Leaving The Day Job
Leaving the day job through the wonders of affiliate marketing
Moving from Blogger Blogspot to Wordpress
Sunday, September 30th, 2007If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I’ve moved this blog away from Blogger to a self-hosted Wordpress installation. Wordpress has all the features I’ve been missing and is generally more modern and expandable blogging platform. But then you knew all that already. The question of why I was using Blogger to start with can be ignored for now.
Here’s a quick couple of notes about what I had to do in the hope that they might help someone one day. I’m assuming a fair degree of familiarity with both Blogger and Wordpress.
I used these instructions as my basis but they needed some tweaking to work with Blogger’s new templates. This method should enable you to migrate your content, redirect your RSS feeds (if you use Feedburner) and redirect your old site pages to your new one. The one thing it can’t do is transfer your Google PageRank as this requires the use of 301 redirects which you can’t do on Blogspot.
1) Obtain the latest version of Wordpress. Create a database and install as described in the Wordpress documentation
2) Log in to your Wordpress admin panel. Click Manage - Import - Blogger. Enter your Blogger login details. Wait for a bit and all your posts should be copied over from Blogger to your new site.
3) (Optional) Assuming that you are using Feedburner for your RSS feed: login to Feedburner and change the source of your feed to your new site eg www.yourdomain.com/feed . Install the FeedSmith plugin - this will automagically redirect requests for your RSS feed to your Feedburner feed instead.
4) This is the fun bit. You need to redirect traffic from your old Blogger blog to your new Wordpress blog.
4a) Download the from_blogger.php file from here and save it to the root of your Wordpress site.
4b) Paste the following code into your Blogger template (I put it just after the opening <body> tag)
<script language='javascript'><!-- var process_page="http://www.yournewwebsite.com/from_blogger.php"; var newpage=process_page; var oldlink=document.location.href; newpage+="?p="+oldlink; newpage=newpage.toLowerCase(); document.location.href=newpage; //--></script>
4c) Paste the following into your Blogger tempate’s <head>element
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=http://www.yournewwebsite.com" />4d) Paste the following somewhere into your Blogger template’s <body> element
<div style='position: absolute; top: 30px; left: 30px; border: solid 2px #333; color: #000; background-color: yellow; padding: 5px; width: 350px; z-index: 5;'> <p><strong>My blog has moved! Redirecting…</strong></p> <p>You should be automatically redirected. If not, visit <a href='http://www.yournewwebsite.com/'>http://www.yournewwebsite.com</a> and update your bookmarks.</p> </div>
In theory what should happen is that visitors to your old blog will be redirected to the same article on the new site. The way it works is by capturing the last part of your Blogger page’s url eg my-great-post.html and searching for a post with the slug ‘my-great-post’ in your Wordpress blog. Unfortunately Blogger and Wordpress don’t always agree on how to create that slug so you may need to go through each post individually and check that the slugs match up. To do this go to Manage - Posts and Edit each one. The slug is displayed on the right hand side of the edit page under ‘Post slug’.
I’ve tried to write this as quickly as possible while the process is still fresh in my mind but in rushing I’ve probably not explained myself very clearly. Post in the comments if you have problems and I’ll try to assist.
Caution: This blog is on the move
Sunday, September 30th, 2007I’m in the process of moving this blog from Blogspot to a self-hosted Wordpress installation. Since I’m using Feedburner the RSS feed should seamlessly redirect without any problems. On the other hand it might all go pear-shaped and I apologise in advance if thirty odd posts all turn up at once on Affiliates4U and internetmarketingblogs.co.uk
I’m the worst person in the world
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007I’m the worst person in the world.
OK, maybe I should qualify that before you think I’ve either murdered someone or have forgotten my mother’s birthday or I’m just having another one of my affiliate income-related downers. I mean, I’m the worst person in the world to try selling something to online.
Realising this has caused another huge revelation to, erm, reveal itself to me. As an affiliate I’ve been trying to market to myself. And that’s as dumb as rubber nails.
I’m cynical. I’m educated. I’ve got more years of internet experience than most people think it’s possible to have. I’m wise to affiliate marketing and to the spammy tactics of some of its dodgier disciples. I can use price comparison sites. I’ve bought all manner of stuff online and I’ll most likely go straight back to the retailers I’ve used before. In short, don’t bother trying to sell me stuff online.
