The AskWoody ads should be clean now

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If you ever see an ad on this site for a product/service/site that’s unsavory, email me immediately, please! My ad broker has been very responsive. I
[See the full post at: The AskWoody ads should be clean now]

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http://www.remooptimizer.com

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Doc –

Thanks for the link!

Looking at it, I think Remo Optimizer is legit.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/is-remo-more-safe-and-good.359872/

I wouldn’t use it, personally, but I don’t use cleaners. I also don’t think it’s malware.

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The ads are localized. I get them in Dutch. There are 2 ads shown I am not certain about so I Googled them: Simple driver updater and Winzip driver updater. Symantec adds warning signs next to Google’s search results and has the homepages of these programs rated at Caution. See:
– https://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=winzipsystemtools.com&product=NIS&version=22.8.0.50&lang=1301&source=toolbar&ulang=eng
– https://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=simplestar.com&product=NIS&version=22.8.0.50&lang=1301&source=toolbar&ulang=eng

Virustotal says both sites are clean. However, I always doubt such programs, especially when Symantec has warnings for their websites.

I do not know whether you consider these (Dutch) ads (of which I have screen shots should you want them) as undesired or that they meet your standards. Personally I think they distract from the quality of your website, or, in other words, they might give your website a negative connotation.

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… and by the way. I clicked on a few ads which I did trust to generate some revenue for you 😉

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Woody, (sorry its not related but didn’t know ehre else to put this) I did a search for “ask woody” on duck duck go and this was the top hit:

http://www.woody.info/

It shows your site from back in Feb 2015 when you were at Defcon 4.

I was just curious but was that the last time you were in defcon 4? When was the last time you have been in defcon 5 (if ever)? How about 1?

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It may not be malware, but the only $50 “speed up your PC” product I’ve ever seen actually work was a RAM stick… 😉

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Woody:

All I’m seeing at this point is two blocks of raw HTML code.

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Weird. Are they below the “first” article on the page, and again in the right column?

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HA! +1

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I’m not sure, but if I recall..

Last time I hit a 1 was in May 2012

https://www.askwoody.com/2012/ms-defcon-1-the-net-patches-are-causing-havoc/

I think the last time I went down to 5 was in July 2015

https://www.askwoody.com/2015/msdefcon-5-microsoft-patches-applied-2/

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I’m sure they will. Thanks!

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Interersting.

winzipsystemtools.com is from the people who make WinZip, in Canada. I feel comfortable with them.

I’ve never heard of simplestar.com, but they appear to have a legit optimizer/registry cleaner. As noted, I never use cleaners, but I don’t suppose this one’s any worse than the others. I think.

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FWIW, I click on (almost) every ad when I browse AskWoody from one of my my tablets or phone. Not sure how much that helps, but there it is.

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@Woody,
Have the patrons that you list in the tab “Thanks Patrons” (https://www.askwoody.com/thanks-patrons/)agreed to have their full names posted online?

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I almost read that as “Revo.” I thought it was about Revo Uninstaller which is actually a useful piece of software. But I’ve never heard of “Remo Optimizer” I mean I’ll use CCleaner. But those cleaners and stuff you see from ads I wouldn’t trust either way. Even if they’re not malware they can still be utter crap.

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And most of the times an SSD 🙂

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Agreed. But I don’t think they’re bad enough to banish them…

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Very good question – and one I’ve struggled with. I’ve had a number of people tell me that they wish to remain anonymous, and honored their requests. Some have said they want to use pseudonyms, and that’s fine. But those who don’t specifically tell me otherwise get their names put on the page.

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It IS helpful. Thank you.

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@Woody,

I know you mean it to be a good thing, but I’m so glad I had not yet donated – I wouldn’t have wanted my name to be published online here without my knowing (if my understanding about how it works is correct)!

I clicked on the Paypal button to see if there was an indication on the donation form that the giver’s name would be published on this website unless he/she specifically asked for it not to be, and it doesn’t say anything about that.

There is a space for the payer/donator to type in some instructions to the seller/receiver, but I wouldn’t have normally thought that I would need to especially ask for my name not to be revealed.

Do you get an opt-in from people in some other form, like do you send them an email after receiving a donation and ask them if you can publish their name?

If not, I would suggest that on all of the donation forms, in an obvious place, you give people a warning about this practice, because the general assumption is probably that you wouldn’t be posting people’s names online without an explicit opt-in from them.

(However, I was glad to see that Peerblock today didn’t hamper my going into Paypal at all from your Paypal button – no ips were blocked and I saw the whole page properly, so that’s great.)

—
I’ve clicked now on your Patreon page to see what it says there about publishing names.

