I wanted to update the StandOutBlogger family with some exciting news. If you don’t follow me on Twitter (@StandOutBlogger) then you may have missed out on the massive news on Wednesday!

My gorgeous daughter Isabelle Rose was born and Mum (Fiona) and Bubby (Isabelle) and doing well.

I have just come back from the hospital and wanted to update you all with some of the details and a photo (plus let you know when some comments are not getting replied to and posts are not being written (no internet at the hospital).

Name: Isabelle Rose

Born: 30th June, 3:38pm

Weight: 6 Pound 8 Ounces

Where Did The Name Come From?

We absolutely loved the name Isabelle (which means God’s Promise) and it has a good range of options for nicknames (like Belle, Bella and Izzy) – and Rose is my wife’s middle name.

So forgive me if there are no posts over the next couple of days as I spend some quality time with my two beautiful girls!

PS. Wonder how many years until I can get her blogging? :D

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After last posting about looking forward to the arrive of Dreamweaver CS5 and the ‘Content Management System (CMS) Framework’ and having a few days to play around with it and start to get a good basic understanding of how it works. From what I have seen there are people who will really benefit from the new features – and others who won’t. So in an attempt to save some bloggers a lot of money here’s my list of:

2 Types Of People Who Won’t Benefit From Dreamweaver CMS Framework

1. Blogger’s Who Don’t Want To Design WordPress Themes

A lot of bloggers are quite happy with their free or premium theme, and that is totally fine. If you have no interest in designing WordPress themes then it goes without saying that the new Dreamweaver CMS Framework will be of no benefit.

2. Bloggers Who Don’t Have Moderate Coding Knowledge

One of the reasons I was so excited about the new CMS framework feature of Dreamweaver was because while I have moderate knowledge of CSS styling – I really can only edit code and create basic code. By allowing me to see the changes I make in real time I knew this would improve my coding skills and help me create much better themes in a shorter time period than in previous versions of Dreamweaver.

If you have no CSS coding knowledge then I think you will really struggle doing anything more than changing colours as you are still working with the CSS stylesheet. So I would recommend that you do a bit of CSS studying before you spend the money to buy Dreamweaver.

What I Love About The CMS Framework…

Live Code Navigator

I absolutely love how you can split your screen between a pages html or the Stylesheet and a live preview – and you can right-click on any section of the live preview and select ‘Code Navigator‘ and it will show you which section of the CSS to edit.

Live WordPress Theme Preview

After a bit of time struggling to set up XAMPP and install a test version of WordPress onto my computer I was happy to get it all runnning and this feature makes it feel like I am editing my theme live through Firefox!  It is amazing.

How Dreamweaver CS5 Is Working For Me

I took the opportunity to test out the new design features to see if I could design some new WordPress themes for a couple of my blogs and I though I would share the results.

**NOTE**
Both these designs are still a work in progress and I know there is still work to do on both. This is just an example to show what an average blogger, with average design and coding skills can accomplish with Dreamweaver.

WordPress Theme 1: DIY SEO Services

This design is for one of my local Australian blogs that’s focus is on teaching local small business how they can conduct their own SEO services and save money. It is still in it’s infancy but is starting to get some good search rankings and I think will do really well with the new design and an upcoming free e-course.

WordPress Theme 2: Secret Marketing Success

SecretMarketingSuccess.com is all about teaching people the art of outsourcing jobs overseas and is really starting to see an increase of in traffic, this is why I wanted to update the theme to put a much greater focus on the content above the fold.

I am really happy with where this new design is heading. With a major focus on the free ebook, I think this will dramatically increase conversion (I’ve already had my first subscriber through the header form). While the home page is still a bit messy, I think this theme should convert extremely well.

With both themes I now need to spend a bit of time nutting out the text css, especially the in post formatting – but I think you will agree that it is a pretty good start!

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Blog Security Info From An Expert I by no means can call myself a blog security expert. With This 90 Page Tutorial You’ll Systematically Be Walked Through Each Step It Takes To Lock Out The Bad Guys So You Can Protect Your Profits. WordPress Security Blog Lockdown

The last two days have been incredibly hectic for me after I found out that my reseller account with HostGatorhas been hacked by this annoying back phishing scam people!

