Rita Wilhelm's Blog

Things that happen on the internet every 60 seconds

Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers

Scary Advice from Vista Print’s Website Program – YIKES!

I have a friend of a friend who has a website using the Vista Print web builder. She asked me to optimize her website for her. I’m doing it more as a favor.

While in the system, I noticed that I couldn’t create title tags for each page of the site, which of course is vital.

I called them to see if having that option would be open with an upgraded version, so I called up Vista Print customer support, who then forwarded me to the website department.

You know what they told me?

Be prepared to be shocked that a large company like Vista Print would have a customer service person offer this advice:

They said that they don’t do title tags, because it is too advanced for most of their clients. Instead, list the keywords in the keyword section. They also said to add all the keywords to the body of the site and match the text color to the background color so that it would be invisible to visitors, but not to search engines.

WHAT?!!

That is sooooo 10 years ago advice that has long been a taboo practice that will get you sandboxed in a heartbeat!

Can’t believe their web department is suggesting that.

Prosperent – A Better Alternative for Amazon Affiliates

As many of you know, I am a fired Amazon affiliate. All Amazon affiliates in Colorado were fired.

I have about 40 product sites that just aren’t going to make good Adsense sites. Because of that, I’ve had a heck of a time trying to figure out what to do with them.

I’ve been looking into Datafeeds, but too be honest, it gets pretty complex.

But now I’m doing the happy dance!

I just discovered Prosperent!

Prosperent is absolutely FREE to join.

They basically handle all the datafeeds for you, and you simply have a little javascript code that is much like Adsense, that you paste into your site. It works great with Peter’s theme.

What’s very cool is that Prosperent is a targeted behavioral ad network. What this means is that they are able to determine what your web site visitors are interested in, and display a relevant product and convert that into a sale. If your visitor searches for blue widgets with chrome, they will show ads that have blue widgets with chrome. Talk about giving your customers exactly what they are looking for!

All the ads have pictures on them, which again adds to the general visitor experience on your site.

The cookies last a lot longer than the 24 hour cookie that Amazon has. They basically work with companies on Shareasale, Commission Junction, Linkshare, etc. You’ll get paid on stuff that someone may have clicked weeks or months ago.

They earn revenue as a % of what you earn. They earn 30%.

From reading their forum, it sounds like members are making a ton more money than when they went with Adsense. That of course makes sense, since visitors are getting exactly what they hoped to get when they went to your website in the first place.

Anyhow… I’m thrilled. It’s the perfect solution to my Amazon dilemna. And frankly, I think it’s better than what I had with Amazon in the first place.

I’ll also say that their control panel is extremely easy to use and robust. You an get all kinds of statistical information and can easily create ads.

It is for product type of sites though. I wouldn’t use it on services or digital download type of sites.