In many internet businesses, producing what you yourself want can be a very successful strategy. It’s called scratching your itch. You want a better search engine so you go and build Google. You want to keep up with your Uni mates, you build Facebook.
But for me trying to sell things to myself is pointless. I’m not going to buy. So instead I sit in front of the computer all day dismissing all my ideas as naive or stupid or “been done before”.
Well, maybe Monty, not everyone in the world has been round the HTML block(quote) as many times as you. Maybe what you think is jaded is fresh and shiny to them. You may think that Myspace is Geocities with more Emo kids but to them its hip (or whatever young people say these days). Maybe you need to round up some net neophytes and see what happens when they surf the web.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about hoodwinking naive newbies with old hat spamming and deception. What I’m saying is that I need to be more openminded about what may work with the wider population outside of Geek Towers where I reside. I’m scientifically minded and I should experiment and discover what works. You never know I might surprise myself.
Wake me up when September ends
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007What a crappy month September is turning out to be. Not only have I got a year older, as I do every September, but my fledgling affiliate income stream has dried out and become a tiny trickle.
I’ve blogged before about the possible impending recession and certainly the going-ons at Northern Rock haven’t done the retail scene any good. But there seems to be more going on. People just aren’t spending.
Are they saving money now for a Christmas splurge? Or have they learnt in recent years that desperate retailers will start discounting heavily as we get closer to the big day?
Whatever it is it’s not making my life any easier facing my first Christmas as a semi-pro affiliate. It’s nigh on impossible to judge whether the work I’m putting in is worthwhile. I can’t tell whether customers are holding back their spending or if I’m just crap at building websites and attracting customers.
So what I’m doing is a scattergun approach. Throwing simple little websites together in a variety of different markets. Hoping that the SEO is good enough that they’ll rank nearer Christmas and bring in some sales for me.
Of course, there’s the danger of spreading myself too thin and making 100 crap sites instead of one or two good ones.
I think I need to be pragmatic and accept that the first Christmas as an affiliate is going to be a learning rather than an earning experience.
I’d still like to get a nice Christmas bonus for all my hard work though ….
A simple tip for affiliate networks
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007Dear Affiliate Networks
This is just a small request. Just a simple little thing which will make my life a lot easier. Please, please if you are going to give us Javascript snippets at least make sure they work!
I’ve just wasted an hour trying to debug the Javascript for a certain merchant’s search panel. Just to make it even more fun I’ve discovered in the process that the code refers to their Winter 2006 inventory so even when it works it doesn’t work!
Terrific.
All the best
Monty
Blogrush or bogbrush?
Friday, September 21st, 2007Blogrush is suffering from a spam invasion. As I predicted at the weekend spammers have jumped at the chance of having their crap syndicated for free on some of the biggest blogs on the planet.
Blogrush emailed all their users last night with the following admission : “… the bozos have come out of the woodwork and are trying to cheat the BlogRush system. We have quite a few users that are abusing the system — from running scripts to auto-load the widget, to other fraudulent methods to earn syndication credits for their account that they do not deserve.”
Jason at One Little Duck has had enough of the spammers piggybacking on his site already and has pulled the widget. He rightly points out that “site owners/bloggers should remember that links on your own site are often seen as a recommendation by you to your users”
I’m hanging in there for the moment. I’m a bit concerned that the Blogrush guys didn’t see this coming but they reckon they have it in hand so I’ll let them see if they can solve the problems. Certainly the size of the network and the potential for getting your blog in front of so many new readers is not to be sniffed. And you can’t argue with the price either.
I’m grudgingly and constantly amazed at the ingenuity of spammers. They must get up very early in the morning to keep finding all these new ways of corrupting every idea everyone else comes up with. If only they could put that amount of energy into something useful we’d have cancer cured by now and be moving on to world peace, edible microwave meals and getting British trains to run on time.
MyBlogLog-ahoo!
Friday, September 21st, 2007I must have missed this one being announced but it appears that MyBlogLog, purveyors of popular blog readership tracking/social networking widgets, has been acquired by Yahoo.