It started off with an email from a company that Lloyds Bank had contracted to assist with anti fraud and security, which went something along the lines of this:

It appears that your website has been hacked by a fraudster. It is now hosting a phishing attack against Lloyds Banking Group plc
Please remove the fraudulent folders/files as soon as possible and secure your website as it has been compromised.
Please note that it is possible that the fraudulent content is embedded in your website’s legitimate files.

http://www.website.com/halifaxonline/halifaxonline/formslogin.asp.html

In addition, please send us any source files of the attack.
Please let us know if you have any questions or need further assistance. We appreciate your cooperation.

Best Regards,

RSA Anti-Fraud Command Center
RSA, The Security Division of EMC
US Phone: +1-866-408-7525
Email: afcc@rsa.com

As you can imagine my mind started going crazy trying to work out the ‘what, how and why’ or what was going on because I knew this was serious.

I was frantically checking my ftp to see if I could find the files that they mentioned when I started getting about 8 emails from HostGatorall saying the same thing (for my different domains).

Hello,

We have received complaints of a phishing site being hosted on your site as referenced above. Upon inspection, we found that a phishing site had been installed on your account. The vast majority of phishing sites are installed by malicious users who have found exploits in scripts previously (and legitimately) installed on the account. We have taken the above actions to prevent further malicious activities. Please make sure to update your password to something more secure at this point and to update all the scripts/plugins on your account to the latest version.

Your new account password is: (removed)

The following malicious scripts have been removed from your account:
./hsbc.zip
./hsbc
./hsbc/files
./hsbc/files/user-prefs.js
./hsbc/files/util.js
./hsbc/files/btn_view_demo_dgrey.gif
./hsbc/files/logging_data
./hsbc/files/logging_data/c
./hsbc/files/optimise.js
./hsbc/files/090615_btoffe_b_len_cre_sa_490.txt
./hsbc/files/btn_lgon_g_red.gif
./hsbc/files/default.js
./hsbc/files/header-base01.css
./hsbc/files/logo-on-white.gif
./hsbc/files/sidebar.css
./hsbc/files/header.js
./hsbc/files/print.css
./hsbc/files/top_section.js
./hsbc/files/continue.gif
./hsbc/files/idvFieldsValidation20071023.js
./hsbc/files/ExitPublicFusedSite.js
./hsbc/files/logging.js
./hsbc/files/p2g_piblogon.js
./hsbc/files/hw.js
./hsbc/files/nav_logon.gif
./hsbc/files/default_002.js
./hsbc/files/content.css
./hsbc/files/Styles.css
./hsbc/files/Styles_002.css
./hsbc/files/form_utils.js
./hsbc/files/btn_fom_dgrey.gif
./hsbc/files/pr.js
./hsbc/files/logging.htm
./hsbc/files/onlinesavings.css
./hsbc/files/logging-code.js
./hsbc/files/0510wealth_v8_240.gif
./hsbc/files/generic.css
./hsbc/files/ib.css
./hsbc/files/bottom_section.js
./hsbc/files/icon_help.gif
./hsbc/files/3103savings_obs_v1.gif
./hsbc/files/menu.css
./hsbc/files/mdghsb_personalinternetbankinglogonpage_10.gif
./hsbc/index.htm
./hsbc/details.php
./hsbc/confirm.php
./email
./email/wp-config.php
./email/error_log

Warm regards,

Christopher D.
Level 2 Internet Security Division
866-964-2867 (General Support)
281-476-7801 (Abuse/Security Fax)

This made me freak out further, but also told me two things:

1. Obviously it was something to do with WordPress (because that is the only script I run on any of my websites.
2. HostGatoris brilliant.

Since HostGatorhad deleted all the infected files (and I went and checked to make sure), the first thing I did was go and change all my passwords (hosting and WordPress) then open up the big G (Google) and start searching for increasing security in WordPress.

My Tips For Beefing Up WordPress Security!

