GeekLad - Latest Comments

Re: Disqus vs. Intense Debate

Traveller_Adventure — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:12:14 -0000

What a useful post here. Very informative for me..TQ friends...

Cheers,
Buat Duit Dengan Blog

Re: Disqus vs. Intense Debate

kongrit — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:03:25 -0000

Thanks a lot for sharing

Re: Disqus vs. Intense Debate

Bluerayprice — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:06:52 -0000

still very new on it but feeling positve with the comments in here

Re: Disqus vs. Intense Debate

Traveller_Adventure — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:39:27 -0000

Great post, really help me alot. Thanks.

Cheers,
Buat Duit Internet

Re: Alternate Recent Posts Widget

GeekLad — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:24:25 -0000

Not at this time. It is really meant to replace the existing recent posts
widget and nothing more.

Re: Alternate Recent Posts Widget

Sciabb — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:47:08 -0000

Is it possible to display this plug-in in the footer instead of the sidebar??

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

GeekLad — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:40:15 -0000

Currently only the US is supported, but I will likely add other locales in
the near future.

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

chris — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:20:33 -0000

how can i have the plugin show the german store ?

Re: View External Nofollow Links in Google Webmaster Tools

Seo Company Submitqueen — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:20:36 -0000

Google Webmaster tools shows you exactly which links google has taken into account as to be your backlinks.
Thats a great help for webmasters too check there backlinks no matter it even shows the ones which you might havent seen in any of the backlink checking tools.

Re: Alternate Recent Posts Widget

GeekLad — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:53:14 -0000

Thanks for the fix. I didn't realize I was leaving open tags. I'll update
the plugin to include your fix.

Re: Alternate Recent Posts Widget

Web Guy 303 — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:16:43 -0000

Hey just a heads up, I ran into a small issue with the code - I described it and posted a fix here: http://webguy303.com/2009/06/alternate-recent-p...

Re: Alternate Recent Posts Widget

Web Guy 303 — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:14:54 -0000

Hey I just want to say this is a sweet plugin - I've always hated the redundancy of the recent posts lists on my sites. Just started using this plugin today and now I wonder why Wordpress doesn't do this outta the box, it makes so much sense. Thanks!

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

GeekLad — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:43:13 -0000

Thank you taking the time to share your concerns and suggestions, I do
appreciate them. First let me address the issues you mentioned regarding
the Tarzan and Amazon terms and conditions.

I do not believe that Tarzan requires any link love or even mention of its
use, but I felt compelled to do so. Without the Tarzan library, it would
have taken a bit more work for me to develop my own library for
communicating with the Amazon API. The code probably would not have been as
efficient without it either. Now that you mention it, there is currently no
mention in this post that I used Tarzan to develop the plugin. I will be
sure to update it accordingly.

Of course one could make the argument it is much easier to share link love
when it someone else's link love you are sharing, and I wouldn't dare
dispute that. However, I decided that if I was going to share your link
love with my site, it would only be fair to share some with Tarzan as well
since it also played a part in the development of my plugin.

According to the Amazon terms, you are correct, the logo or phrase only
needs to be placed on one page within the website. However, given that I
will be splitting 10% of the impressions with other blogs, I need assurance
that it will indeed be displayed each time my ID appears.

As to the issue of displaying backlinks as well as taking 10% of the
impressions, I've decided it is worth doing so at this point in time. I do
realize there are many such as you and fallman that will be unwilling to
accept these terms. However, I believe it is worth the risk of losing some
plugin users when there are others willing to accept my conditions.

The either/or option is a good suggestion, but it is not something I'm
considering at this point in time. However, you do have me considering the
development of a competitor to phpbay and BANS and undercutting them by
offering a less expensive alternative. Essentially it would function in the
same manner, but without the backlinks and 10% impressions. You may have
just given me my next project. :)

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

jamie of doggiepedia — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:48:20 -0000

I hope I say it nicer, but I'm unable to use this plugin for the same reasons. There's way to much going on in this plugin that encourages whatever readers I get to surf away from my site without me getting anything out of the deal.

A small time blogger needs to focus on pushing her own site, and your links are just garishly blatant - it honestly makes my site look like a feeder for yours and not a separate entity. A big time blogger is probably not going to use your plugin at all.

It's not at all fair that you're getting PAID (at least 10% of the amazon referrals will be with your aff id, so IF your plugin makes sales for us it will be making sales for you too), -and- you're able to steal my visitors (and get Pagerank). That's not usually how these things work. Frankly, that's why phpBay makes so much money.

Also, from Amazon's operator agreement: 8. Identifying Yourself as an Associate (snip) We will make available to you a small graphic image that identifies your site as a Program participant. You must display this logo or the phrase "In association with Amazon" somewhere on your site. (snip)

Amazon only requires that disclosure ONCE, not on every page and post. Which means I can include it on my Privacy Policy page, along with my Adsense Disclaimer.

Then there's Tarzan. First, is Tarzan even still the name? I thought it was cloud something or other now. Second, it's open-source. I have not read the terms, but I do not think link love is REQUIRED. Give it credit in the admin section then.

