Included in this new package-deal are lots of extras that will offer a complete business web presence ready to take on 2012. I’m making this available to anyone for less than $800.

I am also liquidating an established website forum for only $1500. Both are extraordinary deals, so please continue reading for all the details.

Start 2012 With A Modern, Professional Website

With this web development special you are getting much more than a customized design. I am offering a complete business website launch done right with search and website optimization, design, marketing, social network integration and much more.

The following 10 features and services are all included in this limited-time special offer.

1. eCommerce, Social or Membership Sites – Using the latest online business solutions such as WP-eCommerce, BuddyPress and more, we can create a wide variety of feature rich websites.

2. Professional WordPress Theme Customization – Take your choice of premium layouts from ThemeForest or other professional themes and frameworks as a starting point for your business.

3. Logo and Graphic Design – In addition to customizing your website however you like, a great looking new brand and promotional graphics will give a finishing touch.

4. Comprehensive SEO – Starting from the beginning, your website will be optimized to rank for targeted keywords of your choice. In addition to complete on-site optimization, I am now offering initial link-building and other methods of driving traffic and gaining authority for your new site.

5. Website and Marketing Copy – Content is king. So, for your business to succeed in 2012 you need great web copy. I have written for the web for over a decade and would be happy to get you started with website copy for your products or services. I will also include starter content for your company blog and social profiles.

6. Comprehensive Website Optimization – Your site will load lightning fast and will prove to be a great experience for your visitors. Several plugins, features and tweaks will make your business up to par with the latest website optimization standards.

7. Hand-selected Plugins and Extras – Along with SEO and website optimization, I will also share my favorite WordPress management plugins and other unique solutions that may fit your needs.

8. Six Months of Free WordPress Hosting – I will be glad to host your website on my server for up to 6 months at no additional cost to you.

9. Custom Facebook and Twitter Profiles – You don’t have to worry about finally getting a Twitter profile and setting up your Facebook page. Included in this package are custom social networking profiles that will be linked with your website and drive leads for you in 2012.

10. WordPress Instruction – Each of the elements of your new site may seem overwhelming, but they are really not, and I will be available to walk you through the process of managing your website effectively and easily.

All these services are included in this New Year Special for only $799.

Because many of these services demand a lot of time, I will only be able to accept a limited number of clients. So, please contact me now to express your interest in working with me to build your online business.

Example Works

Here are a few sites I’ve completed for clients who took advantage of some of these services.

RaleighPersonalTraining.com

JukeBoxxMedia.com

UDRP-Attorney.com

WritingAssignmentHelp.com

Contact Me To Get Started

Thank you for your interest in my web development services. For just $799 you can have a professional online business presence. Please contact me here as soon as possible with the details of your online business needs.

Start 2012 With an Established Twitter Forum

I am looking to liquidate TweetSocial.com a nearly 4 year old Twitter Forum. This online community of over 3000 members features discussions on all things Twitter and additionally features an application directory.

Liquidation Sale! Own this website today for just $1500.

I have not attempted to monetize or extensively market this site in recent years, however it grows organically through rankings for key terms on Google. The site receives just under 5000 unique visitors per month.

Included in the sale is all site content, design, and ownership of the Twitter profile (@TweetSocial) with 6710 followers, which as an easy way to send more traffic if you have just a few minutes to spare.

For only $1500 you can be the proud new owner of the TweetSocial Twitter Forum and app directory. Please contact me here as soon as possible with your interest in purchasing this website.

Have a great new year!

New Year Web Development Special: Start 2012 With A Great Business Website DotSauce Magazine

For almost any type of website you’re looking for, I can create a great solution using WordPress, the webs’ most popular and user-friendly content management system.

Get this cool deal on professional WordPress development for only $300 until the end of this sweltering hot summer.

Here is a list of types of websites available as starting points, though I would be happy to discuss other options you might be interested in.

• Personal blog
• Professional portfolio
• Professional business web presence
• eCommerce or affiliate product portal
• Niche magazine
• Startup web presence
• Community / forums
• Question & answer hub
• Directory
• Classifieds
• Job board
• Membership site

August Development Special

Included in this special offer are the following features and services.

• Beautiful designs using the latest standards. Integrate your existing logo or get a new one.
• Full search engine optimization services
• Social media integration and other interactive features
• Advanced WordPress plugins make site management simple and boost performance.

Let’s Build Your Professional Website

I will be in close contact with you throughout the development process to get your feedback and direction as well as to explain how to manage the site. My work will not be complete until you are 100% satisfied with your website.

Hot August, Cool Deal: Professional Website Development Only $300 DotSauce Magazine

Google’s official Page Speed announcement reports speed improvements of 25% — 60% on some websites. The service works by routing your DNS requests to Google’s server where they rewrite your website and serve it to visitors faster with optimized CSS, image, text and script compression, caching and other tricks.

[Header image via Flickr]

Is Google’s Page Speed Service really necessary? I’m not convinced it’s for the masses yet because most of these techniques are available freely. However, I’m sure there is a large market for individuals or businesses who are willing to leave website optimization up to Google. It can provide some peace of mind in knowing that all the many best practices for optimization are taken care of for you.

Try It Out

You can see how the Page Speed Service would improve your website performance now at WebPageTest.org.

For now, the service is free for a select number of webmasters who sign up here. Google plans to charge a fee for usage in the near future.

Related Article: Instant Pages: Google Plans to Preload #1 Search Result

My Page Speed Service Results

I ran the DotSauce Magazine homepage through the comparison test. You can view my results here. Google was only able to speed up the site by about 0.1 seconds, a 1% improvement. Not surprising really as I have taken steps to increase website performance manually.

Page Speed Service Comparison

Don’t get me wrong, I did see some benefit to the service. The start-rendering time as reported by the comparison did show a marked improvement. Some images began loading 14.9% faster as you can see in the results, particularly on the visual comparison.

I attribute the already fast load time to optimization techniques and resources recently featured in my article, 12 Tips and New Standards for Optimizing Your Website. I highly recommend you implement most, if not all, of these tips if you haven’t already.

How did Google Page Speed work for your website load time? Would you pay a subscription fee for this service? Please leave a comment below with your thoughts.

This should prove to be a valuable service that will help boost business by reducing website bounce rate and increasing search rankings.

Google Launches Pay For Page Speed Service DotSauce Magazine

[Header image via Flickr]

Multiple Domains Multiplies Risk

I have a semi-dedicated server that I use to host all of my web properties, domain development projects and many client websites. Before today, my public directory had something like 100 folders representing multiple domains for various websites, mainly WordPress installations.

I found out the hard-way that exploits within a particularly vulnerable script on one directory can lead to complete access of the public_html directory. In my case, a neglected old WordPress installation came back to bite me in the butt. I also discovered a vulnerability within an old PHP-LinkDirectory installation.

It’s something I should of known was possible, but never thought an exploit would be so bad as to lead to this.

The hackers placed code within .htaccess files, redirecting Google bots to spam sites. Normal visitors, including myself were none the wiser as search rankings were taken over. It’s an all-too-common, devious form of hacking that you should be wary of.

Luckily, several observant readers reported that something was awry with my search listings (they are still screwed up) and I was able to contact Google to remove the suspected hacking warning.

Avoiding This Disaster

Nobody should have to go through the experience of losing all their hard-earned search rankings. There are several actions you can and should take to prepare for and avoid a potential hack when using multiple domains on the same host.

1. Move inactive projects to a new folder, hidden below the public_html level
2. Be vigilant and timely about updating all web software
3. Regularly check notices from Google Webmaster Tools
4. Monitor website content changes through a third-party service such as CodeGuard

I’m not too worried as DotSauce Magazine should bounce back in the coming days and weeks.

I would greatly appreciate your support in sharing our content and +1′ing articles to help speed the process along. You can earn rewards like free domain registration through our loyalty program if you do. Try out one of our share buttons to sign-up for free.

Security Vulnerability When Using Multiple Domains On The Same Host DotSauce Magazine

These conferences are extremely valuable to industry professionals. This is an opportunity to attend a popular search and social meetup in 2011 for free. Experience first-hand training, keynote speeches and networking; boost your SEO and social media knowledge and rub shoulders with industry leaders.

Conference Crashin’ Time

SEOmoz is giving away 2 tickets to each of the following conferences in a random drawing.

• MozCon - Seattle, WA – July 25th – 27th, 2011
• SES - San Francisco, CA – August 15th – 19th, 2011
• Social Media Summit - San Francisco, CA – August 15th – 16th, 2011
• Wappow Search and Social Hawaii! – September 26th – 29th, 2011
• SearchExchange - Charlotte, NC – October 3rd – 5th, 2011
• Conversion Conference East – NYC, NY – October 19th – 20th, 2011
• Distilled PRO Seminar - London, UK – October 24th – 25th, 2011

Enter to Win

For your chance to win, simply signup for a free SEOmoz PRO trial by June 29th at midnight.

That’s not much time to enter the giveaway. So, check out SEOmoz PRO tools now with no obligation to purchase and a sweet chance at a free conference pass.

Friendly Reminder

DotSauce is hosting a slightly more modest giveaway that ends on Jun 30th. You can enter to win a free design package from Logo.com after checking out the latest web development special.

Conference Crasher Giveaway from SEOmoz DotSauce Magazine

I’ve recently discovered a new, possibly better solution for displaying a domain portfolio within any WordPress page using the My Domain List WordPress plugin which is available at CodeCanyon for $12.

As it turns out, this plugin is a great way to both market your domains for sale and manage your portfolio privately.

