I’ve been using E-junkie for more than two years now, and I’m still delighted with them.  They handle all of my digital products for me, and they’re the most reliable company I’ve worked with.

In addition, they’re still the least expensive option I’ve seen for file storage and digital product fulfillment.  Currently, I pay $5 a month for their services.  That’s all.  No commissions.  No surprise charges.  No hidden fees!

Unlike Clickbank, E-junkie doesn’t charge me a per-sale commission or anything like that.

The only reason I stopped using E-Junkie for my Sites that Soar affiliate program is because I’m busy launching a publishing company.  I discontinued all of my affiliate programs, for now.   (The exception is Clickbank, and that’s because  — though it’s fairly expensive –  it requires zero time and attention from me.)

I’m still happily using E-junkie for all of my digital product sales and file storage.

E-junkie stores my files, handles my sales and pays me immediately via PayPal, and it keeps track of my customer lists, in case I need to send update notices or announcements.

If I was selling CDs or DVDs — which I plan to do, in the future — E-junkie would even interact directly with my CD fulfillment service.  Orders could be placed and products created & shipped, and I don’t have to do anything.

If and when I resume my affiliate programs, E-junkie does everything except issue the monthly payments.  However, even that can be managed with one click (via PayPal) for the entire set of payments, using the specialized list format that E-Junkie provides for this purpose.

At any point during the month, my affiliates can see how well they’re doing at their own E-junkie page.  In addition, E-junkie creates and maintains a list of my affiliates so I can send them messages and updates, as well.

They have options for physical products, too.   So, I could create an affiliate program for tee-shirts or posters or artwork… or anything that I’m making on my own.

E-junkie is designed for smaller businesses.  So, if you’re doing tens of thousands of dollars in business, monthly, they may not offer all of the features you need.  (Ask them.  They’re nice people and may create what you need.)

For a home-based business like mine, E-junkie is perfect.  I tried several other programs, and they either cost too much or they had too many problems… or both.

I put my products at E-junkie and I don’t have to think about them again.  Delivery is reliable.  I’m paid instantly. The whole thing costs my $5 per month.

My customers are happy, and so am I.

Here’s what it says on the E-junkie website:

E-junkie provides shopping cart and buy now buttons to let you sell downloads and tangible goods on your website, eBay, MySpace, Google Base, CraigsList and other websites using PayPal Standard, PayPal Pro, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, TrialPay, ClickBank and 2CheckOut. For merchants selling downloads, we automate and secure the digital delivery of files and codes. If you are selling tangible goods, we automate the shipping calculation and inventory management. Our shopping cart has a built in sales tax, VAT, packaging and shipping cost calculator. You can sell ebooks, sell mp3 tracks and albums, sell software, icons, fonts, artwork, phone cards, event tickets, cds, posters, books, t-shirts and almost everything else you want to sell. E-junkie has no transaction limit, no bandwidth limit, no setup fee and no transaction fee.

Their website may not be as polished as Clickbank and similar services. However, E-junkie doesn’t charge the same fees as Clickbank… not even close!

And, I’ve had only excellent results with E-junkie.  No complaints at all!  (And, since I’m very picky, that’s saying a lot.)

I highly recommend E-junkie.  I am an affiliate for them, but I’d recommend them to anyone (and everyone) anyway.

Click the button below and see what they offer.  I think you’ll be impressed.

You’ll probably be relieved at how easy it is:

• no programming is needed
• no complicated shopping cart software (it’s just a normal link)
• there are no start-up fees, and
• you can even try it for a week, free, to see if you like it.

(After that, the basic plan — which is plenty for me, even with about 20 digital products and affiliate programs when I used them — is $5/month… period.)

However, I’m using the newest (2.6) Branford Magazine stylesheet with it.  I’m doing that so my links are underlined and easier for visitors to find.

Obviously, this combination works and can give you the best of both worlds.

Here’s what to do if you’d like to try this at your website using the older version of the Branford Magazine theme:

1. In your WordPress dashboard, to go Appearances > Editor.

2. Replace your current style.css code with the code from the new stylesheet. (If you need a copy, right-click to download it here:  http://www.SitesThatSoar.com/misc/style.css In it, I’ve renamed the theme “Branford Magazine variation”.)

3. Click “Update File” to save your new stylesheet code.

4. The screen will suddenly say something like, “The requested theme does not exist.”  DO NOT PANIC!  (The screen will look like the following screenshot.)

5. Go to Appearance > Themes in your WP dashboard.

6. Re-activate your Branford Magazine theme.  Click on it in your themes list, and then click where it says something like “Activate Branford Magazine theme” in the upper right corner of the theme preview screen.

