Helping You Make Money Online

It struck me to day that one of the greatest benefits of working online is the ability to earn a living without effort.

Work is nothing more than the production of something. It could be words, or paint, or pixels that are beautiful, or organized files, or the solution to a complex equation. But it’s something you can point at and say, I created that.

And good work is production that has value to others. It is good work I am talking about.

If you offer the fruits of your good work to others with the enthusiasm inherent for things you love, others will accept your offer.

Working from love and enthusiasm effortless. I would even suggest that if you find something takes effort then you are lacking love and/or enthusiasm for it.

Granted there will always be small bits of house keeping and an occasional interaction that requires effort to accomplish successfully. But they are inconsequential, tertiary, completely forgettable.

What do you think?

Sharing the creations of your love with tens of millions of people on the Internet ensures a good living through work without effort.

Tags: workwithout effort, make money online, make a living online, satisfaction

We’re off an running. Here’s my list of niche ideas:

digital photography
low fat diet - eat clean
coin collecting
bar tending
wine
social media
insurance
personal finance
children’s birthday/activities
web development
yoga lifestyle exercise (pilates, tai chi…)

I’ve started using Market Samurai and, despite a couple of weak links, I find it nothing short of revolutionary in the world of keyword research. I truth this is what every tool should have been like in the beginning.

My strategy is to break the above list down into Market -> Mega Niche -> Niche -> Micro Niche as suggested in the video. I’ll focus on the micro-nche(s) for the 30DC with a long term goal of a SILO authority site.

Question:

Digital Camera has more than 1,000,000 competing pages so “technically” it is a market. I am thinking of treating it as a mega-niche withing the Digital Photography market. Would you do that?

Tags: nichemarketing, keyword research

I am watching the live 30 Day Challenge prelaunch party and can’t describe my excitement with words.

Ed Dale and a team of volunteers have taken an entire month to teach people how to build an online business in 30 Days, for free.

They’ve done it before but this year is something special I think. Why?

Because the focus is on using Social Media, which is THE next big opportunity for making money online. I think it’s as big as email marketing or the introduction of AdSense to all web masters.

Even better, we are getting our hands on the newest, most advanced, and totally rockin keyword research tool available. Simple, focused result are just one thing that puts this tool heads and shoulders above the rest.

This tool will be yours to use for 40 Days! Starting Saturday, August 2nd.

Saturday will also be an important day as a massive amount of information and foundational “projects” will be presented.

And you get to make great connections with a bunch of other people focused on building a real business online.

I could go on and on and on. Best if you to check out 30DC for yourself.

Tags: 30Day Challenge, keyword research, build a business, make money online

Using .htaccess files to make your web site or blog to redirect/cloak affiliate links or improve SEO is a great idea. Unfortunately Wordpress rewrites the file whenever you make a change to the blog layout or permalink structure.

Does that mean you can’t use custom .htaccess commands with Wordpress? Of course not, but you do need to make the right modification to the initial .htaccess it creates.

Here’s an example to show you how simple it is. Just move the lines in bold from their position in the first sample to the position in the second:

SAMPLE 1:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^dummyurl$ http://www.affiliateservice.com/afclick.php?o=6496 [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

</IfModule>
# END WordPress

SAMPLE 2:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^dummyurl$ http://www.affiliateservice.com/afclick.php?o=6496 [L]

# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress

</IfModule>

NOTES:

1. If you already have a .htaccess file in place be sure to save it off the server before installing a new Wordpress blog. You will then need to integrate the original code into new .htaccess file if Wordpress botches things and overwrites the whole thing. It doesn’t always happen but is a good thing to keep in mind.

2. The extra .htaccess commands above show first, how to make all requests to your site start with www. for SEO purposes, and second, a simple .htaccess redirect. I will be explaining the redirect in detail in upcoming posts.

Tags: SEO, .htaccess, Wordpress, linkcloaking, redirect

I’ve just finished my lens reviewing Cuil on Squidoo.

What I hoped would be a valuable comparison of promising new technology turned out to be nothing more than a source for a migraine.

If Cuil were the only search engine left I’d go back to Gopher.

Cuil is just not worth talking about so I won’t anymore, unless the historical insanity of Wall Street shows its face and creates a Cuil IPO.

I’ve covered the flaws in more detail on the lens linked above. Here I’ll share two of my favorite fatal flaws revealed in About Cuil that ensured this was dead before launch:

“The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now.”

There’s just no truth in that statement. Google is keeping up fine and Cuil is not delivering more results.

Besides when it comes the sheer number of pages I don’t think size is an asset.

“Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.” … “Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there.”

So I’m supposed to cull through the millions of pages myself? Not so cool Cuil, you’re as irrelevant as your search results.

And BTW, Cuil doesn’t understand the concept of phrase search.

Go away Cuil. You’re a waste of time for anyone that uses you.

Tags: cuil, ciul, Google, searchengine, new search engine