Wow- What a disaster. I went away for the long weekend and sporadically checked my AdSense ad amazon revenue. The was a big dip. My income dropped by about 75%. Since the blog is a family related blog my assumption was that maybe because of labour day the traffic just wasn’t there. However The blog is several year ago and I last few years the blog held its own and I had never seen a dip like that. I certainly wasn’t panicked.
I got hoe from cottage up north and was caught up in unpacking and settling kids, etc. and didn’t really think about it.
I just about vomited when I looked at numbers. Income from Adsense slashed as as Amazon earnings. CTR rate was fine but page impressions were way way off.
I took quick look at my blog and within minutes I noticed the lonks struture was changed- I have no idea how it happened but the permalinks structure was changed and all the pages on my blog and been re-named, Consequently the hundreds of pages on my blog were not indexed by Google. A quick search proved me correct. My pages and post were not showing up in search engines.

Spontaneous Change of Permalink Structure on Wordpress Blog

I took deep breath and thought though my options. I am still dumbfounded as to how the permalinks structure changed, I did not do it and had not been anywhere near that part if admin panel for weeks. it looked like the change had happened Sept 2. How very very scary. I figure that little change cost me several hundred dollars probably more because I don’t know when pages will get re-indexed and show up again in Google, traffic back, etc.

Getting Site Indexed FAST

My first step was to change back the structure. All trackbacks, cross links and sites thank link to specific sites that link back are getting dead links and search engine bots are reporting those deadlinks.

Nest using Google site map plugin I manually updated the site map.
Next was to create some fresh content. So created some new posts.

Also this is when it pays to have fiends with sites and blogs- I called in favours and had them write posts add links to their sites if only temporarily to get site crawled.

Normally I have Related Posts Plugin set to show 5 related posts but in this crisis I have set to 10 posts for better cross linking and faster re-indexing of site.

Any other thoughts??
Thanks!

Tags: Internet Marketing and Blogs // Add Comment »

I wanted to wait a but before I posted by thoughts and recommenced what i thought was best shopping cart to use with Wordpress.
I specifically needed one to use for digital downloads. If your are selling actual physical product then try WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart which is free.
The ones i looked at were Wordpress eStore Plugin and WordPress e-Commerce Plugin . I did briefly look at others but they did not meet my needs and would by unfair to mention them here.

I ended up purchasing the a href=”http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-estore-plugin-complete-solution-to-sell-digital-products-from-your-wordpress-blog-securely-1059″> Wordpress eStore Plugin , made by the same guy who created free shopping cart plugin for wordpress, WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart. I was very pleasantly surprised.
I am very very .. um. frugal so was going into it annoyed that i was buying a plugin to be honest. I feel but guilty now as the plugin was only 9.99 and the support has been fantastic. Having my emails answered promptly , with no sarcasm or reference to my intelligence or gender had been refreshing to say the least and that only worth the 9.99
The plgin was a breeze to install. Bit of a learning curve but it is a very powerful plugin.

The plugin does what it says it will do and the developer, Amin, sends out frequent updates. I get regular emails with the latest version of the plugin. He has also been great customizing the code and adding features not in out of the box.

My only problem with the problem and it is a big one is the plugin will not work with WP-Super cache. The Shopping cart basically can’t work and chaos ensues.
This has been an ongoing problem as my site is very high volume and my second highest earner. The bulk of my revenue comes from Adsense and affiliate revenue I can’t get that revenue if people leave site because its too slow. The money from digital downloads just doesn’t make up for it. I have not notice significant impact but in holiday months I am not sure i I will overcome the problem.
I am really hoping Amin will come up with a fix!
Overall a great plugin in and I would not hesitate to buy.

Tags: WordPress Plugins // Add Comment »

This has been making me crazy for about a month now and FINALLY got it solved. I tired everything.. simple reboot, defrag, disk clean. etc.
When in a program or in browser and trying to save a file or open a file the dialogue box opens and my files are in reverse alphabetically order. Not sure if I have mentioned buy I am dyslexic and this is enough to paralyse me and put me over the edge! I really thought I might have to reformat. it was THAT bad.
Was not a simple open explorer and change to “name” etc.
The problem could be solved temporarily by doing this- when in dialogue box, right clicking within the screen, checking ‘arrange icons by..” and picking name. This Worked once and had to do every time. ARGH.
How did I solve.
Do the above. Some how get into a dialogue box by opening a program ( i.e WORD, AI, etc) and open a file and when in dialogue box right click so that option to pick ” arrange icons by name ” appears. Then, hold down “ctrl” key. click then “name” option then close the dialogue window by clicking “X” box. will look like it has frozen. It has not. Let go of key and try closing again.
This should do it.
Hope this helps!

Tags: Internet Marketing and Blogs // Add Comment »

On phone now with Rogers and looks like they will be sending me a new iphone 3G after my unsuccessful upgrade to the new 3.0 o/s.
He has taken me through network reset and reset all setting and finally we are at the point where they are sending me new phone.
The is phone is 2 days old! And was replacement for another iphone. This will make 4 Apple Iphones i 6 months,
ARGH.
Wi-fi is turned on and not greyed out but will not detect any kind of a wireless access point. What a drag.
Curious if anyone else has had same problem and if they find a fix.

If you are thinking of upgrading I woudl hold off for a bit- sounds like there are quite a few kinks in this.

Tags: iPhone and iTouch // 2 Comments »