7. Your Themes screen might say that your theme is now Branford Magazine variation (or Branford Magazine 2.6  2.6).  That’s because the stylesheet says it is. Do not forget that you’re actually using the earlier Branford Magazine theme!

ALTERNATE METHOD

If you aren’t able to use the Editor in your Appearance section, or if you’d rather use FTP to overwrite your current style.css file, you can do that instead.

1. Download the Branford Magazine 2.6 theme, or download my copy of the style.css in it. (http://www.SitesThatSoar.com/misc/style.css )

2. In FTP, open your Branford Magazine folder.  That’s at wp-content > themes > branfordmagazine.

3. Upload your new style.css file.  When your FTP program asks if you’d like to overwrite (or replace) the older style.css file, say yes.

4. If necessary, reactivate your Branford Magazine theme, as explained in Steps 4 – 6, above.

VARIATIONS

People have asked me if they can make their links appear in the classic blue color of links.

The answer is yes, but you may not like the results. (I didn’t, when I tried it.)

IMPORTANT: Read this entire section before you make any changes!

If you’d like your links to appear in a different color, that’s the same color you’ll see for your sidebar links (Categories, Recent Posts, etc.).

In your new style.css, look for this section of the Hyperlinks part of your CSS code:

a:link, a:active, a:visited {
color:#333;
text-decoration: underline;
}

Change it to the following.

a:link {
color:blue;
text-decoration: underline;
}

a:active, a:visited {
color:#333;
text-decoration: underline;
}

At most of my websites, that looks ugly.

I compromise by changing the code.  Now, the links are black and underlined, but if someone hovers their cursor over the link, the link turns red.

Here’s how I did that.

Look for where it says:

a:hover    { 
    color:#333;
    text-decoration: none;
    }

Change it to:

a:hover	{
     color:red;
     text-decoration: none;
	}

If you’d like to download a stylesheet that already has those changes made, right-click on this link: http://www.SitesThatSoar.com/misc/style-redlink.css )

Which Branford Magazine version are you using?

If it’s 2.6, the one released in December 2008, change the Custom Fields URLs.  (Mr. Oeser, the designer of Branford Magazine, changed something very important.  If you update your Branford site to 2.6, this will be a problem.)

In your Custom Fields, the second edition of my book tells you to use a relative URL that looks like this:

2008/12/yourimage.jpg

Instead, use the absolute URL… the full URL of the image.  It will look like this:

http://yourdomain.com/yourWPname/2008/12/yourimage.jpg

However…

If you’re using an earlier version of Branford Magazine, do this:

Place your cursor over the area on the homepage where the image should be.  Usually, it’s a little box with the Custom Field word in it.  (That is, “featuredarticleimage” or “rightcolimage” or “leadimage”.)

If you’re using a pc, right-click and select “Copy Image Location.”

In your browser, open a new tab or window.  Paste the image location into the area where the URL should go.

Go there.

Can you see the image?  If so, something’s not working in your WordPress files.  Frankly, I’d reinstall WordPress as if you’re upgrading.  (They explain how to do this, step by step, at the official WordPress.org site.)

But, if the image doesn’t show up — and it usually doesn’t — look at the URL that you pasted into your browser.

Does it look like this?

http://yourdomain.com/yourblogname/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/imagename.gif

If so, the image didn’t upload properly.  Try again.

Does it look like this?

http://yourdomain.com/yourblogname//somename/root/yourdomainname.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/wp27a.gif

See that extra set of forward lines in the URL?  Look again.  You’re looking for something in the middle of the URL that looks like this:

//

That tells you something important:  The image URL is resolving to the wrong location.  It’s almost always a database issue.  If you know how to work with your database and you have access to it at your hosting service, you can fix it.

In most cases, either you won’t know how to fix it (I don’t) or you don’t have access to the nuts-and-bolts of your database.

Contact your hosting service.  Tell them what’s going on.

Be sure to include the long URL of the image, with the extra set of double lines (forward slashes) in it.

It should take your hosting service just a few minutes to fix the problem.

It’s a database issue, and it happens to a lot of people.  Out of about 25 websites that I’ve installed at HostGator (where most of my sites are hosted), two had this problem.

So, it’s not your hosting service’s fault… unless they don’t fix it, of course.

Until the images resolve to the correct URL, there’s no point tearing out your hair, trying to fix the missing images.

And, I’m sorry, but there’s also no point in writing to me about this, either.  Your hosting service can fix the problem; I can’t.

Yes, I posted about this in my previous Featured entry, No images on WordPress homepage?

It’s also covered in the lengthy comment thread at No Images? Weird placement?

Apparently, people aren’t reading those posts and/or comments. So, in this post, I’m trying again.

