Working on another simple PHP script. One that helps you write articles quickly.
It is called Articletator.
I’m planning on having a working version ready very soon.
Here is a ten minute video demonstrating what it does so far – and the code that generates the results.
Articletator Video
The idea is you search for a keyword phrase of interest, tell the script how many results to get and where the results come from.
Articletator goes off and does its thing – grabbing urls of sites that provide the information of interest, parsing out bits of information relevant to your query and reporting back the results in an easy to use format.
Or “The Poor Man’s Split Testing Method”.
There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Darren Rowse made a post about split testing Google Adsense and showed how to do so using channels and a little javascript.
Like a lot of things, there are other ways of accomplishing the same thing.
Enter PHP, that fancy web scripting language that gives you the ability to do some pretty neat tricks.
The code snippet below allows you to split test your Adsense by day. Instead of having to setup separate channels to split test, just login to your Google Adsense account, create two versions of the Google Adsense code you want to test, paste those two versions into the PHP code shown below, put that PHP code in an include file on your site, and call that include file in your web page. Then, if you want to see how you are doing, go back to your Google Adsense account and look at your results by day.
O.K. maybe that was a lot of stuff to do.
If you have a PHP enabled web site and you are not using PHP includes, tsk, tsk.
All of the even numbered days (even numbered according to PHP) will display one version of your Adsense code while all of the odd numbered days will show another version of your Adsense code.
<?php
if (date("z")%2 < 1) {
?>
<!-- Google Adsense #1 goes here -->
<?php
} else {
?>
<!-- Google Adsense #2 goes here -->
<?php
}
?>
The most important part is the “if” statement, the code that checks whether today is an even or an odd numbered day.
In this PHP example the “z” represents the day of the year.
The date(“z”)%2 < 1 checks if today's number modulus 2 is less than one (which asks if today is an even numbered day), then do whatever is between the set of squirly braces - the "{" and "}" - else do whatever is between the next set of squirly braces.
The whatever I am referring to is display your Adsense code.
By the way, there is nothing to prevent your from putting anything between the squirly braces.
There are some limitations to be aware of for sure. Namely, you still need to generate two versions of the Adsense javascript code to include on your web site. Also, if you want to get a better understanding of your results, you will need to download the results and group the data by even or odd day. I don’t even know if Google allows for an easy way to get your Adsense results – I’m not even going to login to find out.
But, for a quick and dirty way of split testing your Adsense results, this PHP code will do the trick.
Extra: You don’t have to just use the day of the year (“w”), you could just as easily use day of the week (“w”), hour of the day (“G”), day of the month (“j”) – or some combination. Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can … oops, that’s for a different topic 
Notice anything wrong here?
So do I , so do I.
That image you see above has been “spoofed” – its a fake.
Sure, I took it from my account, then I threw a little javascript at it and manipulated the appearance. Makes you think I took the first half of the month off from promoting products, doesn’t it?
It better not.
Hopefully, you don’t fall for this type of hype that promises the moon … and delivers nothing but hot air.
That’s why I am pleased to say “Black is Back”
The Affiliate Black Book is available for purchase.
Like a breath of fresh air – if you want to get into the mind of a genius that shows you some killer strategies, then I suggest you purchase this now.
I’ll even “incentivize” you, I’ll provide access to one of my killer little scripts that makes it easy for your to increase your sales … and does so in “X” fashion.
Purchase the Affiliate Black Book through my link, hit the CONTACT page and let me know you purchased (let me know your receipt number) and I’ll give you access to this script.
Heck, even if you don’t purchase, lets have a little fun here.
The first person that replies in the comment section and knows EXACTLY what this script does will get access to the script regardless.
I’ll give you a little hint … most affiliate programs use these?
Lets see how the comments go, I’ll add hints as needed.
Adding articles to your new affiliate gardening site involves uploading a text file to your web site.
The important points are:
- Your article needs to be a text file, for instance, “rose-bushes.txt”.
- The text file needs to be named EXACTLY like you want it to appear on your site. If your text file is “rose-bushes.txt”, then the page that gets displays your article on your site is “http://www.example.com/rosh-bushes.html”.
- The text file needs to be in the same directory as THE SCRIPT.
This short 3 minute video shows you how to upload a text file using a FTP program (I use SmartFTP)
Click here to see the … CLICK HERE >>> article video.
And as an added bonus, the last 30 seconds include some music from the a movie of the 1970s. Enjoy.
The next step in creating a database driven website is to display the results.
We have the contents loaded up in the MySQL database ready and waiting.
First thing to do is write a simple query that pulls out a few of the entries.
The way I will do that looks like this:
The important part is line #62, the one that starts with $sql.
The way to read it is “Give me everything that has the word ‘Tree’ in the title.
Once we have that information, then lets print it out.
The “while” statement on line #65 goes through the results and prints out the title and description. Nothing fancy … at least not yet.
That’s enough to hold me over. Enjoy the “family video” that shows you how to do this.
There’s a problem with datafeed affiliate sites – at least it is a problem if you want your sites to stand out from all of the competition – duplicate content.
