Well, I find myself in a bit of a conundrum - I need to operate my regular daily business, and I am developing or re-designing an old affiliate site… for the past 2 weeks, I have been re-designing it, and coming up with new and original content… and it eats all of my time, so, Bloglyne.com suffers. I cannot keep up with comments at communities which I normally frequent, and so I am slowly seeing my traffic die down and my Yahoo! links dwindle.

What is to be done?

I would imagine many of you out there have faced similar dilemmas - It would be interesting to hear from you and how you resolved them… for now, I am hoping that the time slicing will be enough for me to keep from reaching the bottom.

For those faithful readers, thank you for your continued diligence and interest in the site. Again, I put the call out for anybody who would like to add original content here for an outside link back to their site, as well as some sort of text advertising. Email me at admin at bloglyne dot com - and we can discuss details.

Here is an idea I just thought up over the past couple of days.

Because I am still working on developing a consistant base of readers, why not open the door to other authors to help shape and contribute to the content here at Bloglyne?

Instead of charging people for advertising at Bloglyne, I thought it might be interesting to look for 2 - 3 authors who would like to publish unique articles here - The idea is that, as long as the content is original and related to Affiliate/Internet Marketing, SEO, or Website Design, the authors would be able to publish their unique articles here with one way links back to whatever site they wish.

Please leave comments about what you think about the idea or if you are interested in becomming a contributing author, send an email to admin@bloglyne.com

I recently ran across a brief summary post on Connected Internet which referred to an article at DoshDosh highlighting 20 specific tips to improve your Alexa rank.

Most of the steps seem fairly straight forward and ethical, here are 5 that I consider practical to implement quickly:

1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few days ago and receive a fair amount of clicks every day.
3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar or SearchStatus extension. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers.
8. Write content that is related to webmasters. This can fall in the category of domaining and SEO, two fields in which most webmasters will have the Alexa toolbar installed. Promote your content on social networking websites and webmaster forums.
14. Create an Alexa category on your blog and use it to include any articles or news about Alexa. This acts as a resource for webmasters while helping you rank in the search engines.

Some of the tips seem a little “shady” to me like step 4 which talks about installing the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension on all computers in your office and setting your website as the homepage for all browsers on said office computers.

DoshDosh has great articles which provide good and practical tips on how to improve traffic and ranking to your site – Check him out at DoshDosh.com

All in all, I think it would be an interesting experiment for folks to implement the tips they feel comfortable with over the next 30 days and track what happens to their Alexa rank along with their Text Link Ads and ReviewMe profits (since both sites use Alexa ranking to determine what amount to charge for ads on your site).

Good luck and let us know what happens.

Note: I was not going to include this review on this site, as it did not seem relevant, but after having received numerous comments on the review given at Stackblog, I thought it might be alright to include it here. After all, a lot of affiliates are providing links to this video - so, without further ado, here is my review.

As a Christian, it is obvious to identify serious issues with Christianity and The Secret if you do not temper it with the tenets of our Faith.

Again, I am still in process on this one - but where it really crosses the line is when one of the “Teachers”, Lisa Nichols, says that you are “God manifested in human form.”

According to my Christian belief, Jesus was the only one who was truly God manifested in human form.

So, I am not okay with that statement from The Secret, but what I am okay with is modifying the statement to realize and remind myself that I am a creation by God in His image.

Make no mistake, just like many philosophies put out there by humans, there are real problems with some of what the Secret says, but, I do not think The Secret was made by Christians, so why should we use that measuring stick?

Now, if we choose to apply anything out of The Secret, we must be careful to remember the basics of our Faith and use our Faith to judge anything we choose to apply. But, remember, that can be said for anything we apply and use in our lives as Christians.

I do not see why these two things, “The Law of Attraction” and Christianity must be exclusive to one another. In fact, I believe that the Universe is part of God’s creation, and when God set it into motion he did so with certain laws in place for it to operate under.

Everything humans have made (I did not say created, because, this is also where The Secret misses it - we are NOT Creators of the energy discussed in the movie. God is the Prime Mover and Creator of everything. God does allow us to shape it though.) Everything we have made, we have made with the building blocks of the universe God created for us to exist in.

