Wordpress Datafeeds and broken links

For those of you running wordpress with datafeeds I found a great wordpress plugin that’s free and checks for broken links! It’s available here – Broken Link checker to download. As usual with wordpress plugins, it’s a breeze to install and activate, you can then check for broken links by going to Settings > Link Checker

Hope this helps those of you running a datafeed/deepfeed on wordpress!  As for others try this link wordpress plugin I recommend

Elizabeth Lambert football violence video!

I was shocked to see this video of Elizabeth Lambert, a  female football player, on Sky News while doing my morning session at my local gym today. Ok I should of been working out but the video caught my attention:

That was Elizabeth Lambert a female footballer in the championship play offs as her team BYU Cougars were up against New Mexico Lobos. As you can see in the video it shows her pulling a girl on the opposite team down my grabbing her hair and trying to throw her to the ground, and succeeding!

This kind of behaviour in a sport like football is just stupid, regardless of the emotions going on during the game, she should of redirected the energy into winning the game instead of punching, elbowing and kicking players on the opposite team.  And for a girl to do it is quite strange really!

Elizabeth Lambert played for the BYU Cougars and won’t be playing for them anymore as she has been removed from the team and will not be back, due to her inexcusable behaviour on the pitch.

Good riddance I say!

Motivational Chinese Proverb

I love reading motivational books and sayings. Came accross this one which I thought I’d share on my blog, it made me laugh at the first few, then the last one made me think.

If you want happiness for an hour – take a nap.

If you want happiness for a day – go fishing.

If you want happiness for a month – get married.

If you want happiness for a year – inherit a fortune.

If you want happiness for a lifetime – help someone else.

A recommended read from an old acquaintance

Perfect for workaholic affiliates and with perfect timing for myself personally as I’ve been working 10-12 hour days in the last 2-3 months. It’s important to re-focus on the reason for getting into this business – my own was time freedom!

The freedom to do what I want when I want and a financial fort around me and my family to be able to do so.

I originally read the unfinished version of this e book by internet superstar Michael Anthony about 3 years ago, and only just found old the Brentwood (or pick your favourite mediteranean resort!) based entrepreneur has finished it! Better late than never I say, I’ve asked politely for his permission to allow visitors to squink.co.uk to download it for free so feel free to download it from here. (Right click and ‘Save As…’)

It’s a very easy read in which Michael presents some paradigm shifting ideas about life, business, family, time management, decision making and more.

Michael Anthony taught be ages ago the value of leverage and the fact that you don’t have to work 10 hr days to become a success if you do it intelligently. He has a good way of making things simple and that is probably a large factor of his internet success.

Learn what works for you and throw away what doesn’t.

I’ll read the full version and edit this post with any eureka moments, or insights I found useful!

Some useful wordpress plugins for affiliates!

Thought some of these may come in handy for those of you starting a new site based on wordpress, which I, personally, am liking more and more!

I recently threw up a quick site in wordpress for doctor who toys it was a bit of a quick job to be honest as I have other priorities but, there is content there for google to digest and now if it does ok in the search engines, thanks to easy content units I may even get a few sales!

So my favourite plugins that I’ve used on the Dr who site are Keith Bond’s ECU WP Plugin which makes it a breeze to add products from almost any merchant (for my site I used Amazon.co.uk).

I also really like the Add to Any social bookmarking plugin which should be at the bottom of every post and helps if you read something useful and you want to digg it or add it  to your favourite social bookmarking site, etc.

This one is a godsend!  The WP All in One SEO Pack which is fantastic allows you to do so much with SEO’ing your wordpress site it saves shed loads of time!

Google XML sitemaps is another really handy one that creates a sitemap for your site.

This one can be useful for making your wordpress site look that little bit more professional with a wp contact form plugin.

It’s now getting easier and easier to get a site online and have all the tools ready for you which is great for us affiliates where we tend to use up all our hours in the day doing alot of ’stuff’ but finding by the end of the day, in fact, not alot has been done!

The great thing about wordpress and the plugins are that it eliminates the time it used to take – leaving more time to do what actually matters – getting sales! I do really believe it will transform alot of people who say they cannot write into fully fledged eager writers, which on the whole will add alot more value to sites, which in turn Google will love! Maybe I’m being a little ambitious!