I see that your Patreon overview page says, but only in the sidebar under the heading “pledge $5 or more a month”,

“I’ll be proud to post your name, pseudonym and/or link on the AskWoody Patrons page.
I’ll also add your name to the Acknowledgments section in the next edition of Windows 10 All-In-One For Dummies.”

The Patreon page says that 0 patrons have signed up for that particular plan, so the people whose names you have listed here might have given donations in other ways, and maybe they didn’t know that your offer to publish their name that you have described under the “$5 a month” plan description is what they were also signing up for by donating to you.

(To see the Patreon page, I ignored the Google, Facebook Ireland, and Comodo blocked IPs that Patreon tried to get through Peerblock, and I allowed the Amazon and Cloudflare IPs through for 15 minutes — allowing one of them wasn’t enough, but allowing both of them enabled me to see the Patreon page properly.)

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Got it. Made both of those changes.

I don’t have a Patreon pledge of $5 as yet. Hope springs eternal.

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out of acorns mighty oaks grow!

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I’ve been getting it too, most of the time on Pale Moon with a satellite link. (I tried it on IE 11 when the ads started, and I was getting something valid.) Some other sites will give me things that don’t work “just right”, usually in rendering an image. I’m guessing it’s the time lag inherent to satellite interacting with something in Pale Moon.

It’s in the right spot, but I’m not seeing any left angle brackets.

Here are the first few lines of the ad code on this page:

[gubbage block starts]
!doctype html> html> head> meta charset “UTF-8”> link href “https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family Slabo+27px:400&lang en” rel “stylesheet” type “text/css”> style>a.rh-ms-mute-undo {color:#0000ff;}body,table,div,ul,li{margin:0;padding:0}body{font-family:”Slabo 27px”,”Times New Roman”,serif;}#adunit {background-color: #ffffff;height: 250px;width: 300px;}#ads {height: 250px;left: 0px;position: absolute;top: 0px;width: 300px;}#ads ul{list-style: none;}#ads ul li {clear: both;float:

[gubbage block ends]

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Are the Patrons people who donate to you on Patreon, PayPal or both?

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The ones listed under the “Thanks patrons” section. Wanted to clarify. You do have a decent number of people listed there even though you only 2 Patreon supports as of this comment.

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Right now I see a real ad below the first article, but still HTML in the right column.

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Are you using Firefox?

I just got a note from CW, with screenshots. I see what you’re facing!

He found that the HTML display problem was solved by going into NoScript for Firefox and, in the Option dialog, Advanced Tab, XSS tab, unchecking the two XSS boxes: Sanitize cross-site suspicious requests; and Turn cross-site POST requests into data-less GET requests.

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PayPal, Patreon, by mail, and carrier pigeon. I’ve had 2 Patreon donations, and I haven’t checked the PO box yet.

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Just in case it might be helpful, I still don’t see any ads here, except for the Paypal and Patreo buttons.

I do see ads on Ghacks.net though, and that’s after taking the same whitelisting measures on both sites.

Firefox 64-bit + Adblock Plus + NoScript. I have even disabled Disconnect.

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I have disabled adblock plus for this site, but still see no ads.

In order to see the ads I also have to disable Privacy Badger – which blocks Trackers rather than ads, but the two seem to be related.

Any thoughts on this?

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Got me…

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Specifically, Privacy Badger defines the following two sites as Trackers and blocks them:
(1) partner.googleadservices.com
(2) paypalobjects.com

By default Privacy Badger blocks (1) completely and blocks cookies from (2).

Maybe you need to restate your advise about turning off ad blockers to include other related products.

[NB The web site for Privacy Badger is resource://jid1-mnnxcxisbpnsxq-at-jetpack/data/firstRun.html]

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Hmmm… I certainly do have links to both googleadservices (which my ad broker uses) and paypalobjects (for the PayPal donation link). Yep, looks like Privacy Badger needs additional handling.

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Yes! That works for Pale Moon. I had to allow scripting from doubleclick dot net to see the advert.

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Woody:

Yes, using Firefox. Your procedure above fixed the ad display.

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Hey hey, I like the new image of your book in the upper righthand corner!

—
I don’t know what this means – “Perfect gift for frustrated Winners”.

Is a Winner a user of Windows 10?

(As a Win7, probably-Group-C person, I’ll keep any unkind thoughts to myself, ho ho ho)

—
Regarding the Amazon and B&N links –
Do they contain your affiliate info within them (so that if we click through on them, you will definitely receive the affiliate percentage of the sale, and we don’t have to do anything else once we are at the retailer’s website)?

Do you get a portion of the proceeds only for sales of your book, or for anything we buy via those links?

For example, if we click on that link and end up spending $50 on Amazon, will you benefit from the entire expenditure?

