested this content optimization plugin myself on an Artisteer generated theme, its already been proven to work with Thesis themes and StudioPress among others as well.

Why SEO Copywriting is Important

If you want your content, your web page, web site, blog article, news article, product page, service, etc to be found on the net, it needs to be written and published in a way that search engines can understand.  You not only have to write the write (key) words, the right number of times but you have to get them placed in the right spot too – SEO Copywriting in a nut shell. Its not the end all to getting a number one position in the SERPs, but it can be a solid starting point, one that should be skipped.  Yet up until now, content optimization is something that is typically a time consuming process with a learning curve as steep as the boredom curve of using it!

Any writer, professional or amateur, publisher large or small, business hoping to gain traction on the internet and maintain their position there in a world where location is definitely everything, all of those groups need to make sure that their website is search engine optimized for copywriting and that includes every page of importance in that website too.

Is it necessary to optimize every silly little blog article?  No.  But if you have an important blog article or three, you should definitely consider it.

Scribe SEO Copywriting in WordPress Video Tutorial and Walk through

Wow, that title is a mouthful.    Anyway, enough of the optimized mumbo jumbo.  Odds are if you have read this far, then this might actually be something useful for you to consider.  The 2 videos walk through the plugin for wordpress from Scribe, the brain child of Brian Clark, aka Copyblogger.  I wanted to take a look at the first incarnation of this service, to get a feel for what it can do.  The video gives the overview in the first part, and in the second part I delve into what it actually does, and where the pricing sweet spots are.

Yes this does cost money.  That’s why I put the video together.  You can download the plugin for yourself and use a 10 page analysis free trial yourself, but that’s a big time commitment up front.  So check out the second video at least (if not both) and see if you think this plugin would be useful for you.  After the videos, I ‘ll share some of my own insights on how you might want to use it.

Part 1 Scribe SEO Copywriting w WordPress Review

Part 2 Scribe SEO Copywriting for WP Review – What it Analyzes, How it Helps and Where the Bargain is

As a former accountant and financial analyst I don’t generally step up to the plate and shell out money for something I can do myself.  I’m cheap, I know it and there are times when that is a character flaw. 

All that said, when I look at this plugin I can see that there would be times when you would want to optimize some but not all of your content.

Sure, altruistically, we might think that every single thing we ever write is very important and should get the maximum amount of attention.  In reality that is not the case.  Sometimes on the web, some pages just communicate timely little pieces of communication, like a happy birthday in 2005 or a ‘I had a bad day in 2006 and noticed XYZ’.  Some of these article might help a writer or business connect better with parts of their audience or customer base, but the shelf life on these articles is probably pretty short.  So imho don’t spend money optimizing it.

But if you have content that is important, that is generating some traffic or incoming backlinks all on their own, take some effort to optimize those articles first.  Get some more bang for your buck out of your high performing articles.

Then start looking through your content for those elements that are under performing for no apparent reason.  See if there is a SEO copywriting optimization opportunity to increase those articles or product pages in the SERPs(not to be confused with SERPS) through some crafty SEO suggestions from this great plugin.

After that if you have time and money, and you want to boost some other things knock yourself out.  As you write new content, if you want those articles to have the opportunity to reach their full potential, then optimize them also.  But don’t neglect your big rocks, get them in your jar first before you put the smaller rocks in if you want your site to fill up with traffic.

Prioritizing Long Tail Copywriting Optimization

1. Identify your highest trafficked Pages or Posts (Check your stats, google analytics, shortstat or a popularity tool if you are running one)
2. Analyze & Optimize these first!
3. Then go back and focus on good articles that are low performers
4. Finally, Optimize new articles as you see fit

UPDATE

Just to give some additional static visual references, I went through the process of analyzing and optimizing this very article.

First, I go to my post to edit.

I noticed right away that my All in One SEO tags, description and title had not been uploaded correctly to WordPress from WindowsLiveWriter where I’m running the All in One SEO Bridge and All in One SEO in WP.  So I next copied and pasted that information into wordpress and updated my wordPress page because something wasn’t working with my add on.

Everything is all green now for Scribe SEO, so I’m ready to hit analyze.  (I’m still working through my own free trial as of 3-19-2010)

It processes . . .

I scored an 89%, which isn’t too bad, or at least feels a little gratifying.

The 3 yellow areas indicate that my title is too long, so is my description and I only have 7 external links when I should have about 8 external links.  So I did a quick Google search on the keyword ‘copywriting optimization’ thinking I might find some additional resources or further background information.  Had to chuckle when I saw that this article, published 5 minutes ago was already in the Google top 10.

I was already pretty generous with some links to other blogs, so I simply added a Wikipedia link to SEO Copywriting.

