There are two types of people that this web analytics package is especially useful for, newbies and geeks (and yes, this does apply to me as I am a self-confessed geek).

Clicky is ideal for the newbie who has discovered the importance of visitor tracking and is finding Google Analytics too complicated.

The more experienced stat geek (I love my stats) will also love Clicky because they track more elements than Google Analytics. They even provide the stats in such a user-friendly way that you can get a stat fix with just a quick glance (this can seriously increase your general productivity, I have lost too much time reading through my website data!).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not coming down on the big G, their Analytics program is amazing, is packed full of features, is better than 99% of website analytic packages on the market, and ultimately, is free.

But, and this really is a big ‘but’, the learning curve is very steep for someone who can be considered a ‘newbie’. Additionally, quite a few people who are running a small business and have an accompanying website do not always have the time to work through the given ‘how to’ pages that Google has kindly put together.

So, why is Clicky a more powerful alternative?

Clicky Web Analytics has the traditional features you’d expect but let me share with you a few of the additional features that have me excited!

• Juicy Visitor Details
• Twitter Analytics
• Dedicated iPhone Clicky Analytics
• URL Shortener Integration

If that still hasn’t whetted your appetite, how does this sound:

• Dedicated Wordpress plugin (yes, you can track you stats directly from your Wordpress dashboard)
• Spy on your visitors

The Wordpress plugin is for self-hosted Wordpress blog users and has recently been updated by Joost De Valk, over at Yoast.com. You can download the plugin directly from the Clicky website.

A great additional feature of the plugin is it can also be configured to update your Twitter account each time you upload a new blog post; this also includes a URL  shortener. as stated above, and tracks your links.

The ‘real time visitor tracking’ [*] is what gets me really excited! This feature allows you to literally spy on what your visitors are doing on your website as they are actually doing it. This is a bit like watching a Twitter stream but instead of tweets, you are watching the pages of your website update as your visitors navigate from page-to-page.

All you need to do now is head on over to the Clicky website and sign-up for an account. You’ll gain instant access to a trial period of a pro account (no credit card required to gain access) and will be downgraded to a free account when the trial comes to an end.

To get the complete access to the full range of services I recommend you take them up on their pro account offer, it only costs $59.99 for a whole year giving you a whole 6 months for free.

The do have other packages so I recommend you visit their site now to see what is the best fit for your website.

Here’s the link again: www.GetClicky.com

To your success,

Karl Foxley

[*] For real time visitor tracking that is recording using screencast technology visit Clixpy.com.

I have a confession to make, my secret voodoo blogging methods aren’t going to send you unstoppable floods of traffic and make you rich, but they will give you a better blog. If you are looking for a system that will help you earn cash from blogging the you have a limited time to grab Bloggers Payback before the price goes up; you may already be too late!

Right, now that’s out of the way let’s get back to my not so secret voodoo blogging methods. The reason for this post is to reveal some fundamentals to blogging. You see, people jump into blogging and in the progress of creating their blog often skip the basics.

The tips I’m going to share will add that little something extra that a lot of people overlook… keep reading and all will become clear.

1. Tell Your Readers Who You Are

Seriously, this is such a small thing but it can have a big impact on how your readers interact with your blog. I am still surprised how many blogs I come across where the blog posts were written by ‘Admin‘.

You may write a killer post that compels your readers to start commenting, but instead of being able to address you in a conversational way they will probably stick to more generic responses. Just compare the following:

Scenario A

Hey, I really like your Secret Voodoo Blogging Method; you’ve shared some great tips.

Michael

Scenario B

Hey Kelly, I really like your Secret Voodoo Blogging Method; you’ve shared some great tips

Michael

Okay, not drastically different but now let’s follow Michael as he leaves your blog and starts chatting to a friend on Twitter.

Friend: ‘What have you been doing today?’

Michael: ‘Just reading a few blog posts, one of the posts blew me away!’

Friend: ‘Really, what was it about?’

Michael: ‘It was about some secret voodoo blogging methods.’

Friend: ‘Sounds awesome, who wrote it!’

Now, if we return to scenario A for a minute, Michael will say something like ‘erm, not sure but here’s the link …’.