[Header image via Flickr]

Automated Whois Information

One of the key perks of My Domain List is automated retrieval of whois information. This is a great feature which enables you to keep up-to-date on all of your domain information from multiple registrars in one central location.

My Domain List Management

The following data is displayed for all domains within a private domain management page.

• Domain registrar
• Owner name
• Whois creation date
• Ownership change date
• Expiration date

These details can be displayed publicly as part of your domain list table or kept private.

If you would like to manage your portfolio with My Domain List while keeping some domains private you can do that as well. Select the “Unpublish” to set a domain to only be visible through the domain management page.

Your domain list is displayed by placing a shortcode within a post or a page and customizing it to suit your needs, as in this example.

[my-domain-list-portfolio show='owner,extension,registrar']

With this initial release of the plugin there are some features left to be desired (such as domain search and categories), but all the essentials seem to be covered. The UI is well designed for both owner and visitors and the Make Offer process is user-friendly and inviting with a fixed priced domain.

My Domain List Screenshots

Here are more screenshots of the Domain List display and the private back-end. You can review the full plugin documentation here.

My Domain List – Full Demo

Incoming Offers Stats – Displayed on WordPress Dashboard

Optional Pagination by Letters

Get My Domain List

My Domain List is available exclusively at CodeCanyon. The WordPress plugin is reasonably priced at just $12. This is a bargain for being able to manage and market your domain names for sale.

Let me know what you think. Please leave a comment below if you decide to give it a try.

My Domain List WordPress Plugin: Market and Manage Your Domains DotSauce Magazine

What was traditionally thought of as a blogging CMS has been transformed into a powerful, user-friendly development platform. Virtually any type of business website can be created using a combination of innovative WordPress theme design and advanced plugins.

Continue reading to enter to win professional logo design! (No purchase necessary)

For a limited time I am offering these special rates on development services for the following turnkey web development solutions powered by WordPress.

Updated June 22 – I’ve lowered the prices to make them even more attractive. Pay half up-front to get started and the remaining half when your website is completed. Contact me to get started.

Magazine / Blog / Business – $350

Below is an example of the many high-quality, visually appealing and flexible themes for creating a web based publication, blog or business website.

Affiliate Product Portal – $350

Create a niche affiliate site and earn commissions by referring customers to popular products. Bonus: A plugin will track stats and create custom affiliate URLs.

Product Reviews – $350

Similar to an affiliate portal, you can review products and promote affiliate products. This layout is intended for ratings and reviews from you and a community of visitors.

Q&A Site – $400

Question and answer sites are a popular new trend that is great for business and getting advertising revenue.

Classifieds – $400

Find an audience for professional classifieds site to help people market their products and services. Collect listing fees through PayPal.

Job Board – $400

Certainly a great time to develop a job board as many are looking. Connect employers and job seekers and collect listing fees through PayPal.

eCommerce Storefront – $400

Whether you have your own products or are selling digital goods, this turnkey solution makes use of a flexible shopping cart, but has options for external purchase options.

Membership Site – $500

With premium membership plugins you can setup private membership site and collect subscription payments. A-List Blogging site shown as example.

Group Buying Site – $650

This wildly popular trend is sweeping the world by helping small businesses profit and customers save money. It will take some commitment to get the site started, but the rewards can be big.

These innovative new WordPress themes use the latest standards from WordPress 3.0. Much more than incredible designs, they are built for turnkey online business. Theme and plugin files, documentation and authorized licences are included.

You can select one of these turnkey solutions  to customize and launch your online business, or you can request a comparable design to work with. Pick any premium WordPress theme the web has to offer, the cost will be included in the service fee.

Added Features & Services

The following features are included with all turnkey development options at no additional cost.

• Professional logo design and theme integration
• Design customization and widget setup
• Social media integration
• Navigation and content map setup
• SEO review, consultation and latest plugins
• Website performance optimization and plugins

Pay half to begin development and half upon completion!

That’s right, I can get started for an initial payment of half the special rates listed above. You can then pay the remaining half when the website has been completed and you are 100% satisfied.

I would be happy to discuss design options or answer any questions you might have about the development process.

Please get in touch as soon as possible; availability will be based on demand. Contact me here with details about your development needs to get started.

Logo Design Giveaway

The team at Logo.com has been kind enough to offer professional logo design services to one lucky DotSauce reader.

This is a $199 value!

There is no purchase necessary, anyone is eligible to win. Simply connect with the Rewards widget below and follow the instructions to earn entries.

• Comment on this post saying how a new logo design will help you (+1 entry)
• Like DotSauce on Facebook (+1 entry)
• Tweet about this giveaway (+1 entry)
• Bonus (+unlimited entries): Share your invite link to earn +1 entry for every unique click-through and +5 entries if your friend joins the giveaway.

Enter to Win

Update: Abhinav Gulyani has been selected as our lucky winner. Enjoy your new logo!

This giveaway ends on June 30th at midnight EST. Thank you for participating and good luck!

Again, please contact me soon with your interest in my turnkey web development solutions.

Turnkey Professional Web Development Special and Free Giveaway DotSauce Magazine

I’ve kept watch and tried out many new web development techniques. I’ve also held an active interest in engaging with readers directly on site and through social networks as much as possible.

In this article, I share the optimization techniques and resources that have been most beneficial to me as a web developer and blogger.

Site Header Tips

1. Optimize your title. By default, WordPress and other CMS’s append your website name to the end of title tags on posts and pages. Using your choice of SEO optimization plugin, such as All In One SEO or WordPress SEO, you can configure post titles to contain just the title of your post.

This technique has proven to be beneficial for ranking well for key terms within post titles. It works because you will eventually receive backlinks with better anchor text and more relevancy on social network shares.

2. Set a default image URL for Facebook & LinkedIn sharing. In the past, images accompanying my articles when displayed on social sharing services like Digg, Facebook, bitly, and others always seemed to be the wrong one or missing entirely! The problem annoyed me to the point that I had to seek out a solution.

I was ecstatic to finally work out a simple way to define the proper post image every time. Plug this code into your site header to define the image URL.

<link rel="image_src" type="image/jpeg" href="post-thumbnail.jpg" />

3. Set an author link attribute. (New) Google, Bing and Yahoo recently announced a joint initiative hosted at Schema.org. This HTML tagging platform will work as a framework for defining the structure of a website and individual bits of data. This initiative to create a more open web filled with rich data is just getting started.

Google is getting started right away with a new way to connect authors with their content across multiple websites. Simply define rel=”author” when linking the author’s name in post display as shown here.

<a rel="author" href="http://markfulton.com">Mark Fulton</a>

Site Speed Tips

4. Track page speed with updated Google Analytics code. (New) Last month Google introduced a revolutionary new feature as part of the upgraded Google Analytics, tracking website load times.

With a little adjustment to your tracking code you can begin receiving reports on site speed analytics. Get this rolling and watch as the next few tips greatly reduce page load times.

_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);

5. Minify JavaScript and CSS files. WordPress Minify is a must-have plugin for any site using JavaScript files and detailed CSS.

Automagically have all these files compressed and combined. This will reduce the number of HTTP requests, significantly speeding up page speed performance.

6. Compress images and serve them across multiple sub-domains. Another highly recommend solution for improving website speed is the WP Smush.it plugin which compresses images as you upload them.

I still recommend saving all images for the web using PhotoShop before uploading. Then let Smush.it work a little extra magic to reduce the file size further without noticeably compromising quality.

Additionally, hosting some images on different sub-domains allows them to be loaded simultaneously instead of one at a time.

7. Place non-critical JavaScript calls in the footer. By placing your JavaScript calls just before your closing tag you make sure all critical content and design layout is rendered before JavaScript enhanced elements. This is as important for user experience as page loading time.

Ironically, the new Google +1 button code suggests placing the script tag in your header. Put it in the footer instead!

Increase Conversions

8. Split test your business and lead generation copy. We’re hearing more and more about split-testing or A/B tests in recent years as easier tools are made available. The smallest of changes in copy, color or positioning of call to action elements can sometimes yield big returns.

Here are some economical choices for getting started with split testing your website content.

• Google Website Optimizer
• A/B Theme Testing Plugin for WordPress
• Visual Website Optimizer

9. Reduce bounce rate by engaging readers. There are a lot of great methods for engaging website visitors, encouraging them to stick around longer and click-through to further pages on your site.

I’ve written some common sense suggestions for reducing bounce rate in the past. Simple things like improving your navigation or adding images to content can help.

I have been pleased with increased engagement here at DotSauce Magazine using the following applications.

• Wibiya Toolbar (red toolbar at bottom of window) – An incredibly useful toolbar with lots of applications.
• Punchtab Rewards (“Rewards” icon at bottom left of window) – Encourage return visits and sharing content with Punchtab’s innovative new social rewards layer.
• HelloBar – Run a promotion in the header of your site to get immediate attention. Simple app with lots of thought put into it.

I have 5 beta invites to HelloBar for those interested. Please leave a comment and let me know you’d like one.

Extend Your Reach

10. Go mobile. I use the WPTouch plugin which automatically generates a mobile optimized version of DotSauce Magazine. Have you looked at your Google Analytics browser reports to see if many visitors are using mobile devices? It’s likely more than you think.

Greatly improve their user experience and conserve server resources by implementing a mobile optimized display.

11. Get social. Love them or hate them, social networks are driving traffic and allowing your following to engage and endorse your content. Discover the best widgets and sharing buttons for your website and include them in prime positions such as at the top of your sidebar or directly after post content.

I recommend you highlight the big 4; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and email.