About how much do you get from people’s click-through expenditures at Amazon and B&N, percentage-wise?

Is it the same % for all website affiliates, or do you negotiate your own terms with the booksellers?

—
I hope you will get some snazzy, attention-getting buttons for the retailers soon! 🙂

Even for a jaded person in an anomic fugue, it is still a little fun to click on a button and have another window open up.
🙂

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Also,

Do you get a detailed report of the Amazon or B&N sales, for example the name of the buyer, the buyer’s email address from their account at that retailer, and what exactly the buyer purchased in that shopping trip?

Or do you simply get told by Amazon, “on Oct. 25, x number of anonymous people clicking through your affiliate link purchased $xxx worth of stuff, so you get $x from that” ?

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I was thinking about saying “Perfect gift for frustrated Winnows…” Fortunately, it’s easy for me to change the text.

The Amazon link has my affiliate ID. I tried to click beyond the book, and the affiliate ID didn’t go along with the URL, so I’m not sure if I get the affiliate percentage (about 4%) on other items. Some folks say the link is stored in a cookie, which persists for 24 hours.

I don’t have a B&N affiliate account. I should look into that.

Any other booksellers you would recommend?

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Are you joshing with me?

If not —

YES, I’ve recommended Powell’s bookstore to you about 3 times already in the last 24 hours!

I even gave you the direct link to Powell’s affiliate sign-up page and commented that 7.5% was a good rate.

Plus I gave you the link to a New York Times article about how some “independent” buyers would rather buy from a Powell’s link than an Amazon link.

(One of my mentions of Powell’s you deleted when you deleted an entire blogpost that you’d put up, plus its comments.)

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If you don’t have an affiliate account with B&N, why not take the link down for now – it’s not helpful to you and it only diverts profits away from you.

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Done.

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When you get more experience with Amazon, please let us know:

1. how much the % is for you

2. if you get a percentage of the total expenditure made during the linked-through transaction, or only a % on your Windows book

3. what identifying information Amazon gives you about the purchaser

4. how detailed do they get about the other items that were bought in the transaction

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As far as I can tell, they don’t send me any info about the purchase – not even the items purchased. I had an affiliate link years ago, and don’t recall seeing any details other than the total amount spent while using my affiliate id.

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@Woody,

I think it would be better to refer to Powell’s as just Powell’s Bookstore — that is how most people refer to them.

It might be part of their official name, but I’ve never seen them referred to as “city of books” before. In fact, I have sold them hundreds of my own used books in the past and I never noticed the “city of books” part of their name before.

—–
Here is the Powell’s affiliate program, available to all joiners, as far as I know:

http://www.powells.com/partner-program

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If you get a % on the entire expenditure,
and if it’s anonymous for the purchaser (in terms of Amazon’s not letting you know all the buyer’s personal details),

this could be a GREAT way for people to donate quite a lot to you, because many people spend a LOT at Amazon, particularly in the run-up to the end of the year holidays.

Even if you only got 1% of a total shopping basket/cart, that could net you many dollars over the course of a month or a year from some readers here.

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Lemme see how it goes. But I believe that’s the case.

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Gotta run, but I’ll sign up for the Powells affiliate program shortly. Thanks!

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But you’d want to suggest that they use your link during their ordinary Amazon shopping trips, and not just when they wanted to buy your book.

Or they wouldn’t even think of coming here to click through your link.

But I know that people would take the time to do that, if it helped you in a substantial way and didn’t cost them anything.

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Powells:

“Emily Powell, the chief executive of Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., which has an e-commerce store, said she attracts some shoppers with similar attitudes.
“People come because they want to support an independent and feel good about it,” she said.”

from: “Online Shoppers Are Rooting for the Little Guy”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/business/some-shoppers-rebel-against-giant-web-retailers.html?_r=0

—
“Powell’s Books has long enjoyed a unique place on the internet. Being both an indie and a business large enough to run its own affiliate program, Powell’s has been the anti- Amazon/Barnes & Noble for the conscientious online book buyer.

Bloggers, too, that want to avoid doing business with either corporation have used Powell’s as their go-to affiliate program to generate money from their blogging. It isn’t shopping local, but it sure isn’t like buying from one of the chains or Amazon.”

from: http://www.mhpbooks.com/is-the-affiliate-program-dying-off/

—
“One winner in Amazon’s price war with book publisher Hachette: Portland’s own Powell’s Books, which scored an endorsement from comedian Stephen Colbert in Wednesday night’s “Colbert Report.”

…Colbert urged viewers to pre-order Edan Lepucki’s debut novel “California” and provided a link to Powell’s on his website, as well as an on-air mention.