1. Make Sure You Have The Latest WordPress Install

   In my research I found that a lot of the upgrades have security fixes and hackers target websites that are using older versions of WordPress. Since a couple of my websites using WordPress are normal company websites – I never thought to update them!

2. Don’t Use The Default ‘Admin’ User

   This just makes it easier for hackers to guess a password. Probably not the most important thing, but something that will definitely make it harder for some hackers.

3. Install Some Security Plugins

   Like insurance, security is something that you never think about until you need it. And this is what happened to me. I had no idea there were so many great plugins that you could get that would beef up your WordPress and make it much harder for hackers.

   Here are a  few I recommend:
   Login Lockdown
   Secure WordPress
   WordPress Antivirus
   WordPress Firewall

This should go a good way to preventing successful hack attempts on your websites!

Why I Love Host Gator!

When I was doing some research on how to fix my problem I found countless website owners from other hosts who mentioned how the first thing they new about their website being hacked was a letter from their host canceling their account.

I am so glad that HostGatordidn’t cancel my hosting account, but instead HELP FIX MY PROBLEM and point me in the right direction of how to stop this from happening again.

This is the sign of why HostGatoris one if the best blog hosts!

The good news is that it seems to all be sorted out, and while I can’t guarantee that doing these things will prevent your WordPress blog from being hacked – the more you can do and the more security flaws you block up, the more you will deter people from trying!

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I don’t know about you, but having been blogging for over 3 years now, I have always been looking for that ‘top affiliate product‘ that just sells like hot cakes every time I promote it.

After reading  a post over on BuildThatList about the best affiliate products, I was reminded of the most important key when it comes finding that top affiliate product.

The products you use are the best affiliate products to sell!

I think that Tom has made a fantastic point that I recently had the pleasure of experiencing.

My Top Affiliate Product

I am not the type to go around sharing my online earnings, but I have set myself a goal to go full-time online by the end of the year with a minimum income of $3,000 a month.

While I am still quite a long way off this figure I have been taking the necessary steps to make sure that I find myself on top of the goal by the end of the year, and the first of those steps was to find my top affiliate product.

Now I know it is going to take a lot more than just one successful affiliate product for me to consistently make $3,000 a month, but I found my start when I downloaded a trial of a keyword research product called Market Samurai.

After purchasing the product, I seriously could not think of why every single affiliate marketer and blogger was not using this software – I believe it is that good!

The Problem was when I started looking for their affiliate program.

At the time they didn’t have an affiliate program and all I could do was email them my details asking them to let me know when they decide to set one up.

I got a reply saying that they were working on adding about 7-8 new affiliates a month, but there was a long waiting list  – so I was left in limbo until sometime near the end of January.

I was estatic.

Here I had a product that I love. That I seriously recommended to everyone who asked anyway and they offered to give me about half of every sale that I sent over to them. Sounded like a pretty good deal to me.

In the month of February, I sent an email to my mailing list and made a couple of blog posts, one about a Market Samurai Discount, one about a review of the software using a case study for my new large dog kennels niche site.

During the 28 days of the month I made 12 sales (which is almost one every 2 days)  and this month is on target to do even better.

Why Is Market Samurai My Top Affiliate Product?

If we go back to the way to find your top affiliate product,

The products you use are the best affiliate products to sell!

The reason I believe I made the sales that I did was a result of my review posts, where I showed my readers how I personally use the software to find the keywords for my websites.

So Where To Now?

Obviously I am going to continue to find ways to introduce bloggers and internet marketers to Market Samurai but now my focus is to finding my next top affiliate product.

Sure 10 x $50 commissions a month is nice, but that is not even 20% towards my monthly goal for the end of year. So now I am looking for my next top affiliate product – because we can either continue to improve our sales of one product, or introduce a new pipeline (I am trying to do both!)

So what is your top affiliate product, and why is it working for you?

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One of my good blogging friends, Jim (from The NetFool.com) has just let me know about an amazing offer he has over at his blog.

In fact, I put on hold a blog post I was working on just to let you know!

