Look at the image on the left.

That’s what I got to look at for 24 seconds while waiting for a popular blogger’s site to load.

UGGGGGHHHHH!

And no, it’s not a slow connection on my end — almost every other site I visit loads instantly. What’s worse – every page on this blog takes as long or longer to load… every single time.

Now, the only reason that I bother waiting for this site to load is because I know and enjoy this blogger’s work. He shares all manner of valuable tips, interesting anecdotes and personal stories on his blog.

I don’t mind the wait because I know it’s coming. I do some other work on my computer and when I see his favicon come up on the tab in Explorer, I know that page has finally loaded and is available for viewing.

That works for me, but what about first-time visitors to his site? Do you think they bother waiting nearly half a minute for a page to load. Some might, but MOST definitely will NOT… which means that he’s not making nearly as much money from his blog as he could.

So why does his blog load SO painfully slow when others load instantly?

Well, in a nutshell… he’s got too much ‘stuff’ (that’s put nicely) going on.

• On a single page you’ll see ads, ads and more ads. He’s got Kontera, Chitika, ReviewMe, Peel away ads, top of page ad bars, one or more 468×60′s banners, at least ten 125 x 125 banner ads — many of which contain Flash.
• His standard top of page navigation is heavily graphic-laden and takes up everything above the fold.
• He obviously runs a ton of WordPress plugins and there is a TON of javascript code running on each page which is notorious for slowing sites down when scripts from different programs conflict.
• Instead of linking to one primary stylesheet, the CSS code has been built into his header.php, which adds approximately 3000 unecessary characters to each and every page.

UGGGGGHHHH again. Mostly unecessary and a total waste of good traffic.

So, what can you do if your site is loading slower than you would prefer?

The answer is simple — lighten up!! Here are a few easy ways to do that:

• Reduce the number of graphic images that you use on your blog and that includes banner ads.
• Decrease the color depth of your own images to 256 and make them as small as possible.
• Test your site for loading after installing any new plugin or javascript widget.
• Consider whether you really need to put your Flickr album and broadcast all your Twitter tweets in your sidebar or whether having a link to those accounts would accomplish the same goal.

If those simple tweaks don’t solve your page load issues, or you’re not a geek / technically inclined, hire a programmer at RentaCoder to help solve the problem.

Bottom line — when people can’t see your site due to slow page loads, you’re killing your bottom line.

The latest newsletter has just been sent…

Happy April Fool’s… and nope, no pranks this year, although I see that there were a few ‘take-offs’ around the blogosphere from the one I did in 2006.

The big news for affiliate bloggers this week was the release of WordPress 2.5, which I talked about in Chomping at the Bit for WordPress 2.5 and WordPress 2.5 Officially Released.

I also posted a short piece this morning about Upgrading WordPress with Fantastico in response to a comment from Evelyn who ended up with ‘weird characters’ on her blog after one such attempt. (Evelyn, it’s not nice to talk about your visitors that way!)

There is also some blog design instruction at How to Correct Bulleted List Errors with CSS and
Have You Updated Your ShareThis Plugin?.

I took issue with something I’ve seen too much of late and posted Agent is Typing… My Eye along with suggestions for a better way of doing business.

Yanik was broadcasting Live Feeds from the Underground® where you can see Marlon Sanders and a whole raft of attendees who attended the seminar. (LUCKY them.. I’m still choked that I had to miss it!) If you missed it too, oyou can pre-order a set of the Underground® 4 recordings (DVD & Audio and workbook) before it goes on sale to the general public — or until 11:59 PM on Friday April 4!

In affiliate program news I posted Chitika Announces a New Way to Monetize Parked Domains and Sell Products to Spanish Markets through Clickbank

Because I’ll still be pretty much housebound for a while, I’ve reduced my consulting fees until May 1st. Wanna chat?

Speaking of housebound, there’s also a little blurb about last Saturday’s Earth hour in Lights Out on Google. We played rummy… what did you do?

