Photo by Smiling Pug

I have started using the Alinks plugin, and I really like it.

There are a few other plugins that do similar things. I tried one other one, but then hit upon Alinks and love all the features it has. It is really easy to use.

What this plugin does is, if you have something you want to link to multiple times, it will do the linking for you. I wanted to increase the internal linking of one of my sites. Think of wikipedia. It does a lot of internal linking, which is one reason it ranks so well. (Another reason is that so many people link to wikipedia, of course.)

So I set up the plugin so that, for example, every time I mention “pug” in any post, it will automatically create a link to my “pug dog” page. I have it set up so that it will only link on the first occurrence of the word in the post. You can change this number, but I thought once per post was enough.

Besides internal linking, you can use Alinks for external links. For example, you could use it for affiliate links. Every time you mention, say, “keyword”, you could have it create a link to your affiliate link of your favorite keyword tool. (Hey, not a bad idea! Maybe I’ll do that on this site. )

It will create links for all your previous posts automatically. You don’t have to go into each post and update it, or anything like that.

Alinks has an option for creating Amazon links automatically too. I have not tried that feature yet, but it sounds like a good idea.

I love all the options it gives you. You can set it up to do click tracking on your links. I have not tried that, so I can’t say how well that works. You can decide if the links should open in a new window or not. You can display a little image next to each link. You can enter the title that you want for the link. (This is what you see when you hover your mouse over the link.) You can decide if you want it to be case sensitive when deciding whether to create the link.

Alinks comes with a nice pdf instruction manual that explains everything to you.

And it is all free.

Update: I just read somewhere that Alinks does not work with the latest version of WordPress. I have not updated to the latest version yet, so I don’t know. Hopefully the plugin author will update it.

– Pat B. Doyle

I have been spending a lot of time lately at a site called Blogger Unleashed. This is the blog of a video blogger named Vic Franqui.

I have been learning a lot from his methods, and his videos are very entertaining.

Here is one of his milder videos:

Some of his videos are much more passionate, especially when he is attacking some “make money bloggers” who he feels are leading people astray.

I admire Vic because he tells it the way he sees it. He is very generous with his time in teaching people how to actually make money online. His latest discovery is creating BANS sites (eBay affiliate sites). He stresses the importance of getting links to your sites, and he does show you exactly how to do that.

My next project is going to be setting up some BANS sites of my own according to Vic’s directions.

Starting today, Vic has another cool feature on his site, Blogger Unleashed Live, a live video chat. The only complaint I have about that is that I am having a hard time getting any work done. I’m spending too much time in his video chat.

Disclosure: Vic has a contest going on, which you can find out about here. This review of Blogger Unleashed is my entry into his contest. However, I hope you know me by now - I don’t recommend anything unless I really like it, and I really like Blogger Unleashed. Everything I have said in this review is how I really feel. I would not recommend something to you just for a contest.

Do Vic’s methods work? I’m not sure yet, since I don’t have my sites set up yet, but everything he says makes a lot of sense to me.

So check Vic out at Blogger Unleashed.

– Pat B. Doyle

Photo by Gaetan Lee

Do you use AdSense to monetize your site? If so, do you have a privacy policy?

Google recently updated their terms of service for AdSense. When you signed in, you had to agree to these new terms of service. But how many people actually read those things?

In case you are not aware of it, the big change to the terms of service is that you now need to display a privacy policy on your site, if you are using AdSense. Here is the explanation on the official Google AdSense blog.

Don’t worry, some kind bloggers have come up with a way to help you with this. I have found two so far:

1. Jennifer Slegg of the JenSense blog has created a sample privacy policy that you are free to use on your blog.
2. Eric Giguere of MEMWG has created a WordPress plugin that will create a privacy policy for you. It is called the Privacy Policy Plugin for WordPress.

I have not yet updated my blogs that use AdSense to include a privacy policy, but I certainly plan on doing it soon. I want to stay on AdSense’s good side!

I was just waiting for someone to come up with a solution I could use, and I believe either of the above two options will do the trick.

Have you added a privacy policy to your AdSense sites yet?

- Pat B. Doyle

Photo by laffy4k

Once in a while you need to take a look at your business and the different things you spend time on, to see if these things are really furthering your goals.

I am at this point right now.

For example, this blog currently takes up quite a bit of my time. It is not just the writing of posts, but getting ideas for posts, doing research, reading other blogs to see what is new, moderating comments, promoting the blog by various methods, and so on.

Yet, this blog has hardly earned me any money. The only time it has earned me money was when I first released my blog traffic ebook, and a lot of my blog readers purchased it. (Thanks, I appreciate your support. )

But this way of monetizing the blog will only work if I constantly come out with new products, something I have had a hard time doing lately, for various reasons.

I did try AdSense on the blog for a couple of days, but that was a total bust. AdSense just does not work for “Make Money Online” types of blogs, unless you are really aggressive with your ad placement, and I didn’t want that. I’d rather stick to using AdSense on my other, more consumer-oriented blogs, where it does very well.

I believe an Internet Business blog can do very well if it is just part of your business strategy. Few of them make a lot of money just as a stand-alone effort.

I really need to focus more on actual money-making ventures right now.

But I don’t want this blog to die! It has been very successful in terms of numbers of visitors and RSS subscribers. I also have quite a few newsletter subscribers.

And I really enjoy the interactions with my readers. I learn a lot, both from your comments and from my own efforts to formulate ideas for posts. I’m not going to give up on this fun entirely.

So I have decided to post less on the blog for the time being. I still plan to post at least once a week. If you are signed up to my RSS feed or email announcements, you will know when I have published a new post.

I hope that the weekly posts will be somewhat longer and have some useful information for you to use in your own business.

I believe that this phase of my blog will be only temporary. Once some of my other ventures get going and are more self-sufficient, I hope to be able to post more often to this blog again.

Also, if I create any products that would be of interest to you as internet marketers or bloggers, I will certainly let you know about them.

In the meantime, I am curious to hear your experiences.

If you blog about “make money online” topics, do you earn money from your blog? If so, how?

And in general, how do your blogs fit into your overall internet business strategy?

- Pat B. Doyle

Photo by The Wandering Angel

Wendy Piersall at eMoms at Home has written a really interesting post about Stumbleupon and how different groups view it. This post should be required reading for any internet marketer who is using Stumbleupon.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from her post.

Here are some lessons that struck me:

• Different groups have very different ideas about Stumbleupon and it really helps to understand the others’ point of view.
• If you are attacked, instead of lashing out in return, try to find out what is behind it in the attacker’s mind. You might learn something really valuable.
• Other groups don’t always understand marketers. We have to be careful not to be seen as “spammers”.

There is a lot more to her post that I can’t cover here, so I suggest that you go and read it right now: What I Learned About Communities and Social Media by Hanging Out With the Trolls.

- Pat B. Doyle