Last week I was reviewing my domain portfolio, and it dawned on me that many of my websites are outdated. Heck, most of them don’t even have blogs attached! A site without a blog is so 2005!

Taking the advice of the countless ebooks that say you can make millions of dollars just by adding a blog to your website, I converted each site to a Wordpress backend and used a standard blog format.

Then I thought, “hey, there are much fancier blogs out there. I don’t want mine to look like shit, so I should hire a good web design firm.”

The best way I know to find a good designer is by referral, but instead of asking around (not necessary in this day and age,) I simply visited my usual websites and looked at the designer link at the bottom of the page.

So I pointed my browser to BlogMatters.net, a fellow blogger in this exciting and invigorating “make money online” niche. The site has a nice and simple three-column design that would work well for my sites. Scrolling down to the very bottom corner, I find “Theme Design by colon cleanse.” Hmm, what an odd name for a web design firm!

I wasn’t too sure about that, so I continued my search. The latest product I have been contemplating is a tooth whitening kit, because once my online riches do start rolling in, I can afford to leave the office for once. And if I go out in public, my yellowing teeth won’t attract the ladies! So I was randomly browsing these websites and came across Best-TeethWhitening.net. It was another beautiful site, so I scrolled down to that designer credit link. Again, I found “Theme Design by colon cleanse.”

I guess the Colon Cleanse designer is pretty well-known!

But still, I continued my search. When looking for eBay coupons, I found EbayCouponAxis.com, designed by colon cleanse. When researching the latest ways to make money online, I came across Forex-Megadroid-Review.info – yet another impeccable creation from colon cleanse!

I couldn’t find but one web design firm that way, so I moved far away from anything relating to online marketing. First up was my local real estate agent, Wake Homes. What do you know, their beautiful site was a creation of colon cleanse! Having one final idea, I went to my favorite source for stripper poles for my apartment – Stripper-Pole.info. Even this site was created in part by colon cleanse!!

That settled it! I decided Colon Cleanse was my web designer of choice!

I get it now. All these new age, Web 2.0 companies have crazy names that don’t make sense. I think that’s what they call a “brandable” name. So I bet the Colon Cleanse Detox Web Design Firm is not only completely legitimate, but on the cutting edge of all things web design!

I decided to inquire about their services. Here is the email I sent…

Dear Colon Cleansers/Designers,

I am currently relaunching a website about my hobby of collecting coins from the year 1977. I feel an aesthetically pleasing blog based on the popular Wordpress software would help me in my endeavor. To make sure my blog is pleasing to the eye, I am looking for an experienced website design firm.

I found some nice looking blogs, and at the bottom of the pages, I found that they were designed by your company, Colon Cleanse Detox. Therefore, I would like to know your prices for website design services you can render.

Sincerely,
Mike Rotch

P.S. Is there a 2-for-1 deal if I want a website design and a colon cleanse?

And here is their reply:

Hello Mike,

Yes, we would love to help you with your website design and colon issues. I tell you what buddy – if you order a colon cleanse detox from us (the best in the business,) I’ll throw in a free Wordpress theme that I guarantee will be aesthetically pleasing.

However, you must act fast. This special deal is only available till midnight tomorrow!

Sincerely,
Ben Dover

OK, it’s time to come clean (just like my colon would be if I used a colon cleanse detox!) I was not fooled into thinking that Colon Cleanse was a true web design firm. Paid links have been around for many years, and specifically, Wordpress theme sponsorships have been around a while, too.

It’s so popular (or at least annoying enough) that DigitalPoint created a sub-forum just for these template sponsorships! The other link sales forum was just way too crowded with these requests.

All it is, is a way for marketers promoting colon cleanse and acai berry offers (which typically pay $40 per lead, hence the reason they’re so popular) to build multiple links with one purchase. If you hadn’t seen this before, the premise is that Colon Cleanse sponsors the theme designer by paying them in order to get a “colon cleanse” link in the footer of the Wordpress theme. Then the theme is given away for free, used by webmasters, and the link popularity for Colon Cleanse gets boosted.

So when you see sponsored links on Wordpress themes like “Theme design by Colon Cleanse” with a link to a crappy landing page promoting some CPA offers for a colon cleanse diet, you’ll know what’s up.

My question: Is this fooling anyone??

Surely this is one of the first things Google can devalue? I mean, it’s a completely unrelated link. How does colon cleansing relate to blogging, eBay, real estate, and stripper poles?

At least the link tricking strategy involves finding related websites. What are the chances people using a given Wordpress theme will be blogging about your site topic?

And the colon cleanse page linked to is nowhere near a quality website (according to Google’s thoughts.) They did add a contact us page link and such, but it goes to a 404 error page! LOL.

So… There are two morals to this story:

1. Do not bother buying unrelated sponsored links on Wordpress themes.
2. Do not hire Colon Cleanse as a web design firm.

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There are a number of ways to block spam. If you have a blog, you’ve probably tried a few. If you’ve ever commented on a blog, you’ve probably seen a few in use.

I’ve been using Akismet since I started blogging, and I’ve been happy with it. But there are other ways. Captcha images, math plugins, questions, and more.

For now it’s “Is fire hot or cold?” and “What is the sum of 7 and 4?” but who knows what the future holds. Someone out there is probably working on an anti-spam plugin that requires you to solve physics and/or calculus equations!

Before you can comment, we have to make sure you are qualified as a rocket scientist. Just answer this simple question and your comment will be approved:

What is the cosine of an ultraviolet wave traveling at a velocity of 27 kilojoules with a frequency of 3, as it extends perpendicular to the angle of inference, in an isotonic solution?

