With so many lazy ‘bloggers’ about happy to steal content from anyone’s website, what can you do to stop them in their tracks? Not much really, but there are a few possibilities to protect your work.
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

First we need to understand how someone might copy your blog’s content. It is actually very simple. You provide an RSS Feed of your latest posts and they subscribe to that. They then use a tool to turn these posts into posts on their own blog. Sadly, there are too many plugins available to do this task so it becomes very easy.

Stopping copying in its tracks
Because of this, the easiest way to stop someone from copying all of your posts in full is by just providing the summary, or the first so many words, in your RSS Feed. If the full post is not there, then they cannot steal it through the feed. Simple!

Why then don’t we all do this? Well readers wanting to access the information might not want to see only the summary and get fed up, eventually unsubscribing.

Making your posts less attractive to copying
If your can do something to your posts to make them less attractive to those wanting to copy them, then you should stop the copying before it happens. You could subscribe to a service such as Copyscape, but are you happy to pay for this service and do you really want that banner on your blogg and does detecting the problem prevent it?

However, there is an easy way around it. On some posts, it does not need to be every post, just include a simple copyright statement, such as:
By [my name], ©[mywebsite.com]

Quite simple and if anyone starts bulk copying your posts they are going to be displaying that copyright statement on their site. Not only showing they are copying your work, but also telling people where to go for the original work. You can take it a step further by making your name, the URL or the entire sentence a link back to your blog.

The side effect of this little trick
Displaying a copyright statement on your own posts does not exactly cause you a problem on your own website. However, if someone does miss the fact that a few of your posts link back to your website and start copying from you then they will actually be doing you a favour! They are spreading links back to your website across their website.

If they have a genuine readership then some of these people are going to be wandering over to your site when the see the links and search engines will see the links as one way, giving you the benefit. The search engines will also see that they are linking back to your website and Google in particular seems to take this as a sign of where the original content came from, preventing you from having a duplicate content problem. You actually therefore beat the person copying from your blog!

One way hackers will try to hack into a target website is by running a program that tries thousands of different passwords. A complicated password should defeat them, but you can make certain of this by detecting them at the source and locking them out. And on WordPress it is very easy to do.
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

Hackers wanting to get up to some mischief on a blog might just use a brute force attack to try to get access to it. A complicated password means that they have to try for longer and longer to gain access, but how long will that keep you safe for? Changing the user name to something that they cannot guess straight off is also excellent protection, but such a prolonged brute force attack could use a lot of bandwidth and ultimately slow down your blog as readers are trying to access it.

Slowing Down A Brute Force Attempt Is The Secret To Stopping It
You need to put them off by blocking them out. If they see that they are going to get locked out after every 3 or 4 attempts and not be allowed to try any more for an hour or more, then they know that just to try 100 passwords is going to take over 2 days. Therefore, to try the number of password / user id combinations needed to break your security is going to take years and hopefully they will move on.

Sadly, Not All Plugins Deliver On The Promise
There are several plugins that do exactly this, however in testing some of them on my own blogs I have discovered that not all do the job properly! They might lock out the login form, but you can still submit a userid / password indirectly and successfully log on.

The Plugin That I Use On My Blogs
The plugin that I was not able to defeat was Limit Login Attempts and I like it as it has a lot of good options. You can set how many attempts there are before a lockout and then how long the lockout is for. Then, if there are more lockouts within a longer time period you can lock the attacker out for much longer.

And with each failure, the person trying to log on is told that there are only a few attempts left, so they know what they are dealing with and hopefully will leave you alone.

What If You Log Yourself Out?
Yes, get your password wrong and you could log yourself out. And it is no good trying a different user id – the plugin monitors the IP Address of the attempt and will block any further login attempts from that IP address. So if you get it wrong, either because Caps Lock is on or because you are testing it, then you are locked out.

Assuming that you can’t change your IP address, you can still get back on. You just need access to your databases and then remove the record that shows that you are locked out!

