http://forum.topaffiliatechallenge.com/showthread.php?p=351#post351

Am I out of my league here or what??  LOL

Jonathan

Caller ID said “Thor Schrock” so of course, I answered.  The conversation went something like this:

Me:  “Hey Thor!”

Thor:  “So congratulations on your surge of trffic.  You crashed our server.”

Me:  “Uh… oops.  Sorry.”

Apparently the TINY paid traffic campaign I started this morning was enough, combined with the normal traffic the site was already receiving, to bring it completely down.

Just goes to show the power one can command when one knows how to get TONS of instant, targeted traffic cheap.

This is gonna be FUN… 

Jonathan

http://www.woodymaxim.com/help-a-brotha-out/

Jonathan

“I’m asking for your vote, in the
2008 Top Affiliate Challenge”

Hi friend,

If anything you find on this site has proven to be helpful to you in any way, I humbly request that you vote me a “10″ for the Top Affiliate Challenge. Your vote will help me have a chance to be on a 3 week reality web-tv show, during which time I will compete to see who can make the most money, under the guidance of some very big names including Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker.

http://topaffiliatechallenge.com/users/tooltrainer

So please, cast your vote above for Jonathan van Clute, and watch me as I compete, no holds barred, showing you everything I know live, in real time.

THANK YOU!!!

Jonathan

http://lpgen.com/launchblog/ppc-quit.html

LPGen - the Landing Page Generator (and oh so much more!)

Check it out, you’ll be glad you did!

Head over to my most favoritest new internet marketing blog, and give this particular post a good reading. It’s simple and to the point, but I think gives a nice overview of a subject that many people, including myself at times, get really hung up on. What offer should I promote and why??

Keep up the good work Derek, you’ve got one heck of a growing fan base - and for good reason!

Check out the free PPC campaign builder now!

Now additionally, I continued to poke around this new blog - DerekBeau.com - and found it simply chock FULL of goodness! Tons of great reading there, I am truly impressed. Here’s just a couple of quick highlights:

http://www.derekbeau.com/ppc-affiliate-marketing-how-what-to-promote/
http://www.derekbeau.com/using-brute-force-to-find-profits-in-affiliate-marketing/
http://www.derekbeau.com/18-tips-for-writing-better-pay-per-click-ads/
http://www.derekbeau.com/how-to-properly-structure-your-ppc-campaigns/

The list could go on… this is well worth spending some time on, or adding to your favorite RSS reader if you are so cool as to use one (which, I must admit, I am not… :() I don’t know who this Derek guy is, but he seems to have a very firm grasp on the principles of affiliate marketing, and is clearly a coder as well as an excellent writer. I find it rare that someone can bridge the gap between the technical discipline of programming, and the creative discipline of writing and teaching (since he’s clearly teaching through his posts, something I greatly admire).

Oh! And one last thing. His blog doesn’t even have any ads on it! Amazing eh? Apparently he’s planning to monetize it at some point, but for now he’s actually giving the ad spaces away for free by holding a simple contest. Here’s an excerpt from the blog, the original page is at http://www.derekbeau.com/contests/ -

There are four things you can do to increase your chances of winning these ad spots on DerekBeau.com, they are:

* Leave a comment on any post - All you have to do is leave a comment on this blog and you get 1 entry. There is a limit of 20 entries per person awarded for comments.
* Link to any page in a new post on your blog - Write a new post on your blog and link to any page on DerekBeau.com within it to receive 5 entries. This is limited to once per post (even if you link twice in the same post) but you can get multiple entries by linking from multiple posts.
* Mention this contest on your blog - Mention this contest within any new post on your blog and receive 10 entries. This is limited to one entry per blog but you can write multiple mentions if you have multiple blogs.
* Write a review on your blog - If you write a dedicated review of DerekBeau.com, you will receive 15 entries. This is limited to one entry per blog but you can write multiple reviews if you have multiple blogs.

So there you have it, finally a new post from me and it’s a damn good one, if I do say so myself. Enjoy the new reading material!

I have a script on this page to enable people to leave message for me. I was under the distinct impression that those messages would be emailed to me… I haven’t received any emails so I figured nobody was leaving messages. After all, how many people actually leave messages on blogs other than in comments?

Well lo & behold I logged into the script’s Admin panel and found that I have a whole BUNCH of messages, from as far back as a year ago!!!

Grrrrr… I’m really annoyed by this, and very much apologize to those who may have thought I was ignoring them. I’m going to begin working my through the messages now…

I got an email asking me about these 3 topics and some specific tools, over on the Warrior Forum. I thought it was worth posting my reply here.

You mention 3 needs… tracking, spying, and landing page creation. For tracking, Affiliate Radar is the first such product I’ve used, and I’ve been totally blown away by the developers and their willingness to create exactly what their users want. I feel really confident in them and their ability to stay on the cutting edge - in no small part because Mark Roth is a PPC marketer himself (though in a MUCH bigger league than us little folk lol) and so he really does understand what marketers need and why.

