MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing » php code

Using Opt-Ins to Increase List Subscriptions

Mark E. Mason — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:27:31 +0000

I have written a lot recently about the importance of mailing lists. Last Friday, in fact, I explained about how I had been working on a lightbox solution for optins using the You Can't Block This script. The only problem is that I have been worried about bugging my normal readers and tarnishing my brand.

Sure enough, I got this thoughtful comment from a loyal reader (Alex The Big Blogger):

I’m not a fan of Popups, I consider them a little bit spammy, although I’ve tested them out on my own blog and I too have seen good results. I’ve made them with Aweber and set a delay to the apparence. On this way the visitor fisrt starts reading the post and then he gets the popup. Getting a popup as the first thing when i come to a site sets me up and makes me walk away.

That is exactly what I am worried about -- but I like the idea of a delay.

Then it occurred to me that I could just put some php code around the JavaScript based on the referrer to determine if the lightbox appeared. For my initial experiment, I am only showing the opt-in box to users from StumbleUpon, Google search, Yahoo search and MSN search. That way, I should not be offending my regular readers. (I know I am not the first person to have this idea, by the way).

In addition to that, I have the popup set to display once per browser session. That should allow for minimum annoyance.

I will let you know how it goes. I have added some Google Analytics code to the popup box html, so I should be able to get some decent stats on the performance.

One issue -- not all browsers are configured to report the referring website. For our current experiment, those visitors will not see the box. I may change this behavior later.

In case you are interested, here is the trivial php code to manage who sees the popup:



 $referer = strtolower($_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]);

 if ( strstr($referer,"google")||strstr($referer,"yahoo")||

      strstr($referer,".live.")||strstr($referer, "stumbleupon"))

{

?>
  -- POPUP SCRIPT HERE ---

(Special thanks to Josh Spaulding for help with troubleshooting)

Have a great day!
Mark

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

Mark E. Mason — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:00:11 +0000

One of the biggest challenges for me personally working on Internet Marketing part time is focus. As a part time Internet Marketer, I have a very limited amount of time to spend on tasks related to my new hobby. In fact, I try not to spend more than a couple of hours a day on Internet Marketing related activities. When I started out, my goal was to demonstrate that I could make some money on the Internet -- inspired by a segment I saw on the Today Show.

Since that time, I have started several blogs, a link directory, a couple of niche sites, some forums, switched blogging platforms, switched hosting companies, done some business/administrative tasks, read books, listened to podcasts, read and commented on blogs, studied marketing, joined countless affiliate programs, hired writers, won contests, built a mailing list, made friends, hired programmers, purchased software, written php code, changed blog themes many times, chatted on GTalk, and hung out on forums. The one thing that I have not done much of is make money. Go figure.

Speaking of distractions, I am writing this post on a plane bound for Hong Kong using ecto, which I mentioned earlier this week. I think this software is a keeper -- but I have not quite made up my mind. (Too bad they don't have an affiliate program). It does have some limitations that are annoying, however, For example, you cannot add a category or contol the post slug. My friend Garry Conn likes Blogdesk. I need to check that out.

Back to my story. Don't get me wrong. I am having a blast, and I have learned a ton. The problems are that I haven't really finished anything - and the learning is not well documented. As it happens, my wife will tell you that this "unfinished project thing" also happens around the house. Great at starting projects; less great at finishing them. So, I thought it would be interesting to list all the current projects that I have underway or in my mind and see if I could prioritize them. Once again taking a page out of Caroline Middlebrook's book, I going to create a Projects page to document all of this so I can keep it straight in my own mind.

Another thing that I plan to do is increase my post frequency on this blog by making sure that I document what I did that day. After all, the value that I am trying to provide is an account of my experience. I am not trying to claim that I can teach people how to make $4B on the Internet this week. I'll categorize the posts by project. So watch for the post count to go up in the coming weeks.

So, what are all these current projects about? I'll work on a list tonight and post it tomorrow.

Best regards,

Mark

Niche Super-Site: Adding a PopShop

Mark E. Mason — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:00:41 +0000

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

Yesterday, we talked about how you could diversify your niche income by taking advantage of the eBay affiliate sales program by taking advantage of phpBay Pro. Today, we'll look at our second method of nich store diversification -- PopShops.