…The “Colbert Bump,” as Colbert refers to the interest an appearance on his show can generate, hit Powell’s immediately.”

from:
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2014/06/stephen_colbert_bit_on_amazon.html

—
“Aside from the one-time sales, it’s too early to say what effect the “Colbert Bump” could have on Powell’s, which like most bookstores is used to battling Amazon for every sale.

The bookseller enclosed a postcard with each shipment of “California” highlighting the people behind the store, an effort to set itself apart from Amazon and other online booksellers.

“We’re humans. You can call us, you can write to us,” said Kim Sutton, marketing director at Powell’s. “We’ll even give you book recommendations specifically per your request. That’s what sets us apart.” ”

from:
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2014/07/with_stephen_colberts_help_pow.html

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Looking at those articles that I just linked to here, it seems that they are referred to as
“Powell’s Books”

not as Powell’s Bookstore, which I had said earlier.

So scrap the “store” part, it’s just “Powell’s Books”.

Anyway, after you join their partner affiliate program, it looks like they have a lot of buttons to choose from, so the buttons will display the right term.

🙂

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Is it just me that sees some kind of irony in the GFI Languard ad link… software which allows networks to ensure MS Updates are ALL installed and up to date continuously?
If that was a reliable, safe option, I doubt many of us would be such committed readers of AskWoody.
PS Woody – congratulations on having a secured site. I really like that!

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I hear ya, and I’m not real happy with marginal ads – free antivirus, registry cleaners, and the like. Stuff I would never recommend – but nonetheless legit.

GFI had me shaking my head, too, but you have to take into account that it’s designed to scan entire networks and report on missing patches. As such, it works a bit like PSI – a product I use all the time – but for multiple machines on a single network. I can see the value in that.

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LOL, right. A “secured site” that tries to deliver ads and give Google the opportunity to track users. I note as evidence the attempt to contact, that anyone can easily verify:

https://www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js

In case it’s not clear to the less technical amongst the readers, an “ad” is nothing less than a box on the browser window in which software from **somewhere else** runs, which Woody has NOT seen nor had the chance to vet.

Anyone who allows ads into their browser is being naïve about where malware comes from and about network security in general.

I’m sorry Woody, but never on my systems.

-Noel

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Just saw the following on Ask Woody http://free.mytelevisionhq.com/index.jhtml?partner=^CAP^xdm154&s1=192862&s2=thq_nc&s3=27dcac&s4=35 This appears to be “toolbar and malicious browser extention” Got warning from WOT.

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Yep, that’s a bad one. I’ll get it to my ad broker right away.

Keep those reports coming!

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@Woody,

When hovering over it, I see the “partner ID” in your Powell’s link, which I don’t think I saw in the link yesterday, so that’s great!

I like how on the listing they give the numbers of copies at their stores. Yesterday they only had them in the “local” warehouse and “remote” warehouse, but today they also show 2 of their B&M bookstores where they have some copies.

Would you want to send Powell’s an image of your Dummies book? They don’t have an image on its listing page.

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**One thing that readers here on AskWoody.com can do for you, if they have bought/read your book already, is to leave an honest Amazon review on it (for the 2nd edition book)**

because right now the book has only one review and it’s a 3 out of 5 (though it actually says nothing bad about the book).

Your first edition of the Win 10 for Dummies All-in-One book now has 242 reviews at a 4.5 average on Amazon, which is great. Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Windows-10-All-One-Dummies/dp/1119038723

But shoppers who are looking at the second edition’s listing on Amazon do not see that prior high score, they just see the 3 out of 5 stars “average”, which is taken from only one review.

Amazon says your 2nd edition is the “#1 new release in Microsoft OS Guides”!

—
Hmm, one of the top search results I got on Amazon for ‘Windows 10 for Dummies’ was a 4-star-rated *pair* of laminated pages for $5. Sheesh! that’s an easy $5 plus shipping & handling.
https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Introduction-Reference-Instructions-Shortcuts/dp/1939791545

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Some other affiliate programs that you might think about joining:

1. Amazon.co.uk

Reason:
You have a lot of contributors/readers on this site who are from the UK.
They would need to buy it from the UK to get free shipping and the best price, but their Amazon UK purchase could not (I don’t think, although I am not sure) be done through your Amazon USA affiliate link, so it would be good to give them an Amazon UK link to use.

More info at:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/
(Peerblock is not letting me view the page, but I think that’s the appropriate link)

—-
Note: I see online the information that “Once you proceed [to sign up as an Amazon affiliate], depending on the country’s program that you are signing up for, you will be presented with additional options to opt for. For example, if you signup for Amazon Associates UK, you will be presented with options to signup for other EU countries Amazon associates programs. This makes it easy to join several EU programs at once.”