For spying… I bought AdSpyPro and got a refund. The whole concept is actually flawed in my opinion. In fact, you might want to download the free report over at http://www-affiliateradar.net if you haven’t already. The Spy Tool Conspiracy… very interesting. In my opinion, those tools are all being sold on what looks like a GREAT idea ON PAPER. But in reality, the whole concept is hugely and dangerously flawed. I don’t even plan to bother using AdSpyPro at this point, which is why I got the refund… it simply did not and CAN NOT live up to the sales page.

Now for landing page creation… funny you should mention that. I have actually created a dynamic landing page generation script that, in my opinion, does exactly what the PPC marketer needs. It will create a custom landing page for whatever keyword the searcher is looking for, with extra content (RSS feed, affiliate datafeeds, etc.) to add relevancy for the PPC bots, to lower your bids. So for example…

www.domain.com/offers/colorado/online-dating/best-online-dating-site-colorado.html

would produce a landing page all about “Best Online Dating Site Colorado” and display your “Online Dating” offer page, provided you had one anyway, and provided that keyword was on your keyword list. The title and meta tags would include your keyword, and other content would be stuffed in as well.

I happen to think this is precisely what people are after, if they do PPC landing pages. I’ve been asked a lot if I am selling it, and at the moment I’m not. But, I’ve made the program available free of charge to members of the PPCFormula forum.

Honestly if you are in a position to spend some money, but want to do it wisely and get the maximum return, my opinion is to invest in KNOWLEDGE rather than TOOLS, unless the knowledge you already have is making you money and you just need the tools to go faster. If PPC is really where your focus is, I think you would get a ton out of the PPCFormula course. The private forum is amazing, and I’ve watched several people who bought it at the same time I did (around Jan/Feb) take off and do huge things with it - i.e. $10k/mo+ net profit. There are some fantastic people there who are really willing to help out. I’m not sure of the course price right now, but it’s not a super cheap product - it’s 4 CDROMs, 2 DVDs, and 6 bound workbooks that get shipped to you. The quality is very high, but it IS a bit technical and really isn’t geared for newbies.

Now that being said… I of course am an affiliate for PPCF, and am happy as can be to have people buy through my link. HOWEVER… the fact is you can get a better deal at least for a while. Affiliate Radar has a One Time Offer for the PPCF course at a steep discount. I’m not sure how much, but I know it’s a big discount. So what I’m getting at is, if you’ve been thinking of getting AR anyway, and want to maximize your PPC potential, buying the PPCF would give you access to the course material, the private forum, AND my landing page generator software, by virtue of being a member.

WHEW! OK so I like to type, in case you couldn’t tell…

That’s my take on all this stuff. SpeedPPC is also an awesome tool but is pricey at $500. Again, if you’re already making money but want to go much faster, I think you can’t beat it. But it’s not really for newbies… if you are making unprofitable campaigns, it will just allow you to make more of them. LOTS more.

So, I bought the course when it launched. I was pretty surprised too… no wimpy eBook here. 6 CD ROMs, 2 DVDs, and 6 spiral bound manuals were shipped to my door. Access to the private forum was granted. The journey began.

I’m still only a short ways into this journey, but I have learned much and made some new friends. One of those new friends just hit his first $10,000 net profit month doing this business. This is in only about 3 months of working on it!! I can’t say I’ve had that same success yet, but I know the potential is absolutely there.

This is a business model that just makes SENSE. It’s based on profit margins and ROI, income & expenses. You know, the stuff that any real business is based on. Is it easy? No it’s not. Is it getting easier? Yes I think so.

One big part of the reason why it’s getting easier, is the introduction of automation tools. There’s a whole slew of them coming out in the next week or two, that promise to revolutionize many aspects of this business. Suddenly having the ability to create thousands of unique content-enhanced landing pages for thousands of keywords is no small thing. In fact it’s a BIG thing. But of course it’s easy to get lost in the frenzy of tools rather than working on actually doing your business. I’ve fallen in that trap often enough, thankyouverymuch.

So, in the interest of NOT falling into that trap again, I have created a solution. I realized the many similarities between mass landing page creation and mass adsense site creation - something I was doing heavily last year but don’t any longer (well, at least not the way I was…) I have built my own mass Landing Page Generator, which allows me to set up campaigns in any PPC program I want, and have each individual keyword get a matching unique landing page instantly. All I have to do is create a single template, upload my keywords, and I’m set.

The script supports multiple templates and keyword lists (one each per offer you want to run), and also has integrated click tracking so you have a log of every click you receive, time & datestamped with the full URL that was hit. It is a dynamic script, but it will generate a proper 404 error with headers, should someone try to visit a URL that doesn’t have a keyword to go with it.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with the script and it is working well. Though it’s commercial in nature and there are probably people who would pay for it, I’ve chosen to make it available FOR FREE.

That’s right, this script is completely free of charge. The catch is, you must be a member of the private forum I mentioned above.

So how do you become a member? Well by purchasing the PPC course, of course!

So, get the course and join the forum, and you’ll get the download link to this very handy tool. I have various plans to possibly add numerous features to it, but for the moment I just want to make it help me (and my fellow forum members) generate revenue.

