Archive for August, 2008

You all know that I have been writing about building sites for friends, family and neighbors. It is a great learning experience and gives you a feeling of accomplishment, oh and you can make a little money along the way. Not a bad deal.

So back at the end of July my little friend Penny came bouncing in here and said “Did you hear about the new exercise pill?” What the heck are you talking about?

No, really she said. Researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego have been experimenting with some drugs AICAR and GW1516, and have discovered that these genetically affect muscles into a state as if they have just had a strong work out.

You can lose fat without exercise in other words. I told her she needed to set up a website to monitor this news and track and report all the references she can find, because this news is going to go viral. So we immediately set up newexercisepill.com and she has been busy as a beaver doing her reports.

If you search for those three words, new exercise pill, her page comes right up near the top of the search engines. She does have quite a few readers and subscribers but does not use an email signup, but I think we should. Now we are watching the search term Exercise Pill to see if her site can come up near the front of the pack. It was back around 400 of a half million when we started checking and has been slowly moving up.

I told her that the more she becomes known and people realize that this is a miracle break through in science and not just a joke, that she should become the authority site.

What do you folks think? Should Penny be doing anything different or just keep on reporting as she finds news on the Exercise Pill ?

Wow! Miguel Alvarez’ MarketingFactor website is holding a contest called the Blog Boost and is giving away several thousand dollars worth of prizes to four lucky individuals on September 20th.

You should visit the site and all you have to do to be in the drawing is to sign up to the MarketingFactor email newsletter, which is a great idea anyway because Miguel knows what he is talking about.

There are other very simple ways to add more chances to win by earing extra drawing tickets, such as to Friend Miguel on FaceBook, follow him on Twitter, etc.

You will gain a lot of very good information that you can use to optimize your site and all types of Internet Marketing tips when you read Miguel’s Blog at MarketingFactor.

You want to create a logo for free!

How to Create a 125 Banner

Ok, no big deal you say right? Making little button ads that link out to a website somewhere is a piece of cake. Easy stuff, no big deal. Well it is a big deal to me because as I have said before I HATE programming!

It was only nine months ago that I decided to veer life’s course toward learning how to make a little moohlah off the Internet. I had been hearing all these fantastic claims of millionaires being created from nothing more than putting ads on their websites. I had been publishing stuff for free on the web for over ten years. It’s my turn dammit!

Well that’s a joke. There are many people that do make a lot of money, but it is not by slapping a couple of AdSense groups of ads on your favorite website and then sitting back to light up a stogie. It’s a Hell of a lot of hard work.

I put in at least 10 14 to 14 18 hours per day, EVERY day of the week, trying this, tweaking that, reading mmo Blogs, learning the domaining game, writing, writing and writing. If it wasn’t fun, I would NEVER work this hard at a real job.

A few months ago I couldn’t have told you the difference between a and a
in HTML code. Not because it was that difficult to learn, I just never wanted to, or had a need to…

So here’s the deal. When I first started reading Garry Conn’s Blog about six months ago, I was struck with how common sense this game could be. That’s if you don’t let it overwhelm you. Those of you who know Garry, and if you are reading this I can’t believe any of you don’t know him, well he is occasionally a tiny teensie weensie bit opinionated. That’s just part of his charm.

Early on I asked Garry how to learn enough HTML to learn how to make some slight code changes in WordPress themes or plugins, when needed. He gave me a very positive reassurance that learning that crap was EASY! He he he. Needless to say he got me. It isn’t easy, it’s a damned struggle.

Well today I am a Ninja coder ready to do battle. Not really but I always wanted to be a Ninja something or other. So you know those little 125X125 pixel button banner ads that are all over everyones websites? I HAD to know how to make one.

So for those of you that want to create a logo for free, here is how I did it. Maybe some of you will laugh and call me an idiot for doing it this way, but it worked for me, and if you need to learn how to create a logo for free, then it will work for you also.

First you have to find an image you want to use and then you have to crop it to some size that is workable. I have an old version of Adobe Photoshop that still works good enough for me, so I took part of my banner at the top of this Blog site, the lovely Carribean beach, and I cropped a chunk of it to about 400X400 px so I could see what I was doing with it.

Then I was going to use WORD to just type out the visible label that you can see which says LinkMoney dot org, and then paste it over the image as a layer. Well I decided I had absolutely NO idea how to do that, so I used the “T” text tool on photoshop to type that label in the cloudy sky of my image area. OK, so now I have an image, with a visible label.