• Facebook Social Plugins
• Twitter Website Resources
• LinkedIn Share button
• Google +1 Button (New)
• Sharedaddy (Part of JetPack for WordPress)

12. Become a curator of the latest news and resources. This suggestion goes hand-in-hand with getting social. The most influential people on social networks are found generously sharing editorials, news and resources. It’s a great way to build a following and get recommended.

Every day I share a selection of domaining, online business and web development resources on Twitter, the DotSauce Facebook page, LinkedIn, social bookmarking and social news websites. I’ve been doing this for years and have found the practice to be very rewarding.

I’m now using Keepstream to publish a monthly roundup of the best links here on DotSauce. You can also find over 90 industry leading publications at the new DotSauce News site.

Next Up: Optimizing Publisher Experience

I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips and techniques for optimizing websites for both search engines and readers. I’m considering a related post that will feature methods of optimizing your experience as a publisher on the backend of a website. This year, I’ve discovered some very interesting tools and resources that make professional blogging that much easier. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading my tips. Please leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions about this article, I would love to hear your thoughts.

12 Tips and New Standards for Optimizing Your Website DotSauce Magazine

Cashmore reported that Mashable now receives 50 million page-views per month, and has gained an incredible increase of 10 million in the span of 1 month. The publication is branching out to multiple news areas of interest to online readers beyond Technology news. Some of their best performing categories are Marketing and Business.

In 2011, Mashable has taken over the sale of their advertising. Simply by not giving away a huge revenue share to an ad network such as Google AdSense, they have effectively doubled their revenue. Direct advertising is one of many ways to make money blogging (#7) and is likely the single biggest money maker for professional bloggers.

The State of the Blogosphere

The massive success and following of online publications such as Mashable, the largest online publication The Huffington Post, and AOL’s purchase of TechCrunch for $25 million has led the blogosphere to grow tremendously in 2011. Even smaller bloggers are getting multi-million dollar deals.

The blogosphere has truly arrived to the mainstream in 2011, largely piggy-backing off the success of Facebook, Twitter and other means of social news consumption.

Blogging is an essential and increasingly important part of online business. I highly recommend it. If you can curate and share value, you will gain customers and keep your existing ones in-touch.

I look forward to riding the wave generated by this Internet boom with DotSauce Magazine. I believe the domain industry will make a similar emergence in 2012 with the introduction of thousands of new gTLDs. It’s not so far-fetched to predict the future as the exponential growth of the internet is plain to see.

Congratulations to Mashable–thank you for leading the way.

Mashable Doubles Revenue In 2011 Switching to Direct Advertising DotSauce Magazine

This is a guest post by James Agate, founder and SEO Director at UK based SEO consultancy Skyrocket SEO.

So the supposed end of the world has come and passed and I don’t know about you, but nothing seems to have changed. However, there is another apocalypse on the horizon and this one is infinitely more likely!

Regular readers of DotSauce Magazine will have seen the news that Google is talking about tuning down the SEO value of exact match domains in the SERPs.

This post is going to be a sort of “end of world” survival guide if you will – how you and your domain portfolio can survive the carnage. I’m not saying keyword domains are dead just yet, but Google recognises that, as things stand, this is a flaw in their algorithm.  So, there’s certainly something big on the horizon that you are going to want to be ready for.

Consolidate and Conquer

I suspect many of us are guilty of owning one too many domains, the urge to pick up a couple more ‘great names’ is just too hard to resist. I suspect also, that you, like me have big plans for every domain you buy, but I’m as guilty as the next guy for not always following through on those plans —  usually for lack of time.

Now is your chance to consider consolidating your domain portfolio and look to build out a handful of the really great domains you own into really great websites. Cast an objective eye over your digital real estate and assess which sites have the greatest potential, even if your domains already have a website on — you need to make a decision which ones you are bringing with you when the apocalypse comes.

You’ll see the importance of consolidation later on in this post — it really would be time consuming and expensive to carry out all of my recommendations to a large-scale portfolio. It would be possible, but you would need to seriously scale your investment.

Identify your cash cows and rising stars and retire the dogs in your portfolio.

[Image via Flickr]

Think Brand

Whether Google will admit it or not, the search engine increasingly favours brands based on their judgement that brands usually provide a better user experience and they tend to offer up higher quality pages. Therefor, it makes sense if you are going to make a change from depending on the strength of your keyword domain to relying on the strength of the website itself, you are going to need to either create a brand (preferable) or at least mimic some of the brand signals that Google references.

Brand signals such as:

• A physical address listed on your website and cited elsewhere (Google Places, Yelp, Yell etc)
• Useful/interesting/engaging content
• Customer reviews
• Press/blog mentions
• A unique site design or at least a customised template
• Corporate profile pages on sites like LinkedIn and Crunchbase

These are all things a brand would have, so you need them if you want to be seen as a credible website rather than a mere keyword domain.

Get Social

Social signals are now a ranking factor, so getting your social on is a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of tactic. Because you are A) enhancing your ranking and B) reducing your dependence on search traffic by creating another user/customer acquisition channel.

You don’t need me to tell you that social media is huge. There are 1.8 million status updates on Facebook every 20 minutes and 1 in 13 people on this planet are on Facebook. Astounding!

Social media marketing is a fantastic way to spread the word about your website and add even more proof (in the eyes of Google) that your website is a trusted and legitimate entity.

As the web becomes more social, there are millions of pages that are asking to be shared, liked and tweeted. This means you need to get ahead of the curve and look for ways to make your website stand out.

Services like Punchtab (see the Rewards feature here on DotSauce) help you to encourage interaction and engagement with your site and its content. It taps directly into that trend for social gaming, rewards and basic human need to compete.

Punchtab is free at the time of writing and it’s pretty new, but is an awesome tool, so I’ve no idea how long it is going to stay free for.

Strategic Linkbuilding

We all know links are essentially votes of confidence and not all links are created equal. Like it or not, links still form the backbone to Google’s algorithm and for the foreseeable future they are going to be a major ranking factor.

An exact match keyword domain used to ensure you could rank quickly and relatively easy for a keyword term without the need to do very much link building — now you are going to need relevant, authoritative and good quality links.

Google says you need to earn links and they’re right, there’s no substitute for a bulging yet natural link profile but these things don’t happen by chance. You need to help other websites recognise that you’ve earned the right to a link.

Linkbuilding tactics:

• Blogger outreach
• Researching and knowing your market – reach out and connect with potential partners
• Giveaways – to generate attention for your website
• Guest posting
• Embeddable badges
• Press releases
• Linkbait
• Ego-linkbait – as a way of getting attention from the players in your market
• Sponsorships – not always within budget but there are many smaller conferences and events now that you may be able to sponsor for a small amount of cash

Produce In-depth Quality Content

Tuning down the value of exact match domains and the recent Panda update means you need to work twice as hard if you are going to prove your website is good quality and worthy of the search traffic it receives.

Information retrieval experts were involved in the algorithm changes that made up the Panda update. The word in the trenches (and I have to say I’ve seen this first hand), is that Google is getting pretty close to being able to algorithmically detect the quality of content and assess whether a web page has been crafted by an expert or spun by a machine or some $2 an hour writer. Google’s subject modelling technology means that in addition to things like spelling, grammar and formatting checks, it can also recognise if a piece is factually accurate and if it covers the key points. Google may even be attempting to check out the author and see if other trusted sources around the web cite this person as an expert.

Developing subject expertise is no easy task, hence the reason to consolidate your portfolio and concentrate on a few areas. Alternatively, if you are still looking for scale, you could of course hire market experts to write for your website — but this may eat into your profits considerably.

How will Google tell the difference between a keyword domain that’s gaming the search results and one that’s a genuinely worthwhile and rank worthy website? Well, by assessing the quality factors we’ve just discussed. It’s the reason that when the time comes and Google finds a fix for this flaw, Tennis.com will do well and websites like 1200-calorie-meal-plan.com are going to feel the pain.

Most keyword domains can be turned into a brand and if you put the work in now — you’ll be laughing when the update comes that sees hundreds, thousands or even millions of keyword domains get obliterated in the SERPs.

I’d be happy to answer any questions in the comments section below.

[Header image via Flickr]

How To Survive The Exact Match Apocalypse DotSauce Magazine

Last week, I announced the Domain Club Grand Opening prize giveaway that will run through March 28th. Free professional web development and design services are featured as one of the prizes.

A lot of people have shown interest in this particular prize, so I’ve decided to host this special
March Madness discount. You can take advantage of these services now for one low flat fee.

March Madness Web Development Special

All of these professional services and features are included for just $300.

• Business, personal or eCommerce website development; whatever your project requires, I have the resources to make it happen.
• Beautiful design using the latest standards. Integrate your existing logo or get a new design.
• Full search engine optimization services
• Social media integration and other interactive features
• WordPress and advanced plugins make site management simple and boost performance.

Pay $150 to start and $150 when your project is
complete and you are 100% satisfied.

To get started, contact me here with specific details of your website development project or if you have any questions. I will review your request and get back to you soon with design options.

Don’t delay, this offer will only run through March. Availability is subject to demand.

March Madness $300 Professional Website Development Special and Free Giveaway DotSauce Magazine

[Header Image: Famzoo, From Cash To Digital, August 10, 2010 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution]

Today, PayPal has announced the micropayments solution is now live and available to merchants, game developers and any creative looking to sell digital content online. The fee structure is reasonably low at 5% + $0.05 per transaction under $12.

For information on how to get started accepting micropayments, visit PayPal for digital goods.

The PayPal for digital goods solution opens a lightbox layer (shown below) on-site. This style of checkout was previously only available to merchant services subscribers. Now it will be easy for anyone to set up a two-click checkout for digital products and services.