I next reviewed the Keyword analysis in Scribe’s tab.

I was happy with the results of the copywriting optimization on this front so moved on.

The next tab gave me some suggestions about ways to adjust the primary keywords as viewed by a search engine.

The Tags and Serp Tabs were self explanatory.  (I do like the SERP Tab for a preview of your article listed in Google)

The SEO best practices tab, is just general SEO information as far as I can tell and not specific to this article

I wrapped things up, by shortening my description, removing the original blog title and replacing it with a shorter version for optimization reasons, and copied the old title (which the stupid writer in me thought had a nice hook and made it an H3 level header.

Finally, re-ran the analysis (each re-run of the analysis deducts from your account, so I don’t recommend too many redos, I had a 95% score on this article.

Basically that boils down to about $0.32 – $0.40 to optimize my article and make sure it is delivering the results I want it to deliver!

Related posts:

1. The Most Important WordPress Plugin You Will Ever Find – All in One SEO Pack
2. Optimize Artisteer WordPress Theme’s H1/H2 Title Tags for SEO
3. Charlotte May WordPress Meetup Fav Plugin/Setups/Configurations (SEO Focus) 5/14

I was introduced to the After the Deadline plugin while helping people at the Genius Bar.  After the Deadline is a great plugin that does grammar checking and spell checking of wordpress posts and pages.  This is no simple tool, it performs contextual checking of grammar and spelling at a very high and accurate level.

WordPress comes with a built in spell checker these days, but its not to powerful.  After the Deadline is a plugin that has been picked up by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.

I was also re-introduced to the Shopp ecommerce plugin for WordPress.  These days there are several WordPress plugins that provide ecommerce capabilities either as a bolt on plugin or as a conduit to another ecommerce plugin like OScommerce.  Shopp provides a number of great features as an ecommerce tool which include but are not limited to

• Easy to install WordPress plug-in
• Bolt-on e-commerce functionality, just install and activate
• Works out-of-the-box with any theme (quality may vary)
• 2Checkout.com (included)
• PayPal Website Payments Standard (included)
• PayPal Express Checkout (included)
• Google Checkout (Lvl 2 Integration) (included)^†
• PayPal Website Payments Pro (available add-on, US & UK only)^†
• Handles multiple product images with easy drag-and-drop sorting
• Support for selling digital & physical products and donations
• Export orders and customers into Tab, CSV and Excel formats
• Export orders for import into Intuit QuickBooks
• Search engine optimized shopping pages (product name and category in the title, semantic markup, alt/title attributes set, <meta> keywords/description)
• Built-in smart categories provide easy ways to highlight: new product additions, featured products, bestselling products, on sale products, random products, even related products for cross-selling
• Standards-compliant mark-up output (targeting XHTML 1.0 strict)
• Setup free shipping discounts
• Promote overstocked items with buy X get Y free promotions
• Apply any of your discount options using promo/coupon codes

Shopp is not a free plugin, it costs about $55.  As compared to the WP-Ecommerce plugin, which is free at a basic level and has multiple add on components to make it shine.  That said, the total price adds up to about the same amount.

Related posts:

1. The Essential Plugins for Using WordPress as a CMS
2. WordCamp Boston 2010
3. How to Design a WordPress Theme – Unconference WordCamp Boston

In this video, Amanda does a great job of covering why WordPress is a great, effective, cost effective tool for non-profits. She has some colorful language, but she gets the job across in a no nonsense way.  There are some conversations and resources out there for non profits and wordpress but not as many as there could be.  I highly recommend checking out this presentation and conversation to help immerse yourself into how Wordpress can play a part in a Non-Profit organization.

Softduit was founded in Georgia and has expanded to North Carolina, but we serve customers around the world from Ireland and Great Britain and the Netherlands to customers all over the US and Canada to the far East, back around to the Ukraine and Russia.

WordPress CMS & Social Media Resources Referenced

This video references a few different resources which I have used myself including the cformsII Plugin, the social media managing service Social Oomph. 

I use Social Oomph regularly myself.  It lets me manage communications on multiple twitter accounts and my facebook account.  It helps me vet good versus bad followers on twitter.  It also helps me to schedule twitter messages if I want to make a future announcement or setup a recurring message for follow Friday for example.

BTW Cancer Services of Gaston County is offering tickets for a screening of a major motion picture 2 weeks from this Saturday, Letter’s to God Screening details.

Don’t miss your chance to see a major motion picture prior to its’ nationwide release in theatres. Help us spread the word and fill the auditorium seats! 