However, to join them separately, see,for example:

2. Amazon Germany affiliate program
https://partnernet.amazon.de/

3. Amazon France affiliate program
https://partenaires.amazon.fr/

—-
4. Amazon Canada affiliate program
https://associates.amazon.ca/

—-
5. Barnes & Noble

Reason: Only as a well-known alternative, otherwise I am not sure what they offer customers over Amazon

More info at: http://affiliates.barnesandnoble.com/

—–
6. Books-a-Million

Reason: It’s just another alternative, though again I don’t know what extra benefit over Amazon that listing this one would offer

More info at:
http://www.booksamillion.com/affiliates/

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I just saw an ad for “Install Windows Service Packs” the address is “gfi.com.” I did no click.

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driverupdate.net

Sigh.

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So once this post and its comments are buried deep into your sight and its forgotten about then where do you suggest reporting bad URLs?

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Email them to me. I’ve already had quite a few emails – and getting a screenshot helps. woody@AskWoody.com has been a valid email address for me, forever.

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That should be banished. Have you seen it lately.

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I looked at GFI.com and came to the conclusion that they’re OK. They scan a network for missing patches, much like Secunia PSI, but they’re more admin-oriented. Would I pay for it? No. But they aren’t pushing junk like so many, many other ads.

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Thanks! Yeah, I should definitely look into a general Amazon affiliate link, and one for Amazon UK.

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That WOULD help a great deal.

I just looked at the detail on one of those laminated pages – and it’s not the way I would skin that particular cat. Interesting. Shipping and handling and overhead would kill ya, but if Amazon took care of all of that, it’s a possibility.

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Yep, I got the Powell’s affiliate link yesterday.

Not sure how to feed them a shot of the book cover, but I’ll check it out. (Usually the vendors pull the shot from the distributor’s feed.)

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Yes. Last night as a matter of fact. That’s why I wrote it down.

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Yes. I too gave them a look out of curiosity and their site does seem to be legit with an HTTPS certificate and everything. But that driverupdate.net looks fishy.

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Just got this one:
http://www.erroranswers.com/lp/dll.php?t=Missing.dll

Download a tool that scans your computer for you? Nah, don’t trust that.

On the same tab: http://www.remooptimizer.com/lp/clean-up-my-pc.php

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At first I thought erroranswers.com was a bogus site. But I tried running it through various scummy site finders and it looks OK – old and targeted at very novice users. Don’t see it listed for malware anywhere. Whois reports that the domain registrar is Enom.com, which is a typical cheap host in Panama.

vastech.net says the site is worth $10.

It’s not the kind of ad I’m proud of, but I don’t see any reason to kick them out.

I looked at Remooptimizer a while back. While I wouldn’t use it – I don’t use any optimizers/scanners/cleaners, and advise against them in my books – the company seems legit. It’s a tough call on whether this particular cleaner is better than another one.

Thanks!

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@Woody,

Tonight I noticed a new box in the righthand column, under “Limited Time Offer”. I couldn’t see anything in the box.

I was curious what it was, so I went to Peerblock and I unblocked, one at a time, a few IP addresses that Peerblock identified as from Amazon data services Ireland, Amazon Level 2, and Google (it’s rare that I wish to unblock a Google one!), but that wasn’t enough and when I’d refresh your page, more and more blocked IPs were coming up, so I eventually turned Peerblock off for a moment and refreshed the page to see what was in the Limited Time Offer box.

However, even with Peerblock turned off, and using no other adblockers and no security software besides Norton Security, I still can’t see what is supposed to be in that box. That was unexpected.

What I do see is a white background and this message:
“This page can’t be displayed
•Make sure the web address https://rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com is correct.
•Look for the page with your search engine.
•Refresh the page in a few minutes.”

Some other things I don’t allow on IE 11 are Active X, DOM storage, and TLS 1.0. Would turning off one of those in Tools allow me to see what is in that Limited Time Offer box?

—–
With Peerblock off, I *was* able to see 1 or 2 of your regular ads, a square one in the righthand column under the notice “If you have any doubts about the suitability of the following paid ad” and I think there was also a rectangular one in-between some blogposts in the center of the page.

The square ad was a very appropriate one for an LG product, looked like a cell phone or a camera. I forget what the rectangular ad was for.

—-
I like the Win-ers spelling, makes more sense when skimming.

—-
The Paypal button’s gold colors/shading coordinate well with the woodgrain background and with the gold font color of your AskWoody title at the very top of the page.
The Patreon buttons’ red balances with the red in the DefCon image, and the green and yellow of your Dummies book cover picks up the green and yellow colors over in the DefCon 3 and 4 shields.