Last but not least, I’d like to send a special thanks to Rita Ashin who informed me about a few spelling and grammatical errors on the Super Affiliate Handbook homepage. Just think how much nicer the web would be if everyone took the time to help out another webmaster… not to mention how it’s good karma too! Thanks Rita!

P.S. Stay current by getting the Feed or visit the Blog and share your thoughts, comments and suggestions in the Forum. Always love to hear from you!

I don’t know about you, but my Cash Parking Monthly updates from GoDaddy are always pretty meagre. So meagre in fact, that they’re laughable. In January, I made a whopping 53 cents from 10 parked domains and in February, the earnings were zilch.

If your revenue from parked domains is anything like mine, you might want to check out Chitika’s new parked domain solution which looks like a shopping site with product images. The pages include a listing of well known merchants and an easy-to-navigate category listing.

Here is an image of what the display looks like:

For more information about using Chitika’s updated ShopLinc product as a CPC revenue source for your parked domains, see their “A CPC store for your parked domains” post.

Hmm… there’s nothing quite like being scheduled for surgery to remove a mass of unknown origin to propel one into action. In other words, I blogged a LOT this week.

After reviewing notes and listening Affiliate Summit recordings via the web, I blogged about how Jason Calacanis offended affiliates during his keynote speech. I personally thought his point was excellent – when you got past the arrogance.

I reported on Chitika’s new Related Product Unit (RPU) and that Yahoo Search Marketing changed it’s minimum bid policy on Sponsored Search keywords.

At that point, I noticed that Brian Gardner was having an contest for affiliates who promote his Revolution WordPress themes — which then got me thinking about working on RosalindGardner.com where I ended up installing a new Premium WordPress Themes (which I blogged about at NPT).

I stopped just long enough to read success stories about sites that sell fitness, tea & gas station equipment and then started blogging again.

I blogged about how much I enjoyed using my Flip Video Ultra Camcorder and embedded some new videos along with my 3-month old godson’s first YouTube video taken at Sun Peaks Resort where we cross country skied last week.

I took a little poke at some U.S. based online merchants who really need to start thinking beyond their borders, and at the discourteous jerk in seat 12F. Of course, I won’t have to worry about rude passengers as my March and April conference plans and appearances have been cancelled.

From now until I go under the knife, I’ll be drafting a series of helpful posts to be regularly delivered during the first part of my recovery.

But I really hope that that there will be an Internet connection in the room so that I can just keep on bloggin’…

Chitika’s wide selection of ad units got just a little bigger a few days ago, when Chitika announced that it has released its Related Product Unit (RPU) to all its publishers.

The RPU is designed to work exclusively with blogs and news article sites and is a text link format that integrates right in to your content.

According to Chitika, Beta testers of the unit ‘experienced overall revenue increases and enjoyed it’s complete customization features‘. They also state that their publishers ‘love this ad unit because it doesn’t “look” like an ad‘.

You decide. Check out the example at the bottom of this post. Shown is the standard related product unit. Title, text, background and font colors can be customized to match the look and feel of your site. You can also remove the bullets and add channel tracking or an alternate URL.

Chitika ad units include eMiniMalls (as well as one specifically for Facebook), ShopCloud$, Owna, ShopLinc-Linx and now the RPU code.

If you are not yet a Chitika publisher, you can sign up with Chitika to access their interactive CPC ad units.

[tags]chitika, blog, ad, unit, CPC[/tags]

Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom tagged 5 affiliate bloggers – Jeremy Palmer, Sam Harrelson, Shawn Collins, Heather Paulson and I – to blog about one thing that we learned at the last Affiliate Summit.

So here goes…

As often happens, my biggest takeaway from the Summit didn’t come during a presentation but from talking about affiliate marketing with many different affiliates who were attending the conference.

Too, it wasn’t a new lesson, but a lesson re-learned and further entrenched.

