How?

I keep getting SPAMMED:

Author : Soiplyraxarly (IP: 24.1.252.239 , c-24-1-252-239.hsd1.il.comcast.net)
E-mail : nowntauct@yalta.krim.ws
URL    : http://www.”porn spam”.info/index.html
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=24.1.252.239
Comment:
hello administrators of site  www.artifexus.net I not so a long ago got over in Staunton  
and so, that I rasproschalsya with magnificent  a man, Smith - - Ginny  Virginiakon, and now try to find him, last that I know so it that he lives in citi, and often vi
sits the resources of type your www.artifexus.net, names ona itself Daviesson
, if suddenly will see this nik write that this man contacted with me  . I very much I miss  without socializing with this man.To reason wanted to say thank you and to wish successes to the collective  your resource. So to hold boys. Only little request of,sdelayte  so that www.artifexus.net better embarked on dial-up connection

and:

ALMOGLENE | spemomtok@pozitifff.com | music.”russian spam”.ru/fioricet/news-fioricet.html | IP: 59.95.160.225

All helloAs I already understood reading this forum here are not only simple users but also beginners of web masters and also professionals here my the pair of questions whether makes sense to untwist the site of cars such such here by the set of keywords to the cars not having not what relation, a similar method was untwist a site Lada country Russia: generic fioricet fiori
cet and news fioricet phentermine fioricet or fioricet cheap cheapest fioricet I hope on your sympathy I ask to forgive me forlanguage, I to twist only began to teach English, by nationality to twist I Poland, understand as in schools of my country teach this wo
nderful from languages really and there are not responsive people on this forum
Ps. I found some references which to me interesting steel fioricet fioricet buy online and searched through google on demand : fioricet fioricet buy,? here this site with the heap of Linkov.

Surely this means I’m official now, right? I’m getting several more spam comments than just this…is this how it is once you’re blog becomes a little more ‘established’?

Here’s July’s income summary:

Adsense: $22.90 (even got a token click here at Artifexus.net!)

Sponsored Directory Network Listings: $1100

That’s all gross income, not counting hosting, paypal fees, etc. Still, not too shabby.

I’ve been spending money like crazy, and I’ve had to pull back a bit. SEOhosting runs a pretty penny each month, I bought the Directory Network, I’ve got a bunch of domain names from TDNAM, and I’ve been link building, plus a few odds and ends (which add up to a pretty penny themselves). I’ve got a total of 80 domains in my pocket, and it’s just too many to work with right now. I’ll probably have a domain sale here and/or on Digital Point. I could use the money for other things, I won’t get around to putting decent sites on them all any time soon, and someone else could use them. Even though I’ve got too many, I’ll be keeping most of them.

Wish me luck on this 2 month old journey towards World Domination!

Looks like my SEOhosing debacle is over. I got my additional accounts, and turns out I just had to add a ‘package’ to activate them. Too bad the online chat guy couldn’t help me with that; I had to wait for an email the next morning from hosegator support. I probably should have thought to try adding a package myself, but I’m just a poor noob trying to make a webmaster living. Let’s hope it’s smoother sailing from here on out.

Update: This issue was resolved, and further information is here.

So as of yesterday evening my additional accounts were STILL not activated on my plan. I hopped onto online chat with seohosing, and the operator told me that a billing manager would be in touch with me via email before the end of the night. I waited several hours until 11:30 PM EST (seohosing is on central time), when, with no email in my inbox, I fired up online again to speak with a different operator. I related my story and what was told to me earlier. He told me that a billing manager was there, but not there right now (stepped out). I told him I’d wait until 12:30 and check back, but please get back to me. Of course, I didn’t hear from anyone.

I started up chat once again at 12:40 (yes, that’s after midnight), and after waiting a bit, was told my accounts were activated. Whoo hoo! I even got an email! Of course, when I tried to activate an account (set up a domain), I was unable to do so. Hmmm. It was getting late at that point (after 1 AM), so I gave up for the night, hoping it was just an error on my part (gasp!). It would only be coincidence that when I list all my accounts in WHM, it shows 35/35 accounts used (not 35/50), right?

I tried again tonight when I got home to activate an account - no worky. I fired up trusty online chat and walked through what I did with the operator (I was doing it right). The operator looked into it, and even tried to set up an account using my login/pw - no worky for operator either.  He says I need to contact support with an email. Sigh.

SO: I STILL don’t have my additional accounts a full 5 days after I paid for them. When will it end?

Update: This issue was resolved, and further information is here.

Cue Soundtrack: Take the Money and Run by the Steve Miller Band.