Well, you KNOW I must have a strong opinion about this because I don’t just write product reviews of every little thing that comes along. But lest you think I’m going to shove my affiliate link in your face, and tell you to hurry up and get your copy before it’s too late…

NO WAY. I’m telling you DO NOT BUY PROJECT BLACK MASK.

I’m pissed off. Really & truly. Project Black Mask is being sold on LIES. Period. Pure & simple flat out lies. Not to say that the content in the book is lies - quite the contrary, everything in the book… parasite hosts, link bombing, blog farms, cloaking, and so forth, is real stuff and has worked for a lot of people for the last year at least that I know of personally.

But it’s being SOLD on lies. What do I mean by that? What I mean is, it’s sold on the notion that there is a “loophole” in the adsense program that Google even wants you to exploit, and that by purchasing this book you’ll find out what this loophole is and make tons of money.

Well guess what? The book never even MENTIONS any loopholes! At all! None of the tactics in the book are loopholes, they are ways of overpowering the algorithms of the search engines, it’s as simple as that. I’ll say it again:

THERE IS NO LOOPHOLE!!!

So this is why I’m so pissed off. So is Project Black Mask actually a scam? Well, no, not quite. I won’t go so far as to actually say that Project Black Mask is a scam. But it is being SOLD on very false pretenses. If you don’t already know about the types of tricks I mentioned above, and you’re DYING to know about them (and don’t mind risking your adsense account in the process) and have the technical know-how to pull them off, then go ahead and spend the money… personally I think you’ll be disappointed, but I won’t stop you.

But if you’re someone who’s been struggling to find the magic bullet… that one set of tricks and techniques that will make you fortunes in online income just like throwing a switch - SAVE WHAT LITTLE MONEY YOU MAY HAVE LEFT. Do not buy Project Black Mask. Seriously. It won’t help you, and it will leave you feeling cheated because it does not deliver on the promised loophole because… there is none.

In fact, I’m going to give you a free paragraph from the book itself right here and now, that sums it ALL up. And remember, THIS IS FROM PROJECT BLACK MASK DIRECTLY:

So, here it is. I’m outing the secret, uncovering the truth and laying waste to the rumors. I’ll save you potentially hundreds of hours of false starts and dead ends, and if you take this one secret to heart, the chances are good you’ll find genuine success in the search engines. Ready for it? Ok.

The secret is –

THERE IS NO SECRET!!!

That says it all right there. Don’t waste your money here. Seriously.

Oh and this suddenly appeared in my Adwords account this morning too:

Earn $400.00 towards your first radio campaign!

Interested in running a radio campaign? Sign up now and receive $400.00* towards your first radio campaign — we’ll even put you in touch with specialists who can help you create your own professional-quality ad!

Radio advertising can enhance your advertising campaign in a number of different ways — it’s cost-effective and highly targeted, and it offers a different format for reaching potential customers. Learn more about the benefits of running radio campaigns.

Audio Ads makes radio advertising easier by providing an online interface for creating and launching radio advertising campaigns. Google Audio Ads allows you to select from hundreds of radio stations on which you can run ads — you can even target customers by station type, demographics, and time of day. Visit the Audio Ads FAQ to learn more.

We’ve recently opened the Google Ad Creation Marketplace, a directory of professional ad creation specialists who can help you create ads for your Google Audio Ads campaign. Ad creation averages around $400.00, so we’re excited to offer you a credit that will help get your business on the radio and expand the reach of your AdWords campaigns! Learn more about the Google Ad Creation Marketplace.

To take advantage of this promotion, you must use the Google Ad Creation Marketplace to create an ad, and it must air by April 30, 2007 June 30, 2007 (we’ve extended our promotion!). The specialist who creates your ad will charge you separately from the charges you accrue for running your campaign –- Google will apply a $400.00 credit to your account within 30 days of the end of the promotion (if your audio ad airs by the end of April, you’ll receive your credit by May 31, 2007, and if your audio ad airs by June 30, 2007, you’ll receive your credit by July 31, 2007). Keep in mind that each advertiser may receive one $400.00 credit.

* Terms: Promotional credit valid only for new Google Audio Ads customers with active AdWords accounts who have completed the Google Ad Creation Marketplace process for creating and accepting an audio ad. Ad must air on the radio with Google Audio Ads by June 30, 2007. Advertisers will be charged for radio advertising and receive the promotional credit for the amount of $400 after accruing charges for the radio campaign. Advertisers will be charged separately by the specialist for creation of the audio ad, and that charge is not eligible for this promotion credit. Subject to ad approval, and acceptance of the Google AdWords Program standard terms and conditions. The promotional credit is non-transferable and may not be sold or bartered. Offer may be revoked at any time for any reason by Google Inc. One promotional credit per customer. Offer valid only for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada. Expires June 30, 2007.

So… I did a couple of things. I bought a 1-terrabyte storage backup appliance (The Yellow Machine, the manufacturer of which has sadly already gone out of business) and I finally started using an off-site internet based backup system. It gives me 2 gigs of backup for free, and I can go unlimited if I want to pay $5/month (I just haven’t been using it long enough to decide if I need it or not). I’m not backing up EVERYTHING this way of course - that’s what the local backup device is for. I just backup my most critical documents, most recently changed docs, books in process, business records, etc. Looks like the two together may finally be the backup security I’ve been needing for a really long time.

