This update was planned to go live in November of 2010, however, we continued to get new suggestions and found additional areas to upgrade, which pushed things back until now. And while it is mostly on the Advertiser side of things, it was done to help increase sales for our partners.

The biggest changes you’ll notice will be on the “My Products” and “Shop” pages. We’ve upgraded technology, improved processes and made it much easier to build, launch and maintain your campaigns.

Here are some of the highlights:

• New Shop page where you can search for all products on one page
• More filters added for searching
• Instant purchase or add to cart/wish list
• Listings can be clicked to expand for additional information
• New Cart page that allows you to easily change items
• Long-term discounts now offered on recurring products
• All changes on cart updates instantly
• Buy multiple LinkPosts and space them out with one Partner
• Update to My Products pages to decrease number of clicks to navigate
• We have updated Sponsored Listings for partners to make it very simple

This is the upgrade in a nutshell. To really experience it, you just have to login and give it a run. We would love feedback, so if you run into any issues or have questions or suggestions, please click the feedback button in the bottom right and let us know.

Yesterday we also experienced a server failure that hosted our blog and support software. We’re happy to have everything restored on a much nicer server. Sorry for any inconveniences.

We will need to take our platform down this evening for a couple of hours to attend to some database updates. Expect LinkWorth to be unavailable between 7:30 PM CST to 9:30 PM CST this evening (12.7.10).

Apologies go out to any that may be affected by this and hope to get things back online as soon as possible.

Wouldn’t it be nice if LinkAds just magically appeared on your site and made money for you right away without the hassle of having to log in to the control center, approve the ad & then go through the steps of publishing the ad each time an advertiser wanted to buy from you? We think so, too, which is why we’ve just launched a new feature to do just that!

It’s called “Auto Approve” and its live right now. If you think this option is right for you, simply log in to your LinkWorth Partner account and go to “my sites” >> “publish” >> select LinkAds >> and then select one of your URLs. You’ll see the following section at the bottom:

Be sure to click the “What’s This?” link for exact directions you must follow to be accepted into Auto-Approve program.

By selecting “auto approve” you are allowing LinkWorth to approve or decline any link requests you get from Advertisers and publish them automatically on your website. You will be prompted to select ad categories that you DO NOT want to host on your site in addition to outlining any other criteria you want us to follow prior to making a decision. You don’t want Viagra ads, for example? No problem. Don’t want competitors advertising on your site? Done. Relevant sites only? Piece of cake.

The benefit here is that Advertisers will see that you have this option available and since it’s been requested MANY TIMES over the years, our feeling is that you’ll sell more ads. Advertisers want links and they want them NOW, so this will better serve them while making the whole process easier for you.

This is currently only available for LinkAds, however, we may decide to activate this for other products if the Partner feedback is good.

Last night we made a pretty sizable update to our system that is significant enough to let you guys know about. Up until last night, we’ve considered listings as “sites” or “blogs”. Blogs were setup more for LinkPost where the rest of our products were geared towards a regular “site”. With the majority of sites being a blog these days, it was more of a headache than anything else, so I say with great pleasure, it’s all one listing now!

You no longer have to submit your blog as an entirely separate listing! (insert crowd raawr!) If you had a blog listing previously, no worries, we’ve merged everything over to the “site” side of things and this is how you list everything now. There’s no more managing your blogs or anything else that used to come with the blog listings, it’s all been merged with your normal site listing.

As we’re testing and really getting a good live run-through today, we’re on the hunt for any bugs or problems that we might have missed during testing, so if you see something, PLEASE click the “FEEDBACK” icon in your lower right-hand corner and let us know. Include errors or pages, as much detail as possible so we can quickly jump into action.

This is one small part of several big improvements we have on the list. Soon, our control center will be as simple as pie…something we’ve “ALL” wished for, for a long time.

We’ve added a new feature to our LinkPost and LinkPost Jobs that many will find extremely beneficial. It’s called “Pre-Written Content” and in a nutshell, Advertisers create the content for the LinkPost they purchase and Partners use this content to create a new post on their blog.

One of the most complained about items when it comes to LinkPost and LinkPost Jobs, is the actual content produced in the post. While there are many that do a wonderful job at writing original content, there are also many that just don’t quite meet the Advertiser’s standard.

Due to this reason and suggestions from clients, we have implemented a new feature called “Pre-Written Content”. Think of a LinkBB and a LinkPost combination; the Advertiser creates the content and the Partner publishes it. The Advertiser gets a perfect post they are 100% satisfied with and the Partner gets a guest blogger making a new post on their blog and being paid for it. It’s “VERY” easy money for the Partner.