However, in scenario B Michael knows who the author is and he was so impressed he is just about ready to tell the world. His response will now more likely be, ‘Kelly wrote it, here’s the link … she knows her stuff!‘.

This small tip really helps with word-of-mouth and social media marketing where people like to talk about people!

Having your name displayed also makes it easier for people to contact you regarding joint ventures etc.

You can enhance this even further by adding some extra elements just like you will see on this blog.

Below this post you will see an author bio box that is being created using a free Wordpress plugin.

If you would like a similar author bio box on your blog then you can get the plugin from the Devils Backyard and is called About The Author Box Plugin. The About The Author Box plugin also works for multi-author blogs making this a great plugin.

While you are at it you should head on over to Gravatar and sign-up for your free account. You will then be able to add a photo that will be used for your comments on other people’s blogs. Do that now, come back here and leave a comment (using the email you signed-up for your Gravatar) and your beautiful pic will be displayed next to your comment for all to see.

You can change your display name in Wordpress under the Users tab where it says profile.

To enable Gravatar for your comments then you’ll need to enable Gravatar by going to the Discussions page under the Wordpress Settings tab.

Let’s move on to the next tip…

2. Hide the date

Well, you may not want to hide the date of your blog posts but rather move it to below the content.

Why? Because people love fresh content!

Let’s say you have written the best ever post all about widgets but the post is now 3 years old.

When people do a search for widgets in Google they may come to your page see the date and hit the back button. You know it is the best ever timeless piece written about widgets but people love fresh and right now content.

Moving the date below the post will decrease the chances of this happening. People will no longer see the date until they scroll down the page and hopefully your content will have grabbed their attention by then.

You will have to play around with your blog theme to make this possible. We use Elegant Themes eBusiness Theme which allows us to hide the date with one click of a button in the theme admin area.

I’m glad you are still reading and have stuck with me this far, so let’s head on to the final tip.

3. Ask your readers to do something!

Do you want your readers to interact with your blog? Well, then you need to ask them to! When you write your next blog post be sure to end it with a call to action.

Conclude your blog post with a statement that is a good fit for your content.

Examples:

A blog post about social bookmarking:

Now you’ve discovered the power of social bookmarking why not test it out right now by clicking here and adding us to your bookmarks.

A blog post about RSS feeds:

Now you’ve walked through our tutorial for using RSS Readers to stay-up-to-date with the blogs you enjoy, click here to add ours.

A blog post about a product launch:

What I want you to do right now is click on the link and grab your copy of Blogging Payback before the price goes up!

You see, sometimes you really do need to tell people what to do to get the results you want.

I hope you have found this post useful, before you go, be sure to join me on Twitter as I’ve finally got myself an account!

Best wishes,

Kelly-Anne

2009-10-30  photo credit: revjim5000

If you are not sure what I am talking about then just take a look at the screenshot below of Google Images holding my site in a frame.

Not all sites that hold your site in a frame are bad, my objection is when the offending site has ads plastered everywhere.

Another objection of mine is the traffic I get from Google Images. You see, Google Images brings me a lot of visitors that wish to copy my images to use on their websites or projects, yes, I have tracked the clicks on my site and some of my images show a high click rate indicating the visitor’s intentions.

The simple solution to this is to install a small plugin known as the Frame Buster Wordpress Plugin by Semiologic.

You can download the plugin directly from the site by visiting the Semiologic Frame Buster Wordpress Plugin page or, alternatively, you can download the plugin from the Wordpress Plugins Directory.

Below is a quick video showing the plugin in use. The video opens in a new window (sorry no sound)!

The video shows me clicking through to my site from Google Images, as the page loads, frame buster kicks and forces the site out of the frame.

I am yet to discover any negative effect to using this plugin or any penalties netted out by the search engines. I’ve been using the plugin for a few months now and I haven’t had any issues.

On a side note, Semiologic have a special Wordpress package that will help you dominate any niche with their out of the box solution. Click on the graphic below and you’ll see the whole host of pro-member only special plugins that you will not find any where else!

I hope you found this post useful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

For a live example of this site breaking free of a frame click here.