Saturday, January 30, 2010
Gaston Day School
Pamela Kimbrell Warlick Performing Arts Center

Afternoon Screening;
Doors Open         1:30pm
Live Music:         2:00pm
Movie:                    3:00pm

Evening Screening
Doors Open:        5:30pm
Live Music:          6:00pm
Movie:                      7:00pm

Tickets $5
Available at Cancer Services of Gaston County

Related posts:

1. Migrating Cancer Services of Gaston County from Joomla to WordPress as a CMS
2. WordCamp RDU 2009 Schedule
3. Barcamp Chattanooga – Brett Bumeter Design a WordPress Theme in 10 Minutes

1. The only tool we seem to have is to suspend all domains temporarily.
2. Then un-suspend one domain at a time and
3. Refresh the server status in WHM over and over again
4. Gathering a sample of outputs for cpu usage

So far we have not identified any single domain that might be contributing to the problem.  Even starting to wonder if there might be a sophisticated hacker out there, hacking a server level or installing a virus at a server level that doesn’t ramp up their hacking efforts or turn the virus loose until multiple domains are on line.

Related posts:

1. My Google Domain Will Not Forward from GoDaddy – 301 Redirect Issue & Solution Prescribed by GoDaddy

If you follow the normal Godaddy instructions for forwarding a domain, you will likely not get the redirection to work at all.  There is a special process that you have to follow, and if you need support, a special team in Godaddy to field your questions (general domain support is not trained for these situations).

I recently worked on a project to with one of my customers.  They had a significant amount of blog content on an old Google Blogspot account (ex somedomain.blogspot.com).  They wanted to consolidate this content to a central website powered by WordPress as a CMS.  They also happened to be bringing in another blog from a different locations, so there was a merger going on, but that’s not relevant for this issue.

We needed google to initially convert the blogspot domain to a domain we purchased through them.  In this case Google handles all the redirects of those deep blogspot article links (in this case more than a thousand articles!).  This is not something a persona can do manually either (not possible).

After Google had everything redirected from somedomain.blogspot.com to BrandNewDomain.com, we then wanted to do 301 redirects from BrandNewDomain.com to ConsolidatedDomain.com/blog/ .

If you follow the Godaddy process, you simply login and type in a redirect URL.

But that will fail! 

Among other things, you have to delete all of the Google default information from the initial creation of BrandNewDomain.com purchased from Google.

Then you do your redirect and if you run into problems you have to call the right department in Godaddy.

Here’s the information that Godaddy sent me to help other people avoid the 4 tech support calls I made and 60 minutes of time spent on the phone working with Godaddy to get this right! 

Support Staff Response

Dear Brett, Thank you for contacting Online Support. Here is the information we discussed over the phone. The direct line to Go Daddy/Google Domain support is 480-366-3700. The email is gdomains@secureserver.net. Please keep in mind that we are not Google. We can only provide support for the settings within the DNS control panel. This does include setting up forwarding however. To setup domain name forwarding you must first log into your account at the Login Page. (To obtain your login information for your Google domain and update the DNS settings, use the directions below) 1. Go to http://www.google.com/a and click on ‘Returning user, sign in here’ on the top right. 2. Enter your domain and select "Manage this Domain" from the drop down and click ‘Go.’ 3. Now you will need to login to your Google account utilizing a username and password you previously created specifically for Google Apps for your domain. If you do not know this information, click ‘Forgot your administrator username or password?’ 4. Once logged in, select ‘Domain Names’ from the blue box that lists your domain. 5. Click on "Advanced DNS Settings". 6. You will now see listed your GoDaddy Google Sign-In Name, Password, and PIN. 7. Select "Sign in to DNS Console" in order to manage your DNS settings. 8. Now enter your Google Sign-In Name and Password listed on the previous screen. 9. You should now be in the Domain Control Center. To manage a domain place a check to the left and choose the option you want from the menu bar above [Organize, Locking, Contact, or Nameservers]. Once logged in, you need to setup domain forwarding. Domain name forwarding may be setup by through a few simple steps. • Check the box next to the domain(s) you wish to setup forwarding for. • Click the ‘Forward’ button in the gray menu above. • If you have selected multiple domains click the ‘Click here to Enable Fields’ link under the warning. • Enter the full URL that you would like your domain to forward to. Example: (http://www.anotherdomain.com) • Click on ‘OK’ when complete. • Allow 48 hours for the forwarding to take place. To add Masking, follow these steps: • Check the box next to the domain(s) you wish to modify. • Click the Forward Domains button above your list of domains. • Click the Masking tab that is next to the Forwarding tab. • Check the box next to Mask Domain. • Modify the title that you would like to appear in browsers. • You are also able to modify the description as well as the keywords. (Meta-tags) • Click Ok when you are finished. Next, you will need to update the IP address for the domain name. Here is how you modify the IP address. • Click the link for your domain you wish to modify the IP address for. • Click the ‘Total DNS Control and MX Records’ link on the domain details screen. • You will need only 1 A (host) record. Delete the extra records by clicking on the "X" to the right of the record. • Now Edit the remaining A (host) record by clicking the "pencil" button to the right of the record. • Put in the IP address (64.202.189.170) into the "Points to IP Address:" • Click on ‘OK’ when complete. • Allow 48 hours for the forwarding to take place. Lastly, you will need to update the WWW CName for the domain name. Here is how you modify it. • Click the link for your domain you wish to modify. • Click the ‘Total DNS Control and MX Records’ link on the domain details screen. • Click the "Pencil" next to the WWW under the CName Records. • Change the "Point to Host Name" to say @. • Click on ‘OK’ when complete. • Allow 48 hours for the forwarding to take place. Please let us know if you have any further questions, comments, or concerns by replying to this email. Our service departments and telephone lines are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to accommodate your needs anytime. Sincerely, Amber P. Online Support Representative