The Bloggers Stimulus Package

This is what he has on offer:

• A FREE PREMIUM BLOG THEME From The Website Of Your Choice
• A FREE CUSTOM LOGO Designed By Jim
• A Copy Of His BLOGGING EBOOK FREE – To Get You Started
• Plus FREE BLOG CONSULTATION – So You Hit The Ground Running

Now, when you look at what is on offer, say $50 for a theme, $30 for a logo, $10 for the ebook and $100 for consultation, you are easy getting ATLEAST $190 in value – for free!

Now What Is The Catch?

As always nothing is free, but this is pretty close. All you have to do is sign up to HostGator through his link (so he get’s an affiliate commission) and you get all of that free! (View TheNetFool.com Post)

HostGator is a fantastic host, and has been my host for over 2 years now! So I cannot recommend them more, and the last time I was an affiliate of them I got $50 for each referral – so I really have no idea how Jim is doing this! All I can say is that if you are looking for new hosting, or planning a new blog – you should really take advantage of Jim’s generosity (cause I’m sure the offer wont last long!)

To view Jims post with all the details click the link below:

The NetFools Blogger Stimulus Package

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I was doing my regular visit of my blogs today, to check that everything was going well and received a very welcomed surprise.

Google had passed by and given my new blogs their first Page Ranks.

While StandOutBlogger continues to be a PR3 Blog, I received one new PR2 and two new PR1 blogs.

1. FranchiseBuzz.com.au (PR0-PR2)

   
   Launched in the middle of November, I have spent quite a lot of time working on this Franchise Business Opportunities blog. And While my posting has dropped off over the holidays, I am planning to jump straight back into things coming into the new year.

   The thing I am very excited about is that I also received a lot of internal PR2′s. In fact all of my individual posts, minus 4 of them are PR2. (You can check internal Page Ranks at: http://www.askmie.com/internal/)

2. SurveysForMoney.com.au (PR0-PR1)

   
   I bought this domain for my birthday (My wife will let me buy two domains a year without selling my old ones – and that is my birthday and Christmas). Started in December, I have already made over $10 on affiliate commission through CheckMyStats, and another $5 or so with Adsense.

   Surveys For Money received quite a few PR1 internal pages, with my post on High Paid Surveys getting a PR2.

   My focus for 2010 for this blog is to start building a list off of this blog and continue to improve search engine rankings.

3. SoftwareProducts.com.au (PR0-PR1)

   This one was of those spur of the moment domain purchases. I thought, ‘What a fantastic keyword domain!’, but forgot that even with a great domain, you still have to put effort into the blog.

   I did a little bit of work on SoftwareProducts.com.au and it still get’s me the odd click in Adsense, but I would like some extra time to make it a lot better than it currently is. That being said, I got quite a few PR1 internal links and one PR2 page for a post on Watch TV Online.

As you can probably see, that I have started to focus my attention of the Australian market with few .com.au domains. I think this has been one of my better blogging decisions and I look forward to seeing how these blogs perform over 2010.

So, was it just me, or did Google visit some of your blogs and give you a nice New Years present?

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Looking back on 2009 I thought it would be a great idea to posts the most Tweeted articles on StandOutBlogger, as well as listing a few that should have been.

This is a great way to give a couple of posts a second wind, and a few that deserved it but missed out, a first wind. I am not to pleased with the amount of Retweets that my posts got, but considering I didn’t take full advantage of Twitter until later in the year, I will just strive to improve on these results in 2010.

Top 5 Tweeted Posts Of 2009

1. 30 Creative E-Book Covers (25 Tweets)
2. 6 Ways To Take Your Blog Up A Level (22 Tweets)
3. Twitter Backgrounds: Top 10 Bloggers (21 Tweets)
4. Using Alexa To Highly Target Your Blog Posts (14 Tweets)
5. Twitter Marketing: Branding With Unique Backgrounds (11 Tweets)

5 Under Rated Posts Of 2009

1. 5 Things More Important Than Blogging
2. The One Thing Stopping Your Blog From Succeeding
3. Turning Failure Into Success In 3 Easy Steps
4. How To Overcome Procrastination – Tomorrow
5. Unleashing Creativity In 5 Easy Steps

BONUS: Best Post Of 2008

10 Things Climbing A Mountain Taught Me About Goals

I hope these posts will keep you interested enough to to continue to follow me through 2010 – which is set to be a very exciting year!

