It all started with two ad bookings on November 3, 2008. I am not going to mention the names of the advertisers here, because it will be a free publicity for them! The two ads were booked for one week. It was clearly stated in the region booked mail that they sends to it’s publishers when an ad was booked. I have original copies of the two emails and I can produce them anytime.

As each of the ads were not related to any explicit materials, I accepted them. The ads went live on specified time and I forgot about them until I saw them on my blog after ten days. First I thought, I am getting extra money for the usage. But, when I checked my account, I saw that they will pay me only for one week. And in detailed information about each ads, it is stated that they will expire on November 30. But my account reports clearly states that they were booked for one week only. Then how come they will expire after 4 weeks?  And how an ad became self-booked ad? Take a look at the screenshot below.

Sensing something fishy, I contacted them via the contact form, on November 17. Now reply for three days. Then, on November 20,  I told them via email that I will remove the ad region, unless the ads are removed from my blog. Their reply arrived quickly with a finger towards their developers! And you know what? Their reply to my first mail arrived on November 24. What a fast customer service.

They said that it was server glitch that prevented ads from refreshing, but they resolved the issue and the expired ads should disappear from my blog. I thought that at last I got some kind of a customer service! But, soon my happiness changed into anger. The same two ads again appeared on my blog.

It is enough. I made a decision to quit. These cheap people have really cheap minds. They must understand that every blogger have full rights on their blogs. And partnering with a third party for revenue doesn’t reflect that the blogger is poor and desperate for money. I have money, I have dignity and I respect my blog. So, I quit.

Finally I wrote to them that if within 24hrs they are not going to remove those ads, I will quit and will openly discuss the matter on my blog. I was sure that there will be no replies and I was right. I am not going to claim any unpaid money or money for the referrals. Let them eat my money.

You may ask, why I am writing this blog post, when I am not interested in PerformancingAds? This for you my dear friends. When it can happen with me, I am sure that it will happen with you also. Already many bloggers have expressed their anger on this service. I am sure that you have probably heard about many of them. So, this is the time. Think once again, if you are using them right now. And if you are new to this field of make money online, avoid them. Otherwise you will regret one day!

The bottom line:

“Avoid PerformancingAds. They will eat your advertising space and you will get nothing”.

The first bug fix prevents accidentally saving post meta information to a revision, the second prevents XML-RPC from fetching incorrect post types and the third adds some user ID sanitization during bulk delete requests. These bug fixes are not so important. Still, it is recommended that you upgrade your installation as soon as possible.

Want to know about the changed files only? Here is the list:

• /wp-includes/post.php  (2 differences)
• /wp-includes/version.php (1 difference)
• /wp-includes/feed.php (1 difference)
• /xmlrpc.php (2 differences)
• /wp-admin/users.php (1 difference)

The last WordPress release was version 2.6.3 and now it is 2.6.5. So, WordPress avoided the version 2.6.4. Do you know the reason? well, it is because of the fake WordPress site that was distributing Trojan with a fake WordPress 2.6.4 release. For your own safety and smooth blogging, download WordPress from the official site only.

The add-on that I am talking about is SearchStatus. What actually it do? It displays Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete Rank of any domain name right within your browser. So, what’s the big deal? This add-on comes with some powerful features that you can use to spy your competitors and to improve your own blog. For example keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and many more.

You will be able to realize it’s power only after installing it on your browser (Firefox off course). Just get it from here and install it. Once it is enabled, you will see it in the bottom right of your browser. You can also change it’s position to some convenient place, from the options menu. Now browse the web as usual. When you are on a web page, it will automatically get information about the Google PageRank, Alexa Rank and Compete Rank of that particular page or domain, and displays them unobtrusively on your browser. You can enable or disable these ranks anytime.

How to use SearchStatus for link building? I am sure that you would love to get some nofollow free i.e., dofollow links. For this you need to know where you can get one. You have probably came across some dofollow blogs and even directories of dofollow blogs. But, mind it, many bloggers are cheating fellow bloggers by announcing their blogs as dofollow, when their blogs are still using nofollow on links!

So, how to know who really offers dofollow links to it’s commentators? Let’s use this Firefox add-on to get some good links. Right click on the add-on icon and select the ‘Highlight Nofollow Links” option. From now on when a web page uses nofollow on links, it will highlight the link. Go to blogs and post comments when you see no highlighting on comment links. Similarly use some brain and get good nofollow free links from relevant sources. So, with this add-on no one can cheat you about dofollow links. Just continue posting good and relevant comments on dofollow blogs and soon you will get a bunch of one way links to your blog.

In my view SearchStatus is a powerful add-on and it is a must for every blogger. I am using it for last few months and getting extremely positive results on some of my new blogs. Besides using for detecting nofollow links, I use SearchStatus to get a quick overview of a new site. It saves lots of my valuable time. If you are not using it right now, try it today. I am sure that it will become one of your favorite Firefox add-ons.