Who do you think will rank higher in the search engines for specific terms that you might find in your datafeed? Probably the merchant. If this happens, then your site is less likely to get the click that gets the affiliate sale.
So what to do, what to do – let me think. Hmm.
Let’s get a little creative with what the merchant gives us, shall we.
Here’s an example entry that we can use from the affiliate’s datafeed.
I was planning on using the second line, the one that says “American Beech” as the title. What is to stop me from also adding the word “Tree” found on the 12th line down to the title. Nothing really. I can make the affiliate script combine portions of the datafeed and mash it up to create a new title. Pretty cool, huh!
Or how about this idea.
Instead of using the “Dahlia – Dinnerplate – Magic Sunrise” as the title, why not (1) get rid of the dash (-) and also rearrange the words to read “Magic Sunrise Dahlia Dinnerplate”? I can already see the PHP code to do that.
Want in on a big secret – on how I am going to make each site affiliate datafeed site that I create unique?
What secret little piece of PHP code that I have planned for making certain that no matter what, each site I build is not identical to any other site.
Ready? Here it is … modulus.
I’ll explain later
Here’s what you need to do to get signed up as an affiliate for Nature Hills.
1) Go to ShareASale and signup as an affiliate. If you are already an affiliate, sign in.
2) Click on the link that says “View those with Datafeeds” under the Find/Join Merchants title.
3) In the keyword search box type “garden” and change the Show me merchants programs that … to “Both – show me all.”
4) Find Nature Hills Nursery.
5) Click on “Join Program”
Typically Nature Hills auto accepts and you are ready to go.
“And in the beginning” … what a great opening line.
Time to start building a brand for myself. Get out and press the flesh with the people. Shake some hands, get pictures taken with the babies, break ground on the new skyscraper. Oh, sorry, wrong conversation.
Where was I? Oh, yes, talking with you. Letting you know what’s going on around here. Telling you my great plans for this little old weblog out on the internut.
I guess I should start with what I have planned for this site. After I spruce up the interior a little – a new paint job, refinish the floors, new kitchen cabinets … no, no, no, no – there I go again, getting off track.
Actually, I do mean I need to spruce up the interior of this weblog a bit. Give it a solid foundation to build on. Stuff like tricking out the title – get rid of that damn raquo thing, you know that ‘greater than symbol’ that services no worthwhile purpose. I have the latest and greatest version of WordPress running this site. Not sure what all of its capabilities are, noticed a bunch of widgets running around when I went to muck around with the presentation. I’ll have to wrap my head around widgets and I see if I like what I have here. Or maybe just do it the old fashion way and edit using vi on the command line. Something like this.
Dont’ worry, I won’t make you touch it, it doesn’t hurt.
Once I have the look and feel stuff done, will move on to adding analytics – maybe Statcounter or Google Analytics for tracking.
Of course, I’ll make the effort to build a list of subscribers – plan on making it worthwhile by giving stuff away. When I say stuff, I mean useful PHP scripts – kind of like what Robert Plank does at his site.
Then I’m going on a bender and getting setup with a bunch of Web 2.0 stuff for promoting this bad boy blog. De.licio.us, onlywire, propeller, youtube, slideshare – whatever else I can think of to toot my own horn.
I have thought about linkbaiting. Already have in mind who I’m targeting – going for the big fish on this one. Title will read something like “_____ ____, I have your wife hostage.” The ironic thing is I have something to back it up with – something I bought November 2007 when I first found out about this little factoid. Cloak and dagger stuff – ohhh, ahhhh, exiting!
And to finish up, I’m going to click on those links I just dropped and see if I can attract any attention over here.
There you go, the first blog post.
No magic here, just a video showing you how to get your site indexed in Google’s search engine using articles and Pingomatic.
This 15 minute video shows you step by step what to do.
1) Write an article.
2) Post the article to your site.
3) Create a link from your home page to the article.
4) Go to pingomatic and submit that page. Watch how the different search engines scurry over to find out what you just posted. (Notice that I am using pingomatic for static pages – who said you had to use it for blogs only?)
5) Since I only posted a few pages, it took a few days for one of the new pages to get picked up by Google.
I bought Dave Kelly and Chris Rempel’s MSN Ranking Loophole, The Ultimate Search Engine Loophole.
I know from previous experience that what is delivered in the pdf manual works (or has worked), I’ll find out if it still works and specifically does it work on getting your site ranked near the top of MSN search results for competitive terms.
When I saw the work “linkubator” on the sales page I wondered if it does what “linktator” does. Yep, it does.
There is some intial setup (which I think is downplayed on the sales page) that needs to occur before you can start dropping one page mini sites into the system. But once it is setup in the way specified in the manual, then all that setup should pay off.
Of course, being the person that I am, there was no way I was going to set this up without automating as much as possible.
I ended up creating a suite of scripts that take care of a good portion of the work involved. I’m offering access to those Ranking LoopHole scripts as a bonus to anyone who buys through my affiliate link.
Even if you don’t buy through my affiliate link you can still access the scripts by paying a nominal fee.