I’m sure by now you’ve trialed various ESPs and you would have no doubt experienced the frustration of having to change your blog opt in web forms, resize text, format fonts, etc.

Let’s say you are using Get Response and you decide to change to AWeber, imaging being able to simply cut and paste your new web form code and that’s it, your blog opt-in form stays exactly the same, just with a different ESP collecting your registrants information.

Well, this has been made amazingly simple with a plugin called Max Blog Press Optin Form Adder.

Download the plugin, use your FTP client to upload it to your plugins folder, activate the plugin and start styling your optin form, just the way you want it!

Visit the Optin Form Adder page for more details and follow the step-by-step instructions of how to set up the form.

If you scroll to the bottom of this page you will see that I am using the Max Blog Press Optin Form Adder for my newsletter (why not sign-up while you are taking a look and get posts like this delivered to your inbox).

I’ve trialed the Optin Form Adder with Get Response and AWeber and both worked fine. I’m sure the form will work just as easily with the other major email service providers on the market.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

photo credit: Mzelle Biscotte

This is just a quick update to let you know that we have added the Top Commenters Widget to our sidebar. What this means for you as a blog commenter who makes it on the list is that your website like will get maximum exposure from our site as a thank you for leaving a comment.

The same rules still apply when leaving a comment so please read our comment policy. All we really ask is that you add value for our readers and your comment will be here for all to see!

If you are interested in adding the top commenters plugin to your blog you can find it over at the Wordpress Plugin Directory.

That’s it, that’s all I have to say! If you want to feature in the top comments section then get posting.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. Be sure to include your websites URL in when you comment for maximum benefit.

photo credit: AYUMi [Esami in vista o_ò]

We are sharing the LOVE! This is just a quick update to say that we have taken the decision to reward all commentators by installing the NoFollow Free Wordpress plugin. The NoFollow attribute is built into Wordpress comments by default but can be overridden using certain plugins.

For a detailed explanation of the ‘nofollow’ attritube then read this post by the Blog Bloke.

We were originally using Lucia’s Link Love plugin that allowed us to stipulate a particular number of comments someone would have to leave before their links had the nofollow attribute removed.

We’ll, we’ve gone one step further and are now rewarding anyone who leaves a comment with a search engine friendly link.

So what do you have to do to get some love from us?

Simply leave a comment and remember to include your URL where it says ‘website’.

That’s it! Be sure to read our comment policy before posting. All we do ask is that you provide value and that you use your real name (and not ‘viagra pills’ or ‘free adult movies’ – you know who you are )

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you are interested in starting your own self-hosted Wordpress Blog and was wondering how to get started then I highly recommend you check out Dave’s Online Videos. The monthly membership fee is incredibly low for the information that you gain access to and you can cancel at anytime, no questions asked! You can find out more here.

photo credit: Sabrina Campagna

Link masking is a great way to protect your affiliate commissions from being hijacked. In today’s post I want to share with you a really cool Wordpress Plugin that will allow you to mask your links in no time at all, and right within your Wordpress admin area.

Before we get to the good stuff I just want to quickly say that masking your links is what is often referred to as cloaking but they are two different things. Masking is preventing people from viewing your affiliate link to help decrease affiliate link hijacking and to also increase click-through rates, some people really don’t like to click on those affiliate links.

Cloaking your links is a way of gaming the search engines by presenting the search robots with one page while showing people a different page. You can read more about link cloacking and what Google have to say by reading this article.

You’ll want to head on over and grab the GoCodes Redirection Wordpress plugin. Then use your FTP client to upload the plugin to your plugins directory and then return to your admin area to activate GoCodes.

To mask your first link you will need to click on the GoCodes link under tools (in your admin area).

Now you’ll want to decide on the name of the redirection.

1. Your custom redirect will be www.yourdomain.com/go/. By choosing your redirection key, in this case, Keyword Elite, my masked link is now

http://www.foxleymarketingsolutions.com/go/KeywordElite.

2. Now you will need input the URL you are masking. In this example I am using a ClickBank affiliate link for a product by Brad Callen called Keyword Elite. If keyword research is your thing then this a serious piece of software. You can also grab a free keyword research report by visiting here.