On their home page, Tweetag sorts out and displays the 40 most frequent topics being discussed on Twitter. The size of each tag varies with it’s relative importance. A tag about which more people are talking about, appears big compared to a less talked about one.

You can also search with your own tags to find out who is talking about what lately! You can also use multiple tags to refine your search. You can add tags to the selection by clicking on them. A click on a tag in the “selected tags” bar will remove it from the selection.

For example, want to check tweets on Google voice search on iPhone? Just use Googe and iPhone as tags and start your search. The results are presented in four tabs - all, links, questions and replies. So, if you want to check the links posted on Twitter, related to your topic, just select the “links” tab.

Tweetag has a developer API which one can use to build cool apps and widgets based on their data. Well, this is just a beginning for Tweetag. In near future more features such as thematic tag clouds are expected to be added to the Twitter-based service. Before that, why don’t you give it a try?

I need your Help!

That’s why I am looking for something that can replicate the original version of a printed newspaper, in an user friendly format. I run websites and blogs, but I don’t have any knowledge about e-versions of newspapers. After my initial search I found that there are some scripts that can give the feel of a newspaper, by using images as pages. But, I am not happy with my search results. Can you help me find a suitable product that will help me in publishing an e-version of a printed newspaper?

I want to retain the look and feel of the paper version in my e-newspaper. That’s why when a reader visits the e-version, he/she must be able to turn pages like a printed newspaper. I know what I need here - a pageflip effect. But, I don’t know how to create a control panel like WordPress dashboard, so that my editor can manage the issues and users. Do you know about any particular script or software that works like an CMS for e-newspaper publishing? If you do, please feel free to inform me via comments or email.

Some of my friends have suggested me to hire a freelancer. So, I am also considering to hire someone to write a custom script. But, if there is something good available in the market, why should I spend my money on freelancers to develop something that I am not familiar with? What you say? That’s why, if you have any kind of experience or information related to e-newspaper publishing, please help me. I really need to decide on it, within this month. Otherwise my editor will continue to disturb me with his phone calls! Please help.

With WordPress Max theme, in the front page of your WordPress powered blog, you will be able to display featured posts, latest posts and categorized posts along with auto-cropped and resized thumbnails. Then there is a carousel in the middle for displaying posts by large pictures. In the sidebar you can display most viewed posts, most commented posts, tags etc with the help of AJAX tabs. There is also a video panel to play latest videos on sidebar. Then there are 4 advertising positions that can be controlled directly from the theme control panel. With so many features and options available on this theme, you can easily create a content rich, news blog, powered by WordPress. Take a look at the demo and download it today.

Overview of WordPress Max theme features:

• Premium quality news style WordPress theme.
• Ajaxed Control Panel for theme settings and options.
• Thumbnails created on the fly with cropping and resizing for best quality.
• Sidebar AJAX tabs (most viewed, most commented, tags etc).
• Video panel to play latest videos on sidebar.
• Custom 404, archives, video templates..
• Four advertising positions that can be controlled directly in the control panel.
• Theme is fully widgetized with 3 sidebars.
• Ability to manage all thumbnail sizes in control panel.
• Flickr gallery scrollbar with options built in.
• Beautiful carousel to scroll between posts by large pictures.
• Gravatars support built-in.
• Trackbacks are separated from comments.
• Show author picture, posts, and info below each post.
• FeedBurner built in - can be setup in control panel.
• Custom jQuery panel for quick social bookmarking for posts.
• Theme is split in several CSS and html template files for easiest access and edit.
• Available for free download.

Demo | Release Page | Download Link

Find the Right Freelance Writer

But due to various reason you may be unable to produce quality contents. In that case, what you are going do? In my view, the best decision in that situation will be hiring someone to write on behalf of you. And here comes the freelancers into the scene.

Finding quality freelance writers may take a bit of time. But, you must not forget that if you find one that can write revenue generating unique articles and that easily converts a regular visitor into a client, then that one difficult search will turn into a profitable investment of time.

So, let’s start searching for a good freelance writer. For this, you can look at various freelancing websites or services such that will allow you to post ads the specification of your project and your budget. Popular services are always good to start, but never underestimate the less popular services. Spend some time and try hard to find the best.

When you start your search, it is important to keep in mind that there are different types of writing such as news writing, medical writing, copy writing, technical writing, creative writing or general writing. One writer might be highly skilled in one area, yet may lack in another. And in order to earn some more money, many freelance writers spread themselves out into others areas where they don’t have good skills. So, it is very critical that the writer you choose can produce the type of content that you need.

