Web Site Traffic Magnet

Web site traffic and how to get more of it is a hot topic for Internet entrepreneurs. The problem is that the discussion tends to begin and end with the number of visitors.

Traffic to your web site is less than half the battle. These days getting people to your site isn’t nearly the whole problem. Once they’re there, you need a way to keep them there, or better yet, keep them coming back!

Offering your visitors something of value is the best way to get and keep them as regular visitors. What’s the most valuable commodity on the Internet? Information!

That’s what the Internet is all about, folks…providing information.

The challenge has never been that there isn’t enough information. It’s finding the information you want quickly and easily.

Someone once described the Internet as a huge library with the books scattered all over the floor! Sure, there are search engines and repositories, but you have to use a number of them to find everything you’re looking for. Now you can provide your web site visitors a way of searching not only for information, but information in multiple formats…all from a single window!

Check out the widget below. It’s called Page Magnetizer and it’s a way of giving your web site visitors a kick-butt concentrated source of information. Enter a search keyword in the box at the top. Notice how the related search links below change instantly.

Page Magnetizer immediately returns the relevant references from all the major information resources for text, video, audio, and more. In one area less than 500 pixels square, you have access to targeted research on any keyword you can think of!

Play with it a while and see what it’s capable of. I think you’ll be amazed. I certainly am.

There are hundreds of potential uses for this little gem. It’s just launched so the price is currently as low as it will ever be. If you want one for your site, click the link at the bottom of the widget and grab yours before the price goes up.

Secunia Personal Security Inspector (PSI) Released

Secunia’s Personal Security Inspector (PSI) is now out of beta. I’ve been using this handy application for quite a while and have found it to be extremely valuable for keeping my applications updated.

Secunia PSI scans the applications installed on your PC and warns you if any are outdated and contain known security flaws. It also flags applications that are no longer being supported by their vendors.

Windows users typically keep their machines updated with Windows Update or Microsoft Update, however, Microsoft Update only scans Windows and Microsoft applications. Secunia PSI scans not only Windows and Microsoft applications, but a long list of other applications from other software vendors such as Apple, Adobe, Sun and many others.

This latest version of Secunia PSI adds a “Simple” mode for non-technical users. The Advanced mode gives the user extensive control over the patching process while Simple mode makes the process, well, simple for the average PC user.

Secunia PSI runs in the background and constantly monitors your PC, scanning periodically to determine if the status of any known applications has changed and warning you if it does. The program is unobtrusive and doesn’t seem to consume noticeable quantities of resources.

This is not an anti-virus scanner. You still need AVG or another good anti-virus application. Secunia PSI compares the versions of known applications on your machine with its list of the latest secure versions. If there’s a mismatch, i.e. you have an older version of an application installed, PSI will warn you and tell you how severe the threat is.

The user interface is clean and straightforward, showing you graphically which programs are insecure or at end-of-life (no longer supported), how severe the threat is, whether there’s a direct download for the update, and very importantly, where the application is located on your machine. The latter information is very helpful when PSI shows that you have two instances of the Java runtime, for example.

I highly recommend installing Secunia PSI on your PC and keeping your applications updated with the latest security fixes. You can download the latest version here:

http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/

John The Geek

Amazon Kindle – First Impressions

The Amazon Kindle is basically an electronic book. Amazon calls it a “Wireless Reading Device.” The Kindle has been on the market about a year now. I recall looking at it when it was introduced and thinking it was a very cool idea.

Well, now it’s a year later and I own a Kindle. And it’s very cool.

The first thing you notice about a Kindle is the “electronic paper” screen. It’s essentially black-on-white and the detail is very sharp. Text is crisp and very readable even in bright daylight outside. There are a number of screen saver pictures that come with the Kindle and these are very detailed, looking very much like fine etchings.

Operation of the Kindle is straightforward. On the left side are Previous Page and Next Page buttons. On the right, a Next Page button and a small Back button. A small scroll wheel below the bottom right corner of the screen controls the cursor and menu system. Push the wheel to click, roll it to scroll the cursor.

The Kindle has a headphone jack for listening to music or audiobooks, a USB port for transferring content from your PC to the Kindle and vice-versa, and an AC jack to recharge the battery. At the bottom of the screen are indicators for remaining battery charge and wireless connectivity.