Looking at the overall view (without the ads though, since I’ve got my Peerblock back on),
it’s a pleasant page template,
and it already feels like it has always looked this way. 🙂

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Glad you like it. The limited time offer is one I didn’t expect to see, but it’s a one-month-free subscription to Amazon Prime. I use Amazon Prime all the time.

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@Woody,

I was curious as to what was blocking me from seeing the Limited Time Offer, so I tried it again, this time with Peerblock turned off and also with DOM storage allowed and with TLS 1.0 allowed.

That allowed the contents of that box to show up on my screen, so it’s either the DOM or the TLS 1.0.

I also use Amazon Prime and really appreciate it (although they often take more like 4 days to get it to me, rather than 2).

Amazon usually allows people one month of Prime free per year, and I’ve done that for the last few years in a row. It’s usually offered to you in a window when you are signed into your account on Amazon and doing some shopping there. I already accepted my free month for 2016, quite early in the year.

Also, maybe 6 months ago Amazon added the option of monthly pricing as well as other types of pricing (having only tv and music access, with no parcel shipping, is one of them), and on a monthly basis I think that the full Prime offering is $10 or $11 for one month, with no obligation to keep it for more than a month. I have already done that twice this year, paid for just a one-month subscription when it would save me money.

The reason I explained the above background to you is the following:

When I still had your limited time offer showing, with my computer’s defenses down, I clicked through on it to get the free month, and it took me to a page that introduced the basics of Prime, and I clicked on a button there saying I wanted to sign up for the trial month, so it took me to another window and told me to sign into my Amazon account. I did so, then a very brief announcement popped up, for just a few seconds, which said, “No offers available”, and it sent me back over to the generic Prime front page.

I expect the reason that they didn’t give me the free month trial as offered in your sidebar is that I have already had my usual free month of Prime this year.

I had clicked around on the introducing-Prime page that clicking the button on your page took me to before it asked me to sign into my Amazon account, to see if there was any “small print” about who was eligible for the free month, and there was no information about who would not be eligible. Therefore, it was disappointing when I got the little “no offers available” notice and was rejected back to the introductory page!

Based on my experience, I just thought I’d let you know that they will probably reject a few other people, and what the reason might be for that.

If folks who are rejected for this offer have a different member of their household whom they can sign up for a new Amazon account, or at least one who has not already had a free month of Prime in the last year, that might work to get their household the free month of Prime from your offer.

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I forgot to say earlier that I appreciate your notice above the sidebar ad spot:
“If you have any doubts about the suitability of the following paid ad, email me for a reference!”

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen that stated front and center on a site before.

If ads are going to be shown on a site, it is refreshing to see the site owner take interest in the ads shown, offer to look into and vouch for them, and work with the ad company to get them removed if they don’t meet the bar for suitability and trustworthiness.

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@Woody,

That’s what I meant about that “blah” laminated offering!

You could put together 2 pages’ (backs and fronts) worth of really good “cheat-sheet” info for Win 10 in a jiffy.

I don’t know how much overhead there would be — you just need a reasonably-nice printer, and there are inexpensive home laminating machines out there, and places like Office Depot and Staples will do it too.

As far as shipping and handling, I used to be an Amazon third party seller,

and if you are not involved in the Prime free shipping offer where Amazon holds your product in one of their warehouses and does a certain type of deal with you, the details of which I have no clue, so I cannot speak to that,

then shipping and handling on a non-Prime-eligible third-party-seller item (at least an item that is considered to be a “book”) is charged extra to the buyer by Amazon at a “set” rate, no matter how big or heavy the item is,
so on some things I often would make some extra profit on the shipping and handling portion of the buyer’s payment,
especially
WHEN THE ITEM WAS VERY LIGHTWEIGHT (like this laminated item)
and
IT COULD BE MAILED OUT IN A NORMAL PAPER ENVELOPE! (like this laminated item)

(WITHOUT NEEDING ME TO SUPPLY A NEW CARDBOARD BOX, NEW BUBBLE-WRAP PACKAGING, GOOD-QUALITY PACKING TAPE, ETC., WHICH DOES GET EXPENSIVE AND WOULD NORMALLY COST MORE THAN THE SHIPPING AND HANDLING SET AMOUNT WOULD COVER.)

You might test it out on Amazon and pretend to order that item on its own, just the $5 purchase, go through the checkout steps before hitting the final “go for it” button, and see how much your order is automatically charged by Amazon for shipping and handling.
(I don’t know if that item is offered as a non-Prime purchase, but I think it is.)

—
Also, Amazon does take a commission of sales, and now I guess they take state taxes too (they didn’t when I was a seller), so that would need to be figured in.

But it still might be profitable, especially given that there are hardly any warehouse storage required and hardly any shipping cost, and it’s pretty easy to produce them (if the quality of laminating at home or at an office supply store turns out to be professional-enough for the purpose).