Preventing hackers and other unwelcome people from accessing your blog is essential. But WordPress, if not correctly used, can be open to successful attacks. What steps must you take to reduce your risks?
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

Securing WordPress is all about two things. Closing known problems and then making it as hard as possible for people to gain access to your admin, so that they instead give their attentions to another blogger.

Step 1 – Upgrade WordPress
So the first essential security step is to upgrade WordPress to the latest version. Sometimes these new versions are released to fix security problems that have been uncovered, for example users able to get more access than they should. And when WordPress is up to the latest version, also check that all Plugins and your theme are also running the latest version.

Step 2 – Don’t Use An ‘Admin’
Recent versions of WordPress now ask you for a user-id, rather than ‘Admin’, but people still install it with this as the primary user. This means that hackers do not need to guess the user name and only have to guess the password. By changing the main username to something different, hackers have to guess that as well. If you already have set up your site with Admin as the user, either go into your SQL database and change the name or change it within admin, as follows:

Step 3 – Use A Strong Password
Use a password that is difficult to guess. Do not use anything as the core to your password that is mentioned on your blog. For example, a password comprising of your town and the current year is very easy to guess!

Step 4 – Do Not Display Logon Names
Go to the user maintenance screen and give your users nicknames and display these nicknames as the post authors. Make sure that the nickname does not give away the signon name. For example, user Fred should not have a nickname of Freddy. Make sure that the actual signon user name is difficult to guess.

Step 5 – Secure Your Email!
This is something that not many people think of. If someone gets access to your email password then they can request password resets for every system that you use. So make sure that your email account is totally locked down and secure as well, else that is a back door in!

Step 6 – Back Up Your Work
If the worst happens then you will need to delete everything and start again. And that means deleting every file in site. Reloading WordPress from the installation files is easy enough, but you might have to roll back your database by a few weeks. The only way to do this is if you are taking regular backups, so install a plugin such as WordPress Backup.

Step 7 – Secure Your Login
If someone does try to hack into your blog by guessing your password, then it is possible to detect them and lock them out with plugins such as Limit Login Attempts. If it detects a certain number of failed login attempts from the same IP address, that IP address is blocked for a short while. This means hackers have to wait before trying again.

InPostLinks might seem at first to be a great way of making money from a blog, but I struggle to see how people are making huge sums of money on it, without sitting there all day watching for ops.

First, when a good opp appears there is a bit of a mass charge to be one of the lucky bloggers to be allocated a slot in that opportunity. If you manage to get one (and you can tell that such opportunities are about as the entire system slows down) then you have to write 200+ words on your blog around the keyword given.

If the opportunities paid well this would not be an issue, however on the whole $0.50 and $1.00 opps are frequently what is on offer. And that is not much for writing 200 words on a PageRanked blog, remembering that the T&C also say that you must have a non-paid opp either side of the paid opp.

Wondering exactly what the problem is? Maybe for USA bloggers there are more better paid opps, but being in the UK there isn’t much, and look at the screen print below of the status when I logged on today. Near enough a page full of this sort of opp. And this is on an account with PR2 & PR3 blogs…

Many people blog to share their thoughts and experiences, but sometimes you want to be able to open up to your audience safe in the knowledge that your identity is safe. How do you do that?
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

To many people blogging is therapy. You can open up to your blog and tell it your darkest secrets. For whatever personal reason, you feel happier getting rid of the demons, sharing the thrills of illicit experiences, or just writing your thoughts in a blog. But, you do not really want someone you meet in the street realising you are the blogger they are following daily.

So, what measures can you take to protect your identity? Well for a start, it can be very tricky. covering your tracks all of the time. Sometimes harmless comments that you make today can be added to previous comments, which ultimately reveal something about you when put together. Mentioning an upcoming holiday or break and spelling out when you are going, or when you are back, can be dangerous.

But, limiting these personal details is not always possible. However, to truely keep your identity safe, you really have to limit the sum total of what you say about yourself.

And then we need to look at actually starting the blog. What must you do then to protect your identity so that you can blog incognito?