Battery life is impressive. I’ve gotten 3-4 days from full charge to half discharged with it on 24/7. I’ve not run the battery all the way down. Amazon warns not to do that, but to keep it topped off. I’m still a Ni-Cad guy so I can’t bring myself to plug it in every night, but when it gets to the halfway mark, I’ll charge it back up.

The Kindle is on the Whispernet wireless network, aka Sprint. I get 4-5 bars of signal strength everywhere I’ve been with it so far. The wireless is fast. A 1.5-2MB Kindle book downloads in a few seconds.

The Kindle has about 180MB of available internal memory, good for a hundred or so books in Kindle format. There is an SD card slot to add more storage. I have a 4GB card in mine which will hold literally thousands of books and documents. The Content Manager allows you to move items from internal memory to the SD card and vice-versa, or delete items altogether.

If you purchase a book from the Kindle Store, it is delivered to your Kindle via the wireless and also stored in your online Media Library at Amazon. This means if you run out of space on your Kindle and have to remove something to make more room, you can redownload it from the Media Library at any time when you have more available space.

In addition to the content you purchase from the Kindle Store, you can convert various files to Kindle format. At the moment, Microsoft Word documents are supported along with MP3s, JPGs and a few others. PDF documents are in the experimental stage. I’ve converted several PDFs and the results have been varied, but this looks very promising. One thing I intend to try soon is to convert a PDF to Word using Adobe Acrobat and then having the Kindle convert the Word doc.

Conversion is simple. Just email the file(s) you wish converted as attachments to the email address given you when you register your Kindle. There are actually two addresses, one of which is free. The difference is that the paid address delivers the converted document directly to the Kindle via the wireless. The free version stores the documents on Amazon’s servers and sends you an email with links to download them to your computer. You then transfer the downloaded files to your Kindle via USB cable.

As of this writing, the paid conversion address has not been charging the 10 cents they say they will charge for the service, but eventually I expect they will. The conversion fee isn’t unreasonable and IMO is easily justified in the time savings avoiding the download/upload cycle.

Not all books are available in Kindle format yet, but they’re certainly working on it. If you find a book on Amazon that isn’t in Kindle format, there’s a link next to it to tell the publisher you’d like them to publish it for the Kindle. I’ve been doing that with computer books as some of my favorite publishers aren’t putting out Kindle editions yet.

Purchasing content from the Kindle store is straightforward. You activate 1-Click ordering on your Amazon account and all your Kindle purchases are processed via 1-Click. There is a Search capability where you can search the Kindle Store from your Kindle by keying in search terms from the keyboard. The Kindle keyboard is a typical QWERTY layout, but the keys are very small buttons. Not all the punctuation marks are present, but when you need one, you press the Sym key which brings up a menu of them.

Thankfully, the period, forward slash and @ symbols are on the keyboard. Web surfing is available albeit in experimental mode and pretty much limited in usefulness to mostly-text web sites.

I leave my Kindle on 24/7 by putting it in sleep mode. If it’s idle with no activity for 10 minutes it will go into sleep mode by itself. There is a two-key combination to put it to sleep or wake it up depending on its current state. I also leave the wireless turned on although this probably consumes a bit more battery power than with it off.

In addition to books, you can purchase newspaper and blog subscriptions for your Kindle. All the major newspapers are available and well over 1,000 blogs as of this writing. I signed up for two sports blogs for 99 cents per month each. Whenever anything new is posted to the blogs, it shows up as a new item on my Kindle home page immediately.

I definitely love my Kindle! It’s allowing me to take reading material with me where it’s too cumbersome to carry a book or two and I can grab 10 or 15 minutes of reading as I get time during the day. If all my computer books were somehow transferable to the Kindle, I’d save a good percentage of the space in my home office! Hey, it’s nice to dream.

John The Geek

Living On Purpose Is the Key to Success

You may have heard the term “living on purpose.” We all know from when we were kids that if you did something “on purpose” it means you intended to do it, as opposed to something that happened “by accident” or “I didn’t mean to.”

I’ve been in Internet marketing for almost two years and I’ve recently realized that I haven’t been marketing “on purpose.” That isn’t to say that I became a marketer accidentally. Obviously, I intended to become a marketer! What’s been accidental has been the result I’ve achieved.