Effective, fast and seamless micropayments will bring about new global trends in digital commerce. Here are some ideas on how to monetize websites with PayPal micropayments for digital goods and services.

Sell Content

1. Whitepapers - This traditional paid-for digital good is often given away in exchange for email subscription. Now publishers may seek to charge small fees in addition to subscriptions or as an alternative as sign-up rates decline.

2. Code Snippets – These little bits of text can give huge changes and improvements for web developers. Code snippets often give valuable hacks, tips, tricks and optimizations for popular software.

3. Software – I think software developers will be some of the first to adopt a micropayment solutions.

4. eBooks – Another no-brainer; eBooks are a great candidate for this solution and sales should increase much as micropayment options are made widely available.

5. Premium Blog Posts – These would be similar in concept to white-papers, but possibly on a more regular basis for certain niches. They would be included within the RSS feed for more exposure, but restricted to customers only.

Sell Services

6. Social Interactions – You could charge for any number of social network actions. Sell access to your Twitter stream. Offer to share interesting updates or articles for a small fee.

7. Live Chat Support - Recall that pay-phone operator asking you to insert $.25 to continue your call? Yea, that concept could easily be converted to online support now.

8. Text Links – For sites that are into blogrolls and allowing their readers to promote themselves, micropayments could be implemented for this service.

9. Newsletter Subscription – While traditionally free, word of paid-for premium email newsletters is slowly being spread. It’s really not so far-fetched, as a good newsletter can often provide as much value as a newspaper or magazine.

10. Membership Site - Virtually anything you can think of to put online can be placed behind a membership site. What do you have to share and teach? Charge a small fee for instant access.

Digital Goods

11. Community / Game Credits – Blogs, forums, applications are now including communities and game-like rewards systems to entice and engage website visitors and members. If the features take off, you could easily begin selling digital goods and features within the community.

12. Photos and Graphics – Another valuable resource often shared freely on the web that is just waiting to be monetized with micropayments.

13. Podcasts / Video Tutorials – These types of media are known to be of premium value across the web. Even with billions of YouTube videos to contend with, high quality productions with unique content are an easy sale.

14. Music – Artists, producers, DJ’s and other audiophiles will now be able to open up shop and sell their sounds direct to fans. Micropayments may just bring the band website back in style.

15. File Downloads – Whatever your file types are, exclusive downloads are an alluring product and will become more so as they become simple to buy and instantly download.

Micropayments should prove to be a great addition to an internet entrepreneurs’ arsenal. How do you plan to use PayPal micropayments? Please share your ideas in the comments below.

If you found this article interesting, be sure to follow up with another recent DotSauce Magazine feature on 20 ways to make money blogging in 2011.

15 Ways to Monetize The Web With PayPal Micropayments DotSauce Magazine

I’ve also previously shared some resources and ideas you can use to predict and profit from the future today. However, in this article I am going to be writing about the world of tomorrow.

[Header Image: Jason DeRusha, Sam Loves To Blog, April 23, 2008 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution]

QR-Codes and similar technologies for gathering and sending information from images are just now emerging. You can make your own right now and begin living this dream once you have contacts owning devices with a QR-Code reader.

Once these technologies become mainstream, I envision a world of enthusiastic affiliate marketers both professional and part-time, because it will be so easy. Those who do not refer friends, family and associates to their favorite products will miss out on the opportunity to earn a substantial amount of money for very little time invested.

Example 1: Grandma Has a Tablet Computer

Grandma will have a paper-thin, light-weight tablet computer with a front and rear facing camera for video calls and snapping photos.

You print a stunning coupon advertisement that represents a coded link to a website URL embedded with your affiliate ID. Paper is still good for milling-over purchase decisions and posting on the GE All-in-one Kitchen kiosk. Grandma simply takes a snapshot of your coupon to be directed to the latest online sale.

Large affiliate networks enable virtually anyone with a website to sell thousands of products. By 2030, you’ll probably be able to earn a small commission for Grandma’s weekly virtual visit to the grocery store and immediate delivery service.

Example 2: Winter Olympics 2030

Imagine your friend is about to go on a family trip to the 2030 Winter Olympics under the Dallas, Texas city-dome and needs a handful of round-trip airline tickets fast. Take out your mobile device, have them capture and navigate to a sweet deal that also earns you a sizable commission.

Consider offering an instant split of the commission for your friend’s courtesy in using your referral. Credits in virtual hand, all parties are happy.

Example 3: Inventor Entrepreneur’s Dream

You are off to sell the latest product you’ve spent the last week developing on your super-computer along with the assistance of your friendly household AI. The free virtual modeling software and pricey, but must-have 3d printer went a long way towards the creation of your dream startup business. You embed a cheap RFID tag identifying your affiliate and a smart NFC chip so anyone can purchase your product with a wave of their mobile device, wherever the affiliate goes.

Share the great news with all your friends on the social network flavors of the decade and give them the opportunity to earn a commission on any sales.

Example 4: The Super Blogger

You’ve been blogging since 2012 and have built up a following of several hundred-thousand enthusiastic fans and virtual friends in the Facebook metaverse. You share great content and write interesting articles about the latest standards in interactive web design trends, supplemented with live video coverage of events with the HD video camera embedded in your glasses.

Every so often you have the opportunity to review and promote high quality products and services to a massive audience. Devoted followers will refer their network to your article review. Affiliate marketing will likely become the top revenue producer alongside direct advertising sales. The super blogger provides a needed service to readers in discovering the best products and services in a niche while living out their passion. Those articles you wrote in 2015 generating weekly commissions will come in handy when the biggest industry conference is hosted in the latest space hotel.

I Look Forward To…

The market in affiliate marketing is going to get much bigger. Not only will there be billions more people, but we will be able to speak to anyone through live-translation applications on mobile devices. A truly global economy will emerge.

This beta technology was just launched earlier this month by Google. It is presently working with 15 languages and is available on Android devices. Here is a demo of the prototype recorded some months ago.

Live Translation

Virtual Currency

The adoption of virtual currency is another trend that will lend many benefits and open a wider customer base to affiliates. We don’t deal with cash, but if you’ll swipe your phone here you can earn 1% back with PayPal, free Groupon bucks or Facebook credits.

More Transparency

I would be thrilled to find more transparency from all affiliate networks and individual retailers. This would come in the form of live analytics, more accurate referral tracking and more frequent payments.

Something I haven’t seen before in many retail settings is an option to manually declare a referrer upon signup. This would be for situations where offering a direct affiliate link is not viable. This would earn you a lifetime of recurring commissions for any purchases made. Such a program would be very attractive to affiliates and would draw the benefits of a virtual army of marketers selling their products.

The Future is Bright

There is a lot to look forward to for everyone involved in online business. I believe the future of affiliate marketing is particularly bright. You can get started today with my guide on 20 ways to make money blogging in 2011.

What do you envision life as an affiliate marketer to be like in 2030? Please share your thoughts in the comments below and consider sharing this article if you enjoyed the short trip to 2030. Thanks!

Affiliate Marketing In 2030 DotSauce Magazine

I’m not writing this to get you to convert to Google Chrome, but I am going to tempt you with a collection of amazingly useful new applications and extensions that can be found in the new Chrome Web App Store. Enjoy!

[Image: Ian Manrue, Wrenches, February 28, 2009 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.]

Web Development

Window Resizer – Quickly change the size of your actual browser window to see how your website looks at common screen resolutions.

Web Developer Tools – This is identical to the web developer toolbar that is so popular for Firefox users. Featuring an assortment of useful web dev tools.

Development & Code Search – Provides quick access to documentation for popular programming languages.

IE Tab – As the name implies, launch a tab running Internet Explorer inside chrome to see how your website looks for those poor souls.

Sight – Automatically highlights code syntax when source of websites is viewed in the browser.

Pastebin – Quickly store or retrieve text or code from a secure or public location on Pastebin.com

MeasureIt! – Determine the pixel width and height on any element of a page.

Speed Tracer – This official Google plugin really puts your website performance to the test and provides valuable information for improving load times.

csscan – Quickly view the CSS properties of any element on a page.

Blogging

Create Link – Allows you to copy the current page URL and title as a fully formatted HTML hyperlink or customize your own link structure.

SEO SERP – Check the search ranking performance of multiple websites against particular keyword term or phrase.

SEO Site Tools – A comprehensive suite of tools for researching and analyzing SEO and social performance of any website.

Pixlr Grabber – Useful for taking a full or partial screen capture of any website and instantly enables crop and editing.

Word Count – Watch what you’re writing. This app counts the words and characters within a selection.

RSS Subscription – Amazingly, Chrome does not automatically recognize RSS feeds. This application remedies the problem and helps you quickly subscribe to the feed of any blog.

Social Media Marketing

Session Manager – Enables you to save individual sets of tabs to open anytime you want. Use this to quickly open a set of important websites or for repetitive tasks that require multiple windows.

Personalized Web – This powerful application allows you to mold the web to work for you. Modify the code of any site to your liking.

iMacros – Automate repetitive tasks with ease with this advanced application. Record and playback actions to make your PC do the grunt work.

Stay Focused – Limit the amount of time you spend on time-wasting sites or manage your marketing efforts by making sure you cover all the bases before you run out of time.

Proxlet Tweet Filter – An amazing new web application layer for Twitter.com that enables useful features such as filtering your twitter stream, hashtags, and blocking annoying Twitter applications.

Thank you for browsing this list of tools for website development, blogging and social marketing. What are your favorite items from the Chrome Web App store? Let us know which tools you can’t live without.

If you found these Chrome applications useful and know someone else who might, please consider sharing this post.