3. Lastly you will want to select whether or not you want GoCodes to track your clicks, I enable this for a quick reference point.

Now click the ‘Add Redirect‘ button to create your first masked link.

That’s it, you’ve created your first redirect and masked your link. If you would like to change the redirection folder from /go/ to something that you would prefer then you will need to click on the GoCodes button under the ‘settings‘ tab in your Wordpress Admin area.

The most common file name people use is ‘recommends‘ but you can use whatever word you like.

GoCodes is a great plugin and I have had no issues since I started using it. The guys who created the plugin do mention one known issue:

There seems to be a conflict with the WP Super Cache plugin where a redirect will only work once before the cache is cleared. There is a workaround, though. All you have to do is add “index.php” on a new line in the “Rejected URLs” field of the WP Super Cache options page. This will disable cacheing of the page yourdomain.com/index.php. Generally, this shouldn’t be too big of an issue, as visitors will rarely add the /index.php when they visit your blog.

As you can see, this work around makes the problem a very minor issue. What are you waiting for, go and check out GoCodes now!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. Be sure to check out Keyword Elite version 2.0 and put your keyword research on steroids.

P.s.s. An alternative plugin to GoCodes Redirect is Affiliate Mask I haven’t used this one myself so you will have to test it for yourself.

Link Masking Software: PHP Link Cloaker, Powerlink Generator, Easy Link Manager

photo credit: Gret@Lorenz

The answer to this is a resounding yes! STOP… before you rush away and start leaving comments on as many blogs as you can I would like to say that there is a RIGHT way and a WRONG way to do it. The right way will earn you a nice bit of traffic while the wrong way will make you look like a spammer. Are you ready to learn the right way?

Adding Value

This may seem obvious but you’d be surprised how many times you will come across the following:

“Great post”

and

“Thanks for the information”

and so on.

Although it is nice to show your appreciation for a ‘great article’ it is better to try and write something to it that extends upon the post.

Do you agree with the post?

Do you disagree with the post?

Have you had a similar experience that worked for you?

Have you had a similar experience that didn’t work for you?

Is the post about something you would try?

The benefits to adding a comment that moves beyond the typical ‘great post’, is that it allows you to share your expertise. This is the important part to blog commenting, sharing informative tips and experiences that extend upon the blog post will show you to be an authority in that area and encourage people (those that would like to find out more about you) to click through to your website.

Looking at the image above you will be see that my name (in blue) is hyperlinked to this website. You see, if people like your comment or are just curious about who you are they will click on your name and visit your link.

Wise Hyperlinking

When Hyperlinking out from a blog I recommend you use your name. This is because you want the readers to know who you are and if they want to find out more they will click on the link. You’ll often see names that look like this:

Derby SEO Company

or

Website Submission Software

Personally I think this looks spammy and I only recommend hyperlinking like this when the blog you are leaving the comment on has KeywordLuv installed. To find out more about this plugin and how to find blogs with KeywordLuv installed then you can read my previous post here.

If you contribute value to a blog over-and-over again through regular commenting the blog author will be much more accepting of you linking out to an external post. Let’s say I was commenting on this blog post my comment could look like this:

I agree with you that blog commenting is a great way of generating traffic and establishing yourself as an authority within your niche, especially when you are focusing on finding related blogs in your target market. I recently wrote an article about The Fundamentals of Traffic Generation that I think covers the core of getting more visitors to our websites and I believe it resonates with the message of adding value.

Regards,

Karl

Be sure to not just write blog comments that have the sole intention of getting you a deep link back to your website, this will be the fastest way of having your links removed before your comment is published or, worse, having your comment marked as spam. I’d mix it up and leave more comments without links than I do with links.

Multi-Author Blogs and Guess Bloggers

When you start finding blogs that you like in your niche you may notice that some are run by a group of authors while other blogs have guess bloggers that write the occassional post. Please be sure to credit the blog post author and not the blog owner when leaving a comment, this makes it look like you haven’t really read the post. It only takes a second to double check.