Another plug for a plugin lol, is the one for datafeed sites using wordpress, it’s a Wordpress datafeed plugin and I actually really like it because it makes childsplay of setting up a site with alot of products. Ok that one isn’t free but for the £25 cost it includes unlimited updates and in my opinion is a valueable investment.

What I’ve found with other datafeed plugins for wordpress is that they don’t allow for products which get removed/updated whereas with the Digitalquill WP datafeed plugin it is different and allows you to set a primary key (ie. the product number) which won’t change, so if you download an updated datafeed and use that the product will basically get updated with the new information!!

Feel free to comment and add your preferred WP affiliate plugins!

Don’t bite off more than you can chew!

As always in affiliate marketing one shouldn’t take on a project if ones hands are too full.

Much like this great white really, that was bitten in half by an estimated 20ft great white shark off of an Australian beach!

The shark on the left is “only” 10ft long, and after experts had a quick look at the bite marks, it didn’t take long to calculate that whatever bit into this one  was at least twice as big!

This dead shark was found off Brisbane near an island called North Stradbroke island.

What I find “funny” is that the orginal news article said people are always cautious of the one big one.. So hang on, if a 8ft shark decided to use your legs as fish fingers you, you’d be ok would you?

Let this be a stark warning to all affiliates out there the next time you think of doing yet another website before you’ve had time to finish your last one! There’s a lot to manage and keep track of if you have lots of sites going. What I do, which might not be the best way, is concentrate on one or two sites max at a time.

There’s definitely a direct correlation between focus and results. Diluted focus doesn’t really get results (ie. sales/leads/etc).  Don’t get caught up (or snared lol) in a never ending loop of creating one site after the other without properly promoting it with decent content, links, etc.

Imagine the size of the shark that bit into that one though!! Huge!  I know which one I’d rather be

Motivation for affiliates!

I just read an inspiring quote from Vincent Van Gogh, he said

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reasons for remaining ashore.

Which reminded me at first of that Trawlermen series on tv – but really to an extent it’s similar to anyone going into business on their own, the only thing they have is their motivation and self-belief.

All the entrepreneurs that I admire have gone through exactly the same feelings any new business owner faces, but they won and overcame their ‘demons’! Some of the business people I look up to are Theo Paphitis, James Khan, and actually Leonardo Da Vinci… I’ve always had a strange fascination with his inventions and work since I was young!

Point is as an affiliate you work on your own and motivation can drain quicker than blood oozing in a Saw movie, especially when sales are dwindling or non-existent. One thing you can do is remind yourself why you are doing this, what the long term goal or “big picture” view is, and why you got into this game.

There’s no doubt about it, if you want to make long term income you need a solid idea that your target market will buy into time and time again, and a niche market that isn’t going to go away anytime soon!

Which brings me, in no related way at all, onto my favourite quote by George Bernard Shaw….

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

I always look at that when I want to get back into the mentality of doing business.. what do you do to motivate yourself?

Squink.co.uk is born!

I’m excited to say this is the first post for squink and there’s many more to come! I’m Matt Seigneur – there’s a picture of me to the left!

This whole idea was born thanks to my business colleage and long time friend Frank (fwitter.co.uk fame, aka smingle) maybe I talk to him too much on msn and he was sneakily trying to get me doing this affiliate type blog instead of chewing his ear hole off!

But truthfully, I think it was partly down to his constant taunting about (shudder)… the fence. In some strange way me writing stuff down might help me catapult my business forward.

I hope to be able to make a valuable newsworthy contribution worthy of reading and look forward to the comments and feedback on my posts.

Something I’m considering doing at the moment is buying a camper van or big 4×4 and going travelling while I bring my laptop and charger with me so I can travel and work at the same time. I have no ties at the moment so now’s a better time than ever to take the plunge and explore while earning a consistent income!

Some of my endeavors include mainly domaining and developing. I dropcatch domain names, with a view to selling them on for a profit, as well as developing a whole host of domains in the gift niche to the business services niche.

I have been doing business since I was 19, when I started a few different businesses, all failures and eventually stumbled onto affiliate marketing around 2004-2005, and haven’t done anything else since!

Apart from being a workaholic I enjoy watching the UFC and training in the gym, bit of a gymoholic too I guess and having as much fun I can have whatever else I’m doing!

Hope this says a little about who I am and what this squink blog is going to be all about!