When I acquired the Directory Network, I put the directories on 31 separate C class IP’s to improve their appeal. I ordered 35 C classes from SEOHosting.com, a Hostgator company. More recently, I’ve also been trying to build a blog network, so I wanted more C class IPs (4 wasn’t enough). I contacted SEOHosting and ordered the extra 15 C classes, and made a prorated payment for the rest of this month. I paid on Thursday evening, and I still have yet to receive my additional 15 C classes. Here’s the chat transcript from their online support tonight (Saturday, ~11:30 PM, EST):

Operator: Welcome to HostGator, how may I assist you?
Me: hi, how long does it take to increase the number of c classes on an existing plan?
Me: For example, if I were to go from 35 to 50?
Operator: You would need to e-mail sales@seohosting.com about this question.
Me: what if I were to call the number?
Operator: Unfortunately, the one person who would know about this is Chad Bean, and he’s not in the office tonight.
Me: I made a payment to increase my account from 35 to 50 on Thursday of this week
Me: hasn’t been done yet
Me: sent an email to sale today, has gone unanswered
Operator: As I said, I don’t have any access to any information about the SEO hosting part of our business.
Me: someone will be in in the morning?
Operator: Perhaps.
Me: perhaps?
Operator: I honestly don’t know when Chad will be in the office.
Operator: He will assuredly be here on Monday.
Me: ugh
Operator: I’m sorry I can’t be of more assistance.
Operator: Ok, take care and have a great day!
Operator: Thank you for using HostGator Live Chat.  Your opinion is very important to us.  When closing the chat, please take a minute to fill out the brief survey that pops up so that we may continue to improve our customer service and support.
Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

Well, isn’t that nice? If you can’t tell from the transcript, I emailed sales (as instructed) much earlier in the day, and hadn’t heard back from them. I had actually chatted with a support person LAST night, too, and they said then it would be activated within an hour. That was 24 hours ago.

This isn’t the first time they’ve been less than stellar. When I moved my directories to different IP’s (choosing from the list of IP’s in WHM), 8 of the sites ended up pointing to nothing or other peoples’ sites. Several of my directories sent traffic to skin care sites for 2 days. When I was assigning IPs to use up my remaining 4 IP’s, it happened again, even though I was assured it was fixed beforehand.

I’ve even chatted with an obvious noob who wasn’t all that helpful. I’ll admit I’m a noob, but nobody’s paying me to be otherwise.

However, it looks like Hostgator is pretty pleased with their chat statistics/feedback.

I’m not sure how much this is a deal breaker. I seriously don’t think I’ll be moving the directory network, but I may be looking to work with someone else for the rest of my business.

</soundtrack>

I noticed a viral tags post over at Gio’s blog today. I like this one better than the ‘asterisk’ viral tag schemes that I’ve seen; they seem a little cheesy to me (but effective). This one let’s you assign your own anchor text for your blog.

Viral tags are like chain letters, you add your link to the matrix and as people copy the matrix to their own blogs, your link gets picked up and you end up with backlinks to your blog. Pretty simple link generation method. The earlier you get in, the more links that will come back to you. If you add your link to the matrix and then let Gio know in the comments of this post, he’ll add your link to the matrix there (so you’ll get at least one link!).

 Follow these instructions:

========= Copy and Paste below this line ==========

The main idea of this tagging program is to allow others that got pinged by you to easily go to your site, and copy your Anchor Text (located right after “My Anchor Text”) and URL and paste them into their ViralTags Matrix. If you follow the instructions listed below exactly, it’ll make everything easier and clearer for everyone. Thank you for your participation! Enjoy!

Instructions:

1.) Copy and paste this program as indicated.

2.) Replace the anchor text located after “My Anchor Text” with your own anchor text. Also add your own anchor text in your ViralTags Matrix. Please keep anchor text to a max of 3 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in their ViralTags Matrix, practice good karma by copying his/her Anchor Text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over your ViralTags Matrix below.

4.) Encourage and invite others to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

My ViralTag Matrix

My Anchor Text: World Domination

Text Unlimited | Startup Entrepreneur Money | Hot MySpace Layouts | Pinoy Jokes | Coolest Friendster Layouts | A Great Pleasure | Gio | Struggling Blogger Ramblings | Profitable Productive Blogging | Text Quotes | Text Quotes | NafaSg | Search Useful Articles | World Domination | Revellian | your anchor text here |

Important: Once I get a ping back from you, I will add your anchor text and the associated link to my ViralTag Matrix above. As more and more bloggers copy and paste this matrix, the more backlinks you will have with your anchor text. If everybody who copy and paste from your blog does the same, pretty soon this will spread and go viral. So, the sooner you participate, the more links with anchor text you will receive.