If you own a blog yourself, make it easier for your readers to engage with you by having your name as the author and not ‘admin’; you’d be surprised how many blogs I come across where it is like that.

Wordpress Plugins That Reward Users for Commenting

The great think about Wordpress is the many plugins that a site owner can use to increase the user experience. When you start incorporating blog commenting into your traffic generation strategy you’ll want to focus on blogs that will give you additional rewards.

The first plugin to note is the Top Commentators plugin that rewards the top commentators with a sidebar link back to their website. You can view this in action by visiting John Chow’s Blog and taking a look to the right of the page (you will have to scroll down a short way).

I recently wrote about the KeywordLuv Wordpress Plugin and I recommend you read the post and even use the neat KeywordLuv search engine that will help you find KeywordLuv enabled blogs.

Additionally, you can also read my post on another great plugin, the CommentLuv Wordpress Plugin, and you can also find the CommentLuv search engine that will help you find CommentLuv enabled blogs.

To find blogs in your niche in general you can perform a google search as illustrated below:

your keyword “blog”

Now, to stand out from the crowd.

Gravatar

When you start visiting blogs on a regular basis you will see that many commentators will have a pic accompanying their comment. Gravatar allows you to register with their website and upload a photo. Now when you leave a comment, using the same email you registered with, your pic will appear next to your comment for the world to see.

This is a great way to add a touch of personalisation and help you stand out from the crowd.  This site uses Gravatar so if you wish to leave a comment and show the world your beautiful face then feel free.

Making It Real Easy

Okay, you’ve probably started to think that this is really hard work. Well, you can make it very easy by using iGoogle as your dedicated homepage (control panel in my case). Now, for every blog you visit and like simply grab the RSS feed and add it to your Google Reader and then add your Google Reader to your iGoogle homepage so you’ll now when a new blog post is live (I’ll create more detailed post in the near future walking you through the steps of how to create an iGoogle homepae and make it a killer resource).

One of the reasons you’ll want to know when a new blog post goes live is so you’ll be able to head straight over to the blog and be the first to comment. If the post is on a high-traffic blog you will receive a decent number of visitors to your blog.

Final Thoughts

Blog commenting is a great way of spreading your links across the web but your success of finding targeted visitors will greatly improve when you focus on finding blogs that are related to your niche and when you provide value to other blog readers.

This is also a great way of gaining additional exposure from blog owners who may invite you to become a quest blogger on their blogs.

Please never spam anyone and leave intelligent links for all to enjoy.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. For more information about makeing money from blogging then take a look at Atomic Blogging.

photo credit: bradleygee

CommentLuv is a Wordpress and Blogger plugin that allows your blog commenters to leave their latest blog post as a link along with their message. By registering with CommentLuv (now ComLuv) you will have your latest blog post shared as a reward for leaving a comment.

To see it in action visit the ComLuv member sign-up page, register your blog and then come back here and leave a comment below. Your last blog post will be added right there with your comment for all to see and this will increase the potential for click-throughs, especially if you leave a comment that provides something of value.

If you would like to have the plugin installed on your blog you can get the CommentLuv Wordpress Plugin from the Wordpress plugins directory. You can also get both the CommentLuv Blogger plugin and Wordpress plugin directly from the ComLuv website.

My secret tool for finding CommentLuv enabled blogs is the use of a dedicated CommentLuv Search Engine.


Just type in your chosen search term relevant to your niche in the search box above and hit search. Try typing in SEO just to give it a try!

Bookmark this page so that you can easily use the search engine again for you traffic generation campaigns.

Lastly, never spam comment the blogs you find. Leave comments that provide value and you will get a regular stream of visitors to your blog in return.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. For a KeywordLuv search engine visit our This Blog Uses KeywordLuv blog post.

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Take a look at the premium Wordpress blog theme below:

Come on, isn’t that one awesome design. As with every Elegant Theme, this blog theme is totally customisable in the most user-friendly way.

Head on over to the Elegant Themes website to find out more and to test the theme live. You can gain access to every single theme in the Elegant Themes catalogue for the insanely low price of $19.95. Yes, you really did read that correctly!

To your success,

Karl Foxley