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First of all I must start with an apology. I just realised that it has been two weeks since I posts here at SOB and I am sure you guys are wondering if I even care anymore.

Well I do, and it has been nice to see my feed count continue to grow in my adsense, but everything has been crazy busy and I don’t see it slowing before Christmas.

1. I Am Doing 40 Hour Work Weeks At A Cabinet Making Business
   A family friend offered me a casual job up to Christmas at his business and for the last 5 weeks or so I have been working about 40 hours a week – on top of the work I was already doing. The money has been nice, but I am glad it is only for a season.
2. My Regular 3D House Design Work
   I work at my brothers Architectural Design company, and handle all the 3D house designs. We are trying to get a new product out for builders in the early new year as well as individual designs for clients.
3. Freelance Design Work
   I had the opportunity to design a series of t-shirts for a friends new clothing line (and she is looking for 2 more designs before Christmas), and I also recieved a website design contract from one of our clients at Archilads. Preview the website design here: Tin Can Bay Builder – still a work in progress.

My Blogs

My blogs have been going quite well, and I have been focusing on my more local, Australian focused domains.

• FranchiseBuzz.com.au
  I now have a couple of Franchises that are sending me news stories on a regular basis, and one has requested information on advertising. I have made a couple of dollars from Adsense, and the traffic is going steady. It’s just about to break into the top 4,000 websites in Australia.
• SurveysForMoney.com.au
  Know I know what you are thinking. ANOTHER BLOG? And to a small degree I agree. But since I last posted, I sold IHeartWorship.com and I have let a lot of my useless domains expire, as I try to refocus my blog portfolio. Plus, my wife let me buy a new domina as a birthday present and I saw a great niche and jumped in.

  I see this as a long term project, that has a lot of potential, and will be adding an email list in the coming months and fine tuning the design. However, already I am starting to rank for some great keywords, such as surveys for money, high paid surveys, get paid for doing surveys and earn money surveys. Each of these keywords were chosen because they are getting daily exact traffic and have quite low competition. As usual I have created a Twitter account – @Surveys4MoneyAU -  and will use it to drive traffic (especially to my email list when I create it)

I am working with a new affiliate program for this website, and will give it a decent review at a later date. It is my first foray in getting paid per lead, and I have already got one lead and an Adsense click – but looking for it to grow.

Well, that is where I have been. I am hoping that in the new year there will be a little more time for SOB. How are all your blogs going? I hope everyone is going well and your blogs are continuing to grow and become profitable.

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Well I have had quite a busy week since my last post. As well as working full-time I have been working hard on FranchiseBuzz (My blog flip challenge blog) and got a few other things going on. I haven’t even had time to think about StandOutBlogger (sorry), so instead I decided to just give you a quick update on what I have been up too.

1. My Franchise Website Is Growing Quickly
   The blog flip challenge started a week ago, and my Australian franchise website is quickly gaining momentum. I am now already averaging 100 visits a day, with the last two days getting over 200.  I have made 8 posts in the last week. A little less that I wanted too, but still a good start. The @FranchiseBuzz Twitter account has over 550 followers and has been my major source of traffic (along with search engine traffic).

   I am currently working on a unqiue theme for the blog that will give it more of a ‘news’ feel -instead of looking like a blog. As well as optimizing adspace (for increase revenue). Speaking of revenue, I added adsense to the blog today (which I will have until I impliment the new design), and have already had 2 clicks and made $.50.

2. Selling A Blog And Domain
   My wife has made me promise that I will not buy a new domain until I sell some that I already own. This is why I have put one of my blogs up for sale at DigitalPoint.

   The blog is in the Christian Music niche and is making $10+ a month from adsense, and getting quite a bit of search engine traffic. It is currently at $70, and if you are interested or would just be kind enough to give it a nice little nudge back to the top of the thread you can view the listing here: IHeartWorship.com Sale Thread.

