My Previous Post…
- Alcohol and Blogging
My previous post attempting to defend my sister’s honor is a good example of why there should be breathalyzers on computers. Google has a feature in gmail called Mail Goggles that prevents you from sending stupid things via email when you are annebriated. I wonder if theres a Wordpress plugin…
In other news, I found a plugin that easily turns your Wordpress install into a mobile-friendly version for when someone visits you on a browser from a cell phone. It works very well and is super easy to install.
I Will Cut You!
Destruction
Apparently, a searcher out there doesn’t know that I cut people. Above is a search result that landed somebody on my site. This is the danger of a) having a sister with the same name as a famous person and b) having a blog that mentions her name. My site is the number one search result for this search. Consider this fair warning.
Just know that that’s my sister and that I have your IP address. And I will cut you.
Yeah I know. If I can’t stand the heat, stay my a$$ out of the kitchen.
Practice Writing
Practice writing. Create a bunch of unique content using different mediums and watch your authority increase. Write on your own blogs and anywhere else you can get your keyboard into (besides Twitter.) Here are a few places I write articles to.
These sites don’t do much moderation, you can post pretty much whatever you want to as long as it’s not crazy spammy. I also write to the different article submission sites like goarticles.com and articletrader.com but these sites take quite a bit of time to moderate and get posted.
These sites are awesome for building authority and PageRank. My favorite has to be Squidoo, even though it starts a new Lens off with all no-follow links. With a bit of work/time those links turn to do-follows and really help you rank well.
Facebook To Offer Usernames
Facebook is finally going to allow everyone to have their own username! In a few days, Facebook will let anyone register thier own username so that you can direct your friends to your Facebook profile with a simple URL.
According to Facebook’s page on usernames:
Starting on Friday, June 12th, at 11:01pm, you’ll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.
If you want your desired Facebook username, better be online 11:01 June 12th!
Google Squared Launches
Google’s new semantic search engine, Google Squared launched one June 3rd. Basically a semantic search is one that does not show search results based on PageRank relavency, but rather shows results based on semantics, or word meaning. Google Squared displays those results in a spreadsheet format and allows editing of search results for personalization, almost like a wiki. You can also save a Google Squared page.
Google squared is very new and should only get better. Getting structured results is a pretty new way of doing search and it seems like Google has hit the nail on the head with this. I’m anxious to use it to get better targeted search results for things like products I want to promote as an affiliate, for example this search for pickup trucks. As you can see, this is a much better way to do research that a typical Google search result for pickup trucks. The Squared search results break down individual truck makes and models, gives me a picture of each truck, a description of each truck, features of each truck, all without leaving the search results page. The typical search results page gives me a list of results with mostly pickups for sale.
Give Google Squared a go and see what it does to improve your researching.
Google Wants To Take Over Your Web
Google had a presentation for a room full of geeks a few days ago. They introduced Google Wave, a work in progress by the makers of Google Maps. Wave is being described as “What email would look like if it were invented today.” I just sat through the presentation and was blown away by all the features of Wave.
It’s a fairly long presentation. Basically Wave works to make everything you do to communicate and collaborate real time. The interface looks like Gmail but it’s not just about messages, it lets you create tons of content in an easy way that is able to be edited and added to by any one that is involved in that “Wave.” Want to reply to a particular part of a Wave? You can add content to a Wave anywhere you wish, like a comment. And all of this is done in a browser in real time. You can also add a new person to a Wave at any point and they would see that wave in it’s entirety. If this new person wants to see the Wave from when it first started there is a playback button that shows the Wave from the original content up to that point.
Google Wave
Google Wave is supposed to be released to the masses sometime later this year. There is an open API for developers that will allow Wave to be extended in tons of different ways. Google has big plans with this and looks like it’s trying to incorporate everything you do on the web into one place. Let’s hope Google is still the good guy.
