Working on making money on the internet can be a bit daunting and sometimes it helps taking a break and looking for motivation. I like to get mine from people who are successful as internet marketers.
Workingnomad.com is a website that I try to visit once in a while. I never really participated on the forum but often found very valuable information there. This website is run by Anthony (alias Webby) who is making a living on the web and traveling quite intensively. Reading the story of Anthony and the success stories of his fellow marketers from his forum usually gives me a kick to keep going !
Some time ago, I also purchased Anthony’s ebook where he explains on details “how he did it”. It was indeed a very valuable read for a beginner like me.
How about you ? Which website do you visit when you need motivation?
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I recently attended an IT presentation where the main subject was security and computers. Encryption of data is obviously one of the point that has been raised. A few solutions have been mentioned and particularly TrueCrypt is one of the software applications that has been said to be very good to protect data. I just tried it on my USB key and also on a partition of my external hard drive. It works well so far, I like it.
About TrueCrypt :
- It is Open-Source software.
- It works on different OS : Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.
- It can encrypt data on disk partitions, drives, portable memory devices (USB keys, IPod etc…).
- Encryption is real-time, done on the fly.
- It uses extremely strong Encryption algorithms.
- It has an hidden volume option.
I used to worry about losing my USB key. Now with the encryption done with TrueCrypt I feel very safe. Someone looking at the content of my key will only see one file (corresponding to an encrypted volume). The encryption used is said to be taking years to crack and in addition this file does not show any correlation to TrueCrypt. I think that should be good enough security wise.
How do you secure your data ? If you try or already tried TrueCrypt, I am interested to know what you think of it.
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Actually this is only if you are using the web browser Firefox though…
If you are not, maybe you should consider switching to it because it’s free and what they say is true : it is safer, more secure & highly customizable.
So, What Is Firebug ?
Firebug is a Firefox add-on which allows to inspect the code of pretty much everything that constitutes a web page.
With Firebug, you will be able to view, edit and debug (live) the following components : HTML, CSS (Cascading StyleSheets) and the javascript.
The HTML
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You can see from the right picture how Firebug works. The HTML code can be seen in the form of a tree on the left side of the screen. When selecting an item (an HTML tag) from this tree, you can see live of which part of the design it corresponds on your website. |
In the example, I have selected the div tag which corresponds to the right column and it appears in light blue.In addition, the style (css) applied on the selected HTML tag is displayed on the right side of the screen.
The HTML code is modifiable and the results can be seen right away! Excellent for experimenting with design… |
The CSS
| Viewing and editing the CSS code is super easy as well. Just click on an item and modify with another value… lively your website shows the changes. |
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Exploring The Javascript And DOM object
| Javascript is kind of hard to debug sometimes. Well if you do have to debug or code some javascript for your website or blog, then Firebug is what you are looking for. You can see and edit BUT you can put breakpoints and follow the code step by step! Makes things much easier for developing… |
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Are you using Firebug and what do you think of it ?
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Do you know Richdad ? Well, it’s the name of Robert Kiyosaki’s website… a place were the number one terms are probably cashflow, passive income and assets. Robert Kiyosaki got famous with his book “rich dad poor dad“, a must read book for everyone interested in getting smart with money. Also Kiyosaki is the creator of the great board game Cashflow 101 which teaches how to get out of the rat race.
Well, Robert and its team are presenting what they foresee for 2008 :
- Ken McElroy talks about Real Estate
- Mike Maloney about Gold and Silver
- Kelly Ritchie about a franchise opportunity with the Richdad company
- Kin Kiyosaki about her “concept”: rich woman.
It was interesting so I thought I would pass the info.
Here is the link to the videos.
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I am back to the blogging world after some great Christmas vacation. I wish everybody a great year 2008!
I was happily surprised when I checked the different stats for this blog. A few changes happened :
- this blog is now a PR3 (was at 1 before Christmas).
- the alexa rank is now 362 933 (was > 450000 before Christmas)
- my rank at the 45n5 Top Blogs is now 200 (was around 240 before Christmas)
Well it’s all good and you can expect more posts from me in the near future.
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Mark at 45n5.com recently wrote a post about how it could be smart to get a job as an affiliate manager and learn the tips and tricks of affiliate marketing while getting a paycheck.
I remember reading an excellent article about exactly doing that in Revenue magazine. Here is the link to the article : Learning Outside the Box.