If you want to get into this “game” and really go for it, check out PGInsider right away, there are 48 spots available as of this writing. I’ve been a member since the very inception and though I don’t have as much time for forums and such as I used to, I definitely have picked up a number of valuable tips, tricks, tools, and code snippets (since the tools have always had unencrypted source, I’ve learned a lot just by digging through their code).

Serious “click chasers” only, please.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly bought plenty of things through clickbank. I’ve even considered selling my own products that way. Then I start to think of all the time involved in creating the product, in putting up the web site, making all the order links & systems work properly, handling affiliates & customers, etc. Too much headache! So, I’ve not done it yet.

Then I saw this thing about “Dominating Clickbank” the other day. At first I thought “oh here we go again… another hyped up, overblown marketing tactic that worked for someone once, and now that it doesn’t work he’s selling it to me. How kind of him.

On reading the sales page however, I noticed something that made me smack myself in the forehead at not having thought of it myself. One of those “how could I be THAT dumb??” moments.

The idea of simply buying someone ELSE’s resale rights product, and putting it up on Clickbank for sale! Now you’re not handling customers because it’s not your product, and you don’t need a web site because you can point to theirs much of the time, or at worst just put up their pre-built resale rights website with just a few tweaks. And now the best part is, you’ve got every other hungry affiliate marketer out there scouring Clickbank for a product to sell, and I’d bet most of them simply look for what pays them the most commission… and that could be “your” new product!

Now they do all the work for you, and you go put up another product. Even if each one just sells a few per month, it will be massively profitable compared to what you spend. ANd if you’ve got a good product with a good sales page, it could sell a few per day week easily, possibly much more.

I see it as similar to portal sites… you have lots of sites that make a little bit of money, and add them all together and it’s a tidy sum. But you ALSO have a few sites that happen to do REALLY well and might make the same or more as all the rest put together. It’s “The Long Tail” at work, and I think it can be replicated here too.

So I jumped on it and bought the product. I need to add product selling to my arsenal, I’m just not as diversified as I should be in terms of my income streams. I have several, and should always be adding more!

Fortunately, it appears that someone has saved me the trouble and written it all down in one nice little book for me! Interestingly, it looks like this book is also going to be taken off the market very shortly, as in October 1st. So, I’m grabbing my copy now so I have it and can begin to clean up my portal sites and improve their overall rankings. It’s a nuisance to do, but I think ultimately will be well worth it.

You might want to grab this one too, if you’re at all concerned about how best to use CSS with your site designs.

There are BIG changes proposed to the domain
name registry system - and they are definitely
NOT GOOD for us.

In fact, they could put a lot of us out
of business, or at a minimum subject us
to a massive “tax” - based on the market
value of our domains - every time we go to
renew them.

Got a valuable web business? You might be
facing a $1,000 or $10,000 - or an unlimited
number - boost to your domain name renewal fee.

The Board of Directors of ICANN (they control
many of the major top level domains) are looking
at making this change right now. They call it
“variable pricing.”

So far they’ve slipped it through quietly and
the public comment period ends today. I only
just learned about it late last night.

Domain name madness…

Some people worry about the power of Google.

There’s only one force on the Internet that
I worry about and that’s the institutions that
control the domain name system.

Why? Because they have the power to change
the domain name rules radically.

Who cares? You might care if when you domain
name comes up for renewal, the charge is $1,000,
or $10,000 - or whatever the market can bare.

That’s impossible, right? Not only is in not
impossible, but ICANN - the domain regulation
entity that controls .org, .info and .biz - has
that very proposal on the table right now.

If they get away with it, you can be sure that
Verisign which administers the .com domain will
not be far behind.

The public comment period ends Today.

Here’s what we need to do:

1. Go to the ICANN web page that discusses this:

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-28jul06.htm

2. Compose a letter that opposes the “variable
pricing of domain names” and send it to each of the
three e-mail addresses listed on the web page -
for .org, .info, and .biz

3. If you need ideas of things to write, just
read the comments that others have posted which
are on the page.

4. If you are a business owner who uses the web,
let them know that you are and that you oppose
this radical change to the domain system.

5. The key phrase is “variable pricing”, so at a
minimum put something like “No to variable pricing”
or “Opposed to variable pricing” in your subject line.

In the body add something like “As a small business
owner who has made a considerable investment in
developing the domain names I own, I am firmly
opposed to the variable pricing of domain names
by the .org registry.”

Send a separate note for .biz and .info.

The comment posting information is all here:

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-28jul06.htm

Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Some of us are working hard to try to extend the public
comment period, but don’t count on getting a second
shot at going on the record.

Variable pricing of domains by the registries is a
terrible idea for web site owners.

ICANN and Verisign enjoy a government granted
monopoly. The current system - which works fine
and serves the Internet community - should be kept
as it is.