Getting Permission
I keep up with quite a few blogs every day. Using Google Reader, I subscribe to the likes of Seth Godin, Jeremy Schoemaker, Aaron Wall, there are quite a few others, not all well known. As far as marketing goes, my favorite might be Seth Godin’s. He is very genuine and works hard not to throw advertising in your face. Where you might find a few of the larger blogs posting similar posts (e.g., Darren Rowse comes out with a new ebook, other big time bloggers post about it,) Seth steers clear of what is trendy day to day and focuses on what his blog is about. It’s obvious why these big blogs post about the same things. It’s self serving. It’s “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” or it’s pay per post, or it’s affiliate links.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there is anything wrong with earning money from your posts. It’s just so obvious that these big blogs are doing that in some posts about the same things at the same times. I think it’s still worth it to read these blogs though because it helps me stay up on what’s new with my interests. One blog i don’t exactly enjoy reading but always do is John Chow’s. John is pretty annoying. I’m not typically a critical person, but he does go a bit far with the whole “I’m rich, your not” thing. I still keep up with him though because there are things that are said in his blog’s posts that I can learn from.
Seth’s blog posts are much different from that. Seth is the originator of the permission marketing theory and he practices it with his posting. He also does this without showing off his ego. I’m a bit all over the place with this blog, and don’t really monetize it much, but I hope with the other blogs I am earning money with that I’m earning my visitors “permission” to market to them.
The Coolest Short Video Ever
I’m a big Star Trek fan (yeah, all the ladies love that about me) and I also like the Star Wars series of films. I saw this short video today and almost pooped myself I was so amazed. Love the idea, and I love the fist bump the two stormtroopers give each other at the end.
For thos who don’t want to bother with the video (what’s wrong with you!) it’s basically the Star Ship enterprise, looks like from the original series, kind of hovering over the San Fransisco bay. The camera pans up and you see the FREAKIN DEATH STAR from Star Wars. Then the Death Star fires on the Enterprise!
Not sure which award show has a Really-Freakin-Cool-Short-Video category but I’m sure this would win.
PhpBay Vs. BANS
A month ago, Mark did a post on reasons to convert a BANS site to PhpBay. I haven’t really discussed PhpBay on my blog, but then again I haven’t really discussed anything on my blog lately. 
For the last few days I’ve been trading emails with Sallie over at Affiliate Marketing Adventure. She was nice enough to give me a heads up on a new product out for one of my niche sites and we got to talking about Wordpress and BANS and PhpBay. I told Sallie that I was looking for someone to convert a few Wordpress themes to Build a Niche Store themes (anybody out there?) and that I was going away from using the Build a Niche Store System completely. I wanted to elaborate on that a bit in this post and give my reasons as to why I have not been building new stores with BANS anymore, but rather relying on PhpBay.
First of all I love the Build a Niche Store system. It is very easy to use and having it setup all those store pages for you is very easy and optimizing for search engines is a snap. The problem now with BANS is that Google hates it. No way around that. Part of the problem is that it’s to easy to create a BANS site with hundreds of pages of eBay products, promise yourself to add content to it later, and then setup another store. That is pretty much a blueprint for a thin affiliate site, and we all know what Google does with those.
The great thing about Wordpress, as I have discussed before, is that Google LOVES Wordpress. Besides that, Wordpress is open source, super easy to install, is easily extendable, and there is a wealth of knowledge available on problems you may encounter with Wordpress.
PhpBay Wordpress Plugin
PhpBay plugs right into Wordpress. It is very easy to install and immediately begin to show your readers targeted eBay products with your EPN number. PhpBay does not automatically create pages of eBay products for you, you insert products into articles or pages yourself.
The way I have been setting up my affiliate sites is by starting a Wordpress blog as the root of the domain name and then adding articles one at a time, sometimes inserting PhpBay commands displaying three products at the bottom of the post. Other times I create an entire page of eBay products right into a static Wordpress page and add content to that. Either way I am building my website one page at a time with plenty of content.
Search engines know that it’s not natural to build a two hundred page website in a day and that is what the Build a Niche Store system can do. A safe way around that problem in BANS is to no-index pages that you have not added unique content to and then do-index afterwards. That can be a lot of work. Another way is to just create BANS pages one page at a time. But that is so much easier to do with Wordpress and PhpBay.
The Build a Niche Store systems backend has lots of features for creating content and inserting targeted eBay products into a page. But Wordpress’ backend is better. In my websites that use both Wordpress and BANS I have to login to two seperate backends when I am working on those sites. With PhpBay I only login to Wordpress and create content and add products right from the admin panel in Wordpress.
I will say that I am still using BANS in sub-directories of some of my niche sites. BANS allows for more flexibility in what products you display to your readers. PhpBay can be limiting because certain rules for what products to be displayed are generalized throughout the site while with BANS you can set many more rules for items to be displayed in individual pages. For example, with PhpBay, the settings page in the plugin handles whether to display the order of the products (most expensive to cheapest, buy it now items only, etc.) and does so sitewide. With BANS you can decide those things in each individual page that you setup.