I actually did consider getting involved in a job related to affiliate marketing at some point. A maybe in the future…
Internet Marketing Job Related Links
Are you looking at working in the internet marketing industry? Do you currently work in that industry ? Please, tell how you got into this field and what are your recommendation for finding a IM related position.
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This past week I have been using all of my “out of 9-5 and family” time to try to find a new idea for what will be my next website. I already had a list of possible topics in mind but I wanted to define which one will be both interesting and rewarding.
Here are in short the points I made sure to investigate for each possible topic :
- Keywords With Potential: Because I don’t have the time to spend a crazy amount of time doing promotion online (you know all the social networking stuff), I have to rely heavily on organic searches (natural - without paying) to bring traffic to my websites :
- the tools I used are Keyword Elite, WordTracker (15% off promo in December by the way). These tools helped me to find out if there is enough natural traffic in the markets I explored. Also they can provide huge lists of keywords and can reveal some possible sub-niches to tap in the future.
- Also, I like to check my ideas using Google Trend. This Google tool is fun, and I like to use it to compare the volume of searches between 2 niches.
- I like to quickly do a search on Yahoo Answers to find out if people have an interest in the market and what kind of questions they ask : very informative sometimes
- Products To Sell : Because I hope to turn my future search engine traffic into sweet rewards, I make sure that the niche I am after has indeed lots of products that could be bought online :
- Ebay and Amazon are the places to go for this kind of investigation. I just do a little search there and take note of “physical” products that would be a fit for my future website niche.
- Also I like to see if there are current bids (for ebay) and reviews (for amazon) for the products I found that are related to the market of study : products + bids or reviews = in high demand market.
- Affiliate Programs :
- The existence of several affiliate programs fitting the target market is also a must have. I usually check the big affiliate networks (commission junction, linkshare). Electronic products are more and more bought online, I go check if there are any e-books available for sale on the Clickbank marketplace.
- A google search for “[product] affiliate” reveals sometimes good companies to affiliate with.
- My Interest & Content : Because I want to keep these websites for the longterm, it is important for me to choose niches in which I have an interest. When creating the website, it’s important to me that I bring the visitors valuable information, so I keep this paramount when I have the content created.
Well, that’s basically what I did all this week (a few hours per day). I found my next internet adventure ;). Who knows what the future holds for me? I don’t but at least I did the homework and whatever the issue, I always learn something in the process.
You, my reader, are you a 100% “blogger”, an affiliate marketer or a mix of the two ?
How do you search for niches ?
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Posted in Monetization, Tools 1 Comment »
A few days ago, Fred was wondering who read his blog and asked his readers to leave a comment on his post. I thought I would tell my visitors who I read pretty much everyday through RSS.
Here are the blogs I read, and a recent article from them. A big thank you to these blogs for continuing to bring knowledge and news to my table!
Mark
Packed with ideas. He is the Top100 Blogs Creator. Mark has decided to Learn Pay Per Click (PPC) in December.
Fred
Young blog with astounding growth! Will that blog reach the top10 one day? I’d say why not… Check out the Top 10 Most Popular Facebook Applications.
Pat
It can be done! She quit her job, created a successful blog, wrote an Ebook about it (Blog Traffic Jump Start) and published it in Amazon’s Kindle Book Store.
FrugalTrader
Great financial advice. A lot to learn there. Everything about personal finance. Here’s how he tries to save money during Christmas Season.
Kirsty
Traveling and earning money from websites is her goal. You can learn from her web development adventures as she often reports her steps. Currently she tries to make a case study in direct link sales.
Yaro
Quality entrepreneur strategies and tips. I would define him as an affiliate blogger… he does that very well since he turned his blogs into passive income machines.
Court
Lot’s of stuff to learn from Court’s internet marketing school. Here is a great read that may transform your blog into a back link superstar.
John Chow
Impossible not to read. John has created a huge money machine blog ($27,000 in one month) : Amazing!
Darren
The Grand Daddy of all pro-bloggers! Lots of information for people thirsty for how to(s) in blogging. So much traffic that he can compile very accurate stats about the amount of money that bloggers earn blogging.
Shawn
Do you need an affiliate tip ? If so then Shawn’s blog is the place to check out. To start just have a look at his affiliate marketing newbies section.
