Security Alert - Free Pixels

!!! Caution !!!

While performing our daily Adgitize visits, we read one blogger's post promoting Free Pixels available on Serradinho.com. Always trying to get free advertising, we visited the site and saw the logo gifs of many familiar EC members. So, we submitted the logo of one of our sites.

After registering, the site sends you mail with a link to activate your pixels.

Using a different computer, we read our mail and clicked on the activate link.

Upon doing this, a Google warning page was automatically displayed, warning us NOT to proceed any further because the site is suspected of containing malicious spy ware. After clicking the link 3 times, we were convinced this was no accident.

Accordingly, we are advising all our readers to:

Resist the temptation to add your site or blog to serradinho.com

And, if you get there:

• DO NOT click on any of the logos displayed
• DO NOT download (or save) any of the images from that site

We are not sure if this site was written with the intention to propagate mal-ware, or if it simply has security holes enabling hackers to infest its site.

In any case: Avoid this site as your computer may become infected.

JL......

Footnotes:

1. We are writing this post as a precaution to the PC security of our fellow bloggers. It is not our intention to degrade this site, but to simply alert visitors of our experiences.
2. We believe our logo has been added even though we never completed the activation.
   
3. From Google, if you do a search for Serradinho.com you will see the warning below its title: This site may harm your computer.

Adgitize - Clickables #1

The goal of every blogger and website owner is to have visitor traffic, write and present information, and more importantly, earn some income.

If these are your goals, then you must:

Adgitize - Get World Class Advertising on a Bloggers Budget

Why Join Adgitize?
First, this is a clickable network designed to assist site owners achieve the above goals. This is done by awarding members daily points for:

1. Clicking on other member ads
2. Writing a post
3. Page Views
4. Ad views
5. Advertising (for paid advertisers only)
   

These points are totaled and the daily points are then assigned a dollar amount. You, the site owner, is then credited with this amount of money (2 days later).

Should You be a Paid Advertiser Here?
In our opinion, the answer is: Absolutely YES! for a couple of reasons.

1. Advertising costs are a Flat $14 for 31 days. That's approximately $0.452 per day. Regardless how many times your ad is clicked.
2. Advertiser gifs are displayed on the Adgitize widgets.
3. Advertisers receive additional points, meaning your daily earnings from Adgitize are increased.

In our experience, we receive between 60-100 visits daily, meaning each click costs us $0.0075 - $0.0045 each. Compared to everyone else, that's incredibly cheap.

Additionally, Adgitize revised their point structure as of April 1, 2009. Meaning that those who are actively involved, earn more points and more money.

How Much Money Can You Earn?
Right now, that's a bit up in the air, but our guestimate is approximately $24-30 per month if you post daily, click the maximum number of sites allowed, and are a paid advertiser.

How Much Time Do You Need to Spend Each Day?
We believe that you will need to spend around 1 hour each day to earn the maximum from Adgitize. Writing a new post will take around 30 minutes, and clicking on the other member ads will be about 30 minutes as well.

How Do You Join?
Either click on the Adgitize link above, or the banner below. Once there, look for and click the "Register" on the left side of the page. Then fill out the form, and you're in!

How Do You Click on Sites?
Once you have joined, you should place the Adgitize advertising widget on your site. This will earn you points.

Next, you will want to click on all the member sites. In order to do this, you must visit Adgitize and log-in, otherwise you clicks won't be counted.

Then, rather than hunting around for sites to click on, we recommend you do one of the three:

1. Go to their "LeaderBoard" page and click on each of the sites listed. They will have ads for you to click.
2. Go to their "Reports" page, and then click on the "Publisher's Blogs Not Clicked Today". This will give you another list of sites.
3. And, lastly, you can add your site to the Mr. Linky list below. Bookmark this page, and visit the sites listed there.

Have Fun!

Newbies Should Join Clickable Networks

In order to be successful after you launch your website or blog, you need to get visitors. But how to do this is often a mystery to the novice on an extremely minimal budget.

You may believe that you are doing everything that is right, such as posting interesting articles, updating content frequently, telling friends, and concentrating on keywords. But, still you're only getting 1-5 visitors a day. How can you improve this?

How do you get more visitors?

By joining the "Clickable Networks".

These are the organizations who enroll members, require you to display a widget of sorts, and encourage you to visit other member sites by clicking on their widget.

From our experience, we have identified 5 Clickable Network providers and have listed them below in alphabetical order:

1. Adgitize (Websites & Blogs - must have RSS Capability)
2. CMF Ads (Blogs Only)
3. Entrecard (Blogs Only)
4. SlogBite (Websites & Blogs)
5. Spott (Websites & Blogs)

Of the 5, two insist that you must be a blog. The other three allow both websites and blogs to join.

In our upcoming posts, we will present an in-depth review of each of these networks. We will discuss both the advantages and drawbacks of each. In addition, we will inform you as to whether your membership will be rewarding or a waste of time.

Until then,

JL..........

PS: The above list is comprised of the networks we joined. If you know of others, please leave a comment and describe them.