PopShops provides tools for setting up an affiliate store inside your website. PopShops claims to be the largest searchable collection of affiliate products (said to be currently over 28 million and growing). They work with the major affiliate networks, including Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareASale, and Performics. With the PopShops program, you keep all of your commissions. ProShops offers a Free Basic account where users can add affiliate products one page at a time using JavaScript. I use the Pro account ($5/month) because that allows you to use php instead of JavaScript. This is important because the php is SEO friendly and the JavaScript is not. This is because with the Pro account shops, the product descriptions are actually in your page, and can be inded by Google (similar to phpBay Pro). PopShops also offers an Enterprise account (at $30/month). The latter account offers better sales tracking, supporting multiple commission junction PIDs (among other things). If I am making so much money at some point that I am confused about where it is coming from, I plan to upgrade. You can read more about PopShops in PC World (good description of what they do).

To make this work really well on our nice site, we need the PopShops plugin for WordPress. As of this writing, it is still in Alpha release, but it works quite well for me. Features include (from their website):

Add products to your WP blog from any of the major affiliate networks.
Click the POP button on your WYSIWYG post editor to add affiliate product links directly into your posts.
Build affiliate stores for your sidebar, footer, static pages, under a post, or randomly after posts.
As always, keep 100% of your commissions

So, for HistoryofElvis.com, we want to add shops that Elvis fans will enjoy. You can use your imagination. For this demonstration, I have added shop pages targeted at Elvis Apparel, Elvis Auto Accessories, Elvis Pins, etc. I also created a sample Elvis t-Shirt PopShop at the end of this post for your viewing pleasure.

One thing that you have to watch out for with PopShops is adding products for merchants in commission junction for which you have no relationship. As far as I know, there is no way to tell PopShops what merchants have accepted you on Commission Junction. So, if you accidentally add a CafePress shirt to your PopShop page and you are not a member of the CafePress affiliate program through Comission Junction, you will not get any commission for the sale of that item.

One great thing about PopShops is the AutoFeed feature (available on Pro and Enterprise accounts). With AutoFeed you can automatically display additional pages of products similar to the ones you originally selected for your shop. The technology uses the same shop keywords and merchants you originally chose to decide what items to add. AutoFeed pages are SEO friendly when using the php code option.

So, that's about it for PopShops. Man, this blogging stuff is hard work. Phew.

Tomorrow we need to talk about Adsense. That will complete our three-pronged monetization attach (Adsense, niche store and niche auction). In the mean time, don't forget to check out the cool PopShop store below. Neat, huh?

Niche Site Case Study

Mark E. Mason — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:06:02 +0000

It's been almost two months since I initially got the bug to "make money on the internet." At that time, I stated my goal was to work at this part time, and that I was not interested in "black hat" money-making schemes. Just before Christmas, I published my initial plan of learning what I was doing by working on a few sites. Those sites are up, and boy have I learned a lot. Since Christmas, I have experimented with b2evolution and Joomla, and settled on WordPress as a content management system and blogging platform. I have played with Adsense, Azoogle, Commission Junction, ClickBank and other affiliate programs. I have written php code. I have purchased some software (like phpBay - affiliate link), and spent a lot of time reading. Tons of time reading.

Like everyone else, I've read John Chow and ShoeMoney, free SEO books, four million posts at DP Forums, etc. Right now, my favorite blog for this stuff is Caroline Middlebrook's site. I really like her style (she has been given the moniker "The Honest Blogger" by many of her loyal readers). Caroline is basically trying to do full time what I want to do part time. She recently released a good e-book about how to build a niche site with WordPress. It's a good read, especially if you need help with the mechanics of installing WordPress and other technical details that often get left out of other eBooks.

Inspired by Caroline's eBook and some of her postings, I am ready to integrate all of the knowledge that I have accumulated over the last 2 months in a live day-by-day demonstration. I have decided to build a niche site live as a case study on how to do this. Caroline's excellent eBook discusses building a "simple" niche site that relies on Adsense. That's an awesome place to start and perfect for the purposes of her eBook. I will be expanding Caroline's ideas to include discussions on PLR article content, news feeds, eBay auctions, backlinks, affiliate marketing, etc. The result will be a fully integrated niche site rich with content, ads and stuff to buy. I'm calling it a "Niche Super-Site." Pretty nifty, huh?

