NichePursuits.com - My site got hacked...

So, last week my site got hacked.

I was going about my day when someone on Twitter reached out to inform me that a weird popunder was happening on my site.

Sure enough, when I tested things out a very small popunder browser was open with SOMEONE ELSES Amazon affiliate id!

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Apparently, someone was trying to cookie a bunch of visitors with their Amazon affiliate link in hopes that people would buy something within 24 hours.

I tried to figure out whose Amazon affiliate id it was...but to no avail.

But I still had a problem, my site was hacked and I had no idea how it happened!

So, I turned to Dustin Hyle, founder of Iridium Hosting, to see if he would be willing to take a look at my site.

(Dustin was on the Niche Pursuits podcast recently and is a true WordPress "tech" expert).

I figured if anyone could figure out what was going on, it was him.

He had to do some digging, but eventually found that there was some hidden code in my Ad Inserter plugin.

I use the Ad Inserter plugin for a variety of reasons and it works great! However, someone...or some hacked injection code...had inserted a new "ad" that was creating this malicious popunder.

Dustin was able to remove the code and that cleaned up the issue! Woohoo!

I did everything I could to track down how the affiliate links got on my site, but I can't be 100% sure.

One possible culprit is that I had a couple of old WordPress user accounts from previous editors that still had admin access! I don't know if it was any of these people; however, I immediately removed access to hopefully eliminate future problems.

But it also just could have been some malicious code injection unrelated to old user accounts.

The best solution is to just constantly be maintaining your site by updating old plugins, cleaning up user access, and just browsing your own site to ensure everything is working properly.

Or have an expert take a look.

I'm super happy that I had a WordPress expert like Dustin who could quickly dig into my site and help me fix the problem.

If you'd like to work with Dustin over at Iridium Hosting, he does offer regular WordPress Maintenance plans that can help prevent these types of issues.

You can connect with Dustin at Iridium and see everything he offers right here.

How L.E. McArthur's Portfolio of Niche Sites Earns $60k/Month From Affiliate Marketing & SEO

Want some tips from an affiliate marketer with over 20 years of experience?

​Today guest interview on Niche Pursuits has done and seen it all over the years in order to maintain steady traffic and a great income. And she's very generous in sharing what's working for her so that you can follow in her footsteps. She covers:

• What her portfolio of sites looks like
• Her favorite marketing strategies
• Her views on SEO and 'entity-based SEO'
• Her thoughts on link building
• How she's growing her email lists
• The exact process she follows to create content
• How she does keyword research
• The resources she recommends
• The tools she can't live without
• And a lot more good stuff...

​Get lots of valuable advice from a seasoned affiliate SEO here!​

New Niche Sites Available on Motion Invest

This 3 year and 2 month old car site has just been added to the marketplace. The site is currently making an average of $125 per month from Amazon and Ezoic with traffic up from the same time last year.

The site has 284 posts live and an estimated 70% of current ranking keywords target an informational intent. This gives a new owner a lot of room to add affiliate content as well as updating existing content and improve internal linking to boost organic traffic.

​Get more details here​

This 1 year, 4 months old ladder site is also new to the marketplace. The site is making an average of $129 per month from Amazon and Adsense.

The site has 112 posts live and its top 10 keywords show an upward trend. An estimated 50% of its ranking keywords target informational intent. This is a great ratio and the new owner can work on updating existing content with Surfer. The site could also be expanded into better monetization methods.

​Get more details here​

Lastly, this 1 year and 4 month old water site makes an average of $44 per month from Amazon. The site currently has 106 posts live.

An estimated 76% of the currently ranking keywords target an informational intent. So the new owner can expand affiliate content about water filters, etc. and add more topic silos to the site. The site is also generating most of its traffic from Bing so should be optimized better for Google. And should expand monetization beyond Amazon.

​Get more details here​

Thanks again for reading!

Spencer