A Webmaster Community BETTER THAN DP with free scripts and free content!

Well, following the debacle of Digital Point (see my last blog entry) I have been looking for a new webmasters forum to post in.

Problem is, I actually like digital point a lot, but it does have some issues.  So after looking at the rest of the other webmasters forums, I struck upon a great idea.  Why not create a new webmasters forum, LIKE digital point, but correcting the problems that it has.

So I have done: The results are at http://Web2.0WebmasterForum.com - in essence it is very similar to digital point, but I am including my whole back catalog of scripts, content and ebooks onto its download shop over the next couple of days, 95% of which will be free so please signup and check back every few days for everything from image content, to full turnkey websites and templates.

Also, I am incorporating a forum cash feature, where you are rewarded for each and every post that you make, and you will be able to trade the points in for domains, hosting and premium products in our store.

Apart from these great features we also have a full iTrader system just like digital point and a free marketplace,  SO, if you want to be part of this new community and be a founding member, be sure to sign up asap!

What some of you might find strange is that I have also replicated somewhat the infractions system that is in place at DP, but the difference is the points are only going to be given out in cases that actually merit them, not because MODs have decided to go all gung-ho!!

Hope to see you all soon at the web2.0 webmaster forum

Buenas Tardes Muchachos!

Banned from DP - for reporting my OWN misplaced thread!

I’m generally not one to complain when I get told off, after all, if someone has call to tell you off its generally because you did something wrong.  Mind you, since I was in my early twenties I guess other people have been hard pressed to find much wrong, such being the life I lead.

Im an active member on about a dozen webmaster forums, but the one that I enjoy the most is digital point. To me its mixture of heavy traffic, great discussions and active marketplace are just the right mixture of components necessary  to make a great forum.

That is why I have been dismayed to find out this evening that I have been banned from digital point, for reporting mis-placed threads that I have created!

If you get banned for reporting your own mistakes, then surely people are less likely to do so…..

Anyway, firstly I must give you a history of my infractions that I have received.  Firstly, I was infracted and you can argue rightly so, for bumping a thread in the general promotion category.  That accounted for 5 points, as I got fined one point for “creating the thread in an inappropriate section” and 4 more for “bumping” said thread.   oooooops.

Secondly, I placed a thread where I was selling a facebook app in the BST -> SITES section, now I would have thought that this would be the best place to put a facebook app, and I did give it some consideration before I posted it, but came to the conclusion that this would be the right place.  I must have come to the wrong conclusion as I was again infracted for  “creating the thread in an inappropriate section”.  This time, I tried unsuccessfully to argue my case, as I justifiably I still feel, did no wrong.  Guess what, I got infracted twice more for arguing about it!

This brought my total infractions level up to a whopping 9 without really having done too much wrong.  To be fair, Im not contesting the first “block” of infractions I got, frankly I cant complain and I learnt my lesson.  The second lot I still wholeheartedly disagree with, but hey, I was willing to overlook them as well and get on with my life.

So today, with two browser windows open, one pointing at BST->freebies and the other pointing at BST->Content, I started two threads.  BOTH threads were for content related sales, BUT the sales value for both amounts were under $5 and at digital point they operate a policy that all transactions advertised at $5 or less should go into the freebies section.

I mistakenly posted BOTH threads into the wrong area.  Ooooops again.  BUT I naively perhaps thought that it wouldnt be a big deal, after all I had noticed that they were in the wrong place so I myself reported both threads, left a nice little message saying along the lines of “sorry mods I posted this in the wrong section, my bad for causing bother, please move”, AND THEN even took the step of warning a new MOD aaron_nimocks (I think thats his username, he is the first of the MODs alphabetically) by PM to let him know what I had done.

To Aarons credit, within minutes I got a response back saying that he was on a super slow connection so he couldnt do it then and there, but if I had indeed posted a warning on the threads report function (which I had) then it would be sorted out.

Case closed, problem solved, or at least so I thought.  About 5 minutes later while answering a PM I pressed “send” and got redirected to a big “Your Banned!!” screen.  I appear to be banned until March the 11th at 13.05 server time, as this is 90 days after my first “block” of infractions disappears.