Chrome Web App Store’s Useful New Tools for Web Developers, Bloggers and Marketers DotSauce Magazine

Hop over and browse the latest articles and features that spark your interest. Consider subscribing to their updates to stay updated and gain a new perspective from these fresh minds.

[Image: C4Chaos, kosmic blogging in samsara, February 26, 2006 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike]

New and Interesting Domaining Related Blogs

1. Domain Noob

John Humphrey is a newcomer to the domain blogosphere, as if the domain name didn’t already clue you in. This smart and business savvy writer has already published several interesting editorials. Definitely one to bookmark and subscribe to.

2. Kevin Ohashi

This entreprenuer has had his eye on the domain industry for awhile and is sharing some really interesting research related to domain sales, internet and technology. Kevin recently released a handy List Manipulator tool that can be used to arrange, tweak and customize lists of domain names.

3. Domain Incite

Kevin Murphy is a journalist churning out a steady stream of domain industry news and the occasional editorial. Kevin has provided views from ICANN meetings and other industry happenings as well as keeping us very updated on progress and state of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

4. Domain Sherpa

I discovered this brand new publication a few weeks ago and immediately saw some potential. The founder is very ambitious, dubbing the new website “the domain name authority” right away. I wish them the best of luck and will be keeping watch on their progress. It is nice to have a little friendly competition.

5. DomainTools Blog

While this is in no way a newcomer to the industry, DomainTools recently dusted off their blog and have begun to publish new domaining articles and resources. The latest is a an article with an interesting perspective on how to value a domain.

6. Domain Consultant

This is my favorite of the new domain industry blogs. Mike Fiol of Domain Consultant and BoxCar domain marketplace has been publishing regularly for several months now. Posts feature interesting and fun updates on domaining, domain sales, valuation and educational resources for experienced domain investors.

I hope you enjoyed these links and found some interesting new blogs to subscribe to. Of course, you’ll also want to be sure to subscribe to DotSauce Magazine to stay up to date on all the latest articles on domains and resources for online business success.

6 New and Interesting Domaining Blogs You May Not Know About DotSauce Magazine

Not only does a blog help establish your identity and lend credit to your expertise, it can drive traffic to your business and help pay the bills.

In this article I will describe some of the best ways available today to make money blogging.

Business Services

These scripts and plugins can enhance your website with powerful new features.

1. Job Board – A job board is a simple software solution that functions like a directory and a classifieds system rolled into one. There are numerous solutions for WordPress and other CMS systems you might be using.

Additionally, some major job search networks such as Simply Hired have affiliate programs which can be implemented on your blog through various means.

2. Classifieds – Another great feature to add to a blog is a classifieds system. Essentially enable your visitors to post short advertisements for their own products and services. This could potentially be the focal point of a blog. Classifieds can work well for a local website or a popular niche segment.

3. Paid Directory – Who says a blog can’t be a directory too? New options are becoming available to add directory features of varying feature sets to blogs. Alternatively, you can use a feature rich platform like PHP Link Directory in addition to your blog CMS.

4. WP Auctions – With WP Auctions you can embed a fully featured auction platform into your blog. This could be relevant to some publications and unique products that are right for auction style sales.

Banner Advertising

Sell graphic advertising positions in your header, sidebar, below or within blog posts.

5. BuySellAds - This is one of the top networks for direct ad sales, particularly in the technology and web/graphic design industries. The directory of sites on the BuySellAds network continues to grow with nearly 3,000 blogs on board. Publishers can apply to setup a profile for their website.

The service will cost 25% of your revenue, but you set the rates. The real value is that thousands of advertisers purchase banners seamlessly through the network website.

6. Google AdSense – This is often the only option for new publications, but can provide some added revenue to established blogs. Google’s network works on a Pay-Per-Click system in which advertisers bid for targeted placement.

Some clicks may only pay out pennies, while highly relevant content for products and services can sometimes bring in clicks of up to a few dollars each. You will need to rake in at least $100 in earnings before receiving a check, so be prepared to stick it out if you decide to invest time implementing AdSense.

One way established blogs can earn revenue from AdSense is by adding the code to older articles that are receiving high search traffic.

7. OIO Publisher – If you do have an established blog bringing in any amount of regular traffic, it’s time to start looking to sell advertising directly to interested businesses and related websites. The OIO-Publisher plugin for WordPress makes for an easy solution to managing direct ad sales.

Affiliate Networks

Connect with the best networks to earn commissions on top selling products related to your content.

8. Share-A-Sale –  This rising player in the affiliate business offers you access to over 3000 retailers in all major categories.

9. PepperJam Network – Another great network with high quality products and services.

10. Commission Junction – The industry leading network represents thousands of the top brands and businesses.

11. Google Affiliate Network – Google recently launched their own affiliate network and now represents hundreds of retailers in dozens of categories.

Affiliate programs offer you the opportunity to sell products that will be widely recognized and possibly already used by your website visitors.

You have the option of making referrals by adding links within related article content, emails, status updates. You can also feature graphic banners for affiliate programs to fill unsold ad space.

Sell Your Products

An excellent way to bring in the big bucks is to dedicate time to creating your own products.

12. Membership Site – Create a subscription based members only area of your site. This can be accomplished using new WordPress plugins, discussion forum software like vBulletin. The most advanced and feature rich option is AMember, which can connect to almost all blog and CMS platforms.

13. Write an eBook – Writing a book on your topic of choice is a long-time standard for making money with your blog. If you are an expert on a subject, it could pay off very well to publish the sum of your knowledge in an enticing digital download. Remember, once you’ve completed the work of marketing your eBook has just begun.

14. Sell Access to Your Tweets – This new concept has just emerged and could become a trend in coming years as more people are accepting of pay walls for premium content. The model has proven to be a success for some stock advisors, celebrities and other experts.

15. WP e-Commerce – This software is the most popular storefront solution available for WordPress. This enables you top open up shop directly from your WordPress dashboard and begin taking orders for your products and services.

16. Downloads – Digital goods are big business. You can sell information, white papers, photos, art, data, and much more. A wise way to deliver downloads is to mange them with an email subscription service. This way you can build a list of your customers or readers and additionally have the download automatically delivered when the subscription is confirmed.

My email marketing and delivery service of choice is AWeber. You can also use scripts, services and various plugins like Ecwid to charge a fee for file downloads.

Bonus! Sell Domain Names – Join the new DotSauce Domain Club to discover how you can build a portfolio of quality .com keyword domains to resell for considerable profits.

Sell Yourself

No, not in Vegas. Offer your technical knowledge and skills at a reasonable rate.

17. Donations - Hook up with PayPal and create a unique donation button to add to your website permanently or within a special blog post. There is no harm in asking for a little support and you may find your loyal readers more than happy to support you.

18. Consultation – Another way to sell your expertise is by offering it on a personal basis with private consultation. Explain how you can help an individual or business achieve success. Include a well formated contact form for interested parties to contact you directly from your blog.

19. Your Services – What can you do to work from your computer? Millions of freelancers are working from home everyday. With some skills on your side, you could be earning added revenue by promoting these services to your blog readers.

Graphic design, writing, web development, programming, marketing, SEO, all that interesting stuff you learned to make your blog better can be put to good use.

20. Sell Your Website – When the time finally comes that you need to move on from your project you may consider selling your blog. The good news is that if you have been putting any of the other methods of making money into practice then there is a chance your blog is quite valuable.

Flippa is the leading website sales marketplace. Post comprehensive auction details including proof of traffic and revenue for the best results.

Happy Blogging!

All these resources and ways to make money have been of particular interest to me personally. I hope you have found them useful as well. I wish you the best on your quest for blogging success in 2011.

I’m sure there are many other great options and companies available to help you earn profits while blogging. Please share your tools of choice in the comments below and pass this article on to aspiring pro bloggers.

20 Ways to Make Money Blogging in 2011 DotSauce Magazine

The contest will pit around 20 web developers against each other with the goal of earning the most income without spending any money on advertising or using your existing networks. There is a $2000 prize pool for those who are able to prove the most income earned within 4 months.

My plan is to develop a blog community about fitted hats on my domain Fitted.co. I can’t link to the site due to contest rules, so you’ll have to type it in to have a look. What you see now is just a few hours progress.

In this article, I will describe the main focal points for the project.

SEO

I chose this domain because of it’s potential as a popular and profitable niche. I plan to put my SEO skills into action as soon as possible to attain top search results positioning for key terms. The competition seems to be minimal, so I am hopeful that I will be able to succeed in tapping into search traffic within the 4 month time frame.

Affiliate Commissions

I plan to write short articles about specific fitted hat designs and feature discounts of popular products from retailers which I have become affiliated with through Commission Junction. Some of the retailers have high network earnings. Fitted hats are additionally popular on eBay.

Direct Advertising

There are a few similar blogs and they all seem to have no shortage of retailers interested in advertising to fitted hat enthusiasts. This could potentially be the main source of income if I am able to drive enough traffic to the site.

Social Media

I will establish a presence on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks with the goal of converting those interested in fitted hats to subscribing to my email newsletter or directly clicking-through on my affiliate products. I also plan to host contests and provide incentives for those interested to follow or “like” Fitted.co.

Your Suggestions, Please!

I would appreciate any suggestions from my readers on how else I could promote and earn profits for Fitted.co in this short time frame. Remember, I am not allowed to spend any money on the project. Please leave a comment below with your suggestions.

It should be interesting to hear others’ ideas on how to profit from a brand new website. I would be thrilled with the possibility of selling a related digital product that did not require an upfront investment, though I’m not sure it’s possible.

Thank you in advance for your ideas!

