With more people setting up their own home based, online business every day, the amount of vulnerable web sites is increasing at an alarming pace. And the blame for this lies mostly within the Internet Marketing community itself. Why? Using the powerful techniques of persuasion at their disposal, many so-called Internet Marketing Gurus lure people into setting up their own online business by providing them with ready-made, plug and play web sites that contain basic security flaws. Do not forget that most of these sites are made by marketers, not programmers! And the consequences for you can be disastrous…

One of the most common vulnerabilities - and paradoxically the most easily cured - is to ensure that each directory on your site contains an index file. By default, web browsers, when directed to a directory look first of all for a file named index. This could be followed by a variety of extensions such as .html, .htm, .shtml or .php to name the most common ones.

If the browser does not encounter the index file, it will display the entire directory in the form of a clickable navigation list, disclosing all its contents for the world to see, thus leaving your precious and often restricted content wide open to any type of malicious action.

To prevent this from happening you should make sure that you have at least one or a combination of the 4 following basic security measures in place:

Security measure 1: Ensure that each directory contains an index file by renaming the default page you want to be shown to index. Then make sure that all the internal links to that page are updated as well!

Security measure 2: Create an empty index file. When arriving at the directory, a blank page will be shown, but you will no longer be displaying a directory listing. You could also provide a message and a clickable link on that page to take your visitors to the correct page.

Security measure 3: Create an index file that contains a redirection to the page you want to be shown. There are many free and easily implemented code snippets available that will allow you to do so and your visitors will not even notice that they are being redirected.

Security measure 4: If you have downloadable content that people have to pay for, do not keep it it the same directory as the sales page, but keep it in a separate, secure directory and set up your payment processor to that directory. This way you ensure that only people who have paid for the content have access to it.

When selling products online as an Internet Marketer or otherwise, you are more prone to people trying to get to your restricted content so as to avoid having to pay for it. These 4 basic security measures should help you drastically reduce the risk of unlawful access to your site and save you from a lot of headaches and worries.

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If you are not making a ton of money with affiliate programs, you will need to try and figure out why. We all know a good affiliate program can be hard to come by.

Here are a few that I really like, and have been with for a while:

1. Progressive Health

2. Zenmed

Before spending a lot of time and money marketing an affiliate program, always check it out first. There are a number of ways to do this.

1. Search through the hundreds of affiliate directories online and look for comments about it.

2. Ask them how many affiliate they have, and what the top earners are making, as well as the average affiliate.

3. Give the program a trial run - just enough to make a few sales that will allow you to recieve a payment from them. This will ensure they pay as offered.

4. Spread the word! Lots of affiliate money stays on the table because we do not refer others. If you know other affiliates, send them an email and let them know about your new program. Of course, send your affiliate link id to earn 2nd tier revenue if possible!

To see my favorite affiliate programs, please visit www.free-affiliate-program.us

Jamie Ratliff has been in the affiliate marketing business for years. He currently offers advice to beginner and intermediate affiliate marketing websites. He has a website at www.free-affiliate-program.us

by: J. Ratliff

Rags to Riches with Affiliate Programs.

If you do not know what an affiliate program is, it is simply the process of merchants paying you to bring them sales or leads.

Here is why affiliate marketing is so easy and profitable:

1. Affiliate programs are free to join. The merchants do not charge you to become an affiliate, because they obviously want you to succeed.

2. Merchants spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in advertising, that very rarely results in a sale. Seen all the commercials on Television? Do you think everyone who see it will buy the product? Of course not!

3. Merchants love affiliate programs because they are able to pay you only if a sale is made. And because this advertising is a guaranteed sale for them, they are able to pay you very well, usually between 10-30%25. They are happy to do so because the sale has already been made.

4. Since we are still in the early years of affiliate marketing, there is a large shortage of affiliates. There will be many people who sign up to become an affiliate, but either do not have the skills or the time to become very successful. They will then blow off future opportunities simply because they failed with one affiliate merchant.

