Archive for November, 2009

FTC Disclosure Policy

There has been much discussion about the apparent rules changes that the FTC commission are making with regard to Bloggers and Affiliates.

Let’s cut through all the waffle.

First, this is a good thing!

The FTC want to clamp down on the scammers, those making dubious claims, etc and we 100% support that. Thad and I have NEVER made any claims about earnings, etc or claimed some tool or product or service was some kind of magic trick. The rewards are there in this business for those who work hard, right.

Well, we now want to work through what you should be doing to make your websites compliant with the ‘new rules’. I’ve put ‘new rules’ in italics because there is actually nothing new about them. The FTC have simply clarified their interpretation of existing rules and how they apply to Bloggers and Affiliates.

Over the next few days we’ll be adding a few more posts on what we think you should be doing, so look out for those. But please note, we are not lawyers and anything we suggest is no substitute for legal advice. We are simply going to state our interpretation and what actions we are taking.

Here’s a couple of things you can look at now:-

I have now added a Review Disclosure Policy to this site. This is our first draft and it applies to ANC. Other sites may require different wording, etc.

On each of our recommended product review pages I have added the the following line ‘Click here to see our Review Disclosure Policy.’

I have added a link in the footer ‘FTC Disclosure‘ and there is also a Review Disclosure Policy link in the side-bar menu.

IMO, this site is now fully compliant.

Tomorrow, I’ll look at some more aspects of the FTC guidelines. In the meantime please watch the videos on Jim Edwards’ blog where Jim interviews an FTC Director. Don’t listen to anything else you hear in forums, etc.

Get the interpretation of the new rules from the FTC themselves here:-


This Month’s Niche Report – Slim Pickings

First up Happy Holidays, Compliments of the Season, Merry Christmas and all that.

I’m a bit early or late with that depending on where you are. Anyway, tis the season to be jolly.

But the IM world it can be a bit unjolly at this time of year…

The truth is a lot of niches go really quiet at this time of year. Slim Pickings indeed.

So what to do?

Gear up for the New Year that’s what.

People like to make a fresh start in the New Year… they make resolutions to change their lives.

And there is one area in particular that positively explodes into life on January 1st.

So, that’s this month’s niche report. Go grab it now from the member’s area and get geared up!

Not yet a member? Sign up on the right.

Slim Pickings? Not on this one!!

PS. Hey, I’ve been busy beavering away in the background to add more good stuff to Wordpress Wizard. I’m currently adding a ‘Content Creator’ section. You can find out how I create a 20 page website in less than 2 hours and you’ll be able to do that as well.

I’ll let you know when it’s ready. Should be within the next week or so.

Miscellaneous Wordpress Plug-ins

To complete our round-up of wordpress plug-ins here are a few ‘minor’ ones that you might want to take a look at.

Nofollow Links – Select which links in your blogroll you want to nofollow.

Visit plugin site

Optimize DB – Let’s you optimize your WordPress database tables with one click.

Visit plugin site

RSS Footer – Allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles.

Visit plugin site

Search & Replace – A simple search for find strings in your database and replace the string.

Visit plugin site

Security Wordpress Plug-ins

Keep your blog secure with this plugin.

WP Security Scan – Perform security scan of WordPress installation.

Visit plugin site

WP Super Cache – Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.

Visit plugin site

Sociable Wordpress Plug-ins

It’s all about interaction, right? Here are some sociable wordpress plug-ins to help your users interact with your blog.

Sociable – Automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites. See below this post!

Visit plugin site

Subscribe To Comments – Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

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Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.

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Essential Wordpress Plug-ins

Here are a couple of essential Wordpress Plug-ins for back up and spam prevention.

WordPress Database Backup – WordPress database backup creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database.

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MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer – Saves your wordpress blog from getting tagged as ping spammer by installing this plugin.

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Cool Wordpress Plug-ins

Here’s a couple of pretty cool Wordpress Plug-ins for ya to check out:-

Let It Snow! – Snow on your Wordpress Blog based on the DHTML Snowstorm script by Scott Schiller. Look around you now to see the effect! (Edit: I’ve had to turn the snow effect off on this site as I’ve found that it crashes Firefox in Windows 7! No idea why. To see it in action go to our Wordpress demo site here.)

Visit plugin site

Xavin’s Review Ratings – Adds a shortcode tag to display a ’star’ rating like this:-

Rating: ★★★★½ 

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

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Basic Wordpress Plug-ins

Listed below are some of the ‘basic’ wordpress plug-ins we use.

All of these are covered in more detail in Wordpress Wonder Module #1 and Wordpress Wonder Module #2.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll add some more to the list.

Please feel free to chip in and add your own.

Please provide a brief description and a link.

Here are the Plug-ins from Module#1:-

Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.

This is already installed but you need a WordPress.com API key to activate it. Just follow the instructions to get one. Well worth the effort. Since starting the ANC blog Akismet has protected our site from over 2,500 spam comments already!

Visit plugin site

Contact Form 7 - Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible. See our About page to see what it looks like.

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Here are the Plug-ins from Module#2:-

Exclude Pages

By Simon Wheatley. This plugin adds a checkbox, “include this page in menus”, which is checked by default. If you uncheck it, the page will not appear in any listings of pages (which includes, and is usually limited to, your
page navigation menus).

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Official StatCounter Plugin

By Aodhan Cullen. The Official StatCounter Wordpress Plugin brings you all the powerful StatCounter features to your wordpress blog.

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Google XML Sitemaps

By Arne Brachhold. This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog.

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Google Analyticator

By Spiral Web Consulting. Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog.

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