The following is an article by Robert Plank*, whose WordPress Search Engine Optimization article I recommend in my book. I’ve tried the following sales page technique and it works, if you’re selling multiple products through one Clickbank account.

Clickbank is a great third-party system for selling your products, but it’s not perfect. The most noticeable problem is that, even though you have the ability to offer up to 50 different products, you can only have one landing page.

This means that when an affiliate promotes your URL, you can only take the user to the sales page of a particular product. (Either that, or take them to a page with a link to every single product — bad idea — too many choices for the user to make.)

Luckily there is a PHP solution. Clickbank lets you add extra stuff to the URL, which can be passed to a PHP script. Then, this script can easy pass the user along to any page you like.

A typical Clickbank hoplink looks like this:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?AffiliateID/SellerID

Where “AffiliateID” is the ID of a Clickbank affiliate and “SellerID” is the ID of the seller whose product you are promoting.

I’ve recently been in a situation where I was selling an e-book, and wrote a second volume. I wanted to be able to offer an affiliate program to the following types of resellers:

1.) Those whose lists contained many people who already purchased Volume 1 from them as an affiliate, and were satisfied enough to buy Volume 2.

2.) Those who hadn’t bought either e-book before, and were willing to pay the full price for both Volumes 1 and 2.

3.) Those whose lists contained “freebie seekers” who would be more comfortable buying only Volume 1 for starters.

This meant I needed 3 sales pages, but I wasn’t comfortable with wasting another $100 to setup two new Clickbank accounts. I also didn’t want to have to login three different times to check all my stats. (And cash three separate checks, and so on.)

So, I gave affiliates a link like this:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?AffiliateID/SellerID&x=volume2

That extra part at the end said, set the query string variable called “x” to “volume2.” That “volume2″ can be any value you want, by the way.

When Clickbank does the redirect to your site, they pass along two things: the affiliate ID, and any stuff you add on to the end of that URL.

So, if your sales page was something like: http://www.example.com/index.php

Then Clickbank would send the user to: http://www.example.com/index.php?hop=AffiliateID&x=volume2

See what it does? It sets “hop” to the affiliate’s ID and then says that “x” is equal to “volume2.”

Here’s where it gets fun. Let’s create a new file in your text editor, like Notepad (this will actually be a PHP script). Copy and paste this in:

{{?php

$redirects = array(
“volume1″ => “http://www.example.com/volume1.html”,
“volume2″ => “http://www.example.com/volume2.html”,
“volume3″ => “http://www.example.com/volume3.html”,
“jv” => “http://www.example.com/special/index.html”
);

$x = $_GET["x"];

if (array_key_exists($x, $redirects)) {
$go = $redirects[$x];
header(“Location:$go”);
die();
}

?}}

* Don’t forget to change the {{ to the less-than sign (hold down SHIFT and press the comma key on your keyboard) and the }} to the greater-than sign (hold down SHIFT and press the period key on your keyboard.)

Change all those rows (volume1, volume2, etc.) and their URLs to your own URLs. They can be anything you want and you can have as many of them as you want. If you want more lines just copy the lines exactly as they are, but the last line doesn’t need a comma, as you can see above.

Save this file as something like “redirect.php,” and then change the extension from the landing page of your site to a PHP extension. For example if your landing page is “http://www.example.com/index.html”, it has to be changed to “http://www.example.com/index.php.” Change the URL in your Clickbank preferences if it needs to be updated to reflect this change.

Almost done. Now in your newly renamed landing page, add in this code:

{{?php include(“redirect.php”); ?}}

MAKE SURE that line is at the very very start of that page. You can’t have anything before it, not even a carriage return or a space. If you put that line of code anywhere than the top of your HTML document the redirect just won’t work.

* Don’t forget to change the {{ to the less-than sign (hold down SHIFT and press the comma key on your keyboard) and the }} to the greater-than sign (hold down SHIFT and press the period key on your keyboard.)

And there you have it. If that special code is added to the end, for volume3 or even the “jv” section, the user will be properly redirected. Or if no special code is entered at all (just a regular Clickbank hoplink) the landing page will just be shown normally without any sort of redirect.

You can now have more flexibility when giving out special offers. You can’t give JV partners a bigger commission (you’d need another Clickbank account for that), but you can:

• Offer a bunch of bonuses for JV partners.
• Have a different product link on that page where people can buy for a reduced price.
• Have a different product link where buyers are sent to a special signup form that shares their e-mail address with the referrer.

Now you can promote multiple products through Clickbank without multiple accounts, and without needlessly paying for a costly script that does very little.

Experienced PHP/JavaScript Tutor Solves 19 Of Your Most Frustrating Direct Response Sales Page Hang-Ups http://www.salespagetactics.com/

Note: The above article may be copied as long as the resource box is included. You may rebrand the above URL with your Clickbank ID however.