The lesson – in the form of a quote – “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” – Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)

The route affiliates take to become successful are as varied as the individuals themselves and doesn’t really matter. Whether one chooses blog content publishing, becomes an affiliate arbitrager (delivering traffic directly to their merchants via PPC) or focuses primarily on social network marketing; success is always a result of intense desire, focus and perserverance.

Talk with any successful affiliate marketer (any successful entrepeneur for that matter) and you’ll discover a person who loves doing what they do. They are passionate and their passion is infectious.

Speaking with them not only gives you ideas about things you can do to enhance your own business, but it stokes the internal fire into an inferno – which is what I love about attending industry conferences. Moreover, people who are passionate about their lives and what they do are just more fun to hang with.

So, as it goes with the meme game, I now tag the following nice folks:

• Brad Waller
• Joel Comm
• Evelyn Grazini
• Darren Rowse
• Sharon Scherer

You could be missing out on the easiest, inexpensive and the most obvious way to get traffic to your site.

I was… and I should have known better, as one of the biggest secrets to my success, is no real ‘secret’ at at all. It lies in the fact that my name, Rosalind Gardner, has become quite popular in the affiliate marketing industry.

Although your name may not yet be that popular, it’s still very important to do what you can NOW to promote your own name and use it to drive traffic to your existing site(s).

And the most obvious, easiest and cheapest way for you to do that is to register a domain name in your own name and then Work It!

Here’s an example of what happens when you don’t take advantage of having a domain name in your own name. I registered RosalindGardner.com back in June of 2002 (BEFORE I wrote my book and before my name was popular) and did nothing with it except …later set up a redirect to NetProfitsToday.com. By result, RosalindGardner.com failed to register on the search engine’s radar.

So, although a search for ‘Rosalind Gardner’ garners NetProfitsToday.com a first place listing, all but one (SuperAffiliateHandbook.com) of the search results on the first page belong to other webmasters.

How incredibly stupid! I should have worked to OWN the majority of listings on the first page of results for my own name.

Better late than never, so, this weekend I started blogging at RosalindGardner.com, so we’ll see how long it takes for it to get the #1 position.

Please don’t make the same mistake I made — regardless of your name’s current popularity.

Register your name’s domain TODAY and use that domain as a business card site that points to your other sites or even as a personal blog monetized with Google Adsense, Kontera, Chitika or other contextual advertising network.

BTW, if your name is taken, use your middle initial or middle name in the domain name and then be sure to use that full name on your site. For example, suppose your name is Richard C. Green. RichardGreen.com is already taken, so register RichardCGreen.com and be sure to use your middle initial in all communications so people think of the ‘C’ when searching for you or your site.

Once your site is in place – and it won’t take long to set up a blog with an About or Product page – when people ask you what you do, just send them to My(Your)Name.com.

Driving traffic doesn’t get any simpler than that.

April 1st heralded the beginning of 30 days of expert blogging – a blogging ‘bash’ – at Chitika.

Thirty blogging gurus (I’m one) will be taking over the Chitika Blog where you will get to enjoy tips and explore insights about a variety of unique and interesting topics like, “Dare to be Odd” and “Shopping and Blogging: How to make the marriage work”.

To learn more about how to make Chitika’s contextual advertising network for you, check out Joel Comm’s Chitika eMiniMalls SECRETS ebook.

Chitika has launched an official forum for its publishers and the first thing I noticed was the post about their ShopCloud$ which displays popular products in a tag cloud format, and where each product is linked to paid (CPC) search results featuring listings (i.e., deals, promotions and offers) from hundreds of name brand merchants.

All user clicks on the merchant listings will generate CPC revenue. This is what the ShopCloud$ tag cloud looks like…

Do you use Chitika eMiniMalls? If so, the new interactive units have a tab that allow you to earn from your referals to their network. Chitika pays 10% of your referrals’ revenue for 12 months. BTW, Chitika is just one of MANY alternatives to Google Adsense.