The lights are dim, but the energy is bustling.

Around tables they sit, sharing drinks, conversations, Iphone apps… but most importantly – business.

It’s a bit like a scene from the Godfather…

As you approach them, you realize that what they are engaged in is very much a closed club. You’re only cool by association. Unless you get introduced by someone who’s already “in”, you may as well not be there.

They’re congregating as we speak, all around the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, much of Asia, even the Mid East on occasion.

And while overall, they are unassuming, it’s these small groups of businessmen who control EVERYTHING you buy related to online business…

Yes, what I’m describing is the hotel bar outside your average internet marketing conference, and the groups of marketers you find there. And if you are trying to learn online marketing, these are people, and circumstances that you NEED to know about.

Why?

Every product launch you see, these guys are behind it. Every time you whip out your credit card at the keyboard for a “how to” course, these guys are behind it.

It’s here that they sit around deciding who’s going to mail their list about what, (before it’s even launched) which upsell is going to lead where, compare sales letter conversion rates, and scheme out how they can get YOU to spend the most possible money for the LEAST possible value.

Sound scary? It kinda is…

For me, it’s everything I hate about this business. Hearing things like:

“People are going to unsubscribe anyway, so why not just send people a sales pitch in every email?”

“I don’t even use XXXX – haha, but I did a product on how to make money with it last year”.

“You’ve got a launch coming up? Cool, I’ll tell my list about it.” (Haven’t seen or tried the product for a second and don’t even care) Or alternatively…

“It converts at 10%? Great, I’ll mail it!”

Those are all things I heard this past week. Eeeeuuurrggghhhhh!! It makes me sick to my stomach.

But that’s how this game works. If you are trying to learn online marketing, that’s what you have to contend with.

The BS is so thick, and you just have to be SO careful with who you trust, and what you buy. Your radar must ALWAYS be on and you have to be extremely connected and focused with what you want to learn, what your desired outcomes are, and maybe most importantly, what your budget is to achieve it. If not, guaranteed you’ll spend far more money on the internet than you make.

—————— Phew, rant over with for now. ——————–

All of that said, there are those very few select individuals who I meet, and they shock me. The diamonds in the rough, the roses growing through the concrete. The people who despite this often disgusting industry we are in, somehow retain their integrity, somehow stay decent people, and still do phenomenally well without the sleeze.

And meeting those people is always worth wading through the douche bags. It’s these people that allow my conscience to survive as a marketer, and inspire me to keep fighting the good fight in this game.

So rather than pure negativity, I thought I’d let this post be a shout out to some of those standup souls who I’ve met recently – to make sure you all know who they are too. They deserve it.

1. I was lucky enough to have a chat in NY with Chris X – you know, DayJobKiller etc? I know how much this guy is into launches, how “in” he is with the guru crew… but no, somehow he’s the nicest guy ever! This is like, Clickbank Millionaire, Adwords uber-guru… He asks about Elysia and I’s engagement, we talk biz for a little, I tell him we’re coming to the UK, and he invites me to meet up with him and their mastermind crew for a beer some time. Just a real dude, you know?

2. In Brisbane, AU while we were back, we met up with super blogger/marketer and fellow Aussie Yaro Starak. Same deal… We talked travel, relationships, a bunch of random stuff, then he takes his afternoon to show us his favorite cafe in Brisbane where he often works. Hardly a word about mailouts, JVs, or how we could “help” each other… A total champion of a guy.

3. Picture this right… We go to meet this guy at this “private membership club” in NYC. The first room we walk into is this enormous lounge area complete with all kinds of super glossy dark leather couches, and bookshelves, with random clusters of evidently super rich people chatting, or working on their computers… the kind of room you’d imagine an old rich dude smoking a pipe in… We go up to meet this guy at the rooftop pool (apparently one of the only in NYC) and the scene is like a rap video… What appear to be models, and rich tanned new yorkers of various kinds huddling around, ordering drinks, sitting in inflatable couches, and so on.

