I've just finished upgrading Blogengine to version 1.6. It was trully worth the effort! It took meles than 10 minutes to clean entire blog from spammy comments. I guess someone has campaign of selling some money making program to suckers on the internet, since they have been quite active recently.

Best of all, when you catch them unprepared, it is sort of a big catch. Their IP adresses go to anti-spam services, and I can only imagine look on their faces when suddenly their "foolproof" system ceases to work.

Sometimes, I have idea to send them to some of the online casinos (there they would have greater chances to get some money), but, who am I to judge? Whatever, Blogengine has grown, and has real teeth now. Looking forward to future upgrades!

Odd title at first, but appears like Google killed affiliate marketing with its Affiliate network. Sounds like contradiction? Only at first sight. Google affiliate network exists for a while. I am also participating in it. Recently, looks like most of big players started participating, so you can find pretty much links on everything. If you look for product you would like to promote, there is no problem at all! You will find it!

But, there is big but in this story. Google has it's Product search and at the same time is your biggest friend and your worst enemy. If someone is inclined into buying something, do you really think he or she is going to search for your website/blog/whatever first, and then use your link to go to the web site that is selling that product? Or, he or she might do something much, much simpler. Instead of that awkward and complicated procedure, simply open product search in search engine (Google), use the very same search engine and find the product of its own liking. So, you think an affiliate marketeer is going to get traffic from Google? Highly unlikely anymore.

As we all know, life is not fair. Google gives, Google takes. Promotion of products through anything that has to do with Google search engine is right now near to mission impossible. So, don't do it. You will lose nerves, money and time. Not neccesarily in that order. Instead, search for alternative promotional methods (but keep in mind when someone tries to sell you that super ultra, great money making auto income, zero effort programe that your possible customer had already been served - by Google). They can range from use of social networks, article web sites and e-mail lists. But, what comes as most effective weapon in this game is in the end maybe the simplest one.

Instead of trying to outmarket the marketing engine number one in the world, why don't you try something different? Use it. Make a product. Then use the very same marketing machinery that seems to work against you for your biding. Give them to promote your product. It is more likely you will sell it. If it happens by chance that your product is actually some sort of informational brochure or booklet with links, well, it's not your fault...

Lot's of people ask about BlogEngine as platform and how hard is to create a theme for it. Well, since I'm using it for a year now, I can witness about it from the first hand... ;-)

First of all, it is a great piece of software. Open source, extendable and based on dot.net. If you are a programmer, writing an extension for it is something you will manage within a day or two. I am not professional programer, but even so, the piece of code that is displaying ads after you expand post is mine. Theme is also mine, and making one is extremely funny. Everything is doable with CSS, so in the end you get really clean HTML that is nicely optimized for search engines, and if you are into artistic waters, you can get really astonishing results. Try googling a bit and you will see some nice works.

Setup and installation is something that is unbeatable. It comes literally to copy and paste of code within working folder. (If you don't need a database that is.) Apart from that, you will need to set permission for  IIS to enable worker process to write into App_Data folder. If you don't know to do this by yourself, ask nicely web hosting service guys and they will probably do you a favour. More or less that is to the setup part (there is more details on BlogEngine documentation page).

What you will need is web hosting that support ASP.Net or Mono, but that is not hard to find anymore. Wordpress is nice, but if you look into something that will be tailored to your own needs, and you know C# or VB.NET, Blogengine can be apealling solution to your needs.

(No, I am not BlogEngine affiliate, and I am not paid to write. This is my very own oppinion.)