Well it all starts when you register your URL. At this point you can end up giving all of your identity away with a single stroke. So make sure that you register the blog correctly, but then opt out of having your identity made public.

By using a self hosted blog you are then in total control of what is shown and how it is shown. With a basic blog set-up you are unlikely to give away many details, apart from your name! Make sure that you set your personal userid up to show a nickname that you can share with people that you are not known by to those you don’t want to recognise you. Display this name with each of your posts.

If you have accidentally left your real name showing on the posts you can quickly change it, but the search engine’s cached pages might retain this information for a while. If you are desperate to hide your identity, the old action open to you is to request the removal of the pages from the search engine listings.

Most bloggers will also want to post comments on other blogs, leave replies on their own and post articles or guest posts. So dream up for yourself a pen name and create a new identity under that name. Give this name an email address under your blog’s URL and create an avatar for this email address, although obviously don’t use a photo of yourself! Maybe a logo or an abstract image.

You can then use this identity whenever you are posting and listing elsewhere, safe in the knowledge that your blog gets the credit, but your identity is protected.

Your blog title says everything about you, but what makes a good title that will work and what makes a bad title that will scare people off? You might only have this one chance to get it right.
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

A good blog title will say everything about your blog. It will say what you are blogging about, what you are blogging for and who is your audience. A poor title will usually try to do too much and do nothing at all.

If you are running a corporate blog connected to your corporate website then your blog title is probably fairly well decided for you. It is going to be the name of your business. But most bloggers are not blogging about their business, either their blog is their business or the blog is a hobby. So, what pointers should you consider to finding a great blog title?

For a start, do not get carried away. I have seen far too many people who think that a good way to write a website URL is to string together a load of popular and relevant keywords. This technique used to get you more search engine visitors and still does with certain search engines, but for the bulk of searches it does not help much.

But, aside from not being a help, if you strung together a load of keywords and buy a URL based on them and then use that as your blog’s title, it can look a mess. Especially if you have to pad out the keywords with a few filler words to make sure that the title is actually readable.

It is far better to think about the subject that you are going to be blogging about and describe that. Think of it like naming a book and forget search engine spamming techniques. If your blog is going to be serious then the title needs to look serious. However, if you are writing with sarcasm and whit, then your title should instead imply your writing style to your readers.

In an ideal world, the best blog title will tell your readers everything about your blog before they come over to read it. Your blog’s title is there to appeal to readers, not search engines. You may be listing your blog on directories and in signatures, or people might see it through your avatars. They will see your title and immediately decide whether or not they want to visit your website.

There is no hard and fast rule that will produce your title for you, you just need to keep to the basic guidelines. And if you remember that you want to show your potential readers everything that your blog is about before they even come visiting, then you cannot go far wrong.

One way of promoting your blog is to give it a mention in Twitter. But, how do you do that?
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

The first step is to set up a Twitter account, just for your blog. Unless you want to hijack your personal Twitter account and confuse followers, then a separate account is best.

Start Writing First
Now, start Tweeting. This is not exactly the quickest way to get going, but you are building slowly for better results rather than charging headlong into oblivion. You want a dozen or so Tweets on your account at least before you start trying to tempt people to follow you and you want these Tweets spread out over a week or so at least.

Tempt In Some Followers
Now, continue Tweeting and start trying to tempt people to follow you. Look for other people who are Tweeting relevant Tweets to your blog and follow them. You are hoping that they, or their followers, will follow you. For everyone who does follow you, be polite and follow them back.

Remove Those That Don’t Follow You
And then you have the rather ‘fun’ task of slowly unfollowing all of those that didn’t follow you. You can do this by adding all of those that are following you to a list, then deleting all those that you are following that do not appear in that list. Just delete the list before you next do the same and then you can easily pick up changes.

Although you can follow up to 2,000 at a time, if people see that you are following that many people but are only followed by 2 or 3, then they are going to ignore you. You have to keep the followers / following in balance. You will never do it exactly, but keep it looking reasonably balanced.