Isn't the point of this plugin for ME to make Amazon sales, and for you to get a cut? Not for every reader of my site to get distracted by your plugin credits and then LEAVE my site and get a copy for themselves? Or go to Amazon directly? Or go to the Tarzan site? I can't make referrals if my readers leave, which means that out of you, me, Amazon and Tarzan, I'm the biggest loser. I lose a visitor, I lose a sale, I give my competition a new tactic, and maybe all three.

This plugin can either make both of "us" money, or it can give YOU pagerank and 10% of whatever's left over.

I'm willing to consider trading 10% of my potential sales for the sake of convenience, but part of my potential sales and potentially a major part of my miniscule traffic?

That's not convenient at all.

And I'm not accusing YOU of this at all, but there have been problems in the past with other plugin writers who hosted code on their own servers that "skimmed off the top" a bit more than they said they would.
Have you considered an either/or setting? Either you get dofollow linklove OR you get a cut?

I hope you can understand my concerns, and know that I don't mean at all to be offensive. But these are things that we all have to consider; both you as the plugin provider and the rest of us as potential customers or even "partners."

Re: More Simple and Easy SEO to Increase Your Pagerank

GeekLad — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:20:08 -0000

If you don't know how to program WordPress plugins or plugins for other blogging platforms, if you know basic HTML you can provide HTML code to others to display a badge on their site to promote yours. Perhaps just a simple image link with your logo. Just be sure to provide some relevant text for the link. That is always worth a shot.

Another method you can try is to seek blogs that do not use the nofollow tag in the comments. If you use Firefox as your browser, you can try the NoDoFollow addon to quickly determine if a blog is using the nofollow tag.

If you use the NoDoFollow addon and you see comment author links highlighted red, it means they are nofollow. That means they will not help you get precious backlinks that will help you with the search engines. Otherwise, you will have to view the HTML code and check the comment links to see if they are nofollow links.

Unfortunately, blogs that do not use nofollow tags tend to be few and far between, but there are some out there. One interesting strategy you could try is to search for U Comment I Follow badges on blogs. If you combine that with the Firefox plugin I mentioned, you may be able to find a few blogs that do not use nofollow with minimal effort.

Re: More Simple and Easy SEO to Increase Your Pagerank

zotrim slimming — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 10:41:26 -0000

But how if I can't make plugins, is there any other way to get backlinks ?
Thanks...

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

GeekLad — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:28:32 -0000

The store is generated on my server. All the parameters for the store display are passed from the plugin to my server. My server queries the Amazon Product Advertising API to retrieve the information according to the parameters passed to it, passes the store contents back to the plugin, and the store is displayed.

You can actually see what the outputted HTML looks like if you visit a URL that will generate a store. For example:

http://geeklad.com/tools/amazon/amazon.php?trackingid=gee0dd-20&rows=3&columns=3&pagination=yes&logo=black&keyword=Blu%20Ray%20Player

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

Jomark — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:16:20 -0000

By the way what's this code for in the plugin;

$storeurl = "http://geeklad.com/tools/amazon/amazon.php?trackingid=$trackingid&rows=$rows&columns=$columns$pagination$customcss$logo&keyword=$keywords";

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

GeekLad — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:31:49 -0000

Oh, and how could I have forgotten add Disqus to that list as well. LOL

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

GeekLad — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:16:58 -0000

I've already openly discussed using backlinks in widgets as an SEO strategy:

http://geeklad.com/more-simple-and-easy-seo-to-...

It's not a big secret and I doubt if I'll get sandboxed. There are plenty of other sites out there that do it, many of them with simple HTML. To name a few:

http://twitter.com/widgets/html_widget
http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne
http://technorati.com/tools/linkcount/

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

twitter-26222073 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:16:36 -0000

LOL you said in open that you have the links for SEO.

I hope your site does not get sandboxed , as talking like that will grab attention.

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

GeekLad — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:42:36 -0000

You can disable the Amazon logo by using the parameter logo="none". The
"Amazon and Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its
affiliates" line must stay in order to remain in compliance with Amazon's
affiliate program terms of service. I used the Tarzan Amazon API library in
order to develop the plugin and they deserve credit for the good work they
do. The Amazon Niche Store line is there for SEO purposes for my plugin.

I'm sorry to hear you are displeased with these conditions, but I have
stated them very clearly. If you don't like them then don't use it.

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

Copart — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:52:01 -0000

This might be a great way to make money. Seeing as Amazon already provides the means to sell stuff, all you need to do is just take care of the merchindise. Great tutorial.

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

failman — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:26:41 -0000

Can't say i'm down with you throwing up all that junk at the end of the widget

"Powered By the Amazon Niche Store and Tarzan
Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates" and the big huge banner too...

it really makes the plugin useless as it's way too spammy on the "credits"

You should make it an option to display all that information at the end of the plugin and not force it on everyone.

This plugin could of been good, but due to this small fact, it's a huge fail.

To anyone who wants to download this beware, you will have to live with a HUGE amazon banner + "Powered By the Amazon Niche Store and Tarzan
Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates" all over your blog.

Re: Build Your Own Amazon Niche Store

GeekLad — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:31:13 -0000

It definitely wouldn't hurt to try it out and see how you do. I think a
niche like wedding planning is well-suited for monetizing with my niche
store plugin.