Being more Honest with my Affiliate Links!

Google Affiliate Network Summit 035 Google Affiliate Network Summit 035 (Photo credit: Affiliate

Testing the Waters!

A friend told me, a couple days ago that I should be telling my readers when I have affiliate links.  He said I would would get even more sales if I were to be a little more honest with which ones are actually the ones that I make money off of!   It would better help those decide if your going to be a a good blog or not.   I really didn’t have much to say on the matter because I didn’t know what to say. I am sure there will always be those who will not tell you.   I thought it was quite obvious when I didn’t tell you but then I forgot I was hiding my affiliate links, not to be dishonest but to prevent programs and virus from taking away from all the work I have done.   I know there will always be people who will got the site directly and not give the site the credit.  I understand that, and somewhat expect that.

Honesty is the best Policy!

That being said, if you ever come to one of my posts and you see the (Affiliate links) or (Affiliate link) then it will be linked to this post.   So you can read about my honesty and understand that I am working really hard at changing.   Here is how this will work:

  • Reviews — I promise to my readers that I believe in the review of the product and that it is a recommendation from me.
  • Reimbursement — Hosting isn’t cheap now a days, that is I put up my Affiliate links and also to try supplement my working income.
  • If Gifted to me — I will clearly state that in my post and my review will no be swayed by the free gift of the item.  If it sucks, you will know about it and if it is something useful then you will also know about it.  I may however have affiliate links for the item.
  • Nicer URLS — even though I have hidden the urls and you have to click the URL to go the affiliate site in question, it is because the URL aren’t really neat and tidy.   If you feel offended because you can’t see URL then please feel free not to click those links.  (I wouldn’t want to see http://www.amazon.com/blah/blah/blah/blah/etc, anyways and I bet you don’t either)
  • Gift Cards — If you are wanting me to review a certain item and it is on Amazon or some other place then I will gladly accept a gift card through email(First name @ this domain).  However if it is something else please don’t hesitate to email me.
  • Review UNITS — Same as Gifted cards, if your wanting me to review an item but don’t know where to send it.   Please email me and I’ll discuss with you where to send it.  (First Name @ this domain)  Please bear in mind that I may not give a nice review, so I make no PROMISES and there are no expectations.

Prove to me!

I’ve done the unthinkable and stopped hiding all my links on this site.   So if you want me to continue to do it this way,  I will need to see a positive out come.   I was making money hiding sites links and not telling people about them being affiliate links.   Now I don’t want to see a drop in sales and money by being honest.   Help support my love to blog and being able to read about the stuff that matters to you.   Just like Glasses USA (Affiliate link) matters to me because I have to wear glasses everyday and I can’t afford to go buy some really expensive pairs of glasses.   They have been the one source for me, when I need to buy new glasses.  If you find a post that you really think is good, then don’t be afraid to share it on Facebook or Twitter.   Those are one ways to show your support of my blog.

Nothing shows support like sharing a post!

Paul Sylvester

How to recover you blog posts!

Source: singingthroughtherain.com via Kathryn on Pinterest Source: singingthroughtherain.com via Kathryn on Pinterest

If I’d Only backed up!

That’s probably what you are thinking right now. Most hosting providers like Hostgator will allow you to backup your content for free but do we ever really do that every week. I’ve learned my lesson on this because of what happened last week. Let’s go back in time shall we!

The Back story.

After some really hard considerations with both my tech-linkblog site and this site, I recently decided I need to merge them into one BIG site because I felt that the ones who were coming to my old site were not really seeing the potential of my new site. So After searching bing on how to merge two domains, I found some articles that would help me do that!

I started off merging!

Yep you guessed it, I thought why would I need to worry about having backups when all I am going to do is merge two different databases into one. The Problem with that is that you never quite understand that doing that is a risky situation and thus you won’t know how to fix it until it is too late. That is where we come to this article for. I lost like 100 articles that were REALLY important I don’t say that lightly, people who have websites for SEO traffic know all to well the importance of some BIG articles. I’m no exception because it helps your ranking and Authority.  These articles actually are the ones that bring in some good links and even helps support my blog.  So you can imagine how I felt and my horror when I found out some of my blog entries were GONE and couldn’t get them back!!

How did I get my blog posts back?

You’re probably wondering how I got some of my really important blog posts back.   I know your really curious as to how I got them back without a backup.    In this article I will give you two or three sites that can help you get your blog posts back, but remember it is going to be a long process.   If you had a lot of blog posts then you may never get all the back but you can at lease get some of them back.     Before i begin though, I must tell you that if you are worried about your hard drive you should try Crashplan [Affiliate Link], they give a free trial and can run on Windows/Mac’s/and Linux. I don’t want anyone loosing their Photos, Videos, or Anything else that is important to you.

Google Cache

If you can grab the cache page before it gets erased then you can use that to replace the content that you’ve lost.  You’ll have to search for it then once you find it, just click the Cached link.   It however isn’t going to be a good solution if everything get’s removed.   Nothing in the article will prevent that unless you do a complete restore and thus you need to keep backups.

Now this is good to point, if you use the Internet Archive, but remember they will not index all your pages and if you only have excerpts on your home page then you really can’t use this service but it is something to consider if your do have one or two posts that might need to be replaced.

I however think if your are smart, to have your web hosting provider like Hostgator to keep backups.   That is why I like Hostgator when the next time I have a problem with my SQL database it will be backed up with Hostgator and all is good!

If you don’t have a backup, you should start backing up and if you have a back up then you need to come up with a good restoration plan for when you need it.   I’ve begun to do that with this site and I hope this helps others with the problem I have had!

Paul Sylvester

Techniques to remove malware from your domain!