No related posts.

This is probably one of those videos that you will want to watch a couple times, just to make sure you understand the insights and information within. 

Related posts:

1. What Moves the Big Rocks in Social Media?
2. Softduit Media at New Media Expo 2008
3. Softduit Media Covering WordCamp:Las Vegas 2009

I used to work on a team in Motorola that drop shipped and sold $150 million worth of product per year from our exclusive supplier in China.  Motorola ultimately sold that division, and I migrated with the team to the new owners.  Drop shipping profitably is not an easy business!

So when people ask me today, “How can I sell drop ship products online from a drop shipper?” I usually tell them, something along the lines of “More power to you if you can make money doing this, I’ve done it and its not easy.  There is a REASON why I don’t sell drop ship products online today myself.”

Drop Shipping to Retailers

As a former credit manager / contract manager (ie the guy that had to assess new retailers and distributors to see if they had the stuff to be successful selling our products), I also know there are two things that make a person selling drop shipped products successful.

1. They have to be kick ass sales people, &
2. They need a competitive advantage

If you are great at selling, then keep reading.  If you have a buddy (you trust) in China that can get you a better than market price on a hot gadget to start drop shipping across 6 continents or even 1, keep preparing.

If not, I advise you to skip on to some other business and avoid drop shipping, drop shippers and drop ship products, because the people that are natural and extra persistent at sales will eat your lunch, and you will not be profitable, unless . . .

You have a competitive advantage so powerful that you can then afford to hire sales person that can kick butt and take names.

What’s a competitive advantage in drop shipping?

If you have an exclusive lock on a drop shipping product or a product model that no one else can sell, you have a monopoly like advantage.  If you have the ability to sell a given product at a price lower than anyone else (even if you are using it as a loss leader or something), then you have an price advantage.

If you make your customers feel better about themselves, make them feel cool for dealing with you, or get them to buy when you don’t have a lock on the product or the price then you are either a awesome sales person (and maybe don’t know it) or you have some other business setup that emulates this (maybe like a Zappos.com that sells shoes, but answers questions on anything if you call them, or an Apple that sells MP3 players at a premium, drop shipped from Foxconn, because people think they are cool).

“I’m a Kick Ass Sales Person, and I make my customers feel cool, Where Can I get drop shipped product for Free?”

So lets say for the sake of argument, you have 1 and 2 covered, maybe you have 50,000 followers on twitter that think you are the best thing since digg, and you can sell anything without flexing half your brain, and all you need is something to sell.

Well that’s where Shopster comes in managing drop ship relationships for you.

Shopster essentially gives you access to more drop shipped products than you could ever hope to review and pick from.  They make it easy to organize and setup a drop ship connection and automate the setup of your online store.

The cool thing is that they do this for FREE now, for people just starting out.  They used to offer a free 7 day trial and then charged about $50 per month to sign up.

No more free trials, they just have a simple free account.  The catch is that you can only sell up to 25 products, but guess what?

That’s a good thing.  The biggest mistake most people make when they set up an account with Shopster is that they try to add a thousand different products and fill up their online store like they are going to compete with Amazon.

Got a news flash for them and you.  YOU ARE NOT GOING TO COMPETE WITH AMAZON ON 1,000 DIFFERENT PRODUCTS.

But you might just compete with them on a FEW drop ship products!

So start small, stay focused, and start for free.  Once you know what you are doing and this can be demonstrated by the fact that you have “MADE A PROFIT” Then you can start looking at growing and repeating your hat trick.

Maybe someday you will compete with Amazon, which just bought Zappos, but more importantly, maybe you will  become just profitable enough selling drop ship products yourself that it won’t matter if you can beat Amazon.

Related posts:

1. Amazon Associates-How to Create Amazon Best Seller Lists with Zero Sales History
2. Two Cool Plugins from WordCamp Boston and Many Honorable Mentions