(Of course, if you needed to do this with the cooperation of the Dummies people, they’d have a professional printing operation that would create it, and probably would handle the sales and the mailings.)

Or, you could offer it as a bonus add-on to people who ordered your book via a special link on your site only, or who became a year-long patron on Patreon, or who donated over $20 via Paypal, or something like that.

…This might be a way to combine the “signature” that you wanted to figure out how to give to certain purchasers of your book, plus a handy reference sheet at the same time.

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Looking into it, even as we speak…

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@Woody,

about asking people here, who already have read your 2nd Ed. Win 10 book, to leave an honest Amazon review of it, how could you go about asking people in such a way that the request was seen by most of your site visitors? Maybe do a brief blogpost about it?

Because this webpage here is of an old blogpost, I don’t think many visitors to the site will have read my original comment above that brought this idea up. (https://www.askwoody.com/2016/the-askwoody-ads-should-be-clean-now/comment-page-1/#comment-104012 )

Are you allowed as an author directly to ask people to give you an honest review if they have legitimately read the book? I don’t see why not, but I wouldn’t know for sure.

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I think it’s OK. I’ve just been busy…

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Oops, I see that the other night I posted an “advertising” idea on the wrong thread – I meant for it to be here with the other revenue-raising ideas.

Original placement: https://www.askwoody.com/2016/patching-win10-in-the-real-world/#comment-103997

============
Woody,

Just an idea:

I was thinking yesterday about the idea of narrated Youtube how-to videos and so forth,
the ‘Liam Neeson-esque voice of the south’ kind of thing (chuckle)

and a thought crossed my mind of a Windows 10 kind of bootcamp or an intensive course, like over a weekend,
helping people to set up their Windows 10 computers and learn how to do the basics and to stay safe, from the expert who wrote the definitive guide on the subject!

A weekend (say, for example, 3 hours in the morning, 3 hours in the afternoon, for 2 or 3 days in a row) would be good for people who didn’t live near to you – they could have a little mini-break at the same time enjoying the sights, music, shopping, and dining in Nashville. (Not getting involved yourself in the accommodation or food side of things, leaving that to the attendees to set up for themselves.)

You could offer a gift certificate for the course, so people could give it as a gift, such as for the upcoming holiday season.

You could do one for beginners, one for intermediate users, one for seniors, one for teens. They’d need to bring their Windows 10 computers, of course. (or their Surface thing, or whatever you were teaching them how to operate).

You could hire a training/meeting room at a local college, a local hotel, local convention center, that sort of thing – the group could be as big as you wanted, probably best though to keep it on the small side because of the sort of individualized help people often need in getting the hang of something for the first time.

You could also teach a course over a longer period of time (for more local folks) — say, an hour and a half for one evening a week, over x weeks.

You could also offer one-on-one training, it would be expensive but well worth the investment for the right clients.

Maybe you already do some teaching like that, or maybe you absolutely can’t stand teaching groups, or maybe you wouldn’t have the time, but I think it might be a great way to use your vast knowledge to help others and also to make a fair amount of money in exchange for the time spent (I don’t know how much that kind of course costs, but you are the author of a definitive guide to the subject, so it should be reasonably well-paying!)

…Just an idea!

—-
Another idea — I’m being serious — is one of those PBS infomercial tie-in thingies, where an expert in something (or at least a person who’s written a book about something) donates a 1-hour filmed lecture or presentation, plus allowing PBS to co-brand a few bits and bobs (like a copy of the book, a key chain, a mousepad, etc.) and to “give them away” to the tv audience in exchange for a donation to PBS — this type of thing is done for the PBS fundraising season, and then such shows are played over and over on PBS stations across the country at all times of year for the next few years, raising the author’s profile and increasing normal-channel sales of the items (through non-PBS avenues).

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Google serves (or facilitates) ads many of which are totally unacceptable. Google takes abuse reports about those ads from consumers and company whose product is being faked and sold via these ads and totally ignores them. Then the mal-advertiser (if they get kicked off) signs up for a new account and runs new bad ads, never to be stopped. Ads contain code (simple or complex) that show different ads to different people. This means they can target ads.

It also means that malware(exploits or just junk product) ads can go undetected for ages since they can learn who detects bad ads and serve them good ads (or just show bad ads to a small group)

There is no way to police the ads that will run on your site, since they contain google script and ad author script, you can’t deterministically review all possible ads, even if you wanted to (even if google wanted to).

A good way to allow an ad to run with more control is to run it in an iframe and remove its scripting privilege, the ad runs based on the server side generated content only (img, links, and not much else)

security=”restricted” does this in IE, I’m not sure if it is standard to any other browsers. Edit: I think the current standard is “sandbox”, but both work together.

