Google Analytics Problem Solved

I’ve found Google Analytics to be a really useful tool for monitoring traffic to my various web sites. I’m also a big fan of Wordpress, and there just happens to be a Wordpress pluggin that allows you to easily integrate Google Analytics into your Wordpress web sites. Unfortunately, when I switched to the Desk Mess theme, the Analytics module quit working so I lost tracking data for this blog. Fortunately the fix was easy. Wordpress uses a footer.php file to process the footer section of pages. It looks something like this:

<!– begin footer –>

<div style=”clear:both;”></div>
<div style=”clear:both;”></div>

<div id=”footer”>
Copyright &copy; 2007 <a href=”<?php echo get_settings(‘home’); ?>/”><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></a> &bull; Using <a href=”http://themes.performancing.com” >Modernpaper</a> theme created by <a href=”http://performancing.com” >Performancing</a>
</div>

<?php do_action(‘wp_footer’); ?>

</body>
</html>

In Desk Mess’ footer.php file, the line in red is missing. Because of that, Wordpress doesn’t process the footer correctly and the Analytics code isn’t added in as it should be. Adding the missing line to footer.php causes Wordpress to correctly process the footer, and Analytics tracking is working correctly again – problem solved. If only they were all so easy…

Make Money On Line with Squidoo

One of the problems with a affiliate programs is that unless you have the money to buy the product before you selling, it’s hard to promote it with any credibility. After all, how can you honestly promote a product if you haven’t actually used it? Another problem is the need to give up your SSN in order to sign up for some affiliate programs, though this problem can be avoided by obtaining a Taxpayer ID number.

One easy way to get started making money on line is by signing up for a Squidoo account. Is it really possible to make money through Squidoo? The answer is an emphatic YES. My husband is a Squidoo addict with about 20 lenses, none of which have really heavy traffic – his total traffic for all lenses averages about 8 visits per day – in other words, the average traffic per lens is only about 1 visit every other day. Yet, for the month of August he earned $63.79. Granted, about $40 of that was from a single expensive purchase from an EBay affiliate link on one of his lenses. Still, that means he earned over $20 for the month just from traffic to his lenses.

There are 2 ways (actually more, but that will be the topic of an upcoming post) to earn money from Squidoo – Adsense and Product modules. Any Squidoo lens you build will have Adsense ads, and Squidoo shares its Adsense revenue with the “lensmasters.” The amount that is shared depends on each lens’ “lens rank,” a ranking determined by several factors, including popularity, earnings, and traffic of each lens. The second way to earn money is through optional Product Modules that you can put on your lenses. Squidoo itself is an affliate of many on line vendors, including Amazon, Cafe Press, EBay, and others. Any revenue generated from Product Modules on your lenses is shared at 50% no matter how low or high the lens rank is.

One of the nicest things about Squidoo is that the payout threshold can be set as low as $1.00 which is much lower than most affiliate programs. They pay directly to your Paypal account (so you’ll need one of those), and you can choose to donate some or all of your earnings to charity. The other nice thing is that it’s absolutely free to sign up. Nothing to buy, no credit card required, etc. It is also extremely easy to set up a lens. I mean if my husband can do it…

If you’ve been thinking about making money on line, it is certainly worth a try, especially considering there is absolutely no cost (other than your time) or risk involved. All you need to do is sign up for a Squidoo account and start cranking out lenses. I’ve dabbled a little myself, and while I don’t have any earnings yet (but then I’ve done nothing to promote my lenses) it is a lot of fun.

Cheers,

Xiaohua

Tags: MMO, Squidoo

Making Money with Affiliate Programs?

Do you want to make money on line? Thinking of signing up for an affiliate program? Maybe you want to sign up for several of them, or a lot. Everyone is making money, so why not you? Not so fast… Yes, it’s true, some people are making money on line with affiliate programs. Most people signing up for these programs aren’t making money though, and may even be exposing themselves to a very high risk of identity theft.

“Make Money On Line.” It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Just buy our product, sign up for our affiliate program, create a web site with our pre-built templates (a $500 value included absolutely free), and sit back and watch the money start rolling in. Who wouldn’t want to make money like this?

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. There are several problems with this “plan.” The first problem is that you’re spending money on a product you know absolutely nothing about (except for what you read in the ad copy). Second, you have no way of knowing how to generate traffic to your sales site, especially when your site is competing for page rank with the sites of the thousands of others (supposedly) selling this product successfully. Finally, you may be exposing personal financial information to a company you know little or nothing about.

I believe it is possible to make money on line, but only if you plan – not just for business, but also to protect yourself. Your fisrt step should be to obtain a Taxpayer ID number from the IRS. Obtaining a Taxpayer ID number will allow you to sign up for affiliate programs without disclosing your Social Security number. This is important to help prevent identity theft.