Having a excellent host
It is quite true that you get what you pay for, however its also true that when you do your homework you can get quality for a great price. When I used to work for a guy doing websites several years ago we use a host that was quality buty pricy. After a couple years we shoped around and got the same quality for 1/3rd the price.
When I started with proxy websites I went with a host that was recommended to me. I knew quality was important as proxies are very volitile and even a day down time can deal a solid blow. I ran with them for while and they were helpful. However upon searching for a better solution I found WDservers.com aka thewird on Digital Point Forums. I was able get a server that supported more then 3 times as many users for basically the same price as I was paying at my old host. My profit went up immediately, becuase I had maxed out my old server and I didn’t realize how much I was losing.
More importantly the guy who runs WDservers is on top of his game. He has always helped me out above and beyond what I needed and fixed the couple of issues I have had, in the past year and a half, in no time flat. His service is just exceptional, and he is just a great guy too.
I got an IM today saying he had fixed my server for myspace. I didn’t know it, but Myspace made some changes and it required a server tweak to may my sites work. Point being, I didn’t even know about it. I realized that my profit had gone down all of a sudden, but I handnt been able to figure out why. It was because my sites were not working! I would have probalby not gottent he problem fixed with other hosts even if I had asked them too. My family has a site with antoher provide and I had just got off chat support with them trying to fix an issue 5 mins before thewird sent me the message that he had tweaked my server. My other host had no idea what they were talking about, and it was a WordPress related issue. You can’t get much more mainstream then that. Then I get a message from thewird that Myspace is fixed on my server and I didn’t even ask for help. Not to mention, I didn’t even know that was the reason my sites weren’t performing. Its easy to see where the quality is here. Great price, better service, hands down choice.
Edit: Of note: he told me that he is currently updating his site and prices may not be acurate.
Hiding your smily links
In my previous post I talked getting do follow links by leaving comments on various sites. The idea is that we would use a picture to get a link, like a smiley face, thus we don’t look like we are spamming. In reality we are not spamming because we are leaving quality comments, but we just want to get a link in there too.
On one site I was leaving a comment and it put a nice blue box around my picture like so:
Which make it obvious that it is a link. Thats not bad, its still unobtrusive, but its obvious. So I thought if you could dress up the image a bit to make it not so obvious it might be better. So I added boxes around the image like this:
Thus when it adds the blue link box around the outside it looks like this:
Grant it that this is not the greatest, but it makes the blue line less in your face. However its a bit big. Another option I did was backfill the smile face with the color of the blue:
Once it adds the link it looks like this:
Smaller and less noticible. Either way it camouflages the fact that there is a link. Not sure if it really makes that big of a difference, but its a thought. If anyone cares to comment if they think it really matters or other ideas that would be great. These were just a couple options I thought of real quick.
Link Devlopment with Media Sites
As I was reading Exposed SEO site I happened upon an article that he wrote on link development with Flickr. Since the premise of this article is based on his article you should probably read it first here:
Sneaky link development with Flickr – But before you jump in, Flickr is now Nofollow. This post is about adapting and expanding on the concept.
In short the concept is to gather dofollow backlinks from flickr by leaving comments and including an image (like a smile face) in the comment that links back to your site. Thus you don’t look like spam, because you are leaving a quality comment, and the link is from a harmless smily face. 
Its a great concept.
Since its no longer advantageous to do it with Flickr, the next question is how can it be applied. Without going into a long explanation of SEO and link juice (there are many others that can explain it better then me anyway) – we are looking for sites that get lots of links in. What made flickr so good is that flickr makes it easy to link to them by embedding the picture with the code they give you. It counts a link to the page that that particular picture is on.
So if you have 100 people link to an image, that page has a lot of “link juice” flowing into it. Then we put our link in the comment and we get to have a little juice from each one of those links. So we are looking for sites that make it easy for lots of people to link to them. After racking my bring for a few minutes the only type of sites I could think of were Media sites. Audio, Video, and Pictures. Anyone else thinks of any, please comment so we can take advantage of those too.
So I did a quick search for photo sharing, and I just went down the line checking each one to see if it was dofollow or nofollow. Either by signing up and leaving a comment or looking at someone elses. The point here is there are other options, we just have to do a little footwork and we can apply the same concept. The first one that found that passed link juice was webshots.com. However they don’t let you bring pictures in, but rather only put in your website in the http://www.xxx.com format. So we can’t just leave our website everywhere, or we will get deleted for spam. However we can leave relative comments and leave our site on a couple of them. So we keep moving down the list.
Always leave relative, quality comments. Use an image as a link when possible, and don’t spam.
Props to Exposed SEO for the concept.
Doing What You Love
I have heard it and read it many times, from many reputable sources. You should do what you are passionate about and the rest will follow. Well I figured I was passionate about business and that I would try to make money. I just didn’t get it. I often struggle with getting burnt out and focus. Some times I feel like I am just spinning my wheels.