How Would You Earn The Most Money Possible In 4 Months? DotSauce Magazine

The newest release, CoverPad takes the concept one step further with cues from the popular FlipBoard news-reader application.

As seen in the video demonstration below, CoverPad uses CSS/XHTML to make your blog appear like a native iPad application without going through the App store.

Blog media is highlighted and content styled elegantly for readability.

CoverPad websites will have a hidden address bar and features for bookmarking as a home icon and social sharing.

Google TV

TechCrunch declared yesterday that the future of TV is HTML. We will soon see solutions similar to CoverPad for converting WordPress blogs into awesome video portals optimized for Google TV.

I have been hinting at the possibilities for awhile. It’s exciting to think that blogs will be able to effectively compete for the public’s attention in the living room.

If you want to learn about optimizing a website for Google TV right now, start at the official guide and read the latest from the Google blog for more information and examples.

Optimizing Your Website for Mobile, the iPad and Now Your TV DotSauce Magazine

These all come highly recommended for the serious blogger, but are sure to get a new comer excited about the possibilities of customizing and improving the blogging experience.

Featured below are new ways to snap the web, edit your code, curate tweets, organize upcoming posts and even get more readers. Enjoy!

1. Pixlr Grabber

Capture the web quickly and easily. Pixlr Grabber is a browser extension for both Firefox and Google Chrome developed by Pixlr, a slick web based image editing solution.

The Pixlr Grabber extension helps you take screenshots of selected portions or entire webpages. You can then save to your computer, upload to the web or immediately share your screenshots with friends.

2. Code ‘n’ Run

This simple web application enables you to connect to your own server via a secure FTP connection and edit your website code.

The interface is extremely minimal and user friendly, perfect for use on an iPad. Code syntax is properly highlighted and multiple files can be worked on quickly and efficiently.

3. KeepStream

The Twitter app I’ve been waiting for is finally being developed. KeepStream is a new startup that aims to help you organize your favorite twitter updates. You may have noticed it in the latest DotSauce Link Roundup.

You can select tweets from your public timelines, your own stream, a search, a Twitter list or your starred favorites. Tweets with links in them can optionally feature full titles and short descriptions of the destination pages.

Tweets are saved within a nicely formatted list that is shareable and embeddable. Here is a live example:

4. Editorial Calendar

This new WordPress plugin provides a clean calendar view of your posting activity. Browse your live posts and quickly create drafts for posts you’d like to schedule at a later date.

Using this plugin definitely beats selecting dates manually from the new post page.

Get in a rhythm and manage your posting schedule with this great plugin. I’m sure it’s going to be one of the next best essential plugins for all blogs.

5. Sharedaddy

Hot off the presses! Automattic has just announced this exciting social sharing plugin today.

Sharedaddy is for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs. The plugin places buttons below your post that enable readers to quickly share posts on social networks, bookmarking services or directly to a friend’s email. The option is also available to add additional services.

View this video for a quick walk-through of the Sharedaddy administration or see the plugin in action below this post.

Stay Tuned For More

I hope you found these new apps and plugins for bloggers as useful as I did. Stay tuned to DotSauce for upcoming collections of useful new apps for social media and business soon.

If you have friends who are fellow bloggers, consider being one of the first to put the new Sharedaddy plugin to good use. Thanks!

5 Incredibly Useful New Apps for Bloggers DotSauce Magazine

In this article I will share the tools and resources I use to take brief glimpses into the future. Using these tools, you too can gain insight into trends and make predictions about the course of your own industry.

Followed by the 10 resources I describe 6 ways you can take advantage of the data for potential profit. Enjoy!

1. Recorded Future

An amazing new service is now providing free updates on future events and trends related to any industry or topic. This brief video introduction to Recorded Future explains how you can use the service to learn about the future.

Select as many topics or as you wish and you will receive an email update for each topic either daily or weekly.

The emails feature a visual overview of the volume and scope of future events and a listing of article references.

2. Twitter

The media has embraced Twitter as an amazing source of breaking news accross the globe. If something big is happening tomorrow, it’s probably already being talked about on Twitter.

Twitter’s real-time nature makes for a great place to watch out for what’s new, emerging and promising. A visit to TweetMeme can show you what people are reading and sharing. There are also many apps and services for monitoring trends. What The Trend displays crowdsourced data on why things are trending.

Other useful services include TweetDeck which now is live streaming capable, TweetTabs live monitoring and TrendsMap local trends.

Use Twitter Lists to follow the news-makers, influencers and curators and #Hashtags to tap into global conversations.

3. Technical Researchers

Many wonderful organizations are working to analyze trends and data so that we might better understand society and the internet.

Here are some great places to start for the latest research on the internet and online business.

• Pew Internet
• GigaOM
• eMarketer
• Morgan Stanley
• Jacob Nielson
• VeriSign

4. Futurists

I am a fan of Ray Kurzweil for his far reaching vision of the future (or it could be the sci-fi geek in me). His talks on the singularity event of exponential technological development make me thrilled to live in such an age of growth.

Futurists can also be a unique source of information for business in the short term. They use extensive experiences, public polling, deductive reasoning and other scientific studies to make predictions.

One futurist recently enlightened us that newspapers as we know them will be gone by 2022, to be replaced by crowdsourced journalism. This makes me excited to be on at center stage as the world discovers blogs and other homegrown online media.

5. Trend Hunters

I like to leave things to the experts in many situations. Trend hunting is no different.

The following examples are well-respected for staying on top of the latest in technology, media and more. Try to find the go-to sources for your niche.

• TrendWatching Briefs
• WIRED Epicenter
• ArsTechnica
• Current TV
• AllTop
• TED
• TechCrunch
• The Cool Hunter
• eBay’s Inside Source

6. Website Traffic

Arguably one of the best ways to predict the future is by viewing the trends in website traffic. This data can be found at Compete and Alexa.

Jacques Mattheij recently predicted that Facebook will overtake Google in the next 18 months using website traffic estimates.

7. Looxii Social Monitoring

While I have not had a chance to fully try out this curiously named service (I’m guessing they were going for ‘look see’), it does seem very promising as a social media monitoring tool.

With Looxii you can monitor up to 2 keywords for free and have reports emailed to you daily. The reports contain data of mentions and trends across blogs, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.

8. PostRank Labs

The team at PostRank, which I have previously praised for their innovative new services, are showing no signs of slowing down.

PostRank Labs features a suite of amazing tools such as social trends, blog widgets, even a engagement analytics plugin for your Google Reader.

Their newest tool allows you to compare social engagement across 3 different domains.

9. Google AdWords & Insights

Advertisers bidding on keywords at Google want to know which terms will be most beneficial to them. The world’s best search engine has gone to great lengths to provide amazingly useful data for just that purpose.

Fire up the Google AdWords Keyword tool and you will see a small graph at the right of each row which represents the local search volume.

This data is particularly useful for web publishers and businesses looking to increase the effectiveness of their search optimization efforts.

Google Insights provides a one-year forecast, comparisons and notable news for multiple terms.

Lastly, I have something for you to watch out for. Google has recently acquired Metaweb and Freebase, a massive public database of virtually all types of data.

10. Bookmarking Data

I have noticed a few things having kept an eye on Delicious popular bookmarks off and on over the course of many months. Invisible trends and influences moving through the blogosphere, often at the highest levels on the most popular publications.

TechCrunch articles will cause spin-offs, one blog will counter with it’s own arguments, a popular piece (The Web Is Dead) may cause the whole internet to share their opinion. We’re all connected much more than you might think.

Other places to find out what people are reading and sharing include Reddit, Digg, Hacker News, and LikeButton.me.

6 Ways You Can Profit From Future Research

After checking out the above tools, you might be asking yourself, “How do I profit from knowing about the future?” Unfortunately, there are no lottery ticket numbers or sports scores to be had.

This is going to take some initiative and time invested, but the rewards can be great. Here are some ways I’ve come up with that you can use this information for profit.

1. Buy domain names of future products and services

As an example, I purchased HTML5Framework.com during the coding standard’s debut on the web. If I had decided to research this earlier, I could have registered countless other valuable HTML5 domain names.

Another example, RecycledFood.com; the business of turning food waste into energy and other products is growing rapidly. I registered this for a small fee and it may now be worth quite a bit.

2. Start a blog about a trending or emerging category

The sooner you begin publishing content the better, because the blogs of today may be some of the leading publications of tomorrow.

A prime example of this would be social media blogs. They are now some of the most heavily trafficked destinations on the web. One of the most popular, Social Media Examiner launched just 1 year ago and has already grown into a million dollar publication.

3. Invest in companies which show future potential

I enjoyed the following bit of information from Paul Graham, founder of startup incubator Y Combinator during a talk on the future of software and startups.

Hackers are a leading indicator of what people will be using in the future.

4. Get a head start on marketing products

Not many people know that Google TV is launching in the fall this year. I have been writing about it and sharing updates on this destined game-changer for several months now. This simple act of writing a post will give my site more authority and relevance for later coverage.

When it comes to web content and affiliate marketing, those who act first often come out as the winners as far as search rankings and eventual commission earnings.

5. Become an early adopter

Sharing all the latest news, resources and tools with your network is a great social media strategy. It also helps you learn the pulse of your industry and catalog all it’s resources.

6. Launch a startup or build the next big app

I just read this interesting bit of information recently on TechCrunch. There is a ton of opportunity for those who run ahead of the pack.

One company that has been overlooked as a potential platform for other startups to build a business on remains YouTube, which Google acquired for $1.65 billion in 2006.