I'll post daily on my progress for a month or so, and we'll track the blog stats and progress together throughout February. I'll be accepting reader suggestions and ideas, and will grow the site live throughout the month. Along the way, I'll be handing out the "link love" posting links to all the references that I use to get the site operational.

So, stay tuned. It should be a wild ride.

Tomorrow, we'll tackle the topic of beginning with the end in mind, followed with a discussion about how to select a niche for our super-site. I will announce my choice for a niche after that and we'll subsequently register a domain name. Goal is one post/step per day (which is consistent with my part-time internet monetization strategy).

See you tomorrow.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

Adding FeedFlare to b2evolution with Multiple Blogs

Mark E. Mason — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:46:05 +0000

b2evolution is a great blog tool that includes all the features of traditional blog tools, and add cool stuff like file & photo management, advanced skinning, multiple blogs support, detailed user permissions and third party plug-ins!

FeedFlare is a way to give subscribers to you b2evolution blog easy ways to email, tag, share, and act on the content you publish. FeedFlare places a simple footer at the bottom of each content item, helping you to distribute, inform and create a community around your content.

So, the question is, how do you get FeedFlares to appear in your b2evo posts? At this writing, no FeedFlare plugin is available for b2evo. So, I document here the method that I used to hack a b2evo skin to display FeedFlares. In my installation, I have multiple blogs running on one b2evo install. FeedFlare code is specific to each feed (i.e. each blog), so I needed a custom solution that would change the FeedFlare code depending on what blog was being viewed.

Note that these instructions apply to b2evo version 2.3. Your mileage may vary with other b2evo versions.

At the end of this hack, you should have FeedFlare links at the bottom of your posts when your readers are looking at the full post view (the one that shows the comments and trackbacks.) It does not modify the blog “multi-post” view. You could extend this hack to do that easily.

Here are the steps:

Burn your feed
Under the Optimize tab in FeedBurner (under My Feeds, select your feed), enable the FeedFlares you desire (for example, Digg, del.ico.us, etc.
Find your skin files. For this example, I am hacking the evocamp skin.
Make a copy your current skin directory. Call it something that makes sense to you. Let’s call it foo-skin.
Go into the foo-skin directory. Make a copy of the single.main.php file. Call it single.main.php.orig. This will be a backup for you, just in case. Read that file. You will see that this is php code that builds the single post page.
Find the code that inserts the post content. In my file, this is clearly labeled with —- POST CONTENT INCLUDED HERE —-
Find the end of that code block. In my file, this is clearly labeled. Look for the “?>” that indicates the end of the php code block. We want are FeedFlares to appear right after the post
Insert the following code (below) after the end of the post content code.
Edit the code below to match your feeds and your blog IDs.
Wait for FeedBurner to resync with your feed. This can take a while, but will go faster if you ping them.

Hope this helps. Feedback is welcome.


Social Bookmarks and Tags (tell people about this post)


// code to add FeedFlares to the end of the post

// works for multiple feeds (that is what the switch case is for)
// Find the blog ID

$items_blog = $Item->get_Blog();

$items_blog_ID = $items_blog->ID; 
// Watch out for blogs without flares

$do_flare = 1;
switch ( $items_blog_ID ):
  //Blog ID = 4

  case 4:

  $fb_src = "http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/MasonWorldTestBlog";

  break;
  //Blog ID = 5

  case 5:

  $fb_src = "http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/FightinTexasAggieGoodBullBlog";

  break;
  //Blog ID = 7

  case 7:

  $fb_src = "http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/Masonworld";

  break;
  //Blog ID = 8

  case 8:

  $fb_src = "http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/CochlearWorld";

  break;
  //Blog ID = 9

  case 9:

  $fb_src = "http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/eBookMoneyOnline";

  break;
  //Yikes, our blog is not set up for flares

  default:

  $do_flare =0;
endswitch;
if ($do_flare) {

echo '';

};

// END code to add FeedFlares to the end of the post ?>