However the past 24 hours have hit me hard. I have heard it and read it so many places and finally it is starting to sink in. I know it works, becuase that has been the path of successful people, I just didn’t know how I could do it. I mean how am I going to make money off of what I love? Who is interested in what I am?
Well after hearing Gary V here:
http://garyvaynerchuk.com/post/79804838/chasing-dollars-instead-of-passion-many-people
http://garyvaynerchuk.com/post/79163716/new-media-expo-vegas-08-see-what-people-say
Then turning around and reading this:
http://www.zanderchance.com/2009/02/20/do-what-you-love-the-rest-will-follow/
And recalling Shoemoney and others having said the same thing.
Well I finally get it. Now I just have to do it. Its a long road ahead, but I believe 2 years from now I will be able to look back and see myself enjoying what I do. Plus see myself self supporting my family without the need for a day job.
So what is it I am passionate about? I love helping people. How am I gong to make money from that? I have absolutely no idea LOL, but it will come.
The plus side to being hacked
So one of my blogs was hacked last week. By hacked I mean when you loaded up my home page you got a nice black page that said “hacked” and gave an email address. The hacker was kind enough not to delete my database, but only some restoreable files. I regained access and got everthing restored in a few hours.
However I am grateful the fact that it happened now and not down the road. In the past few days I have learned more about securing wordpress then I even knew existed. I have taken every step I can within reason to secure my work. I am quite confident that I can still be hacked and there fore have daily database backups that are stored off site as well as weekly complete backups.
I am not goint so say exaclty what I do, as that is like putting up a sign that says “the key is under the mat”. however there is a great article about it here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress
It takes so much stinking work to implement security just so people don’t destroy your hard work. Such is life, but it makes me hustlel.
You just can’t help some people
(This post may look a bit odd in Firefox)
One thing that I have found out form working in retail for many years, is that you just can’t help some people. Some people don’t want to be helped, some are willingly ignorant and proud of it, and a few may even just be straight up stupid. Either way, a picture is worth a million words:
How did he get a lawers liscence anyway?
Who voted for these people?
Do you think the people in Utah really need to be reminded of that?
Odd, thought TEEN pregnancy would drop off completely at age 20….
You just can’t help some people.
Missed Shoemoney
Shoemoney was here in Phoenix, AZ for the past few days. Last night he hosted a tweetup and ivited everyone to attened. I work a “day” job that often has me working 2nd shift. I wanted to attend the tweetup as it was an excellent opportunity to meet Shoemoney and many others. Unfortunately I had to work my day job and was unable to attened.
I got kind of frustrated as this kind of opportunity doesn’t come around everyday, and I don’t like my day job anyway. It pays the bills, and I am grateful, but its not what I want to do. My normal response would have been to get mad and get down. Then I would have gone into a slump and been un productive for the next week or two.
After my previous post about association I have noticed a HUGE difference. Just by being on twitter every day and reading and communication with successful people my perspective has completely changed. Associating with people that are where I want to get to is like an injection of a productive attitude.
My thought this time around is what do I need to do to be ready for an opportunity the next time it presents itsself. The answer is as pound it out | work my rear end off between now and whenever it is. The bottom line, this time I am motivated to move forward and hammer it out. Associating with the right people is an amazing thing. Twitter is an amazing tool.
Picked up 30 new domains today, $.99 .info sale at GoDaddy.
I picked up 30 new domains for my proxy sites today. I try to get them when they are a good deal and right now Godaddy.com has .info domains for $.99, thats 99 cents each! Thats a smokin deal, so I grabbed some while they are cheap. I have in the past only grabbed a few and came back a couple weeks later to find that they had gone up to $3 each. Which means I could only get 10 for the same price as 30. Its not a huge price difference, but cash is cash you know.
Focus
In economic trying times such as these its imporant to remember the main things. Focus=confidence. Keep the main thing, the main thing.
Forcing myself to take a vacation
So I pretty much stink at taking vacations. Given that I work my day job and my internet job I am always working. So when I would take a week off at my day job, I would just use that as an opportunity to work a full week on my internet job. On the whole it has been a good thing for me to work on my internet job while I am on vacation from my day job, but sometimes you just need a break. Quite frankly its hard for me to take a vacation from my internet job for more then a day or two tops.
Two weeks ago I took a 6 day vacation from my day job. I worked one day in the middle of the six days, but forced myself to take the other days off. The biggest challenge was not doing anything for my business and not letting myself think or plan for it. It is really tough to not let myself even think about it. That is what i had to do though. I needed a break, or I was going to lose it. I forced myself to play games lol. Some people may think thats not tough, but I am almost addicted to business, so it was tough for me. All told I came out refreshed and I will be more productive now.
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