Keep At The Whole Process
Then you just need to keep following more people and Tweeting every day. It is having plenty of followers that gives your Tweets exposure and writing interesting Tweets that generate interest. So what are you going to Tweet?

Well every new post can be Tweeted. In fact, using some clever WordPress plugins (if you are blogging with WordPress) then this can be an automated process. But just a load of Tweets with links in will not get people interested. Use Twitter to converse with other users about the subject of your blog and add a few opinion Tweets every so often, again on the topic of your blog.

If you can be Tweeting a few times a day and making what you write look like more than just plugs for your blog then in no time at all you should have a wealth of followers and some extra traffic for your blog.

Once every week you should sign on to your blog, forget about posting and do some basic administration on the blog. Doing this keeps it up to date and safe and once a week is a great way to make sure that it is happening. Here’s what I suggest that you do:

1) Check for broken links – especially in a paid blog with a number of sponsored posts, are all of those links still working? Have any been dropped? Linking to non-existent websites can harm your reputation with the search engines. It’s not as hard as it sounds if you install a suitable Broken Link checker plugin first!

2) Check your comments – hopefully you are approving your comments every day, maybe even more. But are any good comments falsely caught as spam? Go to the spam folder and check that they are all indeed spam. Then save yourself some database space and make next week’s check easier by deleting the spam.

3) Update your blog – have you got a lot of plugins? Are some of them due for an update to a new version? Or are you on an old version of WordPress? It only takes a minute to update them if you keep on top of it – go and do it now!

4) Look at your site stats – have a look at the stats and look for trends. Great if traffic has gone up, ask why if it has gone down. But there is another reason for doing this and that is to look through the list of search terms that people have used to find your blog. What questions are people asking to find you? Do any of them shout out great new post names? Probably – so create a draft post with that title and store it until you are in need of inspiration.

I was very unamused when this morning I discovered on my stats that someone had visited one of my blogs on the term “make money stealing content websites“.

Well I am sure that they were a “bounce”, or if not maybe I converted them to better ways. After all, there are details on my blogs as to how to revenge someone who is stealing content, but other than passing comments on how these people are using RSS Feeds, no more details.

Not that it really takes much imagination to work it out. And that is the problem – it is so easy to steal the content and to make money from it, the only problem is making sure that you are the number 1 blog when people are searching for various terms.

It is a very lazy way to work and I do wonder if we all kept out eyes open for stolen content and raised DMCA complaints every time (easy to do) whether the hosts would put paid to the blogs stealing content?

Also, if we dropped into our posts references back to our own blogs so that it was obvious that the posts were stolen, would that put the readers off the blogs and direct them back to the original sources? Time will tell.

This is an often posed question – “How do I get more leads / opportunities on PayPerPost?”

First, the difference. An opp (opportunity) is an offer from an advertiser for you to do a post for them, whilst a lead is where advertisers are polling bloggers to find out who wants to take up the offer.

So, how do you get more of either?

Pricing
Advertisers will trawl the list of available blogs having limited them by a maximum price for what they want. Ask a lot above the recommended amount and you won’t appear in the list; ask a lot below the recommended amount and you will stand out as there possibly being something wrong. So take the recommended price.

Backlinks (YBL)
Advertisers can also select on the minimum number of backlinks that your site should have. If you don’t have enough, then you won’t be in the list. So work on link building.

Disclosure
You can either post on each post that it is a paid post, or have a disclosure page. Most advertisers don’t want the disclosure on the page, so create a disclosure page and set your blog to allow either type of disclosure.

Approval Rate
Advertisers can see how many of your posts have been approved by previous advertisers (as a percentage). So make sure you are doing good work. If half of your posts have been rejected then you are unlikely to be getting any new offers!

Your Website
Although not an initial selection process, many advertisers will look at your blog before deciding whether to make you an offer. If it is full of advertising, badly written and spammy looking, you either won’t get offers or are at risk of the offers being rejected!