   As well as that I ahve the domain www.TwitterProfitCode.com for sale and it is currently at $5. Domain Sale Thread Here.

3. Doing Niche Research For A New Project
   I am also in the market for a new domain, which will definately be an Australian niche (as I have had much better success with localized blogs. I am still in the early stages of keyword research, but I think I have got a broad niche and will keep you updated when I decide to purchase a domain. This new project will focus on affiliate and adsense income, while Franchise Buzz will focus on private ad sales.

Well that is what has been happening for me over the last week. It is hard trying to juggle a 40hr/wk job plus freelance work and blogging, but I am sorry that I haven’t been more active on SOB. I think for the next couple of weeks I will be using SOB to keep you updated on my other blogging projects.

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About a year ago I bought an amazing little piece of software called Micro Niche Finder that I use almost daily to find new niche blog and post topics that have a heap of searches but very little competition. I thought it was about time to show you the benefits of this powerful tool – and in doing so, give a few of you the chance to capitalise of a fantastic niche for a new blog!

Free Niche Analysis: CAKES

Now you may be thinking, “Why ‘Cakes’?” – Well “Why not?”

It is all about finding a niche and post titles that aren’t to overcrowded, where it doens’t take too much effort to get your posts onto the front page of Google. I have a habit of typing random words into Micro Niche Finder and it just so happens that ‘cakes’ could be a nice little money spinner if you created a WordPress blog and start writing articles for some of the key phrases I have found!

It’s All About ‘Longtail Key Phrases’!

Obviously keywords such as ‘cakes’ would have millions of pages of competition and companies would be paying $1,000′s to SEO companies to get first page listings, but these are not the keywords we are looking for. I mean, check out the competition!

There is no way that I would want to be competing against that many websites! So I head to the other end of the table and look at longtail terms that have little competition but a nice amount of traffic.

What I Look For!

Micro Niche Finder has some awesome ways to check how good a phrase will be to target for SEO. I have guidelines and limits for each of these to help me find the best phrases!

Search Count

This is what lets us know how popular a phrase is searched. For example you will notice above that ‘cakes’ is search 165,000 times a month on Google!
Now the chances of ranking in the top 10 for this term is near impossible, however the aim is to look for:

• A Search Count Of Over 1000
  
  Anything under this I would consider a waste of time unless there was practically zero competition and you are sure you will rank in the 1st spot on Google for that keyword! Your aim is to get as high a search count without too much competition

Exact Phrase Count

This is where it gets a little bit more serious.  ‘Exact phrase count’ lets us know exactly how many web pages contain the listed phrase.  What you are looking for on this one is:

• As Low A Number As Possible!
  
  Sometimes this is easier to find than others, but if you are targeting the lower search counts like the ones with only 1,000 searches a month you defiantly want an exact phrase count of less then 1,000 – I would be looking for the low 100′s!  ow you may be thinking that 1,00o web pages with your phrase is a lot of competition – but most of these will have no SEO and with a few simple steps you can easily rank in the top3  searches for this phrase!

Minimal Strength Of Competition

Soc is an estimate of how strong the existing competition is for a given keyword phrase. Use soc in conjunction with the exact phrase count to determine how hard it will be to penetrate a niche market. The larger the number the harder it will be to rank well in Google!

• SOC Under 50 – Very Easy To Rank
• SOC 50-100 – Will Require More Effort
• SOC 100+ – Only Target If You’re Ready To Spend A Lot Of Effort

My Top 10 Longtail ‘Cake’ Keyphrases

Using Micro Niche Finder and the methods and limits I have stated above, I have found 10 fantasti longtail keyphrases for anyone looking to get into the ‘cake’ blogging niche!

And Here They Are:

These keyphrases would be great for anyone wanting to test niche blogs with Adsense! I’d love to hear if anyone is going to run with this idea!

What did you think of this post? Do you like this kind of research? And if so, would you like to see more posts like this? Leave your thoughts below.

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