Let me explain. When you set out to do something, it doesn’t really matter what it is, you’ll get a result. The question is: is it the result you wanted when you started out?

The statistics are pretty depressing: something well over 90% of all startup businesses fail within the first few years. The length of time it takes for the business to fail is often a function of how long the owner can continue to pour money into it without making a profit!

So, why does such a large percentage fail? Because they have no clear vision of what they want and how the business will help them achieve their goal. In other words, there’s no overarching purpose to the business.

Ask any Internet marketer, or any business owner for that matter, why they’re in business and virtually all of them will say “To make money.” There’s usually a pretty important reason why they want to make money, but no clear plan for how that’s going to happen.

Your life has a purpose and your business needs to fit with that purpose. If you don’t know what your life’s purpose is, obviously, that can’t happen except by accident.

So, how do you discover your life’s purpose? By examining your life and identifying what turns you on and makes your heart sing. You were put here on this Earth to be joyful so by definition anything that brings you joy is part of your purpose.

It doesn’t matter what brings you joy. The important thing is to recognize and acknowledge it. Once you’ve done that, you can focus on finding ways to do those things as often as possible. Ideally, you can do it for a living. Imagine that, having fun “working!”

Look around you and notice that the happiest people you know are the ones doing what they love to do. You may think that you can’t make a living doing what you love to do, but the fact is that you very likely can. Once you know and embrace your purpose, anything is possible!

Knowing your purpose gives you focus, and focus is critical to success. Talk to anyone who is successful at anything and you’ll find that they are totally focused on what they do. That’s why they succeed while others all around them are failing.

If you’re struggling and/or not getting the results you want, I highly recommend taking some time to identify your life’s purpose. I’ve recently completed a 12-week course called “What’s My Purpose?”. It has helped me to discover my life’s true purpose and given me the focus around which to build my life and my business. If you’re ready for the life you want and deserve, you can get all the details here:

http://whatsmypurpose.com/johnsawyer

John The Geek

Earn 1K A Day Online?

If you sign up for my marketing mailing list, the first recommendation I make is to spend just under 8 bucks and grab a copy of Dennis “The Five Buck Guy” Becker’s “5 Bucks A Day, Jr.” report. I call it “the best 8 bucks you’ll ever spend online” because it contains exactly the advice every Internet marketer needs, at least those like me who spend their first year “chasing the shiny things” and never following anything through to completion.

Since purchasing my copy of “5 Bucks A Day, Jr.” I’ve gotten to know Dennis as a straight-shooting guy who is sincerely interested in helping other marketers be successful. A few months ago I joined his membership site entitled “Earn 1K A Day”.

The focus of “Earn 1K A Day” is providing resources to help you reach your first $1,000 day. The forum is outstanding and loaded with successful and future successful marketers all sharing their questions and answers with one goal in mind: to help those willing to make the effort to succeed.

The forum is just one part of “Earn 1K A Day”. Another benefit of membership is the amazing collection of reports, software, courses, and PLR/MRR products included in the $39.95 monthly membership dues. You simply read the reviews of the available products, choose the ones you want and download them. Some are for personal use only, and others can be resold. The obvious benefits are that A) you get expert opinions on what the products do so you know what you’re getting before you download them, and B) you’re not laying out additional money to get them!

I’d be willing to bet a whole lot of money that you’re spending way more than 40 bucks a month on products to try out, most of which you won’t like or use. Then, you have to go through the hassle of asking for a refund, or end up eating the cost.

In addition to the included products, there are many member-exclusive deals offered on recommended products every month. These are typically products offered by other members and are of the highest quality. Because you’re a “Earn 1K A Day” member, you’ll pay a lot less than the general public pays for them plus you’ll have direct access to the author and other users to get your questions answered.

I think by now you can tell that I’m really excited about my membership in “Earn 1K A Day”. I’ve joined a lot of sites and bought a ton of products in my marketing efforts and I’ve dropped most of them. “Earn 1K A Day” is one membership I’ll keep because it’s worth way more than what it costs me every month.

Check out “Earn 1K A Day” for 60 days. If you don’t agree with me that it’s a worthwhile investment, Dennis will happily refund your money. I’m betting he won’t have to.

