Yoobam

Facebook PPC team have the PC bug

Jan 18, 2010 PPC 8 Comments

I’ve just created my first ad to promote my new website by PPC on Facebook.

Here is the picture that I created -

Guess What? It has been disapproved! Here is the explanation that I have been given -

Ad Disapproval Reason(s):

* The image of this ad is either irrelevant or inappropriate. Per sections 4 and 5 of Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines, the image on your ad should be relevant and appropriate to the item being advertised. Images that are overly explicit, provocative, or that reveal too much skin are not allowed. Images that may either degrade or idealize any health condition or body type are also not allowed. Additionally, images may not emulate site features or suggest functionality which is not present (e.g. a video play button). If you choose to submit this ad again, please use an appropriate image that adheres to all of Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines.

What a load of bollocks!

What photograph am I supposed to use? I’m promoting Corsets FFS! The image is not sexually explicit or provocative. It must be that it is idealizing a body type that Facebook does not approve of.

I’m willing to bet that the person who disapproved of the ad was a fat woman

If that offends you then frankly I don’t give a shit! I’m overweight myself, but I don’t get offended by all the six-pack adverts on facebook.

Don’t you just hate it when these huge corporations decide to start preaching morals?

And I am also sick to death of these people who are getting offended all the time. What’s wrong with been offended every now and then? Nothing happens. Your not going to die. It doesn’t hurt. I get offended by Westlife, but I dont go on about it.

Rant over.

I Can’t help it. It’s an addiction!

Jan 15, 2010 General Stuff, SEO 1 Comment

There is not a day goes by without me checking my stats in WebCEO.

Yep, I know it’s wrong but I just can’t help it. Along with checking my emails and Statcounter every 30 seconds, I must be wasting so much of my affiliate marketing time. Just think; If I halved the time I spend twiddling with apps and monitoring my stats I could write loads more fresh content and have more free time to spend down the pub

This is my list of biggest waste of time websites and apps that are stopping me being productive -

• Statcounter
• WebCeo
• Outlook
• Facebook
• Owlstalk (Sheffield Wednesday message board!)
• Youtube

Since I made AFeeds I have also spent more time reading affiliate blogs, but I don’t class that as wasting time because I am always learning new stuff.

So come on. Tell me what websites you spend way too long on when you could be doing something productive? (and no cheeky ones please!)

My new website ready to launch

Jan 14, 2010 Affiliate Marketing, Theme Design, Wordpress Leave a comment

I have been working on my latest website for the last few days and I am really quite pleased at how it is shaping up.

The site is  called Hot Corsets and I am planning to promote it with google PPC. The subject is fairly self explanitory and I must say that I have rather enjoyed researching suitable merchants.

I’ve still got a few bits to tweak, as well as adding the content. It’s been built for  WordPress using a home made theme that I knocked up in Dreamweaver. One problem that I am having is getting the site to look right in IE 7 (I hate explorer!!) So I need to look at the CSS over the next few days.

I’m looking for some good quality links, so if anybody has a similar site and is interested in an exchange then give me a shout.

EDIT: I’ve since updated the site a bit, and it’s a nice little earner!

Link Building from A to Z

Jan 12, 2010 SEO Leave a comment

It can be one of the most boring aspects of SEO, but if you want your site to rank well then it is also one of the most important.  I have read many books and articles on link building and I have tried lots of different techniques (including automated software and link farms. Ouch!)

In my opinion, a great way to find good quality links is to see who is linking to your competitors and send them a friendly email. It’s really hard work but I have been quite successful with this technique.

A quick and easy way to find out who is linking to your competitors is the SEO Toolbar from SEO Book.

Managing and tracking link requests can be a pain in the ass so I have wrote a little database using Filemaker to manage this for me. Filemaker is a superb tool and by far the easiest way to build databases. It can also publish to the web, which is something that I am looking into to help with my affiliate sites.

One of the best articles I have read on link building is “Link Building from A to Z” over at SEOmoz. It is a brilliant article and worth printing out for future reference.

Design your own Affiliate Marketing WordPress theme

Jan 11, 2010 Affiliate Marketing, Theme Design, Web Design, Wordpress 1 Comment

I’ve played around a bit at building my own WordPress theme after learning CSS and a little bit of PHP. Recently I  purchased a copy of “How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer” from Rockable Press. It only cost around $30 and I spent most of yesterday reading it. I’m now really excited because I am quite confident that I am not very far off being able to build my dream affiliate marketing WordPress theme.

It’s not for total newbies, but if you have a smidgen of CSS and HTML knowledge then you should be able to knock up a theme fairly easily.

The book talks you through designing the mock up in Photoshop (I use Fireworks), putting it all together in Dreamweaver before importing into WordPress and adding a few final tweaks.

I’m going to get started right away, so I will add some basic tutorials as I learn myself.