If someone is starting out new to affiliate marketing I would encourage them to go with the Phpbay method and build niche stores using Wordpress. There are just to many pros for using Wordpress and to many cons to the Build a Niche Store system, mainly Google de-indexing your site.
It’s important to note that the only reason Google dislikes BANS so much is that we abused it by creating so many useless thin affiliate sites.
Short Bed Silverado, 2 Wheel Drive, Regular Cab - My New Girlfriend
One of my passions is car mods. Specifically, lowriders. Most of my passions take a back seat to my job and my family and modifying vehicles is no different. I always make sure everything at work is ok and everything on the homefront is ok before I get involved in any kind of vehicle projects.
Last week I was looking for an extra vehicle for the family because my sister Shirley moved back to Minnesota with me and my parents and she would need a vehicle to get to and from work. My search was for a smaller car in the range of around two grand. Just something for her to get around in.
When ever I look for vehicles I always keep an eye out for a two wheel drive, short bed, regular cab, white Chevy Silverado that was built before 1999. Too specific? Yes, that’s why I never find it and I just keep my money and move on. While doing my search this time I ran across this ad on Craigslist:
Craigslist Ad
Oooooh. I was looking for a $2000 small car for my sister. But I found what is basically the truck of my dreams. I say that to people and they look at me like I’m crazy. Why would anybody lust over this truck? If I have to explain it, you wouldn’t understand, but I’ll try. I need it two be a two wheel drive because you can’t lower a four wheel drive. I want a short bed because long beds look ugly. And I want a regular cab because I’ve had extended cab pick-ups before. And I want it to be white because I love GM’s pearl white color. And I want it to be pre-1999 because I’m not a fan of the newer model Chevy pick-ups.
I couldn’t help myself. I called the guy and asked if he’d take four grand for it. He said to come drive it and we would talk it over. I drove it and fell in love! This is the exact truck I’ve been looking for and it is up for sale, in good shape, no rust, no dents, problem-free motor. And he took my offer of four g’s.
White Silverado
Isn’t she pretty? I didn’t need to spend four grand but I did need this truck. I’ve been using it as my daily driver all week and can’t believe how well it drives. I am completely enamored by this vehicle. I have big plans for this Silverado over the next couple of years. I want to have an air ride installed for starters. I also want to put some nice wheels on it. I think about a year from now it should look something like this:
Lowered Silverado
Mmmmm. I can’t wait. You can see the progression of this truck at BaggedRides. I will try and keep udpates of all the mods I make to it there. It’s one of my affiliate BANS sites.
I have two other trucks besides this one. A few years back I bought a Chevy Silverado that is setup more for Minnesota. It’s a four wheel drive, extended cab, short bed. It’s a solid daily driver and is nice because I can have a few passengers with me too. And it’s got a nice towing package for hauling around a boat to one of our ten thousand lakes.
Gray Silverado
But for the most part it’s rather bland. I can’t lower it. I don’t want it to look different from the outside because I don’t want anybody messing with it or trying to steal it. I even have a stereo system installed in it but I set it up so that you can’t tell from the outside. When the rear seat is down all you see is a rear seat.
Rear Seat
Don’t mind the crumbs on the floor. I let somebody borrow my truck and they let their kids eat crackers in it! I damn near went apoplectic. There’s a Holiday gas station near my house that has free vacuums. Consider it done.
So I set a system up in this truck just for me to see and hear while I’m driving. I can’t really play my music loud at home because other people live there and the neighbors get upset. But I can play it loud in my truck doing 60mph up highway 100.
Sub and Amps
That’s in the Gray Silverado with the seat up. It’s got two Kicker Solobaric subwoofers, four Alpine speakers in the doors, and a pair of Alpine amplifiers powering the speakers. It also has a Stinger 1 Farad capacitor so that it doesn’t kill my battery/alternator. It’s not the first setup I’ve put in a vehicle, or even the loudest, but it is my favorite. I had the box you see in the picture custom made so that it looks like it’s part of the truck and blends in very nicely. People and would-be-thieves can’t see it from the outside.
So I started out looking for a daily driver for Shirley to get to and from work with and instead bought yet another truck. Oh well. She can use my Chevy S-10 for now.
S-10