At nearly $500, NicheCretor is a bit of a “deluxe” script and is certainly not for everyone. But at all of $100??? Good grief anyone who has even ever contemplated building dynamic or portal sites has simply got to get this script. You’d be crazy not to, seriously. Just one snippet of the code in the script (it’s all unencrypted code) is worth more than $100 if you ask me.

Go get NicheCreator for under $100 today.

There’s been a bunch of hype lately about Google once again going after the world to stop everyone from using their name as a verb. That’s right, if you say that you “googled” something - YOU’RE A CRIMINAL! Johnny, tell them what they’ve won!

But here’s the really stupid bit, in my opinion. “google” has been used as a verb since at a MINIMUM, July 8th 1998, when Larry Page made the following post (archived here):

First, I’d like to welcome a whole bunch of new subscribers to the
Google-Friends list. This list is an announcement list for the Google
search engine which is available at http://google.stanford.edu/.

We recently added some new features to Google. The most significant is a
summary for each result that highlights where your query matched. This
makes for a much more informative summary than most search engines provide.
You can actually see where your query matched without having to download
each page.

Also, you can fetch contents from our repository by clicking on the
“Cached” link near each result. This often is faster than going to the
original, but of course can give you outdated information since it is based
on our last crawl. This feature can be very useful if the original is not
available or the network is down, you will still have access to the page
(but not the images).

We also made some enhancements to our search code that produce more matches
for many queries, improving performance significantly, we have also done
some more tuning of the ranking functions.

After combining our web server and search engine for better performance, we
have been experiencing intermittent problems with our system being down for
short amounts of time fairly frequently. If you have trouble getting to
the system, try back in a minute or two, and it should be back up.

Expect to see a lot of changes in Google in the next few months. We plan
to have a much bigger index than our current 24 million pages soon. Thanks
to all the people who have sent us logos, HTML and suggestions. Keep them
coming!

Have fun and keep googling!

-Larry

http://google.stanford.edu/

Google needs to get over themselves. You’re a verb. Deal with it.

I am using Brainstorm Generator quite heavily for identifying target niches & words. I can find loads of subject matter that have large traffic but very low SE competition this way. Definitely a highly useful tool… though I wish it were faster, that’s more a function of the services it has to query and not its fault.

So, BSG is a little on the slow side. Unfortunate… BUT there are ways to speed it up. The biggest way of course is to run additional computers! I have 3 or 4 typically running at any one time. But, you can only run one copy of BSG per machine right? Wrong!

True you can only run one copy at a time in main memory - but there is a really nifty utility called “sandboxie” that allows you to run ANY program in a protected, reserved chunk of your system’s memory. What this means is it is unaware of the rest of the machine and what it’s doing. So you can launch an extra copy of BSG and it will run fine, right along side the first copy. So, 2 copies of BSG simultaneously, per machine! Powerful trick. In my case it means I can be running 8 BSGs at a time. That’s a LOT of brainstorming!!

You can get Sandboxie here, it’s FREE!

By the end of today, I will have exceeded my daily unique visitors from a month ago, by a factor of TWENTY. That’s right, my traffic (in terms of unique IP addresses) today, is 20 times larger than it was just under 1 month ago, on July 5th.

HOLY !!@$!

Of course, this is what I’ve been working towards for months now, but it’s still quite shocking to look at one’s stats and see a HUGE spike like this. Shocking, and more than a little exciting. I’m also quite relieved to see my dedicated server is handling the load admirably.

But I was just shown something last night that has me pretty excited. I’ll share one piece of my personal arsenal with you here… I’ve been using The BlogSolution for a couple months now and have had some absolutely insane results. I’m talking more traffic than I can actually handle! This is of course a GOOD problem to have! But I’m also always looking for more. A lot of people have BlogSolution at this point, and as with any mass building tool, I begin to question its effectiveness in the long run once everyone has it. This is why I spend so much time on building my own tools whenever possible.

But along comes the first real competition I’ve seen for BlogSolution so far. I only just got my hands on it so my own results are still waiting to come in, but a friend of mine got a head start on me and has already seen some pretty exciting initial results. I’m talking things like Google and Slurp deep spidering a 3-hour-old domain. That kind of thing.

It reminds me a lot of BlogSolution in many ways… the basic idea is the same (create your own mass blog network) but the installing of each network is far superior (I do like mass automation after all…) and by first appearances, the server load is considerably lower too (rather important when you have a few thousand domains on a server!) The author claims to be limiting it to 200 customers, and I really really hope this is held to. This is definitely one of those tools that if everyone has it, won’t work nearly as well. But for now, the early adopters get a head start and can cash in on all that traffic and linkage while it’s hot!

On a side note - it appears that my SQL server was down inexplcably for possibly a couple days and I did not know it. It’s fixed now, but that meant that anyone trying to purchase UNCS 3.0 would have been unable to do so. Sorry about that… hopefully this does not happen again. I noticed a huge surge in SQL activity a few days ago and that may have been responsible for the problem, I’m not certain. Anyway, everything is back up now and I’m keeping a close watch on it!

Check it out!