Advertiser Information
For Advertisers, we’ve added a new radio option as shown below that asks if the new outline will have pre-written content or not. If you select “Yes”, a new pre-written content text field will appear where you will put the content in. <HTML TAGS ARE ALLOWED!> The best recommendation would be to either format your post with some sort of editor that allows you to insert the html tags, then copy the content with tags over to the pre-written content field. You can also submit the content without tags if you choose to not use them. All paragraphs and line breaks will be recognized and carried over.

After you have completed the fields for the Outline and submitted, your outline will be saved and queued for review. Once your outline is approved, everything else will operate the same as before.

We definitely recommend making each pre-written LinkPost unique. The most effective practice would be to select the blogs you want to publish your LinkPost on. Learn the blog and how they speak to their audience. Then do your best to make your pre-written LinkPost blend in well with the bloggers other posts. You’ll need to create a new outline for each pre-written post.

Another recommendation is to go ahead and put the links in the content where you want it. This takes all of the work out of the Partner’s hands and you’re 99% certain it will be published exactly how you want it to be published.

Partner Information
LinkPost just became really easy for Partners when pre-written content is provided! The worst part, for most, is thinking of what to say about said site/product or keywords. Quite often, the content falls short of what the Advertisers are hoping to see, so this option helps both sides.

Partners will know when a pending LinkPost or a LinkPost job has pre-written content included. As you can see in the image below, you’ll see the yellow highlighted part that says “Use pre-written content as the blog post”. You’ll also see the content on the right side column.

Once you click “Approve”, it will direct you to the next screen that gives the publishing instructions.

On the Publish Instructions, you will see all of the usual items, but now if it includes the pre-written content, you’ll see it in the right-side column. All of the pre-written content will be inside the textarea box that will highlight with a single click, and then you can copy to your clipboard with a CTRL C (or right-click and choose Copy). Then go to your new blog post page and paste the content with a CTRL V (or right-click and choose Paste).

Note: when using copy/paste that has html tags in WordPress, you will need to switch your wordpress editor to the HTML version. Otherwise the special formatting will be lost. This is an illustration of the two editors offered.

If you would like to go over pre-written content before publishing, click the “Preview” link under the textarea box and it will open a new window showing the page formatted properly.

For all of our International Partners who have problems getting your money with the payout methods we’ve always had, we’ve listened and now offer Moneybookers as a payout option!

To setup your next payout, be sure to login to your account and go to MY ACCOUNT > PAYMENT SETTINGS and look for the payment method drop down and select “Moneybookers”. Also make sure your minimum payout amount is what you wish. In the next section below it, you’ll need to add your Moneybookers email address.

Please be sure to make changes before the 1st of February if you wish for your next payout to be sent to Moneybookers.

If you’re a current LinkWorth advertiser, or a potential advertising client, why would you want to spend all of your time managing your campaigns? Let LinkWorth Account Managers manage your campaigns for you!

You might have already noticed the new feature that’s now available in all Advertiser accounts. It’s the new “Account Manager” tab located on the top right side of your Control Center, as illustrated below:

Once you click this menu option, it will take you to the new page that allows you to convert your Advertiser account to a “managed” account:

You’ll also have access to your Account Manager’s contact information:

There are also additional tools that will be available to help you communicate with your Account Manager, request proposals and other features.

Advertisers will now always have an Account Manager at their fingertips when they need them. Once you convert your account, a message is sent to them and they will get in touch with you as soon as possible. Our staff is here to help however you see fit and we look forward to helping.

We’re in the process of pushing a really big update to our system and we’re currently experiencing some database issues. The issues are limiting our inventory to just a few pages of results.

We are working on resolving it and expect things to be corrected shortly. Apologies for any inconvenience this might be causing.

Those that use LinkWorth usually have the best suggestions on how to make improvements to what we currently have. Periodically we’ll reach out and try to get good feedback on what you would like to see improved or added on to our existing system.

As always, we’re constantly adding new updates that make our Control Center function more efficiently, but it’s your turn to tell us what you think. All comments will be well thought out and if it makes sense, we’ll get it on the list and once it’s live, we’ll make an announcement and name it after you.

Now we already know that all Partners want more business, but this is not what we’re asking for. Keep this to improvements that will make what you do in your account easier. Just comment below with your suggestions.

(***Side Note*** if you’re planning on attending PubCon in Vegas next week, let us know. We’re thinking about having a little happy hour if there are enough customers that will be there. )

We will be taking LinkWorth down tonight at 9PM Central Standard Time. The expected downtime will be 2 hours.

We’re adding additional hardware for our database and need to take it offline while these improvements are made. Please be aware that all any active sessions will be closed at 9PM to prevent data loss. If you plan on working in your account tonight, be sure to finish up about 15 minutes prior to 9PM CST.

As soon as the updates are finished and tested, we will get things back online as quickly as possible. You can check our progress on our twitter feed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.