John The Geek

Douglas Goodey – The 20 Million Dollar Man

Imagine that you were a very successful businessman rolling along toward a leisurely retirement with a net worth in the millions. Pretty nice scenario, isn’t it?

Then, one day you wake up to find yourself at age 65 over $4 million in debt! What would you do?

Many would have given up after such a crushing reversal of fortunes. One man who found himself in exactly that situation did something about it. They call him The 20 Million Dollar Man. His name is Douglas Goodey.

How did Douglas Goodey get the nickname The 20 Million Dollar Man? Over the 10 years between ages 65 and 75, he went from $4 million in debt to making over $20 million!

I don’t know what your personal situation is, but here’s why this story speaks to me. I’m not $4 million in debt, thank goodness, but sometimes it feels like that much. I’ll be 60 years of age in a couple of months and right now retirement isn’t an option.

I’m working hard at building up my Internet marketing business to the point where it can eventually replace my full time job income. Knowing that Douglas Goodey came from a much worse situation than mine and turned it around to that degree gives me the confidence that I can do the same for my own situation.

Download Douglas’ free report “15 Secrets That Made Me Millions” by visiting his web site: http://www.20milliondollarman.com.

John The Geek

Windows Home Server Project

About a year ago I saw an announcement that Microsoft was soon to launch an operating system called Windows Home Server. I was immediately intrigued because I’d been wanting a way to centralize my file storage so that I could keep all my data in one place and access it from any of my computers without having to have copies of everything on all the machines.

I discovered that WHS provided that and much more. Here’s a short list of its capabilities:

• Central shared file storage
• Automatic backup of all computers attached to it
• Remote access via the Internet
• Media streaming to compatible devices on the network
• Sharing of photos and videos with family and friends right from the server

I decided this was an ideal solution to my problem. My original plan was to purchase the software and convert my old desktop machine into a Home Server. This turned out to be a problem, however, when Windows Home Server was suddenly backordered and not available for quite a long time.

I eventually gave up and purchased an HP MediaSmart Server which comes with Windows Home Server. This was actually a better solution as the MediaSmart Server has four drive bays while my desktop machine only has two.

The HP box came with a 500GB hard drive already installed. Since my desktop machine has a total of 415GB of disk in it, I knew I’d need more disk capacity in the server. I purchased a 1TB internal hard drive to install in it. I already have three external USB 500GB drives which I can add to the server via its USB ports, if I choose to.

I set the server up last weekend and got it running. I installed the Windows Home Server client software on my desktop machine first in order to get the server configured and the software updated. This was very easy to do and went quite smoothly.

Next, I installed the Windows Home Server connector on my laptop. Now I can administer the server from either machine and transfer files to the server and access the files from both machines.

The only glitch I’ve encountered so far is that the desktop machine refuses to backup to the server. The C: drive in the desktop machine apparently has some errors on it and Windows Home Server won’t back up the disk with errors. I’m still working on getting the errors cleared up so the server can back up the desktop automatically. Stay tuned for further developments on that situation.

I still need to enable remote access, get the extra hard drives installed, and get the rest of my data files transferred to the server. Once all that’s done, I will get the desktop and laptop set up to backup automatically to the server every night. I’ll post more on those activities as they happen.

I’ve also found a blog dedicated to Windows Home Server users: http://www.wegotserved.co.uk

So far, I’m happy with my server setup. If you have a lot of data and several computers that all need to access it, you’ll want to seriously consider a solution like this.

John The Geek

Marketing Tech Secrets – Coming Soon!

Yes, this is a blatant plug for my new training site called Marketing Tech Secrets. Hey, if I don’t think it’s worth promoting, who will, right?

Seriously, I’ve made every effort to make Marketing Tech Secrets a valuable resource for Internet business owners and others who want to learn the technical skills necessary to run a web site. There’s nothing secret about any of this stuff, of course, but if you don’t know something, it’s a secret to you!

I’ve noticed in my experience in Internet marketing that a large percentage of people have difficulty with the technical aspects of their web sites. That’s understandable because if you’re not used to dealing with computers and networks and servers and the various services needed to run a business on the Web, it can be daunting.