Starfleet Officer Image by Sam Howzit via Flickr

Websites and domains!

I recently had to help my favorite club remove some malware off their website.   My club, Starfleet-command Quadrant One website, was one of those sites that didn’t see this coming.   As a website owner, I’ve seen many of things come and go but experience has taught me that it will always come back.  I will be watching for this again in the near future but hopefully it won’t come back!

The back story was something that I have to at least talk about because this is how the site got infected.

One reason that this site got infected was by being hosted with the same hosting server.  They were both using the Goddady shared hosting account to display their webpages or forums on the internet.   Thus Godaddy, with their infinite wisdom tried to explain it away as that.    I don’t know if I buy that reason or if there was something else that might of been the culprit but I do know this website had urls redirects and such to malware sites.  I much rather keep with Hostgator, then have Godaddy anyways.

Another Reason is that it was probably some kind of key logger, or something that was sending back the important password information to a Command and control server and thus the website owner was infected or someone in the organization that had access to the account was unintentionally allowing a hacker to gain access to the website.

Removing the Malware off your Site!

Nothing in the world is ever going to be easy, but it is necessary to get into the guts of the website.   Your probably thinking, websites don’t have guts.   You’d be wrong, when I thought about having to go through each part of the code and remove the html malware redirects that is what I mean by guts.      Many people will come to understand that as a programming language but I like to think of it as a doctor who does surgery to remove an infectedc limb or something like that.

So I’m going to give you a few areas to look at if your having this problem with Malware being on your site or domain.   It won’t always be the same place for the same infection but it will at least help you find it and remove it.

.htaccess — This is one place where they will first make changes to redirect traffic to the domain that they want your visitor to. If you have had much experience with what it does.   It is a good time to learn what they do and how to use them.

 

index.php or index.html— This is something that the hackers have learned to use but most often is over looked.   This is something that I haven’t seen before until now.   Certain browser will display the virus or malware warnings and others will not even see it or have any problems!   See example for more information, because I couldn’t do a better job then them!

 

Check Subdomains and subdirectories —   This is something that is also needs to be looked at.   even if they aren’t showing the signs of being being infected it is always a good idea to at least make sure they stay uninfected.   Check them for the .htaccess and index code and remove what you need or change it to where it should be going to in the first place.   I found the .htaccess redirect code all in subdomains and sub directories on the one that I helped to remove the infection from.

 

Change ALL passwords — This is a MUST, if you’ve been infected then your passwords are at risk of being the source of the infections.   Change your FTP Password, your log in information password, and anything associated with the site in question and possibility the subdomains passwords.

 

Limit the number of people with the new passwords — if your like me, you don’t want to many people to have the ftp password and thus you should consider only allowing a select number of people having it.   Like the organization I have, they have people left and right who use it to upload files and stuff that is needed.   It also might be required to just have a server that is used for nothing else but to upload files for publications and other things like that.

 

Disclaimer

Nothing in the article is a must do or will get rid of your site being blocked by Google and other such search engines but it will at least give you a place to start looking to find culprit and maybe get your site running again quicker.   I will not make any guarantees that this will fix the problem or that it will solve your problem 100% but this is to be used as a tutorial on where to look and what you should do to prevent re-infections with malware.

 Paul Sylvester

SUPERAntiSpyware, with over 20 million users worldwide, is the most thorough scanner on the market. SUPERAntiSpyware

 

 

 

 

 

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Hostgator is best by far!

My experiences with Hostgator!

If you know anything about me, I’ve had several different hosting accounts with different companies like Justhost and Godaddy and I even talked about the websites that not really legitimate sites and are using affiliate links to make money off of people. So I do know several different things that most people might or might not know off. I thought this would be a good time to at least talk about some of them and share with you my coupons to help you save even more money! It is however a personal preference but I will discuss with you in length why I like Hostgator and have been with them for over a year without much a problem.

Reliability is my Priority!

If you are like me, you make your living off people coming to your site. This isn’t always easy for me because I do have 3 different sites all on one server. This is something that helps with me because I have been online for 99.9% of the time since I have been on Hostgator with my 3 domains. Very reliable is great resource. I remember when Justhost wasn’t as reliable and Godaddy was just slow loading, which made people not even try to visit my site.

No Credit Card Required!

This is something that has helped me because of my situation. I don’t have to worry about having a credit card and I can pay with Pay Pal which is something that has been a great value for me. I can go get a Pay Pal Gift card, which is available in several different stores and even in Wal-mart. So I can reload my Pay Pal account every 2 months and not have to worry about fraud with Pay Pal. This is definitely a great resource for those who don’t have credit cards or don’t want credit cards.

Great Customer Service!

I don’t say this lightly because I have my share of problems with my hosting account from problems with redirect and problems with speed. Each time I contacted them they were eager to fix the problem or help me upgrade my server. I even like the possibility to get help almost instantly with just typing to the customer service rep through a chat window. I even had to do some service tickets with them and it didn’t even take 24 hours for a answer from Hostgator. It was really a good experience with Hostgator, some of the reply emails were less than an hour. So I am glad that it didn’t take long to get stuff fixed if it was something that had to be done on the server side.

I could go on but I am really satisfied with Hostgator to the point of wanting to give out some of my domain coupons:

Hostgator Coupons:

Here are the Coupons that you can use to try Hostgator for yourself:

  • paulstechtalk25 — Get 25% off your purchase of an Hosting account using this coupon!
  • paulstechtalk994 — get 9.94$ off first months of hosting!
  • paulstechtalkr2494 — Save 24.94$ of a reseller package.

If I find out more you can bet I will post them so you can get the maximum savings on hosting.

Thanks Hostgator

Paul Sylvester