Thank you for taking the time to review these tools and resources for predicting the future and my ideas for profiting from future predictions.  If you would like to suggest further resources or share your thoughts on this topic please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

There is a world of interesting data out there with many secrets yet to be discovered and it is only going to get better.

10 Tools You Can Use to Predict and Profit From the Future DotSauce Magazine

Metaweb has built a smarter, more connected internet by classifying all persons, places and things under a unique ID they call an entity.

This video introduction does a good job explaining the concept and how Metaweb could bring great content to site owners.

I learned of all this at the Official Google blog today and am a little troubled by the tone of the announcement. I have lots of questions.

Will this optimistic outlook of Metaweb as a service to web developers change as they merge into Google?

Will these cool widgets ever see the light of your monitor?

Google has been increasingly adding content alongside search results in recent years. They have already taken over the traffic and attention of numerous industries and niches such as travel arrangements, business listings, definitions, product comparison and even the news.

Now Google hopes to enable a smarter search where people can go beyond text.

Looking for a college? You may search like this in the near future…

• [colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000]

What’s going on in San Jose tonight?

• [events in San Jose]

There is far reaching opportunity for Google to use Metaweb to provide great answers without a user ever leaving their domain. This is what worries me. How much content will they take for themselves and will websites suffer for it with dwindling traffic numbers?

Metaweb’s data is hosted on a separately branded community site called Freebase. I tried to sign up, but registrations are currently closed.

Google does mention that Freebase (all that data from Metaweb) will remain open to the public. So, you should definitely check it out and support the cause. There is also a wiki for Freebase developer tools.

A free and open database for the world’s knowledge sounds like a phenomenal resource for business and web development. I can imagine countless new applications connected to this data and the social web.

Update: The following video is an astounding Freebase search project called Parallax. It is a new way to explore data and integrate it simultaneously from multiple Metaweb data sources.

While I’m still playing the conspiracy theorist (it’s all this UFO buzz), I believe Freebase may cut into web traffic of some individuals and businesses. Google started something similar with Knol a few years ago; I’m not sure how well it’s doing now.

Popular destinations like WikiPedia, IMDB and who knows what else may soon have smart competition with a major home-field advantage.

Regardless of how it turns out, I respect Google for bringing innovative web ideas to fruition. I hope they continue to recognize their users are creating great content and personal answers that deserve to be found.

Google Breaks Into the Content Business in a Spectacular Way DotSauce Magazine

My personal web presence at MarkFulton.com has been around for over a decade and has gone through many different concepts and designs.

A new update is nearing completion and I’d love for you to visit.

I will now be sharing lots of short articles, app reviews, videos and other resources related to social media, domains, business, and web development at my personal blog.

Latest Posts at MarkFulton.com

• So You Think You Have A Competitive Advantage
• Interactive Social Media Survey
• Epic Win To-Do List iPhone App
• Google Me Will Challenge Facebook With Social Groups
• Microsoft Introduces WebMatrix Beta for Windows
• Link Directories Making A Comeback

New PliablePress Theme

The site is now powered by the PliablePress Chalemeon framework which allows me to manage each element of the site through an innovative and easy to use admin interface.

Not long ago, I featured complete details on PliablePress during it’s launch.

The Chameleon framework has been a pleasure to work with since updating my blog. It took me just a few minutes to set up the layout, widgets and other features. I have not had to open up the theme files at all to this point.

PliablePress is pioneering a level of WordPress customization without coding or theme editing knowledge. I am looking forward to customizing the layout and design further as I continue development.

About Me & DotSauce

If you’re curious about who I am and my history, I’ve written an updated bio.

A few months ago, I published a list of my services. I don’t regularly advertise these services, but may be available for certain things.

I’ve also included information on DotSauce Magazine and other projects.

Thanks for checking out my personal blog!

Featuring More Domaining, Development, Business Content at MarkFulton.com DotSauce Magazine

Nearly 10,000 test pilots participated in the study, 9,667 users to be exact. Every single mouse click and action taken within the browser was monitored over the course of 5 days. Mozilla has published a dynamic graphical representation of the heatmap study here.

Several trends are very clear to see after viewing the usage data. Two elements leap out that get more action than the scrollbar!

Your Worst Enemy

93.1% of participants used the back button, clicking it 66.7 times on average over the course of 5 days.

The technical term for this action is referred to as a website’s bounce rate, which occurs when a visitor decides not to click anything on the site and leaves entirely. Time spent on site is also something you should monitor and hope to increase over time.

Today, it is critical to engage a visitor and capture their attention. We do this by making effective use of graphic and design cues, headings and short, consumable pieces of information.

There are several other things you can do to get started dealing with your worst enemy, the back button. I’ve previously written some tips for reducing bounce rate and increasing website usability that you should check out.

Your Best Friend

95.6% of participants used the location bar, clicking it 430.1 times on average over the course of 5 days.

That is a huge amount of activity! A website should be optimized for both direct navigation and search navigation to increase website traffic.

Direct navigation does not often get the credit it deserves. It is not easily monitored, but when studied it has proven to contribute a much higher percentage of traffic than one would expect. Additionally, visitors who directly type domain names are extremely targeted.

I believe analytics software will soon place a larger emphasis on direct navigation. More attention should be given to branding and domain names while developing a website. They should be memorable, easy to pronounce and easy to type.

The location bar now doubles as a search bar in all major browsers, so visitors will come indirectly from search navigation. Your site should be as optimized as possible (without going overboard) to make the search experience better for these visitors.

One of the simplest and most effective forms of SEO is to make sure important keywords and phrases are included within titles, headings and content. For more tips read my article on common WordPress SEO mistakes.

I hope you get along nicely with your new acquaintances.

If you enjoyed this article, don’t click back! Like this on Facebook and have a look around.

Firefox Heatmap Study Reveals A Web Developer’s Best Friend and Worst Enemy DotSauce Magazine

WordPress 3.0 has introduced some exciting new features, not the least of which is a merger with WordPress MU!

That’s right, the WordPress team has made it much easier to quickly deploy a network of WordPress powered websites on the same host, using the same WordPress installation and administration.

How To Enable WordPress MultiSite

To get your website network started, you will need to enable the WordPress Multisite feature and become a Super Admin! Reason enough, right?

I’m going to direct you to this great MultiSite walk-through at Weblogtools Collection to get the job done.

Follow a few steps, and once enabled, you will notice a new “Super Admin” menu appear.

Setup Domain Names for Each Site

Next, you’ll want to be able to map your domain names to each of the websites you setup in your new network. Unfortunately, this requires a special plugin that has to be installed manually.

Not to worry though, Otto on WordPress has created this great MultiSite domain mapping tutorial.

Follow these two simple guides and you will be well on your way towards building a powerful website network. Your websites will have their very own administration panel, unique plugins and themes.

Each site on your network will be empowered by the innovations and flexibility that WordPress has to offer.

Make Your Network Beautiful

The new default WordPress 3.0 theme “Thelonius” has some cool features and is pretty customizable, but I would like to recommend an even more advanced and more customizable new theme from PliablePress: the Chameleon framework.

With this one theme you can make each of your websites look unique. Setting up the theme options is fast, without any design or coding skills required.

You can learn all about PliablePress here at DotSauce. For a chance to win a free PliablePress theme, join the all new DotSauce Q&A Forum to be entered into our prize drawing!

Build Your Own Website Network Easily With WordPress 3.0 DotSauce Magazine

Many have questioned the accuracy of Compete and Alexa traffic rankings. Could social engagement data soon be viewed as more relevant metrics?

PostRank came on the scene in 2007 with a goal in mind of helping people find the best blogs by topic and to help publishers measure their influence and reach.

Today, PostRank is monitoring and tracking social engagement across all domain names in real-time. Data is gathered on where and when someone shares a post on any number of social networks or makes a comment on-site.

The PostRank Labs team are working on (among other things) a tool that will look very familiar to many of you.

We all love website comparison charts, but this is not simply an estimation of website traffic like you’re thinking.

See this PostRank Labs demonstration for a quick preview of the data.

I was surprised at the differences between on and off-site engagement when comparing websites and how that percentage affects the engagement points total.

PostRank Domain Industry Rankings

I have setup a “Domains” tag on PostRank and added a number of publications. Unfortunately, some blog feeds were not able to be discovered by PostRank. Feel free to add additional feeds if they are relevant.

Clicking a title will show individual posts and enable you to find those with the best social engagement performance.

Social Data, Coming Soon to an App Near You

The PostRank Data Services toolkit for developers has just been updated with a Domain Activity API. Developers may use the APIs to incorporate PostRank, FeedRank and Domain Activity metrics into their own applications.

If you’re a programmer, the PostRank APIs may provide a unique opportunity to develop applications or services related to social engagement. I have a few ideas for using the real-time domain activity analytics, please get in touch with me if you would like to hear them.

I have a feeling we will start to see specific metrics such as provided by PostRank become more prevalent and useful.

Keeping tabs on your PostRank domain activity can help you get motivated to start actively promoting your content on social networks. Find out what works and potentially discover new ways to engage your readers and keep them coming back for more.

New PostRank Domain API: Tracking Social Engagement (+Domain Industry Rankings) DotSauce Magazine

When it comes to online advertising, those in the know seem to be confident that Facebook will soon launch it’s own display advertising network and open it up to third party publishers.

Chris Dixon, co-founder of Hunch.com, has shared his thoughts and some interesting insight into the two different types of online advertising at play.

1. Intent Harvesting

Domain investors will recognize intent harvesting as it is the same concept behind a generic domain name. When someone types in RumCakes.com, for example, then you can be fairly certain they want to buy rum cakes.

