I just uploaded a new logo for eMonetized.com today! I don’t expect everyone to love it but I think it’s pretty sweet.

If you are need of a new logo for your website or blog I would definitely recommend This Logo Design Company found at www.thelogocompany.net

You just don’t need to take my endorsement because they have over 2,500 testimonials from previous clients. In addition, both Wired magazine and The Wall Street Journal voted The Logo Company “Best In Test” for online logo design companies.

TheLogoCompany.net custom logo design prices start at just $149 which is a deal considering what you get. They sent me:

1 x High Resolution Tif 300dpi(CMYK color) for just about any off-line logo professional printing.

1 x JPG in grayscale for logo trademark registration if required.

3 x JPG in RGB color x 3 sizes (Normal, medium and small)for home/office printing or web design work.

1 x vector based eps file which is your master editable file for professional printing and professional design work.

1 x Transparent PSD logo for professional web design work.

There are cheaper logo designers out there but in many cases you get what you pay for.

Now I just have to get the actual theme better customized.

Click Here To Read More About TheLogoCompany.net

What do you think of the new logo?

One of the Niches I plan to enter this year is the diet niche. Yes, this is a highly competitive marketplace but when you are a semi-super affiliate such as myself you can do those sorts of things. I’m only kidding about that one as I believe almost any affiliate can crack ANY niche no matter how competitive it might be over time, and with the right game-plan (learn SEO first).

It can sometimes take a really long time (1 to 2 years) to start gaining high natural rankings for those most competitive keywords. However, you can begin ranking well for the slightly less competitive long-tail keywords almost right away. I don’t discourage you from entering a highly competitive niche (such as diets, hosting, credit cards) but would recommend you work on some other websites in much less competitive fields at the same time. This way you won’t get as discouraged with not seeing immediate results.

Now back on topic about protecting your brand. While brainstorming for a new domain to use in the dieting niche I thought about a new but fast growing and highly popular diet reviews website called DietsInReview.com

When I typed DietsInReview into GoDaddy I noticed that they never took the time to also register the .net version, DietsInReview.net nor another variation they should have protected DietInReview.com

Guess who owns both those domains now and it’s not them!

Nothing personal to them but that was a really dumb mistake and I think they would admit that. I have no doubt that the website is making tens of thousands of commissions a month but someone at that company didn’t think to spend an extra $10 or $20 dollars to protect their brand. Apparently it’s not the only mistake they have made. They have done a lot of things right as well but that’s not what this article is about.

I don’t attend to use either of those two domains for my new diet website (I found another to use) but they could make for a good redirect or 1 page website with diet offers (traffic from typos). Note that name is not trademarked or I would not have purchased the domain in the first place.

When starting a new website that you think has the slightest potential to be a big success, SPEND THE EXTRA FEW DOLLARS to buy at least the .com and .net variations of the domain name IF available.

I’ve made similar mistakes in the past such as buying webmaster-talk.com and webmaster-talk.net but not webmastertalk.com and webmastertalk.net many years ago. Don’t be dumb like that.

A Name Squeeze page uses a script that opens up something similar to a pop-up on your sales page. Your sales page loads first, followed by a floating/overlay box which includes your opt-in email form or some other call to action.

Creating email opt-in forms in pop-ups is nothing new, but because the Name Squeeze overlay box is an on-page HTML element, it is usually not blocked by anti-popup software which is now widely used. Many pay-per-click engines also allow the Name Squeeze technique to be used while they don’t allow pop-ups on your landing page.

At this point you still may be confused at just how these Name Squeeze pages actually work so I’ve setup a sample name squeeze page on eMonetized.com. See here: http://www.emonetized.com/NameSqueeze/squeeze/

To make an effective name squeeze page, you will want to offer information that interests your readers and makes them want to be directed to more information, or to receive information via email. They are not appropriate for every type of website.

You will want to spruce up the squeeze page by writing compelling text on what are you offering and why they should give you their email or take a particular action. You may also want to add a nice image or two, a signature and a no-spam policy (i.e. I hate SPAM. I will never sell or rent your information…).