So, why should our Faith and The Law of Attraction be exclusive? The Law of Attraction is one of the laws that the universe operates under. Another way to think about this, as I have applied the lesson to my life is that the universe hates a void, and if you create a void by declaring a need - the universe will rush in to fill it. Good, bad, or indifferent - so we must be careful what we declare.

The universe and God are two separate things, of course. I do not thank the universe, it is a thing created by God. I thank God. I ask God, that if something is his will, that I would have it, regardless of what it would be. For example, I ask that if it is in His will that he would give me patience, love, kindness, the ability to forgive, I ask him for my daily bread, and by that, I mean, money, food, shelter, clothing, more than enough to meet not only my needs, but the needs of my family, along with the needs of others. It is scary! It is a scary thing to put yourself into the hands of the living God. Although, we would do well to remember that there is nothing to be scared about – God is not the evil step father waiting to punish us. He is the anxious father waiting for us to turn to him through Christ so he can sweep us off our feet.

I believe it is our tendency to take something like The Secret and dismiss it as a whole because there are things in it that make us uncomfortable, and we do not trust ourselves to discern the good and right things from the bad things in it and rightly so. Because if you still trust yourself for anything, you are heading into dangerous territory – we can all be fooled, every last one of us.

But, if you trust God to peel the scales away from your eyes, and allow that if anything is right and good and just and within His will that He will allow His discernment to guide you. You can trust that He will guide you and that you will be alright.

Just read a couple of interesting articles about the decline of Web 2.0 in venture capital circles and the advent of Web 3.0

The authors describe the “killer apps” currently being offered are very similar to each other, many take after the Technorati, Gigaom or Wikipedia “skins”. The challenge with these “killer apps” is that they are still just applications stuck in the old and out-dated form of HTML or XHTML.

The authors ask, ‘Where the truly new and innovative opportunities are in the Web 2.0 landscape?’ While we have seen solutions to cost and access to distinct compiled data, the question remains, when and how do we make the transition to the Web as a true platform rather than just a clumsy way to show text?

Even with the transition to CSS and XHTML, we are still using old & clumsy conventions which you must know how to manipulate at a Developer level, if you are going to have any hope of displaying something meaningful.

I see attempts being made to solve these questions about innovation through offerings like Squidoo and the newer Blogger interface, but, I think we are still a little way out from the “killer app” status where we can provide cheap and easy access to manipulate data which is stored on the web easily and uniquely via intuitive interfaces.

Since posting my article “One Way Inbound PR 9 Links For Free” I have received many inquiries about the software I used to generate the video which captured the computer desktop.

The Night Shift

It took me over 5 hours to find the software I used. I started by looking at www.tucows.com and www.download.com - Maybe I’m slow, but I had a heckuva time figuring out the correct keywords to search on. Many of the terms would yield simple print screen, regular camera video recording or video editing software packages – none of which were going to meet my need for the project. I finally figured out the correct search terms were “screen recorder” or “screen recording”.

The goal was to find FREE software if I could – I wasn’t able to find anything for hours, so, I finally found a package that was free to try. After downloading it, I set up the options, got a brief script ready and started recording. Immediately, I received a message that it would only allow 15 recordings before I would have to pay for it. This was pretty discouraging because I was doing a test video on the first recording and I could see how quickly I was going to use up all 15 recordings. “Ah well,” I thought, and braced to pay for it…

Tech Support?!? We Don’t Offer No Stinking Tech Support!

After recording the first video – it did not work very well, the *.avi was corrupted, and buggy. So, I worked a way around it, and recorded again. The file sizes were out of control, 230Mb – 350Mb. I found a setting to change in order to use a better encoding, but it was buggy and wasn’t working correctly in the trial. So, I emailed the company and asked if they could provide some support – that if I couldn’t get the encoding to work, I wouldn’t be able to buy the software.

They emailed me back suggesting that I purchase some video conversion software. Basically, they were telling me to “screw off” and expecting me to thank them for it.

On The Road Again…

So, I began my search again, looking for other screen recorders. My plan was to download many and use up all of their free to try periods before deciding on which one to buy… then I noticed – All the user interfaces I ran across looked alike! I mean, they did not resemble each other, they looked exactly alike!