ANYWAY, we meet this guy – someone you probably don’t know, his name’s Jonathan Fields – multiple time published author, highly popular blogger, and about a hundred other awesome things…

Again, first time we’ve met, and we sit and chat like old friends. Despite having every opportunity in the world to be pretentious and snobby, he’s down to earth, open, smiley, friendly, and is as interested in our lives as we are in his. He shouts our lunch, then when we leave he goes “If there’s anything I can do for you guys, let me know”. No, not “will you promote my new launch now”… the exact opposite. Just a genuine, impossibly cool chap.

So yes, it’s true. These rare folk do exist.

If you get a chance, and you’re looking for some people you can trust, check out what these guys get up to at the links I provided. Like I said, it’s the existence of people like this who make the insanity of online business worthwhile.

Otherwise, I hope you found in this post both a wake up call, and some consolation. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Photos: Godfather: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brhomnet/2517897563/

I finally hit a threshold.

I see alot of people’s blogs every week through our memberships and give a lot of advice to affiliate marketers as to how to grow their income and so on. So I KNOW first hand how many people HAVEN’T yet implemented anything like the changes the FTC recommended late last year for affiliate marketers.

(If you missed my post on the FTC updates at the time when they happened or still don’t know what they are – check here.)

Furthermore, I know how much of a pain it is to get a proper disclaimer done for your affiliate blogs, particularly if you don’t have a lot of time or money available.

So what I’ve done is this…

I knocked up a very quick, very brief, side bar widget “mini disclaimer” that is generic enough that any affiliate marketer can upload it to their sites without trouble. Having it on your website can contribute to your compliance with the new FTC regulations without you having to spend a fortune to do so.

This is what it looks like:

Before you use it though, I have to give you MY disclaimers that you MUST read, before doing so.

1. Obviously I am not a legal professional and this disclaimer is not constructed by a legal professional. As such it does not take into consideration anything to do with your website. Of course, I make no guarantee that this will clear you of liability based on the new FTC guidelines.

2. Having this on your website DOES NOT mean you will be in full compliance with the new guidelines.

3. This is not to be seen or used to REPLACE a full and proper disclaimer.

If you read that and now you’re wondering “What is this even good for then?, the answer is:

If you’re currently doing NOTHING, this MIGHT get you out of SOME of the trouble you could find yourself in at the hands of the FTC.

We know they have been very unspecific as to exactly HOW they want affiliates to disclose their relationships and WHERE, so for now, something is better than nothing.

Furthermore, the benefit of this is that I have written a disclosure that I think will minimize the hit that such a statement could make to your click through and conversion rates.

Bottom line, think of it as the first step to your full compliance.

Here is the link to download the images. You can choose the colour that fits best with your blog’s theme from the zip file at this link. If that link doesn’t work, try the RAR version at this link.

And below is the video on how to implement the disclaimer image as a widget to your WP blog’s sidebar. You’ll notice that my Windows is currently in Spanish but don’t worry – it won’t affect your ability to understand what I’m doing on the video

Oh and I was in the middle of a terrible cold at the time so again, excuse me for that!

Enjoy!

Well SUCK IT UP!

What? Sitting in the comfort of your home researching weird subjects and then typing on your keyboard is too hard? No problem… give up!

If your entire financial future and the glory and fulfillment and joy of never having to work for someone again and living the rest of your life on passive income that you earned from your home isn’t worth the little bit of discomfort that it might take for a few months, even a couple of years of writing articles and researching keywords… you don’t deserve that outcome.

Imagine if Nelson Mandela said “I’m sick of surviving in this prison cell…”

Imagine if Martin Luther King said “I’m sick of resisting racial inequality…”

Imagine if George Washington said “I’m sick of fighting for our independence…”

You can’t want something awesome to happen in your life and to ALSO have it be really easy to achieve. That doesn’t happen. Ever.

Do you want to work hard and do what it takes? Or do you want to keep your finances the way they are now? Those are the choices.

I’ve just developed a new theory of IM.

I think that as a general rule (there are exceptions) it can be said that:

The longer someone has been selling products in the IM niche and the bigger the name they have – the worse their products are. Why? Because the bigger they are, the more friends they have, the more people will promote for them no matter what, so they have no need to produce awesome products. People will promote anyway.