I will list a few of my favorite affiliate programs near the end of this article, but if you want to know exactly how affiliate programs work and need a basic manual complete with sample listings for advertising, visit the Internet Cash System.

My favorite affiliate programs:

1. Progressive Health.

2. Zenmed Affiliate Program.

3. Quality Generics.

For a listing of many more, visit my Affiliate Directory.

J. Ratliff is an avid affiliate and internet business guru. His affiliate directory is located at www.affiliate-directory.us.

by: Ratliff J

A lot of web pages will find an SEO sitemap useful in improving their performance. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, the process that aims to create or revise Internet sites so that it can be better found by search engines. The objective of SEO campaigns is to have websites appear in the top listing or first results page of search engines.

Internet search engines, such as Google and A9, maintain a very large database of Web pages and available files. To do this, they devise a program called a web crawler, or spider. This software automatically and continuously surfs and hunts content in the Web. Pages that the spider finds are retrieved and indexed according to text content, giving more weight to titles and paragraph headers. Spiders never stop navigating the web from page to page, to index the relevant content of the Internet. Besides looking at the text of titles and headers, some programs are able to identify default tags and keep a library of these page keywords or key phrases in the index.

When a user connects to the Internet types a query, which is automatically interpreted as keywords, the search engine scans the saved index and creates a list of web pages that is most appropriate to what the user is searching for.

SEO will use all the combined techniques of keyword analysis, smart code, good content literature, link popularity study and website organization to place the subject web page as high as possible in the list of search results in search engines. Web pages displayed on the top of results pages are assumed to get the most attention, and therefore, opportunity for earnings for web businesses and pages with sponsor links.

Search engines usually return a list of results ranking pages according to the number of Internet sites linked to them. Results can be classified as organic, or sponsored links. Sponsored links are shown prominently because their creators or agents paid the search engine. Sponsored links are the main source of income of search engines. “Organic” search results are the lists of actual results from the engines index and are directly related to the keyword typed in the request. One of the more effective techniques of SEO is the creation of a well-organized site map in a website. Since the site’s main page and other content are directly linked to a site map, spiders can more easily move through the website, identify the key words of the content, and index these for a search engine. This is where the SEO sitemap helps the website creator or administrator.

Site maps are usually pages filled with links. These are shown as tables or lists, although lists are generally more effective. Writing code for SEO sitemaps is very easy and simple to format and maintain. These are ideally basic HTML pages with default tags, logical titles and keywords scattered in the Meta description. Introduction areas can contain more of the keywords. The site should have a main heading for every directory.

A simple list layout helps reduce unnecessary tags that might “hide” your keywords. Some spiders give more weight to the following, than text in the normal body of the webpage: heading text, content within link elements, text nearer the top of the page and the text written for a link. Therefore, writing the keywords and links in these areas could somehow move up the web page’s ranking. This goes for SEO sitemaps as well.

Web sites should be designed consistently, so navigation models should follow the flow of the site map. Therefore, the first section in the site map should be the first link in the navigation bar.

In an SEO Sitemap, and most pages, the headings contain title attributes where more key phrases in the site map can be added. Keywords are generally well chosen and written in the body of a webpage. However, in an SEO site map with little text, key words should be added as much as possible. As much as possible, web links should follow web page titles, and must undergo SEO during coding. Care must be exercised not to cram the page with keywords and links, or the page will be interpreted as blatant spamming and not receive any traffic at all.

There is no way to guarantee that a website will be shown in the topmost ranking of “organic” search results for an extended period of time. However, smart and responsible SEO sitemap techniques can be used to place the website high up in the search position. Regular monitoring and adjustment of the SEO Sitemap and search results would ensure that a website is kept near the top ranking and receiving lots of web user traffic.

Sometimes I do some blog hopping and I find a lot of good blogs out there. So I try to follow what they are doing in the hope of increasing my money from blogging. Lately I have noticed a lot of “U Comment I follow” sign. It is only now that I have discovered what they really meant.

…continue reading about What is “nofollow” and why you should disable it…