The SuperCounters widget is not just a (useless?) vanity metric tool, it also redirects traffic away from your site. Learn why here.
Category: Free Resources
Beware of Infringing Upon Amazon’s Trademarks
As an author, chances are that you make your books available on Amazon. Whether you do it exclusively is irrelevant to what I’m about to explain here.
I recently read a post in a Facebook group associated with a well-known/highly reputable advertising course for authors. Someone got kicked out of Amazon’s associates (and lost the affiliate commission that he had yet to receive). Thankfully for him, that amount was small. But many authors make the same mistakes he made, so I’d like to help you avoid those mistakes (and lose your hard-earned income), if at all possible.
Continue reading Beware of Infringing Upon Amazon’s Trademarks
WP GDPR Compliance Plugin
The WP GDPR Compliance Plugin has a vulnerability that puts your site in real danger. If it’s installed on your site, click here to learn more.
Using Canva to Create Images
If you can’t afford to hire a designer to create header/slideshow/advertisement images, all is not lost.
You can use free tools to create your own images. They probably won’t be as great as what a designer could do for you, but they can be good enough for now, for your budget.
Watch the following video to see how I created a slideshow/header image step-by-step using the following free tools:
Continue reading Using Canva to Create Images
How to Back Up and Update Your Site
Keeping your WordPress site up to date (WordPress version, plugins, themes, and translations) is an essential task if you want to keep it secure and prevent hackers from exploiting whatever vulnerability may have been discovered by the ruthless bots who have been programmed to wreck havoc on the world.
“Why?” you ask…
My guess? For no good reason other than the entertainment of some low-life hacker. But there’s probably some good money to be made with porn, malware, or whatever they’re into these days.
Make Affiliate Income from Kobo
If you are “wide” and publish books on Kobo, you may be interested in learning how to make a little bit extra from your Kobo book sales.
I’m fairly new at this self-publishing thing, yet I’ve already earned over $1,000 in sales from Kobo. I also get to earn a little tiny bit of extra money when people buy my books through my Kobo affiliate links. The commissions aren’t huge, but extra money is extra money, right?
See below for what I made in affiliate income from Canada over the past 30 days. It’s not much, but I’ll take that extra $34.62, please.
It’ll cover the costs of quite a few poutines. Thank you, Kobo! 😍 Continue reading Make Affiliate Income from Kobo
Expiration Notification Scam
Have you ever received this message?
This important expiration notification notifies you about the expiration notice of your domain registration for DOMAIN-NAME.COM search engine optimization submission. The information in this expiration notification may contain confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the Domain Seo Service Registration to purchase our search engine traffic generator. We do not register or renew domain names. We are selling traffic generator software tools. This information is intended for the use of the individual(s) named above.
If you fail to complete your domain name registration DOMAIN-NAME.COM search engine optimization service by the expiration date, may result in the cancellation of this search engine optimization domain name notification notice.
If you’ve never owned domain names before, getting such message may have you worried and digging through your wallet to enter your credit card information.
Saving Images for the Web
You want to spend your precious time writing books, not dealing with technical thingymajigs such as saving images for the Web.
I get it.
Your website images aren’t high on your priority list.
But here’s why they’re important
- Speed. Images saved for the Web keep your site running fast. You won’t waste your readers’ precious time (so they may actually stick around and buy your books!).
- Cost Savings. Your hosting account has a space limit (especially inexpensive shared hosting plans). The larger your images, the sooner you’ll reach your limit and have to upgrade. Don’t spend more on hosting than you have to (and spend your money on good editors/cover designers or ads instead).
- Efficiency. With smaller images, your backups will be easier to manage/store.
Earn Affiliate Income from your Books
Whether you’re exclusive to Amazon or wide, there’s an easy way for you to earn a few more pennies per book sale. Yes, that would be in addition to your royalty share (and your readers won’t spend a penny more).
“How?” you ask…
Good question, my author friend, good question.
The answer is: Through affiliate income. Continue reading Earn Affiliate Income from your Books
WordPress.com versus WordPress.org
There are two kinds of WordPress sites, and depending which kind you have, your features (and ability to do certain things) will differ.
The most obvious way to determine which version you have (if you don’t already know) is to login and then look at the interface for your pages. (See image above.) But if you’ve connected your self-hosted site to WordPress.com (in order to use JetPack or some other plugin), then the interface may be misleading. At the end of the day, you should know if you’re paying for hosting somewhere or not.