And as a corollary, you can often learn the most and get the most value from the products of IM’ers who are up and coming, who have everything to prove, who HAVE to provide massive value at a low cost to try and make a name for themselves… they sell with their products, not their name, and as people trying to learn IM, they represent a unique opportunity.

That’s all.

Weird title, but you NEED to read this post.

This is about how the actions you take to improve your search rankings actually influence your results… and also how they DON’T. Furthermore it’s an important distinction on statistics and analysis that you might just find helpful throughout your life as a whole!

I really can’t think of an appropriate introduction for this subject so I figure we’ll just launch into it…

I often get questions from Firepow members and others to this effect:

“Yesterday I submitted my site to to a list of web directories, and today my rankings have dropped from page 2 for my keyword to page 100! What’s going on?! You recommended me do that and now you’ve screwed me!”

Or in the news, you might hear something like this…

“As Taliban millitants continue to resist the occupation in the southern provinces, Afghanistan’s civilian death toll rises to the highest level since the beginning of the war.”

Each of these statements is saying something “behind” the words…

The first is saying:

“The reason my site lost it’s ranking was because I submitted it to these directories.”

And the second is saying:

“The reason the Afghan civilian death toll is so high is because of the Taliban’s continued resistance”

Here we uncover a potentially harmful verbal and mental phenomenon.

The phenomenon I’m talking about is:

To mistakenly assume that the link between two factors is CAUSAL rather than Co-Chronological. (actually I’m pretty sure Co-Chronological is not a real term. What I’m meaning is, two things happening at the same time.)

In other words: Just because two things happen at the same point in time, doesn’t mean one causes another! They MIGHT well be proven with testing to be causal, but the mere co-existence of them at the same point in time says nothing about how likely one is to have influenced the occurrence of the other.

Am I sounding like a crazy person yet?? Let’s go back to our fictional examples.

1. Just because you submitted your site yesterday, and your rankings dropped today, doesn’t mean the submission caused the drop. Most people who ask questions like this have very new sites, and it’s common knowledge that when your site is new in the SERPS your rankings bobble around all over the place. There’s constant reindexing, constant shuffling. Some people have called it “The Google Dance”.

2. Just because the Taliban are resisting today and the Afghan civilian death toll is at it’s highest point, doesn’t mean their resistance is the reason for the death toll. Just like the search engines, there are other critical factors in play that haven’t been mentioned in the inference.

The real point of this post for online marketers, particularly those looking for free organic traffic is to… (and I seem to be giving this advice alot lately)

RELAX!

Relax, and don’t judge what something means too quickly, particularly before you have all the information. Especially when you have a new site and you’re doing many different things to improve your rankings, don’t freak out and make an incorrect assumption of a connection between two factors unless the connection:

1. Makes Sense (it doesn’t make sense that getting backlinks from quality site directories would harm your rankings)

2. Corroborates with other evidence, experiential or proven (Have you seen this happen before? Have other people reported it happening before? Is it documented?)

And even then it’s something to be TESTED, not decided upon (with the exclusion of the “proven” category from above)

And in the rest of your life?

When you hear something like:

“Gas prices have risen since the beginning of the Obama administration” (I don’t know if that’s true or not)…

You’ll know to see past the inane inference and think “That doesn’t mean anything the administration has done has been the cause of that… I need more facts to evaluate that statement properly”. And then you’ll realize “I sound like a total nerd right now and I need to get back to work”

I hope this makes you think a little more, both as you build your search engine presence and as you go about every day life.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve probably heard something about the new FTC changes that are set to affect the way bloggers, affiliate marketers and info product marketers do business online.

I was hesitant to even post about it up until now because for me, being a non US affiliate and online marketer, things are even more complicated than for everyone else. Now finally I feel like I understand it enough to be able to at least share some of my thoughts with you on how it will affect your business and what you need to do about it.

First let me offer the token and obvious yet necessary disclaimer:

I am not a lawyer or legal expert of any kind and before you take any action related to these changes you should consult with a lawyer of your own.

That said…

I was fortunate enough to be invited as a presenter to a webinar last week with Jim Morris of NicheBOT.com discussing the FTC changes and in particular, good practices for affiliate marketers and bloggers in light of these changes.