Existing customers will be sent their free update shortly…

Thanks in advance for all the support everyone, and welcome to the soon-to-be new owners!

I have not yet settled on how many copies I will sell this time, nor on exactly what the price will be. I’m considering several possibilities, and once I decide then I will make the order page live. Current legal owners (yes, there are non-legal ones out there… *sigh*) will be upgraded at no cost.

I will also be offering a special discount - 50% off the UNCS price - to anyone who first buys NicheCreator through my affiliate link. So if you or anyone you know has been on the fence about buying NC in the first place, perhaps this will be the incentive they’ve been waiting for.

So again, if you aren’t already on either my owner’s list or my non-owner’s announcement list, make sure you sign up at www.macroking.com/uncs.htm so you don’t miss out. I intend for this to be the last version I release, so it’s now or never!

Stay tuned…

I was just faced with this dilemma, and of course a little web searching turned up the solution!

This is a shell (SSH) command, so you must have shell access in order to execute it. The command is:

find -depth -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \;

I found it at this page: http://duramecho.com/ComputerPrograms/DeleteEmptyDirectories/index.html

It works great! What it will do is to delete all empty folders, recursively, below the directory that you are now in. So if you wanted to delete all empty folders located below public_html for the user “website”, then you would need to navigate to /home/website/public_html/ and then execute the script command.

And of course, you could even put this in a CRON if you wanted to just routinely delete all empty folders for a particular domain, if you have some process that tends to create them.

I hope this helps someone else as much as it has helped me!

Myself - I’m not a big server guy. I know just enough Linux shell commands at this point to be dangerous, and don’t want to have to babysit my server when something goes wrong. I also hate having to install shell scripts on my own, and really don’t enjoy mucking about with SSH if I don’t have to.

So what do I do when I have problems? I submit a ticket to my server manager and within a few hours (often within minutes), the problem is solved, the script is installed, the settings are tweaked, the server is back fully operational again and I’m back to making money. From time to time I get an email saying some aspect of my server is offline, but that my “guys” are on top of it. I’ve been using this service for 3 months now and couldn’t be happier.

There is nothing better than knowing I now have a “staff” attending to my server 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Whenever I need something done - or hell often when I just have a general PHP or scripting question - they’re there to help me out.

When you’re ready to now have this kind of freedom from server headaches, you can. It’s only $30 per month and in my opinion is one of the best bargains around for anyone with a VPS or higher level of server, that doesn’t absolutely love to maintain their servers themselves. Sign up now and see for yourself what a relief it will be! I personally see this as an ESSENTIAL, even if you have a “managed” VPS. In my experience, the “management” my VPS company provided was pretty sad at best, with them often questioning what I was doing and passing judgement on the types of programs I was running. My current management team just does what I tell them to do, no questions asked!

Additionally, if you need NicheCreator and you’ll purchase it now through this link, you’ll receive a copy of UNCS 3.0 FREE. Just send me a copy of your receipt after you’ve purchased NicheCreator, and on confirmation of the affiliate sale I will send you the files.

New features include internal server paths - no more http:// calls, more secure include files so that nobody can view or download your master files, and updated documentation.

All prior UNCS owners are already verified NC owners, and I can send you all a complete set of NC files, ready to go. If you will buy UNCS 3.0 now, you can request a complete set of NC files only after you’ll email me from within the NicheCreator forum itself.

I expect this to be the last update I make to the UNCS method. so if you want it, you have to buy it now. Watch for it soon…

Now, the conspiracy theorist in me is screaming that this is somehow Google up to “no good” and employing their own blackhat tricks. But - WHY??? If it’s just a random comment spammer, what the hell could they possibly stand to gain by spamming a Google URL? Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Anyone have any theories??

Well much to my pleasant surprise, Dave has released an update to WPW that includes, among other things, an integrated scheduler! So now it will automatically check all my indexing for me on a daily basis, and it stores all tha data in a database (flat-file, not SQL) so that I can see the trends over time. If I really want, I can even import the data into Excel to create graphs of what’s happening on my sites. There’s also the ability to import a list of keywords and find out where a given domain ranks for that specific keyword list too - so no more knowing you’re in Google for a certain phrase, but wondering WHERE exactly in Google you are! Now you’ll KNOW.

A very VERY big upgrade in my opinion, and it was free to all existing users. I highly recommend this program if you want a reasonably low cost (even FREE!), but feature-filled index & rank checker. I have previously written about & used Indexing Tracker, and it is a good product. However, I ran into a few minor annoyances with it that proved to be irritating enough that I pretty much didn’t use it. When Dave’s free WPW came along, I found it was at least equal to the tasks of Indexing Tracker, if maybe not quite as “pretty” as far as the interface was concerned. But functionality won out, and I stuck with WPW, especially with the “pro” upgraded features. Definitely the winner, hands down.

Bottom line is - you are wasting your time (even though they are clearly being automated - and in an odd sort of way, for that I commend you! =) I just go into my admin panel and mass-delete the comments with one button push. It is at most, mildly amusing/annoying. However you should know that I went ahead and contacted various channels and pointed them in your direction, so it’s possible you’ll get a phone call/email/visit in the near future to, er… kindly ask you to stop.