Please follow the instructions exactly, it’ll make everything easier and clearer for everyone.

Definition of terms:

Anchor Text - Also known as Link Text, the clickable text of a hyperlink. Search engines often look at anchor text to determine what the link is about and thus infer the subject of the site to which the link points. Anchor Text can be your site or blog title or any words that would decribe your site or blog. (Ex. Transformers Blog, Autobots Online Dating, Robots In Disguise)
URL - An acronym for “Uniform Resource Locator,” this is the address of a resource on the Internet. World Wide Web URLs begin with http:// (Ex. http:// www.yourwond3rrblogg. com)
Ping (blog ping) - A notification to a web site that a blog has been created or updated.

Search Engine - see Google, Yahoo, MSN, Live, Technorati, and so on…
SERP - (Search Engine Results Page) The page of results that a search engine returns.
Google PR (PageRank) - The PageRank system is used by the popular search engine Google to help determine a page’s relevance or importance.

(ViralTags courtesy of FoundersCafe)

========= Copy and Paste above this line ==========

Submit your sites to the Directory Network this weekend for only $25 (regularly $30).

 You can find more details at Digital Point in this thread.

The other day I mentioned that I’d tell you about a site network you can take advantage of for your link building…here it is: The Directory Network.

The Directory Network is a network of 31 directories that you can submit to just once and your submission will show up in 30 other directories. I just recently acquired this network from Aaron Nimocks, who is the one who built the network. The sub-directories all have Page Rank 3, and DirectoryNetwork.us has a Page Rank of 4. Several of these sites are expected to go up in Page Rank with the next update, and I plan to keep building links to them to keep them all strong and get them all to PR4+!

Features of the network:

•     The sites are all now on individual C class IPs (31)!
•     Submit a sponsored listing just once to DirectoryNetwork.us and your listing shows up on 30 other directories automatically. You can find the list of directories on the ‘Suggest Link’ section of DirectoryNetwork.us.
•     Sponsored listings have the main link displayed randomly in the ‘Sponsored’ sidebar site-wide and network-wide.
•     You can submit up to 5 deeplinks.
•     Links are permanent.
•     News feeds keep content fresh in all categories and subcategories.
•     Sites are not linked together.
•     Sponsored listings are only $30 to get your site listed in the entire network.
•     When you pay for a sponsored listing, I have to run a script to send the listing to the other 30 directories, so don’t expect your listing to show up in all of them immediately…I’ve been doing them within 24/48 hours.

So, for the price of $30, your site is listed on 31 directories, which provides you with 186 backlinks (31 sites x 6 links - 1 main + 5 deeplinks) from your listing’s individual page PLUS the links on the category/subcategory pages PLUS randomly displayed in the Sponsored sections on all sites. Not a bad deal! When these sites go up in page rank, you can expect the price to go up, too, so grab a sponsored listing while you can get the most bang for your buck!

For those of you that have already submitted your sites under Aaron’s ownership, don’t fret, I’ll keep your listings in the directories permanently. Same for you, BigWebLinks, your banner stays for the agreed-upon period.

If you have any questions, drop me an email from the contact link at the bottom of any of the directories, or drop a comment here.

When you’re building (ahem, buying) links for your sites, one thing you should consider are site networks. Site networks are simply a group of sites that are owned by the same individual/group/company. They’re not necessarily linked together, and it may actually be beneficial if they’re not linked together.

Why a site network? It’s basically about bang for your buck. You can often find link prices lower on a site network than buying links individually on separately owned sites. The buyer wins because they get a cheaper price and the seller wins because they effectively get more business than individual site link sales. They may be able to solidify buyer loyalty (longer terms sales) and simplify their link sales, too.

One type of network becoming popular is blog networks. With the ease of setting up a blog (even I did it), webmasters can set up multiple blogs fairly quickly, build some backlinks to get page rank and/or traffic, and then start selling blog posts across the whole network. Webmasters are even automating the posting process across the entire network to reduce their time involvement.

There’s a few things to watch out for when buying links on site networks, and Aaron Nimocks actually has a pretty good buying guide for blog networks. Most of Aaron’s points apply for any site network, too. Basically, do your homework - caveat emptor - and avoid duplicate content issues.

Coming up later, I’ll point out a specific site network you can take advantage of…

Sorry I haven’t posted for about a week now. I’ve actually been busy with a lot of websites/acquisitions. I now have 34 live websites (excluding this one), although 2 of those are really just 1 page sites (so nothing major). I bought them all at Digital Point Forums. I’m cheating a bit by buying instead of making, but nobody makes everything they own nowadays. I’ll post some more information here about the big network of sites I acquired in the coming days.