The webinar was fantastic and you can actually download a copy for free from this link.

In my opinion, here’s what you need to know/do about all this.

1. This one would be a DO… and can be summarized in a word: RELAX!

Yes, this is a big change, it will effect us, but the sky is NOT falling! Some people are talking about giving up affiliate marketing, changing their business model completely, or flat out quitting online business.

None of those things are needed and here’s why:

a) It has to be noted that what’s been announced by the FTC are changes to REGULATIONS. These are not LAWS that if you break them, you’ll be charged. They’ve made changes to the way they RECOMMEND affiliate promotions and testimonial marketing should be done online, that’s all.

That doesn’t mean you can ignore them but it does mean you can relax and not worry so much.

b) The FTC representative has openly said that they AREN’T going to be patrolling the blogosphere like Big Brother and that they’ll be mostly filing lawsuits against offenders on the basis of complaints.

c) Even then, they’ll be operating on a “strike” type system where you’ll get 2 warnings before striking out and having them bring the pain… so to speak.

Again, I’m not saying that this means you can IGNORE what’s happened, but it does mean you don’t have to make any stupid rash decisions about your business because of it.

2. Understand The Regulations

Make sure you watch the webinar to understand the new changes completely, but basically there’s 2 parts…

First, affiliates have to disclose relationships they have with merchants. So if you promote a product as an affiliate, you have a relationship with that merchant and you have to tell your readers about it. In essence what they want is something akin to saying “if you click this link and purchase, I’ll make money”.

And second, product merchants who use testimonials have to disclose with each one, what is the AVERAGE result likely to be obtained by using their product. (ridiculous when you think about it…)

3. Be Careful With Your Affiliate Promotions

Now for what you need to NOT do as an affiliate or blogger …

a) In your affiliate pitch (presell), blog content, or articles, DON’T make any claim about the results of using the product.

Like I said in the webinar, this is something you shouldn’t ever do as an affiliate ANYWAY.

If you’ve got a piece of content promoting a product as an affiliate where you’re saying things like:

“This cream will solve your eczema once and for all” – You’ve gotta quit it, and really you should never have been doing it in the first place.

Your job as an affiliate is to REVIEW the claims of the product seller, not MAKE them. It’s to share your experience or your research on the claims, not to confirm or deny them. It’s preselling 101… you remain neutral and informative and let the MERCHANT do the selling. Making these changes you’ll probably find your conversion rates increase too because you’re not pissing off your readers by sounding like a salesman instead of a reviewer.

b) Cut out testimonials completely

If you had any testimonials in your affiliate pitch/presell content, just cut them out. They’re another thing you shouldn’t have been doing in the first place (they’re not PREselling) and now they’ll flat out get you into trouble, so quit it. End of discussion.

c) Disclose relationships

The big concern with this one is that including some text somewhere that says anything like “I get paid if you click here” is going to kill affiliate link click through rates. And that’s highly possible.

In the webinar Jim gave some great tips on creatively integrating a disclosure of relationship into an affiliate pitch in a way that may NOT have the above effect, but the bottom line is, it’s up to us to TEST.

It’s unfortunate that they haven’t made a specific request about HOW they want you to disclose a relationship and where but we can make some reasonable judgements on it and hope for the best until more information is released.

For example, you could integrate a disclosure into your affiliate pitch content itself OR leave a short note below your affiliate link or banner. I think the TEXT of your disclosure will be important too. Whether it’s “mysite.com is associated with xyz product and is compensated for customers who find xyz through our impartial reviews” or something similar, it’ll be important to portray the relationship you have with the merchant in a positive light rather than “I’m a slimy commission seeker who wants you to buy from this link before anywhere else so I get paid”.

So the wording and the positioning will be important, and something for those more inclined than me to test thoroughly for their effect on click through rates.

d) Offering Incentives

Where it’s allowed (many promotions don’t allow incentivized traffic) you can give the people a tangible reason to buy through your link so they don’t even CARE if you get compensated from their purchase.