Recent Yahoo Search Marketing Changes

Yahoo! Sponsored Search connects businesses and customers online. Sign up and get a $25 credit.


During the past few months, Yahoo has introduced significant improvements to their Yahoo! Search Marketing product.

Primarily, they added 3 important features:

• Demographic Bidding
• Geo-targeting, and
• Ad Scheduling

First, Demographic Bidding allows you to target your ads to different groups of people, and adjust your bids accordingly. You may set different advertising rates for varying age groups or sex.

Second, you can specify different regions of the U.S. or Canada to target using the Geo-targeting feature. Using this refinement, you can limit your ads to display in entire countries, or in specific Zip or Postal Codes only.

And third, Ad Scheduling allows you to display your ads at differing times of the day, rather than the old 24 hours per day.

In addition to these modifications, they are now filtering out many of the "parked sites" that click on your ads without ever producing any revenue.

If your blog or website offers particular products to sell, these new features can assist you in reaching the buying audience that you are looking for. Remember:

Yahoo! Sponsored Search lists your business on top sites like Yahoo!, AltaVista and CNN. Sign up and get a $25 credit.


So, if you aren't already advertising on Yahoo! Search Marketing, now is the time to give them a try.

When Google Analytics isn't Counting your Visits

We recently joined CMF Forums and read of one member's frustration with Google Analytics not working properly. They included an Analytics screen shot that says they only had 1 Visit with 0.0 time on the site and 100% bounce rate.

We visited their site for a couple of days so we know that there are more than 1 visitor. So, we decided to investigate a little deeper.

We went to their site again, and used our browser's option to look at their page's html source. We found their tracking code and believe that there may be 4 problems with it:

• First, the tracking code may be in the incorrect location. Google recommends that it be located at the very end of the HTML and just before the < /body > tag. Their's is in the middle of the page.
• Second, and perhaps most importantly, the code is missing the "try {} check {}" error block. That's not good.
  
• Third, you may have another script that prevents this from working. If so, place the tracking code at the top of your source code, just before the < /head > tag.
• Fourth, look at your account number. We don't know what it should be, but if you have multiple sites, you may be using the wrong one.

To correct the above, we recommend you remove the existing code, get new tracking code, and use the Google Utilities to check that it is working.

---

How do you go about doing the above?

Follow these Steps:

1. Log into your Google Account
2. Go to your "My Account" Page
3. Under the My Products Heading, Look for and click the Analytics Link
4. Click on the Edit links under Action. This will show your Profile settings. It will display your site name & profile ID, then a table of your website info.
5. Look to the top right of the 1st table and it will display the green check mark & Receiving Data label. If it doesn't, something is wrong.
6. Also in this area of the page is a (Check Status) link. You should press this!
7. And then see what the status is. (It should say Receiving Data, if not, something's still wrong)
   
8. Most Importantly, it will give you the Tracking Code you need to place on your site.
9. Copy the code and paste it in your site's HTML Code. (don't forget to remove the old stuff)
10. Save your new sites HTML page, and then repeat Step 6

Once added correctly, it will take around 24 hours before data flows correctly.

Good Luck & Happy Easter!

JL.......

Important AdSense Notices for April 2009

If you're a Google AdSense publisher, there are two important notices that you should address.

• Update your Privacy Policy (by April 8th)
• Remove Video Units (by April 30th)

First is their request for you to review and update your Privacy Policy in preparation for interest-based advertising. They provide you a link which describes what information you should include about Google and the DoubleClick DART cookie. Your work should be completed by April 8, 2009. You can read their official notice your account's main AdSense Reports page.

The second notice indicates that the AdSense Video Units product will be retired at the end of April 2009. This means that if you have installed video units on you website or blog, you should consider removing that content by the end of the month. Apparently, this product has not performed as expected.

As other important news is released, we will keep you informed.

JL.......

Our Focus, Our Topics

Long before the recent economic downturn hit, many people were lured into starting blogs and websites by people promising to either make you rich or learn the secrets of earning large yearly incomes. All we had to do was to buy a book or video, get a domain name, place some ads, join an affiliate marketing program, hire an SEO, and watch the revenues pour in.

To those of us with similar dreams, we learned the sad and harsh reality that this will probably never occur.

Creating a successful site requires a lot of time, hard work, trials & errors, internet searching, self doubt and wondering.

In our upcoming posts, we will share our experiences. We will let you know what worked for us, and what things were a waste of time. We will provide you a road map for establishing your online presence, inform you of important news, and tell you things you should be doing.

Our future posts will address topics such as :

• Boosting you Visitors Count
• Free Blogging Networks
• Paid Advertising
• Social Marketing
• Free Advertising Vehicles
• Affiliate Marketing
• Website Security
• Noteworthy Programming Tools
• Knowing Your Visitors
• Important News
• How-to's
• and more.

We plan to update our blog 3 times a week, usually on Monday, Tuesday and Friday.

We hope you will: Bookmark our site; Subscribe to our posts; Leave us your comments, Join our communities; and, Feel free to ask us questions.

And, in the end, perhaps one or more of us will realize our dreams and start to become wealthy (or at least pay for our expenses).

JL....