But then again I can hit delete every few days without it hampering me much. Either way, it’s still a waste of time & resources on your part, but… to each their own!

The nice part is, I already wrote about it some time ago, in this post! So, I don’t even have to write again. Just this little reminder of how absolutely awesome this tool is. The instant I don’t have it installed any more, boy do I know it! Not a happy feeling.

Go grab the free version and use it like mad. You can pay to upgrade if you want, but the free version is fantastic too.

Many of you probably know by now that I am no longer using blogs for portal building. Not that they aren’t good tools or anything, I just decided a few months back (just before all the new blog automation tools came out) that they took too damn much effort and time to set up, post to, and maintain. Not to mention the extra resources all those MySQL calls and RSS2Blog activity were hogging. So I simply stopped using them and have developed techniques that don’t require blogs.

HOWEVER… I have been recently considering using them again for other purposes… they are great backlinks after all, and blog farms are always nice. But there’s that damn lack of automation again. You know me, I just will NOT use something that I can’t automate (or at least sure won’t use it for long).

So I’ve been waiting for the right tool to leap out and grab me… so far nothing really has. They’re either quite pricey (or maybe I’m just too cheap to keep buying $197 to $497 pieces of software every time I turn my back. Heck I used to buy software that cost $12,000 when I ran my video editing business and that was just kinda normal… but I digress) or don’t really impress me with their look, feel, or feature set.

Then today, along comes a friend who mentiones something called Blotto. I’ve never heard of it, have you? Well, it’s apparently extremely new, but it’s a mass blogger blog creation automation tool. So I took a look at the sales page… not much of a sales page really (which I prefer!). Just the facts, ma’am. But there is a great little quick video that shows exactly what it does and how. I have to say, I was impressed. I’m pretty picky about software and this one actually looks to have been very well thought out and solidly developed. But what REALLY shocked me was the price. At the moment it’s $50!! Yes, FIFTY DOLLARS! Good grief what a bargain.

OK so where’s the going blind part fit in?

As you may already know, there is one downside to creating masses of blogger blogs via automation. No way to automate the CAPTCHA code process. So you do have to sit there and enter CAPTCHA codes (or as someone joked in the NicheCreator forum [I hope it was a joke anyway!], hire young children to sit and stare at them for hours and enter them for you… that’s ONE way to automate I guess! ;)) for each blog, which could very well make one either blind or insane, possibly both.

But, if a little CAPTCHA action doesn’t scare you off and you want to be able to create a mass of blogger blogs with a very well thought out tool that seems to have a very rich feature set, you should really check out Blotto while it’s still new and outragreously cheap. I’ve gotten ahold of it and will start to put it through its paces shortly… I think I hear a few blog farms calling my name!

Check it out!

I’m on to something big. REALLY big. Can’t let the cat out of the bag, and to be honest I don’t know if I’ll EVER let it out of the bag, but I wanted this post to exist as a sort of “bookmark” to the day when it became really clear just how big this will be. Then, if/when it goes public, I’ll be able to point back to this little whisper in CyberSpace and say…

“That was the day!”

Cheers to you all - I SALUTE YOU!

If you do portals, ESPECIALLY if you use NicheCreator or RSSGM, you’ve got to get your butt FAST over to www.PGinsider.com. It’s a killer membership site with a limited number of spots, and the software offerings you get just for walking in the door are out of this world. I’ve been a member for a couple of days and FINALLY tonight looked at the tools I got for joining… holy crap!

And then I sat down and added the ability to build on subdomains to the mass NicheCreator builder. This is some sick stuff… in a very good way.

http://www.prosper.com

I can’t even really begin to describe it adequately here, so just go check it out. This is really cool… really really really cool. I need to dig into it deeper to fully understand the ins & outs, but so far I’m totally fascinated.

I hate Overture results.

OK, there, I said it. My first impression about TheDowser Niche Database is a complaint. Hey, I gotta tell it like I see it.

But it’s not really a huge issue in the big scheme of things, more of a personal thing I guess. I absolutely loathe and despise Overture results. They are in alphabetical word order, rather than proper sentence order, and that makes me crazy. However, that being said… every one of my portal sites uses Overture results right now, and they do get traffic. So… is it really a problem? I suppose not. It just rubs me the wrong way.

So, on to the product…

It’s a massive 500 Megabyte download, so takes a good long while to come down. Then it needs a couple of gigs free to install - I had to trash a lot of temp files to even be able to install it. But once it’s running… it’s extremely easy to dig up tons of niche ideas. Basically it’s a lot like TheDowser Professional, but geared towards individual niche ideas rather than keyword lists. Lots of sorting flexibility, and considering how many records it’s sorting through, it’s pretty fast even on my lowly PC. Overall, so far I see it as being useful, definitely.

One thing though… I always have to question the estimates of CPC and other monetary values in these sorts of programs… especially since Google does not make that information truly available. All anyone can do is use either the AdWords API estimates, or just plain guess. Either way, I’m not going to believe in the results 100%. But, I suppose if it’s a question between a niche that claims to pay $30 per click, and another that claims to pay $.05 per click, I may as well go with the higher number, even if it’s not totally accurate.