While the grad students go try to figure that out, let’s look at what the people with street smarts are doing: WP-SpamFree

It’s simple. Few spam bots can process JavaScript, and few can process cookies. Ever fewer can process both. However, 99% of your visitors will have no problems with either JavaScript or cookies.

So they made a plugin that uses JavaScript and cookies to block the bots while avoiding the need for captchas and math questions. It’s not rocket science – it’s better than rocket science. I prefer to use the term practical.

I’ve been using it for a week or so and it has blocked 100% of comment spam, giving Akismet a well-deserved vacation! The only thing that has made it past WP-SpamFree was trackback spam, but Akismet caught that with no problem.

WP-SpamFree gets Sucker’s Seal of Approval!

Photo credit: IRRI Images

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You know the little 16×16 favicon images you put on your website? They’re ok, and you have to do one for each site, but they don’t really stand out.

Now, thanks to a new thing called BlogIcon, you can add an 80×80 image to your blog that’s like an avatar that follows you around.

“Like a favicon but bigger” you could say.

You might be thinking, “wait, can’t you do this with MyBlogLog or Gravatar?” The answer is yes, but then you have to waste time signing-up for those stupid services. With BlogIcon, you just upload an image to your site. That’s it!

If you want to learn more or see some examples, take a look at this post at BlogStorm.

But the point of this post is to say that BlogIcon is now installed right here on InternetMarketingSucks, so add a BlogIcon to your blog and it will show up with each comment you make!

(Please add a blogicon on your blog and leave a comment here so we can see how it looks!)

*Update* Apparently there is no longer support for BlogIcon. And it doesn’t work with Wordpress 2.5 or newer. So avoid BlogIcon, it’s a waste of time.

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Sphinn, if you didn’t know, is the Digg-like website all about SEO and affiliate marketing stories. It’s a great refuge from Digg, where all the users love to bury anything that looks like SEO stuff. So there’s no need to game Digg when you can spam Sphinn legitimately and reach your perfect target market!

I noticed the easiest way to do it is to use this Wordpress plugin, the SphinnIt button.

That adds a nice Sphinn button to each post and it updates if your story is already on Sphinn. It’s at the bottom of each post here on Internet Marketing Sucks, so feel free to sphinn my stories to test out the button.

The button is nice, but how good is Sphinn? Is it really worth it?

It depends. I’ve had some stories on there that got a few sphinns. Never made it to the home page though…

Even so, it has sent me a few visitors. And Sphinn visitors seem to stay an average of 1:20. Not bad, especially because it was 97% new visitors. However, most referrals were better, and even StumbleUpon users (over the same time period) stuck around an average of 1:35.

Hell, Digg users stayed an average of 3:32! Digg beating Sphinn was a real surprise in that regard, but Digg barely sends me any traffic at all, so Sphinn still wins in the end.

Let’s see if anything changes if one of my stories makes it to the front page… (hint hint *cough* vote for me *cough*)

P.S. Did I mention that every time I visit Sphinn, I get sucked into reading every single story on their home page? It’s not that they’re any good, just that the titles really suck you in.

P.P.S. Did I mention anything about that blue Sphinn button at the end of each post? It just says “click me” doesn’t it??

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The thing I love about blogging is that so many experts are giving out great information free of charge. (And I mean experts that know what they’re doing, not the “gurus” who just want to scam you…)

I was hoping that with all this free (but useful) information, the fake “gurus” and their get-rich-quick scams would slowly get filtered out and forgotten.

But now I’m wondering if a new Wordpress plugin designed to turn your blog into a paid-membership website might cause some problems.

First of all, the plugin costs $25, so it’s one of the rare plugins you have to pay for. But then it makes it so if anyone wants to read your blog, they have to pony up and open their PayPal wallet…

If this company was venture-backed and had a huge marketing budget, they’d probably make a big stink like PayPerPost and (more recently) the BuyBlogComments comment spamming service. I just can’t imagine the true bloggers condoning these members-only blogs.

Fortunately, I don’t think any smart people will pay to read a blog, so I don’t see this making a huge impact. The useful blogs already out there will certainly remain free, because those smart people are happy to help others.

But the gurus on the other hand…

The “gurus” might just start getting into blogging if they can profit. The $97 ebook phenomenon might slow down, only to see a surge of $37/month membership blogs. This in turn will give blogging a bad name, much like the internet marketing industry as a whole.

I don’t want to read the “Make $16,298 overnight on autopilot just by stuffing a few envelopes” blog, but a total newbie might. And they might just get suckered in because of the marketing principle that says something like charging a price makes your product seem more valuable and/or exclusive, and in turn more people will go for it than if you were giving it out for free.

(You know those companies that charge $75 for a plain cotton t-shirt? It’s the same principle.)

Anyway, that price tag, coupled with a long sales letter, might just attract some followers. And once they get roped in, it will take a while for the experts and helpful forum members to get these innocent newbies back on track.

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Just after writing all about how to deal with splogs, I found a new plugin that will let you add stuff to your feed.

This is great for dealing with splogs, because it’s much easier and faster than manually adding a note at the end of each post. Plus, it only shows up in your feed, so regular site readers aren’t inconvenienced.

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Apparently I didn’t think this list through…

While I realize the importance of Site Maps (I use normal sitemaps along with XML versions for Google,) I never realized how powerful the Sitemap-generating Wordpress plugins could be!

I just stuck with my regular routine, but from now on I should probably put some more effort into the sitemaps. And for that, this sitemap plugin is great!

Next time I write a ‘best plugins’ list, I’ll include this one instead of mentioning two plugins that do the same thing (i.e. Digg This and Digg That.)

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