My intention is to bring my nearly 30 years of professional computer expertise to bear on this problem and help people learn what they need to know to run their web-based business effectively. Whether you’re starting from scratch, or you’ve put up a site or two and want to learn about autoresponders and other tools of the trade, or you’re ready to dive into dynamic pages written in PHP, Marketing Tech Secrets has something for you.

I’ve divided the course into three levels so that you may join at the level closest to your current skill level and not have to sit through all that stuff you already know. You’ll be able to join at Square One if you’re just starting out, Level Two if you’ve got the basics down already, or Advanced if you’re ready to write scripts and dynamic pages to take your sites to another level.

What makes Marketing Tech Secrets unique is that it’s not simply a weekly lesson emailed to you to figure out on your own. Each level of Marketing Tech Secrets will have its own private discussion group where members may ask questions and get the answers they need from their fellow members or me. In short, you have access to my professional experience as much as you want while you’re an active member of Marketing Tech Secrets.

Get all the details and subscribe to our pre-notification list here:

http://MarketingTechSecrets.com

John The Geek

Firefox 3 – Browser Sync is Dead, Long Live Foxmarks!

I downloaded Firefox 3 the other day along with approximately 8 million of my closest friends. I installed it on my laptop at work a couple of days ago. My first impression was a dialog box that came up and said that most of the add-ons I’d been using with Firefox 2 no longer worked.

The dialog very helpfully offered to go look for updates for the outdated add-ons and I clicked the button to have it do that. It found a few updates, but not nearly all of them. Once Firefox launched, I went to the Add-ons dialog and found that there were a number of add-ons simply marked “Incompatible with Firefox 3″. My only available option was to uninstall the affected add-ons.

Several of the affected add-ons were ones I’d mentioned earlier in my post on my favorite add-ons for Firefox. The most important one was the Google Browser Sync add-on. This is the add-on I used most since it ran literally every time I ran Firefox on any of my three machines. It was also the most important to me because I didn’t want to have to keep the three machines’ bookmarks synchronized manually!

I went to Google to see what was up with Browser Sync and found after a bit of research that Google has stopped supporting Browser Sync! There will be no Browser Sync for Firefox 3. In the same article, however, was the good news: there’s a bookmark sync tool available for Firefox 3 that actually gets better reviews than GBS.

It’s called Foxmarks and it flat out rocks! You go to http://foxmarks.com, sign up for a free account and install the add-on in Firefox. When setting up your new account, Foxmarks copies your existing bookmarks to your account and keeps any new ones synchronized with the online site.

Now that you have your Foxmarks account, you can set up additional machines quickly and easily. Go to the Firefox add-ons site or Foxmarks and install the Foxmarks add-on. Log in to your account and you’ll be prompted to do one of three things:

• Merge the bookmarks with those on your machine
• Replace the bookmarks on your machine with those on the server
• Replace the server bookmarks with those on your machine

That pretty much covers what you’d want to do, so pick one and go. When Foxmarks is done updating, it goes off into the background and pretty much leaves you alone from then on. Any new or modified bookmarks get updated to the server silently.

When you start up Firefox, the Foxmarks add-on goes out to the Foxmarks server and updates the bookmarks on your machine silently. You don’t get the popup list of the tabs you previously had open as you used to with GBS because Foxmarks doesn’t handle that. Firefox 3 has the ability to “remember” which tabs you had open and just open them again when you start up without asking, if you choose that option.

Obviously, I’m a Foxmarks fan and I highly recommend it to replace Google Browser Sync. You’ll have to anyway when you upgrade to Firefox 3, also recommended, but more on that later.

John The Geek

Like this post? Publish It On Your Own Blog

Find The Best Freeware

I’m a long-time subscriber of Gizmo Richards’ Tech Support Alert newsletter. The reason is that Gizmo provides great general computing information plus he maintains a list of the best freeware available at any given time. If you need software that’s free and works well, check out the Freeware wiki:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/

Basically, if you’re looking for “the best free <insert application of your choice>” this is the first place to look. If you can’t find it here, it probably doesn’t exist yet.

While you’re at it, subscribe to Gizmo’s RSS feed to get notified when this site gets updated. Subscribe to his Tech Support Alert newsletter, as well. I’m a premium subscriber and it’s well worth the few bucks a year that he asks for it.

John The Geek

Like this post? Publish It On Your Own Blog