I guess everyone that ever gets banned feels hard done by, but after reviewing the reasons for my infractions, and especially in the light of the fact that I myself reported my misplaced threads AND pro-actively contacted a MOD to help me sort it out, well, lets just say I am dismayed at the behavior of the DP MOD crew, I feel a little bit of common sense should have been used in this case, as I vehemently feel that tonights infractions were unwarranted.

To cap it all off, yesterday I posted a new sale thread in the BST->content section for a facebook app, and a senior member commented that I had posted in the wrong place, and that site sales would have been a better candidate to post in!  Looks like Im not the only one who thinks that way.

So, the question is what to do now?  “take it like a man” and wait two weeks to serve my unjust sentance? Well, unless any of the MODs are big enough to step up and recognise that a mistake has been made, then I guess thats all I can do……

Play Poker on Facebook!

I yesterday put together a new facebook app that I am quite proud of. Well, to be honest Im mainly proud of most of my facebook apps, but this one is a bit special!

http://apps.facebook.com/costadelpoker/ is a facebook application that serves real money and free poker, in all variants (Texas Holdem, Omaha, Razz, Stud, Telesina, Americana - and tournaments of most variats, along with sit and go’s). It works in conjunction with the software at www.costadelpoker.com but allows you to get your poker fix without leaving the facebook interface.

There is another poker app at facebook, pitbull poker, so why is this one different? Well primarily because www.CostaDelPoker.com is a successful poker site in its own right, and has thousands of online players 24 hours a day already - so there’s always a game to be had.

So, support your favorite blogger, install the FACEBOOK POKER APP today!

The Value of DMOZ Links, Less in 2008?

I have studied DMOZ links in the past somewhat (see “wizards of DMOZ“) and being a long term professional SEOer I have probably submitted more sites than most to the open directory project (DMOZ).  Yesterday while checking the Alexa details of one of my sites I noticed that the description that Alexa uses had changed, to one that I did not recognise - quickly coming to the conclusion that this must have meant that I was now listed in an appropriate category at DMOZ I quickly checked.

I am happy to report that the site was indeed now DMOZ listed, and I quickly followed up with a few checks of my other sites and was pleased to find that a further two more sites had also gained that holy grail of the backlinks, an ODP listing.  I did have other sites already listed in the directory so I started to delve deeper into the ramifications of having a site listed and came up with a few interesting things that I either hadnt noticed, or has recently changed.

The DMOZ link did not (does not) appear in my google webmaster tools at all, and not just for my newly added sites, also for a few sites that I own that have had a listing for nearly 10 years.  To be fair there isnt much activity on those sites and not many other backlinks so Im not 100% sure if google has stopped counting DMOZ links in its webmaster tools,  if so then I wonder what about the other directories that “feed” off the information dumps from the ODP,  surely they will count towards backlinks.

A quick check ensued, and as an example the Alexa Directory did NOT appear as a backlink in the test sites I looked at either in Google’s webmaster tools. So this begs the Question:  Has Google Now Discounted DMOZ from its algorithms?  

In short I can not answer that question immediately but I will certainly do some more investigation and come back to you folks when I know more!

Anyway, off for my cafe con leche!

MM

Make Money on Facebook - 3 EASY STEPS!

We all know that facebook is the hot new internet app and the main barrier that most people have to making money with it is the lack of knowledge as to how it works. Well for all those people that havent got up to speed with the new platform yet,  I am writing this SUPER EASY to follow step by step guide to actually making money with the facebook platform.

Before people start reading this guide, I would just like to reinforce my authority on this subject,  my various apps have over 250,000 installed users in the last 33 days (since the start of this year) and have netted me a decent four figure sum so far this year.

