Monthly Archives: July 2009

Have You Written an Info Product Yet?

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eBooks. White Papers. Reports. Call them what you want, but online digital info-products are well worth your time looking into.

For example, say your hobby is clothing for pets. Imagine a website of your very own, where you sell your creations.

But no one is coming – in fact, the site is deadly calm.

Now, try this scenario:

  • After you finish your site, you prepare a brief report answering what’s on people’s minds (for instance, I’m wondering if there are better or worse fabrics to use? What about summer? And do pets REALLY like those clothes?) The goal is a short report that helps sell people on your product – by illustrating it’s the best possible one (of course, this assumes that you are doing quality!)
  • Now, contact a few related sites, and let them know you have a report – free – on this topic, and they just visit your site to get it. The only catch is they have to subscribe to get it.
  • Now, people promote your site for the free guide, people sign up to get it – and you’ve built traffic and a customer base.

Simple? Yes and no. If you’re doing what you love, several thousand words will take no time to write. But if you’re new(ish) to computer software, writing and publishing can be a learning curve.

The good news? I’ve released a report to make the ‘learning curve’ almost disappear:

“Top 10 Tricks to WIN BIG With Your First Info-Product!”

Itself an eBook, it explains how to use the powerful free Word Processor Open Office for extremely easy report writing – and even includes two ‘type and publish’ pre-formatted templates ready to go.

You can read more writing your own info-product here. So get going – and get YOUR knowledge out there working for you!

End Of The Month: Are YOUR Bills Paid?

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I noticed on TV that there are more and more shows about saving, instead of spending: parts in talk shows on economical buying, fewer ‘rich cribs’ types of programming, and so on.

And here it is the end of the month, and I wonder: how many people reading this are having problems at the end of the month?

We are paying the price for someone’s credit policies – and so it makes sense that taking control of YOUR credit will help solve YOUR problems.

One way for some is to combine their credit debt into a single, smaller interest load. While not everyone qualifies, the result is a single payment, and lower overall interest.

For example, this site explains how to use a loan calculator to figure out what payments for a loan equal what amount of consolidation credit. The result is that you will pay to combine your loans into a single one – and THAT bottom line figure is what you need to pay in the future.

Of course, this is one way to solve the present situation; as always, it’s important to get a handle on debt, and if possible, reduce spending. A payment system like this can help you get ahead, but it’s extremely important to not use the extra savings from a consolidation loan for anything but paying off debt.

(One note: I’m not in the financial advice business – I only suggest options based on what I’ve seen online. As always, seriously consider the pros and cons of any financial course of action).

WordPress Comments – and My ‘Comment Killer’ Plugin

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It’s time to get the comments…

If you use a WordPress blog, then you know that checking the comments is a huge deal – and needs to be done far too often for what is mostly spam.

What to do?

Awhile back for ActiveBlogging members, I wrote a plugin to kill comments dead – Dave’s Comment Killer for WordPress – but it’s not your typical comment plugin.

Why?

Because it lets you dump ALL comments!

WordPress has a real problem with comments. Even if you refuse to accept any via the WP settings, spammers can still blast them – and you still have to clean them out. For non-blog blogs it’s a pain.

My plugin lets you automatically dump ALL comments – silently – perfect for regular sites where commenting isn’t used (or needed).

And for sites like this one? I have a setting to detect links – more than ‘X’ links in a comment (which I can adjust in the plugin) and the comment disappears automatically.

Think about it – most spammers want something for their time, and that ‘something’ is a link (or two, or fifty). With this plugin, comments with huge numbers of links are deleted automatically.

And as a final option, I can get an email every time a real comment makes it past the filter – allowing me to approve good ones ASAP.

Take a peek at Dave’s Comment Killer for WordPress – if you need a new way to kill comment spam on WordPress for ‘non-blog’ blogs, this will do a treat for you.

“Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite” – NOT CUTE!

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As a kid, I often heard (and said) that line: “Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite”

Ah, the innocence of youth.

I just read about them on Bed Bugs Guide, a site that offers treatment for bed bugs. Among the nasty aspects of bedbugs:

  • They can live without feeding for months, even a year.
  • However, they like to dine once a week or so.
  • They don’t like the sunlight, which makes them ‘perfect’ bedtime partners.
  • They can lay about 3-4 eggs a day.
  • Their bites can appear hours later (even days), and are intensely itchy.
  • Their sex habits are, well, not suitable for discussing here.

I’ve changed my mind about the little ditty about bedbugs – drop by Bed Bugs Guide and you may, too.

How To Earn Money On Your Unused Domains: Adsense For Domains

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Everyone in the world knows about Adsense – but have you heard of Adsense for Domains (AFD)?

With that, unused domains can be managed by Google, and Adsense pages appear on them (much like the pages for Sedo.com or Godaddy). Just as with regular Adsense, traffic turns into clicks, and clicks turn into money.

Is it for you? There are some advantages for certain types of domains:

  • If your domain is lying fallow. An empty domain earns nothing. AFD is free, so why not move it there?
  • Your sites are under performing. I’ve been testing some domains via Sedo.com, and so far find the conversions are quite poor. In that case, Google is basically a step up. If you have a poor-performing static site, it’s worth a test.
  • Your name is keyword-rich. Google promises to do semantic analysis of your domain name. For keyword-rich domains, this might give you more targeted (and therefore valuable) ads.
  • If you HAD traffic. I’m guessing Google can monitor what specific pages are asked for, and make that count as well. While I have no proof of this, it’s easy to implement, and could mean VERY targeted ads.

The bottom line: it’s free, so why not check it out? After all, you’re paying for the domain name – shouldn’t it earn its keep?