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

Then I ran across a review by Hax0r on C|NET’s download.com where he said the following about one of the screen recorders which is “free to try” but you have to pay to get the full version:

Rip-off of open-source program

Pros: Well, it’s an alright, though CPU-inefficient program… but…

Cons: This is obviously a rip-off of the open-source program, CamStudio 2.0, available at camstudio dot org. They might very well have taken the open-source code, changed the names and are trying to sell it. I highly recommend that you check out the aforementioned program, CamStudio 2.0, before downloading this.

Posted: 28-Nov-2006 03:55:22 AM

Jackpot!

I went to CamStudio.org site and there it was… the free software Hax0r had referred to, available for download and FREE to use at SourceForge.net

Ethics – A Little Cleaning Up To Do

I reported the possible licensing violations to the author, not sure if these are real violations, but wanted to let him know there is a possibility that others are profiting off of his open source work. You can bet this guy gets a donation from me! If you end up using the software, I would encourage you to donate, as well.

While composing a comment response to a recent article by Shawn from AffiliateTip, it started to get pretty long, so, I thought I would make an article out of it. If you want to know more about the post I am responding to, please visit Shawn’s site at the links listed above.

Basically, one of the more controversial affiliate marketers who I have started to follow because they are so honest about their opinion is on a tear and mounting an attack on eBook writers & publishers.

I do not publish any eBooks, and I think his post is an interesting “comment” on the general tone of folks being fed up with poor quality “regurgitated” content.

I share the general sentiment and am extremely tired of the “carpetbagger” mentality of infomercials, eBooks, and other “get rich quick” schemes that permeate the U.S. market these days. I would love to see “scammers” removed from the marketplace in the hopes that we would be left with good value-added products to choose from, instead of having to sift through tons of garbage to find the one gem.

I think the originator makes a couple of mistakes though - the first is being addressed by his readers warning of copyright infringement which he threatens to do.

The second is his assumption that all eBooks have no value - just because he knows the strategies that work for him doesn’t mean that everybody knows those same strategies.

Also, when he says, “I’ve never once come across a single one of them offering anything valuable or new that you can’t find for free on a forum or a blog.” That is true of any cookbook, gaming manual, or other instruction booklet. Does that mean that Emril is an “asshole” because he is publishing another book on how to make crawfish Étouffée? I mean, come on… how many different ways can you cook crawfish and cayenne pepper together??? (That was sarcastic…) There is value in the accumulation and combining of relevant data which saves the buyer time.

It makes me wonder if this is a publicity stunt – perhaps he is getting ready to write his own eBook or has a partner who will release one soon which he will be “forced” to provide a “good” review because the content is so “in the face” of anything out there right now.

We’ll wait & see – I guess.

Here is a way that you can get your site, articles AND photo listed in Google News and Yahoo! News For FREE

I have noticed recently, that there seems to be a trend where more affiliate marketers, including me, have been all to willing to part with our money for press releases and other link back services. However, most of us write articles about stuff that we are passionate about, so why not use some of those articles to get high page ranked sites to link into our sites?

Google News and Yahoo! News are two sites out of many that use American Chronicle as one of their news service feeds?

American Chronicle is a PR 6 site, but once Google or Yahoo! pick up your article, you have instant high quality one way inbound Page Rank 9 links pointing straight at whatever site you wish. Now, this isn’t the end all be all – but it’s not a bad place to get started, right?

In order to be accepted to American Chronicle as an author, you must go through an application process and be approved by the support staff.

The process is extremely simple, you go to the American Chronicle website. On the left side of the page, you will see the View Authors link, once you click through that link you will notice an ad on the lower right side of the page labeled “Writers Wanted”. Click through the ad and you will be able to read more about their author program.

If you want to go through the process all you have to do is submit a sample article to the email address listed there – when I submitted my article I heard back after about 10 business days. I’m not sure what their backlog is now, but that seemed reasonable to me at the time.

Heck, you can even do a search on the Author’s page for my name, but be careful, because you may find my photo there, and I do not take responsibility for any permanent or temporary loss of sight caused by that photo!

Good luck, and let me know how it goes.

Just take time and feel good today.