Now how the Hell can I insert the magic code that makes your mouse pointer turn to a little hand and then allows you to click on the image to go to somewhere else? Well I used a search on Google which was something like “how to create 125 banner ads.” None of the sites gave me the exact info but I started to get the picture that hey, why not go and look at some and see how they are already set up on your own sites?

Great, now I’m getting somewhere… Er, sort of.

Well I realized that there were two parts to the code. One was for locating the image itself, and one for where the link should take you to. Now when I looked at some of the buttons using the mouse right click and “properties” I have on my own websites, it really was not very clear because the codes all seemed to be very long and like CRAZY stuff. I can tell you now, that is because those images and links are on the advertisers own websites or sites that they have designated to keep track of some very specific stats.

The easiest way is to make it work on your own website first. I have about a dozen sites that are doing nothing, nothing at all because I just don’t have enough time to write content or to do any promotions with them yet. I’ll get a Round Tuit soon enough.

courtesy mundoo/flickr

So I uploaded my image as a post on one of these dormant sites and then started playing with the link code.

You have to use the href command first. That’s the sound my Dad used to make when he would come into the dark room where my date and I were on the couch. So that little command is the one that is going to take you to another location. Here is what I ended up using for the first command line:
<a href=”http://linkmoney.org”> (Which will bring you to this website.)

Then I had to decide where to park my image because that would be permanently in the code and must always be available. You could just park it on your own computer somewhere, and call it up, but then your computer would have to be on all the time. No good. Your web hosting company probably has some storage space for files or images that comes with your hosting package, but I didn’t want to bother to dig into how to do that.

(Note: Since I wrote this post several months ago it has become my most popular of all, thanks to you readers. I did learn that it is very easy to go into your WordPress root and create a folder named “images” then upload all images to that folder and when you want to use them just link to them in the html code.)

So I said to myself, self ! Why not one of the photo hosting websites? They’re all over the place. I had an old account at HELLO which was part of Picassa/Google, but too late. Google has shut HELLO down. So I set up a quick account at photobucket.com and resized my image now to 125X125 and uploaded it to photobucket.

Below each image in photobucket there are some little pieces of html code that allow you to copy and paste images into your posts or emails at will, and I also was able to doctor that code up a little to be able to work with my new 125 ad.

So here is the secod part of this code.
<img border=”0″ src=”http://i457.photobucket.com/albums/qq295/LMDO_photo/125copy.jpg” width=”125″ height=”125″
</a>

What that all means is the img (image) src (source) is located at photobucket with their identifier and jpg extension. Then just for good measure I stuck a couple of dimension commands on there. Not sure I had to do that or not, but I don’t argue with success!

It worked, the damned thing worked, woo hoo ! (Ninja speak)

So now boys and girls, you are going to see that little ocean beach scene all over the place.

125X125 Linkmoney dot org Banner Ad

Now you can learn how to do simple HTML coding with an excellent HTML Video Tutorial.   You can get instant access to this group of downloadable videos by clicking on this link: Click Here!

You can do it too!

Now if you have any questions, you have my permission to ask Garry and he will very politely tell you that “that crap is EASY !”

I’m Rich !

ps: If you like this post you will want to Subscribe with the RSS button.

pss: 125 Exchange free traffic.

psss: Create a logo for free!

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Related articles

• Internet Marketing Tips Through Advertising (upserp.com)
• Taking the Time to Design: The Importance of Optimized and Data-Driven Banner Ad Design (isocket.com)
• Need a WordPress Coach

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Check out UBD, MOSTLY for their quality themes, and oh yes the contest is cool too!

Hey you can’t win the Lottery if you don’t play!

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I’m Rich !

First off, this is about me, but I do NOT do any of the aforementioned things.

However I made a major snafu recently, late at night, that has changed my latest plan to become the next Kevin Rose. Hmm, wonder if he ever did?

Any way here’s what happened. I had this idea of setting up a social circle, you know friends helping friends, wink, wink. Sort of a you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Well this crashed into a not so happy ending, (pun intended.)

I was going to set up a site where registered mail list members could post their site or article url and then other members would hump it, oops, I mean help promote it with various social networking tools. I wanted a cool name, so during the night I got up thinking about it and said, something like “social.”… Easy to remember…. Hmmm…

Eureka! I got it. “sosso dot com”! It’s cute, rhymes sort of with social, easy to remember, and I could get it out as a Buzz word. You know what I mean?

Great! I had just read a Blog about how NAME dot com was the cheapest registrar and so I went there and bought it and a dozen other domains all in one day. Then I read another Blog about how great Hostgator was, and though I have sites on three other domain hosting companies already, I wanted to try out Hostgator.