Text advertisements found on Google search results are intent harvesting as the user is actively looking to find a specific product. Amazon and Google are the dominant players, so much so that Yahoo closed down it’s publisher network.

Publishers have noticed the steady decline in revenue from AdSense / traditional PPC.

Could innovations in advertising bring revenues back up? Continue reading.

2. Intent Generation

When a website visitor is not actively looking to purchase a product (as when they may be reading a blog post, using an application or being entertained) then the goal of an advertiser is to generate interest and influence the visitor.

Display advertisements like this have a notoriously low click through ratio of around 1% despite demographic segmentation.

Dixon predicts that this type of advertising will increase rapidly in the coming years as brands continually look to increase awareness across the web.

How Facebook & Google Are Revolutionizing Online Ads

Google and Facebook may soon rock the intent generation segment by empowering ads with more advanced data.

The Like Button

Facebook recently launched it’s developer tool set that allows website publishers to place a “Like” button on virtually anything. This social sharing feature generates some website traffic for the publisher.

Facebook will soon be able to paint a beautiful picture of everything their members like.

That is very powerful data to behold. Dixon gives the example of knowing that a user liked Avatar would be useful when looking to advertise Avatar 2.

Even while not actively browsing Facebook.com, users will remain logged in to their account and can be served highly targeted advertising on third-party websites.

Retargeting / Remarketing

Google AdWords advertisers are now actively remarketing display ads to site visitors based on previous activity.

For example, an advertiser could target a user who had previously visited their website by following them as they browse other sites on the Google Content Network.

The diagram below makes it much easier to visualize.

Reports by advertisers have shown very positive results with ad remarketing.

As for Facebook developing it’s own advertising network, we will have to wait and see just what happens. I suspect we won’t have to wait very long.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, test out the like button first-hand!

Facebook To Rival Google AdSense? Intelligent Ads Will Know What You Like DotSauce Magazine

Online communities, interest groups, niche industries,… the entire world is more connected than ever. The enormous adoption of social networking and it’s ever increasing integration with the rest of the web enables professionals to constantly stay on top of whats going on in their field of expertise.

Thanks to Google Alerts and Twitter, businesses are actively monitoring for any mentions of their name. If you write it, they will read!

In this article I will detail some examples and thoughts on how writing about your favorite businesses and services can increase exposure to your own blog.

Lately I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of responses from companies that I write about here on DotSauce Magazine.

I would like to share three recent articles I’ve written that resulted in a positive action by the subject of the articles.

#1. Search Advertising Pioneer Launches TweetUp.com

Article resulted in: Prominent Tweet

I’m a big fan of Twitter, so when I heard that Bill Gross, the founder of GoTo.com (late 90′s search engine, Pay-Per-Click pioneer), is launching an advertising platform built around Twitter I was pretty enthused. TweetUp has an excellent model which will place tweets on popular websites.

The team at TweetUp likely saw their name being mentioned on Twitter and seemed to like the article. I’ve been getting several visits daily since they shared the link on their @TweetUp profile.

#2. World Domain Cup Top 100 Proposed gTLDs

Article resulted in: High profile backlink

In this article I shared the results of a contest being hosted by Japanese ISP Interlink to select a new top level domain to invest in.

Interlink picked up on the article and placed a link to it very prominently on the World Domain Cup homepage.

#3. Using Media and Data to Market Your Domains For Sale

Article resulted in: High profile backlink

In this article I mentioned  the Bido domain marketplace and highlighted an example Bido auction that used domain statistics effectively to show value in their name.

I’m friends with a few of the guys from Bido on Facebook, so I tagged their names when sharing the article.

A few days later, I was pleased to see Bido feature the article on their Marketing Tips page which is suggested to each and every user when listing a domain for sale.

The businesses or individuals you write about might be looking out for their name, but as this proves, it is worth it to let them know you wrote about them!

What’s Better Than Backlinks?

There have been similar results where the subjects of my articles will leave comments showing their gratitude, re-tweet out a link to the article or simply thank me privately.

These actions are just as important as getting a backlink or website traffic. It’s nice to know that the people you write about are actually taking the time to visit and read what you have to say.

Don’t be afraid to shine the spotlight on and link out to quality, relevant businesses and resources. Building connections with important figures in related industries can open new avenues for you personally, expand your blog’s reach and increase readership.

If You Write It, They Will Read: Blog Content Getting Recognized In Big Ways DotSauce Magazine

Tynt Insight technology is being used to track content sharing via copy & paste actions in a user’s browser. According to the company, an average of 6% of page views on the web result in some kind of user action that can be tracked by their technology.

In a recent rebuttal towards TechCrunch’s claim that 45% of all social sharing is done on Facebook, Tynt has shown clearly that this is not the case.

Email deserves the top spot for overall shares at 75%, Facebook accounts for 25%, blogs and forums (labeled “Other”) still account for a significant number of shares while Twitter is still growing with 1% of the social sharing action.

Tynt went on to provide a different and all-together more interesting break down of social sharing by showing how shares are performing in the chart above. Apparently Tynt Insight is tracking more than just copy/paste actions. This is valuable and definitely insightful click-through data!

Here are highlights I’ve observed containing some very interesting data revealed by Tynt:

• There are an estimated 1 trillion to 1.4 trillion page views on the web each month.
• Slightly over 2% of all page views result in sharing via copy & paste actions, totaling 20 billion shares per month.
• Sharing via built in share buttons (Digg this, Tweet this) account for only 400 million shares per month.
• Email is used for 70% of all social sharing and accounts for 48% of new site traffic.
• Blogs, forums and other mediums generate 36% of new site traffic despite accounting for only 4% of total shares.
• While 25% of all sharing is done on Facebook it only generates 10% of new site traffic.
• Digg generates 5% of new site traffic despite accounting for less than 1% of total shares.

What can we do to improve user experience and cater to the kind 2% of visitors who choose to share our content?

Website publications and blogs could definitely use more accessibility and unity with email sharing. We put an emphasis on social sharing and tend to leave email as a fall-back option when in fact it is being used the most.

Adding a prominent notice or automated form to share via email may do the trick and help tap into the prevalence of email sharing.

I’m sure improvements and new applications, website widgets, and browser addons for both email and social network sharing will be coming soon throughout 2010.

Tynt’s Insight software will automatically include a link back to the source page when text is copied from a website. I’m still a little dumbfounded that they are tracking copy and paste data, why didn’t someone think of this sooner?

I’m interested to see what content is being copied from my sites, how often, and how I can use that information to generate more site traffic. If this sounds good to you as well, check out Tynt Insight‘s free service and leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Surprising New Website Data Reveals Social Sharing and Traffic Trends DotSauce Magazine

A New Medium: Sponsored Comments

TalkAhead.com recently launched with a new approach to advertising through sponsored comments on blogs. The idea is that advertisers can connect and engage with readers of a targeted article and promote relevant products and services with a link to their website.

This chart shows the benefits and potential of sponsored comments as compared with traditional and often shady contextual advertising.

Marketers can sign up to receive automated alerts anytime an article of interest is published.

Oddly enough, I found a blog comment by TalkAhead founder Philippe Lang with some insight into how the system is working thus far.

…we are getting positive feedback from readers, our advertisers receive high click-trough rates and our publishers generate new premium revenues.

I went through the process of registering as a publisher and am quite impressed with the administration, setup and configuration. There are options for creating new channels for multiple blogs, moderating incoming sponsored comments, viewing performance reports and more.

Another cool feature I found was the option to create a coupon code which can be used to offer free or discounted sponsored comments to a business of your choosing.

Why Do Work? AdSense Plugin Works For You

An intelligent AdSense plugin found here at WhyDoWork.com allows you to display AdSense units on posts older than X days. This plugin has been around for quite awhile and has received excellent reviews and confirmed increase in AdSense revenues.

It makes sense to display AdSense on older posts. Visitors coming in from search engines are looking for something specific on your blog. The bounce rate is typically quite high and the return visit rate is typically very low. Why not take advantage of this and serve them prominently featured targeted advertising?

An important feature was not left out, any article can be excluded from displaying AdSense units individually.

I have included AdSense units on certain articles which receive daily search traffic and it’s paid off well. This AdSense plugin makes it simple to do just that and automates the process to strike a balance between respecting regular readers and monetizing search traffic.

Want more? Check out VigLink Affiliate Links and Ecwid eCommerce Widgets, two more innovative solutions for WordPress business that have been featured on DotSauce.

Two Free WordPress Plugins Aim to Earn Your Blog More Money DotSauce Magazine

A standard link to any one of thousands of retailers or individual products can be detected by VigLink and once clicked, affiliate tracking information is added dynamically. You earn the commission and VigLink takes a percentage for their wizardry.

GigaOM reports, “VigLink estimates that less than half of links that could be monetized are hooked up to affiliate programs.”

Publishers can request a free pre-sales report which analyzes outbound links and uses several estimates to determine potential earnings. In the example report above, popular blog Gizmodo could potentially earn $4,413 per month with VigLink.

On the Horizon – Affiliate Marketing to the Masses

VigLink’s CEO Oliver Roup has hinted that their open API can already be connected to social services.

I believe VigLink will be able to tap into massive social networks where people are sharing links to products constantly. The major hurdle will be making deals with the likes of Twitter and Facebook. If this doesn’t spark an online business boom, I don’t know what would.

I look forward to watching what happens as the company evolves and will likely be joining in myself as this may be a way to circumvent Amazon’s recent ban of North Carolina affiliates.

What are your thoughts? How did your pre-sales report turn out? Please leave a comment below.

VigLink To Provide Seamless Affiliate Earnings to Bloggers and Beyond DotSauce Magazine