An Affiliate Marketer from the Ground Up

If you’re just getting started in affiliate marketing, just a word of warning regarding any email address that you use.

As you start to seek out information on marketing online, and even information on other topics, you’ll run into many opt-in forms. It’s individuals, or companies wanting your email address so that they can add you to their list of potential customers. Therefore, when they have something to sell, you’ll be getting an email with the rest of the list.

You’ll soon find out that most marketers offer free gifts, usually in the form of an ebook, report, newsletter or maybe a small course of some type. That’s all well and good, but you really need to use throw-away email address when you sign up for these offers.

Inevitable there will be something on the opt-in form about how much they value your privacy, and would never sell or share your information with anyone…ever. To that I say – BULL!! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve signed up for what seemed to be a good freebie, and it often is, just to start receiving spam from people that I’ve never heard of.

I’m not saying that everyone does it. I’m sure the marketers that value their reputation, and have some dignity, would never sell or share their list, at least with spammers. However, there have been times when I’n signed up with some names that are popular on the Internet, only to start receiving whatever it was I signed up for, along with spam from the marketing losers. Many times, I guess depending on exactly what the individuals do with their list, the emails originate from other countries and there’s never an opt-out link. Obviously the spam laws don’t mean anything to a spammer in some third-world country.

So, grab Gmail addresses or set up your own email addresses on whatever domains that you may have available, but just never use any email address that you consider important to sign up for free offers or for the courses, ebooks and all the rest.

I really have gotten some great material that way, but I’ve also managed to get many thousands of spam emails also.

I don’t mean to suggest tht most Internet marketers opearate this way, as I mentioned previously, the real professionals don’t, but you can never really be sure which ones do.

It’s no secret that there’s a constant threat from the loser hacker types for anyone that has a presence online. As security increases, the cyber-thugs try to improve their methods to make sure they can remain a nuisance.

On WordPress sites, the most common threat is the hacker editing your theme files and inserting their spam links.

Know If You’ve Been Hacked

Unless you specifically look at the code of your site, you may not even know that you’ve been hit. If you look at the HTML of the header and footer, and see any links that look suspicious, there’s a good chance that a hacker has been there. Many times they’ll insert links related to pharmacy/drug sites, credit card offers, insurance or refinancing/loan offers.

Looking at the Links

I use the FireFox browser, and it’s quickly becoming the browser of choice for many users. If you use FF, you can look at the links that are currently active by clicking ‘Tools’, ‘Page Info’, and finally ‘Links’.

You’ll then see the current outgoing links links listed. You should also take a look at all theme files and WordPress core files. Look for anything that appears suspicious. If you know absolutely nothing about code, you can compare it to another site, possibly a fresh WordPress installation, and see if there appears to be anything out of the ordinary.

Fixing the Problems

‘An ounce of prevention’ definitely applies here. Keeping your WordPress installation, including the theme and all plugins updated is the first step in maintaining the safest site possible. The ‘automatic updates’ feature of version 2.5 of WordPress is a Godsend. One click and your plugins are updated to the latest and greatest.

You can also secure the site further by disabling the navigation of directories on the entire site. This will prevent users from seeing what plugins that you have installed, and keep prying eyes away from other sensitive data. This can be done by adding the following to your .htaccess file (located in the root directory). This is a simple text file that was probably created when WordPress was installed (if not present).

OPTIONS -INDEXES

Also, you can secure the ‘WP-Admin’ folder by allowing access by only certain IP addresses (yours).

Insert the following, again, into your .htaccess file :

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Example Access Control"
AuthType Basic
<LIMIT GET>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from xx.xx.xx.xx
allow from xx.xx.xxx.xx
</LIMIT>

Lastly, some people will delete the ‘theme-editor.php’ file from the ‘WP-Admin’ folder, if they can’t limit access to the ‘WP-Admin’ folder to only certain IP Addresses. It should also mentioned that, as with any secure site, you should periodically change your password…and DON’T USE ANY COMMON WORDS OR PHRASES THAT CAN BE GUESSED!!