See:
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_iframe_sandbox.asp
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms534622(v=vs.85).aspx

From your “Limited time offer” amazon prime ad:
BEGIN iframe
width=”300″ height=”250″ src=”[..omitted..]” [..misc style info omitted..] security=”restricted”
END iframe (antispam code doesn’t like me trying to use html brackets / iframes)

I added security=”restricted” client side and my browser re-rendered it as if that’s how it had been served to the browser from your website.

The ad still runs fine, I see the image, and the link is clickable.

I would consider an ad rendered like that (restricted/sandbox) to be totally acceptable on a technical level, and acceptable in general assuming the content advertised was fine.

Ads like this:
BEGIN script
script src=”www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js”
END script

BEGIN script
script src=”//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=…”
END script (antispam code doesn’t like me trying to use html brackets / scripts)

can re-write your whole page if they wanted to, adding context ads and popups.

An ad locked in an iframe stays where you put it, at the size you defined. With security=”restricted” and sandbox, exploit code is almost impossible.

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Is this something that Woody could do, or because the site is hosted on another platform this is not achievable in fact?

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I might be able to do it, but I’d have to spend hours with my web folks.

Far better to just tell people to block the ads if they don’t want them. I think my ad broker has narrowed things down, so the quality of the ads is very high.

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Wow, that’s one large Amazon button, the new one up top on the right! 🙂

I hope that AskWoody fans will remember to use that affiliate link to buy the stuff that they would have ordered anyway on Amazon,
since there is no cost to them, and Amazon will give AskWoody.com a % of the total purchase amount (even if the purchaser does NOT include one of your books in their shopping cart).

(At least I hope that Amazon will give you an across-the-board % on the entire purchase.)

This is a cost-free, very simple way (it takes just a few seconds to click through the link) for folks to provide meaningful financial support towards the operation of this site.

Especially when shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and when buying December-holiday gifts online, I hope that folks will remember to come to AskWoody.com first, in order to click on the Amazon button which will take them straight to Amazon, then Amazon will later donate a percentage of the shopping basket’s total directly to AskWoody.com.

—
Woody, are there other affiliate buttons available that might fit with your topic areas (technology topics) and be of interest to people who like technology/gadgets, like Frys, Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot, Dell Direct, sites like that? I don’t know if those stores have their own affiliate buttons.

I know that you are extremely busy right now, so I’m not trying to be pushy, just recording ideas when I think of them. 🙂

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I’ll come back and refer to the ideas as time allows.

Yep. Clicking on that affiliate button sets a cookie, which remains in effect for 24 hours. If anyone buys anything from Amazon during those 24 hours, AskWoody gets a small (sliding) percentage.

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Most of your visitors probably manually delete their cookies frequently, and also have their internet browsers and programs like CCleaner and maybe antivirus software set up to limit and often delete cookies.

So to be sure that each purchase will earn you a donation from Amazon, AskWoody fans should deliberately come here and click on your affiliate button before heading to the Amazon site, EACH time.

—
Is the sliding percentage published by Amazon, and the same for every affiliate? I’d be interested to see what it is, out of curiosity.

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It’s a sliding percentage. This is how it’s supposed to work, but I have no idea how it’ll eventually turn out:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/welcome/compensation

(So far this month I’ve earned US$ 0.87.)

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@Woody,

The view of the Amazon affiliate area in the top right corner has changed for me over the past few days —
first, it was a huge Amazon button (which it had been for the prior week or two),
then it was a 2 inch by 2 inch empty ad window that Peerblock was blocking my view of,
and now it’s just a paragraph with no image or button, but with a hyperlinked “click this link and shop at Amazon”.

I liked the button the best, image-wise.

However, I think it would be better if the Amazon button were smaller than it was before (perhaps being made to be the same size as the Paypal button).

Also, I would suggest that the Amazon link/area in the upper right corner would work well as an entry _within_ the “Support AskWoody.com” section, instead of hovering above it.
Anyone clicking on that link before shopping on Amazon is supporting your site with a donation — it’s just that Amazon pays the full donation.

(I hope that the contribution from reader Amazon purchases is on the increase!)

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The first version – the huge Amazon button – caused the whole site to be rejected by Amazon: You have to post precisely the Amazon-approved graphics. The big graphic was my next attempt; it was acceptable, but I didn’t like it, and nobody clicked on it. I’m hoping that the link will work – need to wait a day or two to see what happens. If it’s OK, I’ll move it into the Support AskWoody section.

So far I’ve made $0.87 from my Amazon links. But I’m will to keep at it. 🙂

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How’s it look now? Keep in mind that I’m very limited in what graphics I can use for the Amazon link.

Input is greatly appreciated!

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