On trying to sign in this morning I found I needed to log in with a barely remembered Yahoo ID I set up a million years ago and merge in my MyBlogLog account. The only other difference I could see is that the site seems to be painfully slow.
Yahoo are certainly on an acquisition frenzy at the moment (they recently made a more high profile purchase of Zimbra) but I’m not quite sure what the strategic aim of this one is. Are they building a Google Analytics competitor? Adding more blogs to their search index? Or just burning through some cash for the fun of it?
Update: Seems this acquisition happened in January which is why I was unaware of it. I wasn’t even blogging then so hadn’t heard of MyBlogLog
Two Job Bob (or Monty)
Thursday, September 20th, 2007OK. I admit it. I’m struggling.
I’ve never been the greatest at kicking my lazy arse into gear but in the past couple of weeks I’ve been finding it really difficult to motivate myself to “do the affiliate stuff”.
I started off thinking affiliate marketing would save me from the doldrums of the 9-5 but mixing full time work with evenings and weekends of affiliate stuff is doing my mental state no good. After eight hours of sitting in front of a PC coding the thought of spending a few more hours in front of a different PC is no fun. Particularly given the slim returns I’m seeing this month.
I was particularly interested in John’s post “Giving up the day job“. I was heartened by the fact that he had to spend a year as a part-time affiliate before he reached a level where he thought he could go full time.
But more to the point I was intrigued by the fact that his affiliate income soared when his full time job became part time and he was able to spend two full days a week on his affiliate work. That certainly resonated with me as I’m sure a full day’s affiliate work would be more productive than an equal number of hours slotted in after a day at the office. Unfortunately, I’m not really in a position to cut down my office hours yet.
So here’s the current plan. No affiliate work for the next 48 hours. Forget about it. Time off. Hope that my mate’s leaving do on Saturday night doesn’t take too much of a toll on me 
And then : I’ll start taking some of my annual leave to give myself one or two days a week to fully concentrate on what I’m doing affiliate wise. Let’s see if I can get the same sort of benefit John saw when he went part time at work. With Christmas coming up hopefully I’ll be in a stronger financial position in the new year and can revisit the idea of part time working.
It’s the economy, Stupid
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007I mentioned Lee’s post earlier about weathering the storm should the economy take a downturn and I’m going to expand on my thoughts a bit here.
It’s sometimes easy to forget when we’re sitting at our computers setting up PPC campaigns, SEOing websites and blogging about it all that we’re part of a greater eco-system. Unless you live in a shack growing your own veg and knitting your own clothes you’re reliant on other people and indirectly you’re reliant on their success and their confidence in their own future success. If other people doubt their economic future they won’t spend money and we won’t get commissions on the sales.
Lee recommends reviewing the industries you target and mentions foreign travel as one which people are likely to cut back on. This is not good news for me as much of my affiliate income so far has come from foreign travel. I certainly think people are going to be cutting back on luxuries for the foreseeable future but at the moment I don’t think we need completely to run away from non-essential markets. After all, a foreign holiday can often be cheaper than one in the UK. Just think Easyjet rather than world cruises.
And that’s probably the crux of my advice (as much to myself as anyone). Don’t be swayed by what’s cool or what pays the best commission. Look for the good value deal. Think what you yourself would want to spend your hard earned cash on if you were uncertain about the future. Think as well about where people might want to save money. An example off the top of my head, people might decide to ditch their Sky TV subscription and switch to a Freeview box. They might cancel their mobile contract and switch to pay as you go. Just because people are spending more carefully doesn’t mean they’re not in the market for a new product.
Now is definitely a good time to take stock. Christmas is coming and that’s always the biggest spending time of the year but make sure you can survive in what may be a difficult new year.
Hanging round the blogs
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007A quick list of a few blog postings which caught my eye this morning. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to comment more fully on these later.
Keiron asks where are all the good UK blogs. Need to focus my mind on writing this one so I’ll be able to say “Here’s one, Keiron” before long.
Lee’s posted a great ten point plan on preparing your affiliate marketing strategy for the recession that may or may not be coming
Google’s Inside Adwords blog points out their new FAQ on low quality landing pages. Interestingly comparison shopping sites and travel aggregators are amongst those that risk low scores.