Francis
At Francis’ it’s all about Wordpress but with the French touch. Recently, Francis reviewed new Wordpress themes : Thèmes wordpress: nouveautés intéressantes.
Carl
Successful blogging is not reserved for grown ups. He is only 14 years old, and he once got number one position in Google for the keyword Make Money Online. (he’s currently in position 2).
JohnTP
Lots of review and great tips. I started using photos in some of my posts thanks to his article recommending the usage of images in blog posts.
J.D.
You want to get rich slowly? That’s what JD did… well not as slowly as he thought it would be ;). Here is the best of get rich slowly.
Marco
Let’s watch this blog enter the 45n5.com’s top100 blogs : should be soon! Good advice there. Read here how you can improve your wordpress comment system.
Jason
I recently subscribed to his blog rss feed. It offers lots of good resource articles. That’s how you can increase your web traffic using social media sites.
I do read other blogs sometimes, but the ones above I make sure to read almost everyday.
Do you think I should read your blog? if so let me know ;).
Enjoy !
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Amazon annonced today that affiliates could earn 10% commission on the sale of their new Ebook electronic reader, the Amazon Kindle.
The main features of the kindle reader are :
- It’s portable, said to be lighter than a paperback book.
- Carries the equivalent of 200 books.
- Users can wirelessly download blog content, books, newspapers, magazines.
- Access to the Kindle store which has more than 90,000 items to be purchased.
- Access to New Oxford American Dictionary and Wikipedia.org.
The Amazon Kindle seems to be a cool gadget.
I find it a bit high priced though. It sales for $399 and at my understanding, most downloads are $9.99 or more.
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I am talking about the affiliate links.
Let’s be realistic, when people realize that an Url is an affiliate link, chances are that they won’t click on it. Even worse, they might steal YOUR commission by shamelessly replacing your affiliate tracking id by theirs.
If you make money with affiliate programs, hiding your affiliate links could make a difference in your earnings. Hereafter are several methods to hide your money making links. None of these ways will prevent a motivated affiliate link hacker from stealing your cash but at least, after implementation, most regular visitors to your website or blog won’t play around your Urls before clicking on them.
Using Javascript
Let’s consider the following link: Blog Traffic Jump Start (the new book from Pat).
Just hovering on the text of the link will easily reveal to any internet marketers that this is an affiliate link.
A way to hide affiliate nature of the link can be to code it that way :
<a href=”http://fabdan1.blogtrafic.hop.clickbank.net/” onmouseout=”window.status=’ ‘;return true;” onmouseover=”window.status=’ ‘;return true;” target=”_new”>Blog Traffic Jump Start</a>
and now it looks the same but it displays no info when hovering on : Blog Traffic Jump Start.
Using .htaccess
.htaccess is a file that is possibly located at the root of your web server and which among others contain Url redirection rules. Make sure to not delete the current .htaccess file if it exists already, and make a backup before trying anything. If it does not exist, you can create a blank file.
Add the following to your .htaccess file :
redirect /test http://www.test.com?id=123456
Now if you create a link to http://www.mywebsite.com/test on your website will redirect to http://www.test.com?id=123456 !
Using Header location
For example, I would create a new file called out.php and containing
<? header(”Location: http://theaffiliatelink”); ?> .
Now a link to http://www.mywebsite.com/out.php would redirect to http://theaffiliatelink.
Kyle explains with more details this method on his blog.
Using Get-Shorty or TinyUrl
Get-shorty is a script installed on your server that allows you to manage redirections. In short, a typical commission junction ugly Url like http://www.jdoqocy.com/d2100hz74z6MOSAOWMONQURPOO could be replaced by a cute Url like http://yourweb.com/cuteurl.
TinyURL is kind of similar but the Url generated does not contain your domain name and contains a code at the end. A typical tinyURL generated link would be something like : http://tinyurl.com/2d94kl
Using A Plugin
For WordPress users, you could check out the hide your affiliate links plugin.
What I use
I usually use the .htaccess method for my regular websites. All affiliate links are gathered at the same location, and it makes it very easy and quick to manage.
For this blog, I haven’t use any method so far. I didn’t feel like playing with the .htaccess file since it contains already some stuff generated by WordPress. I will probably give a try to the plugin I mentioned above.
Do you know of others way to hide affiliate links ? What is your method to hide affiliate links ? I invite you to comment on that. Also, let me know if this article motivated you to start hiding your money links.
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