I think we all know better than to believe in the mythical “$xx-per-click” keywords anymore. Don’t we?

TheDowser Niche Database

As some of you already know, I have MASSIVELY automated the building of my NicheCreator portal sites, but the one area I still must do “manually” is identify the potentially profitable niches. In the past, I’ve used TheDowser Keyword List to help find niches, and it has been very useful, but I’m always wanting “more”. What can I say, I want it all! So, it looks to me like the folks at TheDowser Software have taken their keyword list product up several notches, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. I’m not personally so concerned with keywords, I can get those myself. It’s the key NICHES that I want handed to me on a silver platter. Here’s hoping this might be that silver platter. Oh and of course I hate to pay full price for anything, so I’m itching to grab this the moment it’s actually on sale, at the initial launch price.

Been a long time since I actually looked FORWARD to spending money.

So, what if you could run YOUR variables, through a script on someone ELSE’s website, and return the results to YOUR page? This introduces some very very powerful ideas. Now you’re not just scraping, you’re actually leveraging off of someone else’s site functionality.

That’s the premise as I see it behind this tutorial from Zend Technologies. It introduces a huge array of possible uses, and I intend to put it to work shortly. Imagine being able to use just about any script on any web site, but just as if you had it on YOUR site? I’m sure there are probably limitations I’ll discover as I investigate further, but the possibilities are exciting. Oh and yes, maybe even a little Black Hat.

The script, for those who aren’t already familiar with it, is really just a cute way for people to buy links from my site. Each “salute” includes a link for a certain amount of time. Honestly I don’t remember how long at the moment, maybe 30 days… I’m not sure, I need to check. You can also sponsor the site and get a “permanent” link for as long as your sponsorship is in effect. I plan to make the links of those who salute or sponsor me visible on the front page of this site as well, so who knows… you just might pick up a little extra human traffic or maybe some extra spidering.

So, if you like what you read here and want to show your thanks, head on over to the salute section and show me just how much you love me! I’ll give you some instant Link Love in return!

Anyway, I’m back again and this time on my very own VPS hosted over at PowerVPS. Thus far they’re working pretty well for me overall, though my custom PHP work has a tendency to do nasty things to the server, but I don’t really think that’s their fault. Check ‘em out, and if you do, tell ‘em “vanclute” sent you!

Lots more to come once I get caught back up with life. Funny how when you leave for a while, things don’t just wait for you to get back…

Anywhere you have include statements (especially your satellite index.php if using my method), you can use the @ symbol to determine if errors are output to the browser, or hidden (suppressed).

So for example, this:

< ? include ("somefile.html"); ?>

Would display all sorts of ugly errors if the file couldn’t be found, or if there was generally any problem with it.

However, this:

< ? @include ("somefile.html"); ?>

will NOT display any errors of any kind. What it WILL display depends a bit on your system, but the key thing is, no errors.

Why do we care? Well apart from the “obvious” of not showing ugly broken pages to our visitors, it also means that visitors won’t see the various filenames and paths involved in your script calls. In fact, this could hide the entire fact that it’s even a dynamic site. On my sites for example, if the entire site was UTTERLY broken and nothing could load, all the visitor would see now is what’s in my index.html file, which is:

ERROR 404_PAGE NOT FOUND

So it looks like a simple understandable error.

On the other hand, what if you’re trying to figure out why a module or something else isn’t loading, and you can’t figure it out because EVERYTHING looks fine, it just will NOT appear on your browser?

If working with NicheCreator, check the include statement at the bottom of index.php (this was pointed out by Philosopher in fact on the NC forum) and notice there is a @ symbol in the include statement. This basically says - “If any module has trouble, give up on it and don’t show any errors”. But that doesn’t help you to troubleshoot much does it? An error message is much preferred. SO… take out the @ symbol until you troubleshoot the problem, then put it back in just in case something breaks randomly some day and you don’t want your visitors seeing broken code.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to sites that had broken scripts, and by looking at the paths in the error messages, I find out all SORTS of interesting things the site owner probably didn’t want me to know about.

Your helpful hint for the day…

It’s almost too fast. It takes me about a trillion times longer than that to gather keywords, even with some automated scripts I’ve created to speed things up dramatically (I have my laptop sitting next to me as I write this, busilly gathering keywords from Google at a rate of, oh, maybe 5-10 words per second or faster…) I actually think my building speed will eclipse the speed at which keywords can be gathered. In fact, I’m positive of it. This is completely changing the landscape for me of what I’ll be able to achieve. I set a personal goal recently of 5000 sites by the end of January. Well, that was really not looking feasible, and I’d already pushed the “deadline” out to the end of February. But at this rate, I think I actually COULD build 5000 sites in the next couple of weeks, if I just have enough keywords.

This just gets better & better… those of you who bought my Ultimate Niche Creator Setup eBook should have gotten a very hastily composed email detailing the process I’m using to build so fast now, I hope it’s able to help you as much as I’m sure it will help me!!