Again, this is something that’s just a staple of good affiliate marketing anyway, but now, it could offer a good way to retain more of the people who may have been otherwise offended by your new disclosure.

e) If you DO want to use testimonials

Another thing I mentioned in the webinar is that if you DO want to use testimonials, there’s a type that’s less offensive in the FTC’s eyes and that might just improve your CTRs. That is, a testimonial for YOU rather than the product.

There’s 2 types of testimonials someone can give me:

One is “Andrew, I made XYZ dollars with Firepow in the past month and I LOVE IT!”

That’s the type that’s gonna be a pain from now on.

The second kind is:

“I’ve bought every product Andrew has ever released and I find him to be a marketer of the highest integrity. Anything he does is top notch and I’d trust him with my life etc etc”

It’s a testimonial to your character, your credibility. How can anyone argue with that? It’s not making a claim about results, it’s just saying that you’re a good guy.

Particularly if you’re an affiliate, this kind of testimonial can be helpful. Eg “AndrewsReviews.com is a source I always trust when it comes to looking for credible info on ABC”. That raises your credibility and doesn’t make any claims that could get you in trouble.

Conclusion

Once again, the conclusion I’m taking from all this is that it’s not time to quit affiliate marketing but we do need to make changes to our approach.

At the end of the day, like we discussed on the webinar, if you’re committed to this business, this news should be a reason for celebration rather than fear. Because it’s another thing that will kick a few of the less committed folk out of the game and leave more room for those of us who are serious about their business

I hope you’ve found this valuable. Any questions, feel free to comment and I’ll try to answer.

To me, there’s far too much talk about money when it comes to online business.

Every sales letter promises a different monetary figure… a different level of income that you could obtain by using it’s all powerful methods. And particularly when you’re getting started, the money means alot.

“What if I could make $5k a week?” IMAGINE that!!

I’ve got a secret to tell you…

I can promise you with full confidence that when you DO make $5k a week (or whatever figure it is that you’ve got in your head):

1. You won’t know what to do with it.

2. You’ll realize there’s only so many things you CAN do with it.

3. You’ll realize that money wasn’t really what you were wanting all along.

In this post I’m going to share with you 5 big reasons why pursuing an online business is a worthwhile goal, completely aside from anything financial.

Here goes…

Number 1: Time Freedom

It’s an unfortunate reality that the condition called Time Freedom is one that the overwhelming population of even the most developed nations will NEVER in their lives experience.

Getting up in the morning and having the CHOICE of what you want to do with your day?!

We take it for granted because we hear about it so much but that capacity is in my mind one of the richest gifts a human being can receive. Furthermore it’s the RIGHT way for FREE human beings to live… not subjugated to an arbitrary authority that steals the hours of their life through wage slavery.

As sad as it is, most people will never know what it’s like to wake up like that but by being an online business owner you CAN have that freedom, every day, for the rest of your life if you wish. How AWESOME is that??

Number 2: MORE Time

If the ability to CHOOSE what you do each day isn’t cool enough, consider the reality of having MORE time to make choices with!

Not having to work 8 hours a day, or even 2 hours a day (if you set your business up like that is) to survive is quite literally akin to adding years and years onto your life!

The things you can DO with that extra time when you don’t have to sell it to someone else are mind boggling.

You can spend time on things that you’re more passionate about, learn a new skill, spend more time with friends or family, travel, have adventures, or just relax and enjoy being ALIVE for once!

This again is an ability that not even the wealthiest CEO’s can brag about. Mention working 2 hours a day to a Fortune 500 company CEO and tell me how badly they laugh in your face.

But THAT’S what online business can give you!

Number 3: Work Anywhere

I’ve never even seen this mentioned as a “benefit” of online business in any sales pitch ever…

But think about how cool and empowering it is to be able to work from ANYWHERE in the world (that has an internet connection).

This isn’t even a luxury that most high paid CEO’s have. Sure they can take a holiday (albeit shortlived), but to physically pack up and move somewhere else if they want and KEEP THEIR JOB in tact? No board meetings, no suit and tie, no one looking over your shoulder? Noooope, not possible.

Online business allows you to work anywhere in the world if you wish. And with that comes the ability to take “permanent holidays”! When you can work ON your holiday… your whole life is a holiday! Seriously think about that in comparison with the reality of most working people!