Rather than posting all the code for the Name Script here in this post, you can Click Here to Download a Free Copy of the Name Squeeze Script I used (limited time free download).

The only three files you will need to edit are index.html, squeezepage.html and thankyou.html. You may also need to make sure all the directory paths are correct.

Ideally you are only going to want to show the NameSqueeze to each visitor only once so you will want to modify the code in some way to use cookies.

Consider using your name squeeze page in combination with an auto-responder script or service. I personally use and recommend Aweber. If you didn’t want to bother setting up your own scripts, they offer a web form generator which includes a floating popup generator which works in a similar way.

As a followup to my post about feeling a little “overwhelmed” lately, here is one solution I hope to use more often.

Using Freelance Websites!

In the past I have used freelance services for many projects. You can use freelance websites for original article and content writing. It usually costs anywhere from $4 to $10 per article. Freelance websites can also be useful if you would like someone to help you with graphic design, custom programming or creating an original website template. You can use freelance websites for just about anything you need help with.

Because many of these freelancers are from India and other non-U.S. countries you can usually get quality work done at very reasonable prices.

Think about how much your time is worth? Do you want to spend 30 minutes or longer writing an original article for your website when you can outsource the same work for $5 per article?

Here is a list of some Freelance websites to consider:

RentACoder.com: http://www.rentacoder.com

GetAFreelancer.com: http://www.getafreelancer.com

Guru.com: http://www.guru.com

elance.com: http://www.elance.com

How often do you use freelance services?

I was doing some research into image galleries for WordPress over the weekend.

I found a lot of recommendations for a script called Gallery 2 so I thought I would give it a shot and install it on eMonetized.

Gallery 2 is not specifically made for WordPress blogs but it is one powerful image gallery script! In fact it offers many more advanced features than I really needed for this blog. Nevertheless it’s still a great script to use and it will be a good learning experience if I decide to use it on another website. It appears to be the same script used for ShoeMoney’s blog.

I also found a WordPress plugin called WPG2 which was made specifically for Gallery 2 users. It helps you to easily embed your Gallery2 photos within your WordPress blog in addition to adding random images, most viewed photos etc. into your sidebar.

I’ve only uploaded one test photo of my dog “Minnie” so far. I’d also like to get the mod-rewrite setup. Lastly, I want to add a “random image” and the “most viewed photo” to the eMonetized homepage.

So here is the new gallery! I’ll begin uploading some images shortly.

One of the first things I’ve done during the setup of the eMonetized.com website is to use a 301 redirect to automatically redirect the non-www URL of this website (emoneitzed.com) to the www version (www.emonetized.com).

What is a 301 Redirect:

A 301 Redirect basically tells the the search engines that a website or particular URL has “moved permanently.” If you want to know more of the technicals, just “Google it”.

Why 301 Redirect non-www Pages to There www Versions:

Many search engines such as Google see the two different versions of your URL as two different webpages. The main reason you don’t want this is for SEO / link popularity issues. All websites linking to your non-www version of your site wont increase the Google Page Rank of the www version.

Using a 301 Redirect in this manner will ensure that even links pointing to the non-www version of your webpage will be seen and credited accordingly as the www version.

How to 301 Redirect non-www Pages to There www Versions:

1. First make sure that your hosting provider has the Apache Rewrite Module turned on. Most do.

If you have access to the httpd.conf file on your server then you can actually enable the rewrite module yourself. In the httpd.conf file uncomment the following line: “LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite”.

Save and restart the server (always make backups first!).

2. Import the .htaccess file from your website’s root web folder to a folder on your machine where you can edit it. I strongly suggest also making a copy of the original .htaccess file in the case you have to switch back to the original version.

3. Open the original .htaccess you downloaded in Notepad.
Add the following code into the .htaccess file (don’t overwrite any existing code). Also be sure to substitute “yourwebsitedomain123″ with your own website information but touch nothing else.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourwebsitedomain123.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourwebsitedomain123.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Finally, save the file, upload it to your server and test it by typing to non www version of your domain into your web browser. That’s it!

Any problems? Just revert the .htaccess file back to the original which you should have saved a copy of on your hard drive. Reply here and I’ll help if I can.