So I said to myself, self, this is going to be HOT! He he he… Can’t afford a private server, not yet, so I purchased the high end shared account for 13 bucks a month, with the first month only costing a penny. Pretty good deal right?

So I set up sosso dot com as my primary account on Hostgator and then read the instructions on how to point the DNS on NAME dot com to my shiny new hard disks at Hostgator. Did that and saw the warning that this may take 24 to 48 hours to resolve. No problem. It isn’t like I don’t have anything to do in the meantime.

So I checked it the next day and the next day and it still had not resolved. What’s up with that? Forget it, I’m already into a dozen new projects, will fix it later. Well that was August 3, 4 & 5. Now this morning I said I’m going to find out what the Hell is wrong.

I checked sosso again and it was coming up on a GoDaddy parked domain website. Huh? This didn’t have anything to do with GD, or so I thought. I checked again with Hostgator tech support and they said it was NAME’s problem. Checked with NAME but had to wait two and a half hours because they don’t get out of bed until 9am mountain time, and they don’t offer 24/7 phone tech support.

Finally it turns out that I did not OWN sosso. I owned a domain named “sossol.” Naturally I got a little testy and said what do you mean, I registered sosso. So sorry, we only have sossol.

I finally figured out what happened. Remember when I said I did this during the night after I had woken up thinking about it? Take a look at where the “L” key is, right next to the “O” key. I did not purchase the right domain and it was ALL my fault! Turns out GD had registered that name years ago, and it was not even available.

So here’s my point boys and girls. Make absolutely SURE just what you are typing during domain registrations and hosting setups. If you screw up, it can’t be fixed. Now I just went through the procedure of taking sosso off my Hostgator account and setting up a different domain as my primary account. It is mostly done but has been a few hours and there is still a little more BS that I have to do to get the damned thing working.

So point number two is. I did this totally clean, honest! Other than being sleepy I should not have made such a stupid mistake. I wonder what people do that have a few beers before going through this procedure?

Oh well, I only lost about a half a month’s worth of my first penny right?

I’m Rich

(New info:  Here is a new website where you can purchase currently owned

domain names for sale.)

There, I’ve said it. No apologies.

A year ago you would not have been able to force any level of computer programming down my craw. That is actually still the case. I HATE programming!

I was a Blogger Blogging Blog aficionado. I owned a full featured authority website in a certain field that had been active for many years, that was built by a professional company using Joomla! I had a strong user base and still do. That site led me to wanting to be able to have a more casual connection with my fans and users, so therefore I Blogged using Google’s Blogger.

I never thought about actually being able to make money off this thing called the Internet. Man, what a mistake. I will tell you that I am not one of those Eureka Kids that made a gazillion dollars, er, not yet anyway, but there is a steady stream now that I never dreamed would happen in my life time. It can only get better.

So I forced myself to learn how to install WordPress, purchase domains and hosting and build websites. You will recall that I wrote about this previously in another post: Make Money Create Blogs for your Neighbors

Well this is an update. I have built way over a hundred websites and with each one there are new challenges and new things to learn and accomplish. It seems to me that Matt at automattic probably knew what he was doing when he unleashed this fabulous free software to the world, but I could not see it at the time. Now I get it.

The old way of creating a website page by page in an editor, then uploading and debugging it are over. This Content Management System (CMS) that is open source, (as in Free,) is something that almost anyone that can dial a telephone is able to learn a little at a time. This is causing a world changing event that is progressing even as you read this.

I still figure that it takes about 40 hours to bring a site to it’s full value with all the little features and goodies that you would want, but it actually only takes a couple of hours to install the rough content of a website that even if someone were to fall off a barstool and come up on this domain by accident, it would still look like a real web site.

I have set up sites now in fields that I know almost nothing about, but they can be populated by the new owners in just a matter of minutes, well OK hours. I have built sites in cars, sports, health, history, medicine, saw mills, machine tools, hunting, camping, scouting, sales, bargains, credit, wine, geo based (like city names,) travel, dogs, weddings, antiques, art work, collecting… Get the picture?

You can do this too. Make a few bucks setting up sites for your friends, families, neighbors, and local businesses. You can do it!

First and foremost, in my opinion, is get yourself comfortable with using an ftp program. I held out on that one, and realize that was my weak point. I had played around a little with file transfer protocol in the late 1980′s. That is when I grew to hate programming. Well the ftp programs of today are not your typical father’s ftp program. There’s dozens of them and I’m not going to try to influence you with one over the other. They all do the same thing. Join a forum. Google the Hell out of any questions you might have. The ftp program will be your new best friend.

If you are just starting, pick a domain registering hosting company, (not GoDaddy,) buy one of their cheap programs, and get started. Sure the cheap ones will have you parked on a Tinker Toy server, but you get what you pay for. You can always upgrade, which you will soon do.