Number 4: International Friends

When you have a business that’s global and serves people in so many countries it’s pretty hard not to develop connections and friends from all over the world.

I’ve been so fortunate in my time online to meet so many special people from all over the world. I was actually thinking the other day that there’s not many english speaking countries I could wish to go where there’s NOT a cool person that I know through business that would happily show me around, even put me up at their house.

(shout out time…) Khai Ng and Jimmy Chen showed us fabulous hospitality in Malaysia; Dylan, Stuart or Edmund I’m sure would show me around Singapore next time I’m there; David Cavanagh would spot me a few baht in Thailand if I needed it; Craig Desorcy would put me up in Japan at a moments notice; our writers would (and did) show us all around Manila in the Philippines; Dee Ferdinand I’m sure would make sure I didn’t get into much trouble in Indonesia; our coding staff would have my back in China; Firepow support ace Shruti would have me at his home in India; Ladan might even give me a little tour of her city in Iran if (when) I get there (something I’m REALLY hoping for some day); Matt Garret will have another beer in London when we’re there next, and Canada and the US are lists that I won’t even bother starting.

There’s no way I say this to brag, but instead to highlight the obvious fact of: HOW would I have been able to say that if I’d worked at some desk job the last 5 years?

Number 5: Meeting Amazing People

Another list too big to start is the number of truly special people with unique outlooks on life who have inspired and influenced me during my time online.

Needless to say when you’re frequently meeting people who have all of the above number 1 to 4 in THEIR lives too, it makes for some fascinating conversations, in depth learnings and unforgettable experiences.

Not only that but having people around you constantly that are doing big things in their lives inspires you to be and do more with your life. You can’t help be infected by their enthusiasm and driven by their desire.

Conclusion

These are the REAL reasons you should be pursuing an online business and the internet lifestyle because I can assure you that any one of them will lead to infinitely greater fulfillment in your life than any numbers on a bank statement.

I hope this post also gets you to reassess your goals for your online business. Even if you only REPLACE the income from your job… even if you ONLY make $5-600 a week from your online business it can still lead to a life of freedom and happiness beyond your wildest dreams.

To your success!

I’ve estimated recently that for every 10 loser, douche bag, hype machine marketers that I meet or come across their material, I meet one or two that I come to like, respect, and listen to when they talk about making money online.

I got chatting to one such fellow on Twitter recently and this week finally got to catching up with him on Skype… He’s a gentlemen after my own heart, big into using his affiliate cash for travel and enjoying a free, nomadic lifestyle. I envied his videos from a recent trip to Cuba, somewhere I’m dying to travel.

Anyway, he mentioned a couple of things to me on skype that piqued my interest, some of the ways he was generating free, high quality buying traffic outside of the search engines and pushing it towards high payout affiliate offers.

I watched one of his videos that contained a strategy that I thought you might enjoy, something that (while I don’t buy many IM products anymore so I may not be the best judge) I hadn’t seen tought before that definitely had some unique insights into profitable affiliate marketing.

His name’s Peter and the video is below:

WARNING: Don’t freak out, but the video IS on a squeeze page… It’s not a big sell, and I promise you that there’s solid content in the video that you will learn from. I also think if you’re smart you can implement the strategy just from seeing what’s in the video. If you like the content, you can enter your email, otherwise, ignore it and take notes from the video.

NOTE: The first chunk of the video is about niche research, and I think if you’ve been reading my material or blog for a while you could afford to skip it, but the strategy for traffic generation that starts about 10 minutes into the video is killer and you can forward straight to that point if you’re short on time.

What I like about it is that it definitely seems like a strategy that can help you generate FAST cash. As much as those words are a joke in this industry, and generally not something you want to strive for, you’ll see when you watch it that the traffic you could get from this strategy could begin flowing within days of getting it setup, no waiting for anything to get indexed and ranked in the SE’s.

That’s all I’ll say. Here’s the link to the video:

http://affiliatepunisher.com/freemoney/

Check it out and let me know what you think.