1) You NEED an application. 
You cant make money on facebook without an application.  You can go about this in a few different ways,  basically its not hard,  there are quite a few good guides to setting up a facebook application, and if you have good prior knowledge of php then you can custom code pretty much anything to work in the facebook platform. For those users that are au fait with coding,  check out these great guides to setting up your first facebook app: Building Facebook applications or Create a facebook app in 10 minutes.  If you DONT have coding knowledge, or if you just want to get started a whole lot quicker, then you can buy turnkey sourcecode for many different popular facebook apps at the site Turnkey Facebook Apps - this will save you time and get you started with a decent app a lot quicker, and would be my recommendation.

2) You NEED Users installed
Your application is worthless without users.  Users are the lifeblood of facebook apps, to put it in more general webmastery terms,  all you need to do is think of it like this:  your facebook app is really just a website, and its users are your surfers.  You can have the best possible website in the world but no surfers, it is then worthless in comparison to one that has a thousand unique viewers a day.

The Great thing about facebook though is that user installs are actually a lot cheaper to buy than anyone thinks.  There are loads of different facebook specific advertising companies, BUT A WORD OF WARNING: I have seen bad or poor (even downright awful) reviews of EVERY company on this list, so use them at your own discretion.

On the plus side, you can buy traffic (read installed users) for as little as $0.05 per person if you shop around a bit.  The list is:

http://www.adblade.com/
http://www.adchap.com/
http://www.appvert.com/
http://www.cpastorm.com/
http://www.cubics.com/
http://www.fbexchange.com/
http://www.rockyou.com/
http://www.socialmedia.com/
http://www.facebook.com/apps/applica…39088&b&ref=pd
http://www.videoegg.com/

Also, as long as your app is viral, then your user numbers should multiply, so for every thousand users you buy you should get another two thousand users over each month that your app is active, at least.

To put these numbers into context lets assume that you have paid $50 for a turnkey app from www.turnkeyfacebookapps.com and $100 on clicks from one of the facebook ad companies above.  So far that has cost you $150 and you have an app which by the end of week two will have two or three thousand users installed.  Naturally if you can afford to spend say $250 then you would buy an app and $200 worth of clicks and have four or five thousand users installed after two weeks.

3) Cash in on your app
There are two ways to do this, one long tail one short term.  As an online entrepreneur I personally prefer cashing in quickly to avoid any uncertainty in the marketplace on the longer term, regardless I will look at both ways of earning money:

Sell your App: simply put, a facebook app is worth far more than the sum of its parts - all you need to do is check the valuations that facebook apps get sold for on www.sitepoint.com/marketplace or forums.digitalpoint.com to realise that facebook apps with active users are worth MORE than the cost of the app plus the cost of the users!  This is a REALLY EASY way to cash in and make a few bucks,  if you invest $250 then you should be able to turnaround the app for $750 to $1,000 in as little as 10 to 14 days,  thats a 300% increase in your money on the short term - which really cant be beaten by ANY other online business I have ever run.

Sell advertising on your App: Using any of the companies that I mentioned above you can SELL clicks on your application.  Ofcourse the advertising company take a cut and you wont make hundreds and hundreds of dollars, in the first week like selling your app, but you would expect to recoup the total cost of your app + users in a two to three month timescale, then everything you earn after that is pure profit.

Of the two methods I recommend selling the app, as you can always start another one, after all you already own the source code to do it again, and this time you would have more money to spend on PPC installs.  Also you never know whats going to happen in a month on facebook, so by cashing in you are guaranteeing a profit margin.

4) Notes 
There are a few extra side issues to think of.  1) you will need hosting, so bear that in mind.  Most webmasters already have hosting so I havent looked at that separately (but if you buy your app from www.turnkeyfacebookapps.com you can also buy hosting from them for $10, which seems a good deal to me) .   Also, regarding the PPC companies I mentioned, I have seen BAD reviews of each of them, not paying their publishers, not giving good tracking etc.  I think that turnkey facebook apps are offering a $25 free clicks deal when you buy an app from them this month, so perhaps that would be a wise way to test the waters before you commit to spending hundreds on a PPC campaign with one of the other companies.

 Anyway, so thats my step by step guide to making money off facebook apps, if you have enjoyed this post PLEASE bookmark it using one of the links below, or link to it from your own blog or website, any links or bookmarks would be gratefully received!