*Important note: Though I have to publish his article “as is”,  and his advice seems to be great, I do not recommend doing business with Robert Plank.

That’s not about his products, which seem to be excellent. It’s about how he treats his customers.

(He used my name on a testimonial for one of his products — and kept using it — long after I asked him to remove it.  The correspondence was not pleasant, and I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through that kind of ordeal.)

There are many reasons why I didn’t recommend WordPress 2.5… until now.  (Security issues make it imperative to upgrade to 2.5.1 immediately.)

One reason why I was hesitant about WP 2.5.x is Category ID numbers. You can’t see them as easily in WordPress 2.5, and you’ll need those numbers for themes such as Branford Magazine and Mimbo.

(I still highly recommend the Branford Magazine theme, or the Mimbo theme, which provided much of the code for Branford Magazine’s basic design.)

Many of us are hoping that this WordPress issue will be fixed in the next WordPress upgrade. In the meantime, there are three ways to work around the problem: Rollover, click, or (as of late April 2008) with an Alpha plugin.

ROLLOVER

To find the Category number in WordPress 2.5, go to Manage > Categories. In that panel, roll your cursor over the category name for which you need an ID number.

The number will appear at the lower right corner of your screen.

Here’s an illustration:

In the example above, my “Design secrets” category’s ID number is 4.

Or, you can click on the category name to see the ID number.

CLICK

If you click on the category name as if you’re going to edit it, the category’s ID number will appear at the top of your screen, as a URL. The ID number is at the far right (end) of that URL.

Or, you can use a plugin that’s been released in April 2008, and — as of today (19 Apr 08) — is still in Alpha mode. (“Alpha” mode means that there may be significant bugs in this plugin, and you are taking a risk if you install it.)

PLUGIN

Oliver Schloebe has created a handy plugin to solve the problem. Though it is still in Alpha mode, I installed it and it worked fine for this website.

Important note: I do not intend to install this plugin at my larger websites until it is at least in Beta mode. If you install it and it causes problems with WordPress or your website, I cannot help you fix that.

The plugin is called Reveal IDs for WP Admin 2.5

Download, unzip, and upload/install it according to the instructions at that link.

Then, activate it in your Plugins tab.

Go to your Settings tab.

Uncheck everything on the list.

Save your changes.

Recheck the box that enables you to see the Category ID numbers. (As of 19 April, this part of the plugin is in Alpha mode.)

Save your changes.

Go to Manage > Categories and the ID numbers should show up to the right of your category names.

Here’s a screenshot of how it looks at this website:

As you can see, the ID number appears to the right of each category name.

TO FIND OUT MORE

To stay current on this issue, visit the WordPress Support forum for news. Search using words such as “category numbers 2.5″ and check the latest discussions about this problem.

Here’s one post about the issue: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/162394

Meanwhile, please do upgrade to the newest version of WordPress.  There are some huge security issues with the earlier versions.

I had two big problems when I upgraded to WordPress 2.5. One plugin had a fatal error, and I couldn’t upload new images in the “add media” popup window.

I was ready to revert to 2.3 until I found the solutions. Here they are:

The image upload solution was in the WordPress Support forum.

In a nutshell, if you’re getting the HTTP error, you’ll need to add this to your .htaccess file in your WordPress root directory:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

(Your WordPress root directory is the highest directory in your WordPress installation. It’s the folder that contains all the WordPress files and folders at your website. It has folders /wp-admin/, /wp-content/, and /wp-includes/. Don’t go into any of those folders. Add the code into the .htaccess file–which you’ll edit in any text editor or HTML editor [in code]–and then upload it via FTP.)

If that doesn’t work (or if you’re getting a different error message), see the WordPress forum, you can always reinstall 2.3.3 and your site should be back to normal.

I like everything else in 2.5 pretty well… I think.

The plugin that had a fatal error was Popularity Contest. The solution to this came from Blogvaria.

Go into your desktop copy of Popularity Contest. The folder probably says “popularity-contest” on it. Open that in any HTML editor or text editor. (I’m using 1st Page 2000, which keeps the line numbers in any file.)

Near the top, around line 59, it says this:

if (!isset($wpdb)) {
require(‘../../wp-blog-header.php’);
akpc_init();

That’s the section that you’re going to change, manually. Here’s what Blogvaria says to do:

Open popularity-contest.php and scroll down to line 59.

Replace

require(’../../wp-blog-header.php’);

with

require(’../wp-blog-header.php’);

IMPORTANT: Ordinarily, this kind of post will be in the password-protected section for people who’ve bought my book, Sites that Soar! This public post is to show you the kind of information I cheerfully share with my readers.