I have had some terrible trouble this last week with some of my sites getting attacked by a virus that I now know is also affecting alot of marketers, AND… I have reason to believe, Hostgator users (very likely other hosts) as well…

I’ve spent the week wrestling with coders and hosting support about it and gotten all the information I can on how to prevent it, so I thought I’d share it with everyone here too.

It’s a piece of Malware that infects your local computer, and digs through to find passwords that are stored in programs like password banks, robo forms, ftp programs, etc. It then accesses your site via FTP and adds malicious code to your index pages, which causes Firefox to display a “REPORTED ATTACK SITE” message which (rightly) prevents access to your site.

You then have to go through and delete all the malicious code on any pages that are affected (finding which pages and how many is a matter for your hosting account) before your site can be allowed to view in a browser again. Suffice it to say it’s a right pain in the ass.

So to avoid having this affect you, I advise everyone reading (as I have been advised) to:

1. Don’t store any passwords in password programs like the ones above. If you have passwords saved in these programs, you might consider clearing the records of those programs so that information isn’t available.

2. Run these malware detectors on your computer to ensure you don’t have infections:

Malwarebytes.org

Norman | Norman Malware Cleaner

There are many Malware scanners out there and I’ve been told it’s good to run more than one as any given one doesn’t always pick up all infections.

3. There’s suspicion that Adobe Reader has some vulnerability and if you don’t have the latest update you should upgrade it asap.

4. Update your FTP passwords frequently.

That’s all I know for now.

So you don’t get too worried, I’ve been informed that it’s not a particular dangerous hack, it doesn’t delete your site or try to find credit card info or anything, but it’s dangerous enough to cause problems and be highly disruptive to your business.

Good luck!

P.S. While we’re on the subject of security, it seems wholly appropriate to mention this highly recommended report from a buddy of mine about ensuring the security of your WP blogs against hacking attempts. I didn’t know how badly I needed it until the unfortunate events + loss of traffic + loss of income this past week.

Ma buddy Colleen was the first to let me know last week about the latest wanton infliction of grevious bodily harm by our fun loving friends over at Squidoo…

She proceeded to inform me that Squidoo’s cracking down hard with some new rules and regulations, and that many a peep has had their lens whisked from the face of the web in yet another digital genocide against affiliate marketers and shameless commission seeking web plunderers…

How vigorously verbose I am today

What this amounts to is a crackdown on low quality lenses and excessive promotion.

Of particular note were their comments on what might constitute a junk lens:

“Junk lenses are often described by the relentless number of outbound links to the same exact domain.”

Good call I say.

And their reference, eerie for many I’m sure, to a few of everybody’s favorite Clickbank products (and the affiliates promoting them):

“how to lose belly fat, cure toenail fungus and how to get my ex back… [with regard to] sort[ing] the wheat from the chaff on Squidoo.”

So at the end of the day, a bunch of lenses are going to be shafted… again… and a bunch of people are going to be losing their incomes and having to start from scratch…again…

What’s the lesson??

Well, let me offer you a comparison…

While all this is happening (part of the reason I was late even hearing this news), I’m busy growing the content on, and building links for my own blogs and their individual blog posts…

They’re slower to rank at the start than a Squidoo lens or an article at Ezinearticles.com… sometimes by a month or more, but it doesn’t much bother me…

As I build my own blog, I stick up as many affiliate links as I want… Often a whole blog with hundreds of posts that link to the same product…

No one tells me what products to promote…

And if I mess up… Ain’t nooooooooo one there to get PO’d and shut down my site and my income…

And of course along the way, I might throw up a Squidoo lens with a couple of backlinks to my own blog that no one can take objection to, that help build the rankings of MY site… not Squidoo’s…

So I’m happy about the Squidoo slap.

I’m happy that a new bunch of people are going to be shocked into the realization that they need their own site to build a real business and that building content of a promotional nature on someone else’s domain rather than your own is amongst the most futile money making practices you can engage in short of sending spam emails.

Because make no mistake about it, this isn’t a Squidoo only change. Wordpress.com closes blogs with affiliate links, hubpages.com is like a prickly pear for excess promotion, and you can bet your bottom dollar that other sites will be sure to follow suit.

So take inventory of your methods my friends. And remember…

The easy way is rarely the easy way