I now pay for hosting with three companies, two average ones with average services and bandwidth, and one super duper one that costs more that I ever thought I would pay anyone for anything, almost. But the Damn thing works and never is down. I recently struck gold with setting up a news story related website that I was able to get in on the first floor with. As an early adopter with a keyword rich url and dozens of posts, I am on the first page of you know who in just one week. I haven’t started to monetize this site yet, but I will after a while. With any luck you will be reading future posts, say in a year or so, from the South Sea Island pictured above.

Most of all, read good Blogs in the mmo field to get the impetus to get off your butt and get going. Join some forums, take some online courses, and learn from those that have been successful. I have been doing all of the above for only eight months. Now I are not quite an expurt, but I’m gaining on it.

Here is my recommendation for one of the very best programs on the Internet, and I am not even going to use my affiliate link, I believe in this man and what he does so much that I want you all to join. Like TODAY!

Yaro Starak! What a great name! This guy is unforgettable by having a name that is so like poetry that it will make you want to change your name. But that is not the reason to remember him best by. You absolutely MUST join his Blog Mastermind program! He just started one up again a few sessions ago. You will not have missed anything because all of his mentoring sessions are recorded and downloadable to the students.

You will be tied in to a Blog Mastermind forum, where you can post questions and get real excellent answers from those that know their stuff. You will be tied into a major group with a well known company, that will give you a way to help other students with social networking and to receive the same in return. That in itself is almost worth the price of admission. You want traffic? You can’t handle traffic…! (Oh no, that was from an old movie, I think.)

How’s that for a rant?

It all starts by learning WordPress. It’s not just for Bloggers you know.

I’m Rich!

(Oh by the way, in case you were wondering, you have my permission to give this post a little Link Luv by using your social networking tool listed below.)

In Asia it is standard custom to pay attention to and honor your elders. That certainly holds true everywhere, or should, but let me tell you about some one else that makes sense far beyond his years.

Jason, the University Kid.

At first when i started reading Jason’s posts, I just presumed he was spoofing us and that he was pulling something like the John Cow deal. I am now convinced he is everything he claims to be, and that he really is a kid of University age. Amazing wisdom!

I have been reading and commenting and meeting others through his Blog and I am very impressed with the youth of this world! For all the bad things you hear about and read about and see on TV, there are certain members of this younger generation that are shining examples of success in the making as well as success right now!

I’m pretty sure that Jason will make it VERY BIG in this world. I don’t know him except through his Blog, but I can tell you this, he is generous to a fault with sharing his methods and advice, and if I were you, I would (and do,) pay very close attention. The make money online (mmo) world is full of wannabees. Jason is a doobee.

Check out his excellent website at: TheUniversityKid.com

I have several old Blogs in Google Blogger under various subjects. They are well known, firmly entrenched and are my major traffic generators for the fields they are in. I use Feedblitz to handle the subscribers on them.

If you use Feedblitz as an email subscription handler, then you probably received an email similar to the excerpted parts below.

Hello, (yaddy yaddy…)

Custom domains are fully functional micro-sites that make life simpler for your subscribers by simplifying access to your newsletters and (, yaddy yaddy…) To make things even easier, we have reserved the following domains for you (these default reservations expire Aug 10, 2008, 23:59:59 EDT, which is why I’m writing to you now.)

(Entered here are various versions of your website’s partial url, the main keyword from your website, your email name, etc. all with the dot feedblitz.com extension.)

(For instance, but not offered for this website because I do not use Feedblitz on this one, eg: linkmoney.feedblitz.com and richhill.feedblitz.com.)

For under a buck a month per domain you get branded pages, simplified access and brand security. Even if you do nothing else, we recommend buying the domain for your main blog. Go to www.feedblitz.com/ (, yaddy yaddy…) now to see the reservations we’ve made on your behalf and activate the ones you want before they expire.

(Inserted here is a warning that someone else might gobble this up and become your competition.)

Thanks,

Phil Hollows,
Founder,
FeedBlitz, LLC.

————

Does any of that smack of extortion to you?

Actually I don’t see anything to worry about, because this same sort of thing will be happening with all of the new TLDs that are coming out in a year or so, this just sort of caught me off guard and I was upset to see the samples shown, with my own hard earned domain names in them.

Oh and when you click on the sample it takes you to a demo site that does not say anything at all about the dot feedblitz extension, it just plain says something like “Welcome to LinkMoney!” (Again, used as an example, not actual.)

I bet that email will piss more people off than Phil ever expected.

LOL