Let’s go back to your ads on freelancing websites. Once your ad is up, writers will make bids on your project along with their writing samples. The more you are willing to pay per article, the more bids you will get from writers. But, mind it, all of those bidders are not excellent writers and there may be some scrappers also! Properly go through the articles submitted by the bidders. Use the private message service provided by freelancing websites and whenever possible want some more sample of their previous works. Also don’t ignore the ratings and feedback provided by previous buyers.

Make Money Online with Articles

After reading all those articles and considering previous works and feedback, choose a suitable freelancer for your project. Some freelancers may ask very high amount per article. If your budget permits, try to avoid the money factor till end. Because, over time you will be amazed to see how much you will eventually earn from your killer articles. Just for your own benefit, check the probable options twice and make sure that you choose a writer who can write the type of articles that you are looking for to make money online.

So, in this way after spending a good amount of time in searching, you can easily find a suitable freelance writer to produce content on behalf of you. You just need some patience and some money to spend. After the articles are ready, use them as per your own technique to make money online. Soon you will see the results and you will eventually make a ton of money off of each article. The time you spent for searching a freelancer may also help in your future projects. As, you may already have some direct contacts who can write articles that really sales!

Some features of WordPress Newspaper theme:

• Real newspaper theme for WordPress.
• Auto image re-size.
• Multi widget support for sidebars.
• Built in photo gallery.
• Custom 404 Error page.
• Dropdown navigation support for subcategories.
• Ajax tabs.
• Ad Optimized.
• Search engine optimized.
• W3C Compliant.
• Theme support and free updates.

Price of WordPress Newspaper theme:
Basic Package $59
Multi-Site Package $99
Developer Package $159

Alert: Fake WordPress Site!

The issue came into light when blogger Craig Murphy reported that he received a “High risk vulnerability for WordPress users” warning from the fake WordPress.org site, after he logged into WordPress dashboard. The screenshot of his dashboard shows that the warning prompts users to update WordPress to version 2.6.4, which is not yet released. The update link directly links to a page in the fake site.

The fake WordPress site is Wordpresz.org (currently down), which looks similar, as the last ’s’ in WordPress.org has been replaced by a ‘z’. After a comparison check by the experts at Sophos, it was revealed that out of 638 files in the fake 2.6.4 version of WordPress, 637 were identical to the official 2.6.3 version. The only difference was the pluggable.php file, which attempts to send the stolen data to wordpresz.org/tuk.php. Now Sophos detects this file as Troj/WPHack-A, which is a Trojan that sends information back to a remote website.

So, how this can happen? Peter Westwood of WordPress responding to a request by The Register, said that it a exploit of old and vulnerable WordPress code. He said:

It looks like sites which have not upgraded to 2.6.3 are being exploited in an interesting way whereby a hacker, probably using an automated script, is hacking into sites with the vulnerability and changing the settings of one of the dashboard modules to point to a different feed thereby encouraging people to go to a different site which is offering a dodgy upgrade.

It is definitely an issue of vulnerable files in old versions of WordPress. After looking at the screenshot provided by Craig, I can guess that it is somehow related to Snoopy vulnerability. Because in Craig’s blog, the warning appeared on the area where feeds are shown in WordPress dashboard and the vulnerability in Snoopy can be exploited to inject arbitrary shell commands via a script calling the “fetch()” or “submit()” function with an URL controlled by the attacker.

So, what lesson we can take from this? Or how to avoid this kind of attacks by fraudsters? The simple solution is downloading and using WordPress installations and plugins from the official WordPress site. Then we must update our installation, as soon as a security release is announced by the official site. One more thing! Always keep your eyes and ears open. Check a link in your status bar, before you click!

How actually ‘Be a Magpie’ works? It allows advertisers to create ad campaigns with a message and some keywords. Then, the system publishes those ads in between regular tweets and you get paid for it! They publishes tweets, on behalf of you, that matches with the topics you are twittering about. How often they publishes the ad tweets or magpie-tweets? Well, it depends on your own choice. You can choose to have one magpie-tweet per 20 tweets or one magpie-tweet per tweet. The default is one magpie-tweet every five tweets. This is very important, as too many ad tweets may annoy your followers.

How much you can earn? Your earnings will depend on the total number of followers you have on Twitter. The more popular you are, the more advertisers will compete for a tweet in your timeline and ultimately you will earn more. The value of a magpie-tweet is assessed through automated bidding of the advertisers that compete for advertisements.They will pay you via PayPal, once your accumulated earnings reaches € 50.

So, how to start? Anyone over 18 years of age and a Twitter account can register as a publishers on the Magpie network. Simply enter your Twitter name in their sign-up page and you will get an idea about how much you could earn. If you are interested to go forward, just give them your Twitter password and start earning! Well, in order to get paid, you must have a PayPal account and I’m sure that you have one.